Starman

by Alan Dean Foster

  In the middle of the brown cloud a door opened. Hands reached out and pulled the gasping, choking starman into the front seat. He wiped his eyes, blinked.

  “Jennyhayden!”

  “Let’s move it, Dave!”

  “Roger, wilco, Commander!” Grinning at both of them the young man gunned the engine. The car tore around the outside of the road-block at high speed, kicking up a huge roostertail of dust in its wake. Behind it there was a lot of dirt, cursing, and confusion as the troops tried to get organized. In the swirling dust no one could locate Mark Shermin.

  “My God,” Jenny muttered, staring at the starman as the car pulled back onto the concrete with a loud screech, “what are you doing here?”

  “I hitched a ride. With a cook.”

  She shook her head. “Ask a silly question.”

  “It is good to see you.”

  “You too.” She turned to speak to the driver. “This isn’t going to work, Dave. They’ll be on top of us any minute now.”

  “No way. You should’ve seen ’em when we pulled out. They’re all running around bumping into each other. Besides, you think I can’t outrun a lousy jeep?” He accelerated, staring over the wheel like a man possessed.

  “What if they send a couple of helicopters after us?”

  “Oh.” He looked crestfallen.“I didn’t think of that.” He slowed, looked over at her. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. Give me a minute to think.” After a pause she nodded toward the side of the road. “Pull over and let us out.”

  He sighed. “You’re the boss, lady”

  The car rumbled to a stop and Jenny and the starman got out. She leaned back in and flashed her sexiest smile. “Thanks for everything, Dave. You really helped us out of a tight spot.”

  “My pleasure. You sure I can’t take you any farther?”

  “No. We’ve got to try something else. You go on ahead. Maybe they’ll follow you. I don’t want you to get into trouble, so if they catch you tell them we forced you to drive us.”

  “Gotcha.” She stepped back and watched as the car peeled out, leaving rubber on the concrete. Taking the starman’s hand Jenny led him across the highway toward the eastbound lane. Now it was the wind and not a car that was kicking up dust.

  A station wagon came toward them, swerved around at the last instant. The driver leaned on his horn and shouted back at them. “Rent a room!”

  “Asshole!”

  Jenny gaped at the starman. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “The cook.”

  “Great education you’re getting.” She stared down the deserted highway. “We gotta get out of here.”

  An old pickup came chuffing along. Jenny stepped out and waved. It slowed down, pulled over next to them. She leaned toward the open window on the passenger side and spoke hopefully. A couple of kids, brown as coffee beans, stared back at her out of wide dark eyes.

  “Please, mister, we need a lift real bad. Which way you going?”

  The driver was thin, muscular, and almost as dark as the children. His slim mustache was damp with sweat. “Durango, señora.”

  “That’d be swell.”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You can ride in back, if you don’t mind some company.”

  She smiled up at him. “Thanks.” They went around to the rear of the truck and she helped the starman climb over the tailgate. As they pulled back out onto the road she took stock of their fellow passengers. There was a young woman with a baby in her arms and an old man. She tried not to stare. There weren’t a lot of Hispanics in rural Wisconsin.

  “We are going the right way?” the starman asked her.

  She nodded, leaned back against the wheel well. “The guy who got us past the roadblock told me there’s a railroad down here that runs almost due south, straight through Winslow. If we can hop a freight it’ll take us right into town. From there we can hitch to where you have to go.”

  The starman was staring at her intently. Not that he had become an expert on the full range of human emotions as conveyed by vocal inflection, but he was certain her tone was different than he remembered it. Short and strident.

  “You sound different. I have done something wrong?”

  “Oh no, nothing at all. What makes you think that?” she said sourly. “I wake up alone inside half a trailer in the middle of nowhere and you’re gone. Disappeared, took off, without leaving a note or anything. I thought we were friends.”

  “You are right. We are friends. I did it to help you. To be with me is not good for your health. I do not want to see you hurt, Jennyhayden, and because of me you might have died.”

  “Friends don’t run out on each other like that, no matter what the reason. At least you could’ve said good-bye.”

  “ ‘Good-bye?’ ”

  “You don’t say good-bye up there?”

  “Teach me this.”

  “What’s to teach?” She shrugged. “Good-bye is farewell. It’s—hell, I don’t know. It’s a custom, a politeness. If you say it a certain way it means that, well, it’s a way of telling somebody you like that you—wish them well. That you hope . . .”

  A loud squalling interrupted her as the baby in the young woman’s arms woke up. The mother also came to life, tried to quiet the infant while looking apologetically over at the starman and Jenny.

  “Her tooth comin’ in. You know.” She gestured at her own mouth. “Diente.” She rocked the baby in her arms. “Pobrecita, The long ride is hard on her.”

  “Can I hold her for a while? You could get some rest.”

  “No. Gracias, but it is okay. There is nothing anyone can do. We have no medicine.” She smiled bravely. “I do not like to see her cry, but it will stop soon. The hurt will go away.” As she finished the infant let out another unhappy wail.

  Smiling reassuringly at the mother, the starman leaned forward. “Excuse me, please.”

  “You doctor?” She eyed him disbelievingly.

  “No, but I can help.” The young woman looked at Jenny, who nodded.

  He put gentle fingers on the baby’s face, ran them across the cheeks and over the chin, barely skimming the lips. The crying turned into a gurgling sound, gave way to silence as the baby stared up at him out of wide, guileless eyes.

  The old man said something for the first time. It was in Spanish and Jenny couldn’t understand the words, but she could imagine what he was talking about. As the starman sat back the mother’s expression shifted between wonderment and wariness.

  The sky rumbled. Distant thunder promised forthcoming rain. Jenny glanced upward. “Storm coming in.”

  “Aquí, aquí,” muttered the old man, suddenly moving around. He started to unfurl a pile of thick canvas. Jenny leaned over to help him.

  By that afternoon the temporary roof had been set in place over the pickup’s bed. Thick clouds had accumulated threateningly overhead, but so far only a few drops had fallen.

  The old man and the woman lay together beneath an old army blanket, resting peacefully. Jenny wondered if he was her father, or perhaps the father of the man driving the truck. Or maybe he was just a hitchhiker like themselves. Appearances could be deceiving.

  Of all people she ought to know about that.

  She held the baby in her arms, rocking it gently and cooing to it as it slept. The mother had finally agreed to hand the child over so she could get some rest herself. The baby moved slightly in its warm blanket, tiny hands reaching instinctively. Jenny cuddled it close, murmuring softly to it.

  “Probrecita.”

  “A new person is called a probrecita?”

  She smiled across at him. The two of them were huddled together beneath another army blanket and he was very close to her. She no longer minded the closeness, no longer found the proximity disturbing.

  “Only if they’re Spanish and have a toothache. Otherwise they’re called babies.”

  “Can anyone have babies?”

  “Just girls.”

&nb
sp; “I did not mean that. I meant, any female. I understand your reproductive process. That information was presented clearly on the device that helped us to find your world.”

  “You said ‘your’ reproductive process. You don’t have babies?”

  “Not in the same sense as you. We are very long-lived, Jennyhayden, and much content with ourselves. The creation of a new person is a serious matter among us and is not taken lightly.”

  “Same way with us. Well, most of the time, anyway.”

  “You have a baby?”

  “No. No babies. No dogs, no cats, no canary birds.”

  “You were not married long enough?”

  “No, it’s more than that. Scott knew. I told him right away, as soon as we started getting serious. He understood. It didn’t matter to him.” She tried to smile and failed. “Just turned out I couldn’t. Everybody can’t do something. I was just one of those lucky ladies who can’t . . .”

  A loud crack of thunder interrupted her, went rolling off to the north. Lightning painted the underside of a cloud with light. Then the cloud and its companions opened up and the travelers found themselves journeying onward beneath a waterfall.

  It rained all the way to Gallup, in northwestern New Mexico. Surprisingly, the old canvas kept the majority of it off, so they were almost dry when the pickup pulled in next to the railroad siding.

  The old man raised the back flap and peered out. No yard men in sight. Probably all sitting in their shack drinking hot coffee, he thought. The long lines of boxcars trailed back into the rain, like ghosts.

  There was a clash of couplings as the freight train lurched forward in front of him. He turned and waved into the darkness beneath the canvas. “Vamanos, hurry up! The train going west is moving. Go quickly now.”

  Jenny and the starman climbed over the tailgate and stepped down into shallow mud. She led him toward the slowly accelerating train, searching the cars. The young mother followed behind while the old man stayed in the back of the truck with the child.

  “Here!” Jenny indicated a boxcar whose door was slightly ajar. The starman grabbed it and shoved it aside, gave her a hand up and then followed.

  Once they were safely aboard, the young woman tossed a bundle of material at them. “Here, a blanket. It’s dry.” As the train continued to pick up speed she began to fall behind. “Vaya con dios.”

  “Good-bye, thank you!” Jenny leaned out and watched for as long as she was able. The young mother was still waving to them as the train picked up speed and moved off the siding out onto the main track.

  “Close the door.” The starman nodded once, leaned his weight against it until it shut tight. Their haven thus secured from curious eyes, Jenny turned to inspect their surroundings as she wrung water out of her hair.

  The interior of the boxcar was dry. Except for a few boxes and crates it was also empty, which explained why the door had been left unlocked. Nothing to steal.

  Behind her, the starman sneezed.

  “You’d better get out of those wet clothes. Maybe you can heal others by waving your fingers over ’em, but if you let that body get good and sick you may not be able to do anything for yourself.”

  “Why get out of clothes?”

  “The water’ll chill your skin and make you do worse things than sneeze.”

  “What is sneeze?” He did it again.

  “That is ‘sneeze,’ and there’ll be worse coming if you don’t listen to me. I swear, you are the strangest blend of brains and stupidity I ever saw. Come on, like this.” She demonstrated what she wanted him to do by unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt.

  “We’ve got to get you warm. You know what pneumonia is?” He shook his head. “No? Well you’re liable to find out unless we get you dry in a hurry. It’s not something that’d be much fun to study firsthand.” She continued working on his shirt. “Come on, help me. You haven’t got a damn thing I haven’t seen a thousand times before.”

  The starman just stood and let her do all the work. She finished with his shirt, then moved on to his shoes and pants. Finally he was standing in front of her, stark naked and utterly unself-conscious. To him she had merely removed the outer set of clothing, the one composed of artificial fibers.

  She picked up the blanket and started wrapping it around him. He put out a hand to touch her gently in the hollow of her throat.

  “You are wet also. You will not catch this pneumonia if you stay wet?”

  She didn’t know how to reply. “I’m not immune to it, if that’s what you mean.” They were touching and she was acutely conscious of the warmth of his body. “I’m not going to catch cold, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well—because.”

  “That is no reason.” She didn’t stop him when he reached for the zipper on her windbreaker.

  There was nothing unnatural about it, nothing at all. She knew every inch of that body. It was like the first time because he didn’t know what to do or how to move, but the mechanism responded to her and he was a superb learner. Outside, the thunder rumbled and the train rattled on through the night and somehow it didn’t seem to matter. Images and visions careened wildly through her mind and it was all perfectly wonderful.

  Though she didn’t think it was quite what Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote, “There are more things in heaven and Earth than you’ve dreamed of, Horatio.”

  It was calm by the time the helicopter touched down at the airfield. Clouds still hovered overhead, but the rain which had buffeted the chopper on its southward flight had moved off to the east.

  Shermin jumped down and examined his surroundings, then started toward the hangar that loomed across the tarmac. Two guards flanked the entrance. Despite the fact that his helicopter had set down within punting range of their position, he still had to produce three separate pieces of identification before they would admit him.

  Inside the hangar it was not calm. Soldiers and technicians were running, not walking, to their assigned stations. Desk and office equipment were being set in position, files full of papers placed atop the desks, telephone lines hooked up. All the activity conveyed the impression that something important was going on. It wasn’t, not yet.

  There were no reference points for Shermin in the organized chaos of the hangar. Then he spotted the major from Wisconsin. At about the same time, the officer noticed him standing forlornly near the doorway and crossed to greet him.

  “Hi. I’m Bell, remember?”

  “Sure I remember. Hasn’t been that long. That’s what’s so crazy about this whole thing. Everything’s happened so damn fast. How come they brought you all the way down?”

  “Because I’m more or less familiar with what this is all about. I guess they figure the fewer who have any idea what’s going on, the better.” He waved at the chamber behind them. “As you can see, it’s not slowing down. Oh, Mister Fox wanted you to know that he was delayed getting out of Washington. He’ll be late arriving.”

  “What’s this all for? I didn’t get all the details. After we lost them at the roadblock in Colorado I was told to report here. Looks like you’re setting up for something major. No pun intended.”

  Bel! grinned politely. “For the foreseeable future this is going to serve as a base of operations. Seems that while the rest of us have been running around trying to convince our visitor to give himself up quietly and with a minimum of fuss, intelligence has been doing its own work. They finally figured out that according to the speed and trajectory of the visitor’s craft—I think we can stop referring to it as a hollow meteorite—it was originally headed for someplace in northeastern Arizona or northwest New Mexico. Since leaving Wisconsin in the company of Mrs. Hayden, he’s been heading straight here. You put one and one together, you come up with thoughts of some kind of rendezvous. The powers-that-be think his friends may try to send another meteor to pick him up. Make yourself at home.”

  The major moved off to direct the installation of additional equipment. Shermin n
oticed a couple of white-coated lab techs hauling something glassy and complex toward the far side of the room. Curious, he pushed his way through the crowd toward them.

  “Whatcha got?”

  “Pathology supplies,” one of the techs replied with a grunt. “Cryogenic suspension system elements. Stuff like that.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tagging along behind, Shermin found himself in a screened-off section of the hangar where other techs were setting up additional gear. Three of them were very carefully unpacking an electron microscope. Another was busy at a hastily installed stainless steel sink, washing out containers and glass beakers. Next to him a nurse was supervising the unloading of an impressive array of surgical instruments.

  In the center of the room was a gleaming operating table equipped with leather straps. An electrician was working on the big mirrored light that hung over the table. Shermin stayed out of the man’s way as he examined one of the leather straps.

  “Welcome to planet Earth,” he murmured. No one overheard. They were too busy.

  The clouds over northern Arizona had vanished eastward to reveal the desert night sky, alive with the stars city-dwellers only see on the bowls of planetariums. Train wheels rattled musically against the rails. Somewhere out in the barren mountains a coyote howled, the faint yip-yip rising and falling with comical speed.

  Clad in his almost dry shirt, chinos, and shoes, the starman sat by the open door of the boxcar, staring out into the darkness. From time to time he would turn to check on Jenny. She slept soundly, rolled up in the cocoon of the old blanket and shielded from the wind by the little wall of empty crates and containers he had piled up around her.

  The train whistle screamed, more for the engineer’s amusement than out of necessity. In this country, even the sight of a steer on the tracks was an event. Jenny groaned, rolled over and stretched. Halfway through the stretch she opened her eyes, woke up, the turned over and stared at her silent companion.

  “Where are we? What time is it?” She looked past him at the stark, moonlit countryside. “At least the rain’s stopped. We won’t drown when we get out.”