by Rudy Rucker
Conrad could feel the crystal in his pants pocket. It was smaller than it had been just a few minutes ago.
Strange. He was going to have to get rid of the crystal. Holding it in the Z.T. for that long had somehow energized it—one of its functions seemed to be that of a radio beacon. It had to be the crystal that had enabled the flame-people to home in on him like that.
And what did they want from him anyway? Apparently they thought he wasn’t doing too good a job here—they wanted to abort his mission. But unless he was actually holding the crystal, it was too hard for them to find him.Well, fine , thought Conrad,I don’t want them to find me.
A battery.The crystal was like a battery. His stick of light, after all, had to be living offsomething . The power for his reality-altering wishes had to come fromsomewhere . Such magical power would involve a higher form of energy than anything that humble human meat could provide.
Conrad reached into his pocket and fingered the crystal anxiously. When he was a kid it had been as big as his fist—though, of course, childhood memories were always inaccurate about size. In any case, last night, the crystal had definitely been the size of a big, homemade ice cube. But now—now that he’d had flying, and shrinking, and face-changing—now that he was the third Chinese brother—now the crystal was only the size of a matchbox.
The crystal was Conrad’s energy source, but it was also a kind of transmitter to the flame-people. Unless he wanted them to come back and get him, he was going to have to get rid of it. But where would it be safe? Some cops sped past on Route 42. Conrad felt a big pulse of stress. If the pigs got hold of his crystal, it would be all over. If the flamers found him again, it would be all over. What to do?
Why not just take Mrs. Larsen’s advice? Why not give the crystal back to Mr. Skelton? Conrad began walking faster.
The highway traffic made a lot of noise, but he kept having a feeling he was hearing thatZZZZOW from before. He glanced anxiously up at the sky, looking for a tumbling pattern of five red lights. Maybe as long as he didn’t actuallyhold the crystal, the flame-people couldn’t find him. But maybe not. In any case, the sooner he got to Skelton’s, the better.
Five more minutes’ walking down 42, and Conrad came to the Esso station at the corner of Drury Lane.
Skelton’s was about three miles down Drury Lane, down past where the Bungers’ house had been.
Three miles ... a good half hour’s walk. Conrad looked up at the sky once again. This was taking too long. Drury Lane didn’t have the heavy traffic that Route 42 did, he’d be a sitting duck for the flame-people’s scout ship. Should he phone Hank from the Esso station’s telephone?
Just then a yellow VW bumped up to one of the gas pumps. That looked like Sue Pohlboggen’s car, and in it was ... Dee Decca. Yes!
Conrad hurried over and stuck his head in her window. “Hi, Dee, it’s Conrad. Can you give me a ride down the road real quick?”
She was so surprised at his new Mr. Bulber-face that it took her a minute to understand what he was saying.
“Conrad Bunger?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Dee, it really is. We got high in the country together today, right? All is One, right?” He walked around to the passenger side and got in.
“I’m really just the same person you’ve always known, Dee.” His Mr. Bulber-voice was firm and manly, with a faint Boston accent.
“Yes, ma’am?” It was the gas station attendant, leaning down for Dee’s request. Conrad held his breath for what seemed an eternity.
“I just remembered something,” said Dee finally. “I’ll come back for gas in a little while.” They putt-putted out of the station and onto Drury Lane.
“Thanks, Dee.”
“Where to, spaceman?”
“You remember old Cornelius Skelton? Who has the farm?”
“Sure. I saw him on the seven o’clock news. That was you, too, wasn’t it, Conrad?”
“Yeah. It’s a mess. The crystal is what attracted the other alien—the one I was fighting. He ... it ...
was trying to get me to leave Earth. I’ve got to ditch the crystal with Skelton and go underground.”
The warm summer night slid past. “What did you come down to Earth for in the first place, Conrad?
What do you really look like?”
“The sword I was holding—that’s the alien me. I came down here and got a human body to see what people are like, I guess. My race—the flame-people—they’re in a saucer out past the Moon. All they know about Earth is what they see on TV, and TV is all bullshit, so they put me here to get the real picture. Find out the secret of life, you dig? OK, now take a right down this driveway. If there’s cops, we just turn around. My name is Charles Bulber. I teach physics at Swarthmore College.”
There were lights on in Skelton’s house, but no extra cars. Sooner or later the cops and reporters would be coming here, but right now they were still over at the cemetery.
“Should I come with you, Conrad?”
“Why not? Mr. Skelton was always nice to me when I was little. He taught me how to cast a fishing lure.
I think he’s basically on my side, even if Iam an alien.”
Chapter 23:
Saturday, August 6, 1966 Mr. Skelton stepped out onto his porch as soon as Dee and Conrad got out of the car. Though he was clearly overwrought, Skelton managed to speak with his usual good humor.
“Well, well. A pretty girl and a man in a black suit. Are you-all from the press?”
“Good evening, Mr. Skelton,” said Conrad. “I’ve come to see you in connection with your missing crystal.”
“Would you care to show me some identification? And come up here in the light where I can get a good look at you.” “Here’s all the ID we’ll need,” said Conrad, taking the crystal out of his pocket and tossing it up to Skelton. “I want you to keep this for me till I need it again.”
Skelton’s weathered face became suffused with joy. “After all my waitin’—you’re finally here? Come on in!” Conrad was tempted. He’d always liked Mr. Skelton, and the idea of being a real alien talking to a UFO
buff had a certain appeal. “No,” said Dee, taking Conrad’s arm. “We can’t. We’re in a terrible hurry.”
“Ah just want totalk to you,” protested Mr. Skelton. “Ah just want to see how youlook .” The only light was on the porch; Conrad and Dee were in near-darkness. “No,” repeated Dee.
Conrad realized she was right. Anything they told Mr. Skelton might find its way into the UFO magazines, and onto TV. At this point it was too hard to figure out what was safe to tell and what wasn’t.
He glanced up at the sky once more.
But there were no red lights up there, no flying wing. Tossing the crystal to Mr. Skelton, he’d felt a tangible drop in his energy level. As soon as the thing left his hands, it stopped being a saucer beacon.
Really, for now, there were only the cops to worry about. And they weren’t looking forProfessor Bulber . “We can talk for a minute, Mr. Skelton,” said Conrad. “As long as you’ve got the crystal back, I guess everything’s OK. But I’d rather we stayed out here.”
“Would you yourself be from the saucer that mutilated my hog?”
“That’s me,” admitted Conrad. “March 22, 1956.” “You’re Conrad Bunger, aren’t you?”
Dee gasped. But the deduction wasn’t really so surprising. After all, Conrad had been on TV twice tonight and ... “Even when you were a little boy, I suspected,” mused Skelton. “There was always something ...odd about you, Conrad. My, my. Me readin’ and writin’ about UFOs these ten years, and an extraterrestrial living right down the street.” He chuckled softly. “I didn’t realize it till this year,” said Conrad. “I have a kind of amnesia.”
“Conrad, comeon ,” hissed Dee. “You have to getout of here.”
“Three questions,” said Mr. Skelton, “and I’ll let you and the young lady be on your way. UFOs have been my hobby since my wife died. UFOs and fishin’ for bass. I’ve puzzled and puzzl
ed over these questions.”
“All right,” said Conrad. This was fun.
“I think it was the radio and TV broadcasts which attracted us, Mr. Skelton, rather than Hiroshima. Our ships are stationed at quite some distance from Earth, too far to observe a nuclear explosion directly.
And as far as world peace goes—that’s not our problem. World peace isyour problem.”
“Very well,” said Skelton with a slight nod. “Question number two.Why don’t you all just come on down and make friends in an open way?” His voice took on an almost pleading tone. “I’m sure our races have so much to share.”
“Well,” said Conrad, “my impression is that if our presence were too widely known, then we would be unable to carry out our mission here—a mission which, to the best of my knowledge, primarily involves observing andlearning from the human race in its natural state.”
“That’s what I’d always imagined,” said Skelton. You could tell he’d thought about UFOs a lot. “Your role would be comparable to that of a naturalist who observes a beaver colony from a hidden blind. I understand. I promised only three questions, and here is number three. I’m an old man, Conrad, with my own ideas, but there is one thing I’d like to ask you. How does your race account for ...” Skelton paused, collecting his thoughts. “Let me put it country-simple. What is the secret of life?”
Dee was nervous enough to greet this question with a wild giggle.
“Ma’am?” said Skelton. “I’m afraid I ...”
“Don’t mind her,” said Conrad. “What is the secret of life? Strange as this may sound, Mr. Skelton, I don’t know. I said before that my mission involves learning from the human race. More specifically, my mission is to find out whathumans think is the secret of life. Do you have any opinions?”
“Since you so politely ask, yes, I do.Life goes on. That’s the secret, as far as I’m concerned. No one person—or being—matters that much, because life goes on anyway.”
“Thank you,” said Conrad.
“Lifeas the secret of life,” interpolated Dee. “Let’s go.”
“OK. We’ve got to go, Mr. Skelton. Hang on to that crystal for me. It’spart of me . Hide it. Don’t let the cops get it, whatever you do. And one other thing ...”
“Anything at all, Conrad.”
“Do you have any beer?”
“Just a second.” Mr. Skelton headed into his house, leaving his front door open.
“Are you crazy?” demanded Dee. “Is beer all you can think about?”
“I just didn’t want him to see me getting into the car,” explained Conrad. “So he doesn’t see me all lit up by the dome-light. I don’t want people to know I’ve changed my face.” He hopped into the car and bent down when Skelton reemerged from his house. Dee took the beer—two cans of Sterling—and got in the car as well.
“Why are we helping you, Conrad?” she asked as they drove off. “What am I doing chauffeuring a nonhuman saucer-creature? Why didn’t Mr. Skelton come back out with his shotgun and blow you to bits?”
“No beer for me, thanks. I’m confused enough as it is. Does Hank know?”
“Yeah. But you’re the only one who knows I can change my face. Please don’t tell anyone, OK?”
“Can you change back to Conrad for a minute? I don’t like you to be Charles Bulber. You look like a real straight-arrow.” “My powers only work in life-or-death situations. Like at the graveyard just now when the cops almost caught me.”
“That fire-stick you were fighting with was one of your ... race?”
“Flame-people, Dee. Yeah, that was one of them. They were trying to get me to come back. They think I’ve fucked the mission badly enough already. But I dig it here. I like being human.” They pulled into a Gulf station, and while the attendant filled the tank, Dee put her arms around Conrad and gave him a big kiss.
“That’s nice of you,” she said after a time.
“What is?”
“To dig being human,” said Dee. “I don’t think Jesus ever said that.”
“What are you talking about?” said Conrad. They pulled out of the gas station and headed for town.
“I mean, the way the story goes, Jesus was an extraterrestrial-type being who put on a human body, right?”
“I’m not Jesus.”
“I knowyou’re not. But youare in a somewhat similar situation.”
“I never understood why Jesus had to get crucified. Couldn’t he just say, ‘Fuck thiscross shit,’ and fly off, or change his face? Why should he let the pigs kill him?” “He had to die so he could rise from the dead. I think the idea was to let the pigs take their best shot at him ... and thenstill come back.”
“Oh, look, I don’t want to start thinking this way. It’s too sick. I’m just a hippie.” Conrad finished the first beer and started on the one he’d opened for Dee.
The news about his being an extraterrestrial seemed to have changed Dee’s attitude toward him considerably. Before this, they’d been good friends, but now she was looking at him with ... veneration.
As if heknew where it was at .
“You’renot just a hippie,” said Dee quietly. “Listen.” She put on the car radio. News, excited news.
“... tentatively identified as Conrad Bunger, aged twenty, formerly a resident of Louisville. Bunger’s family have refused comment until ...”
“I ... I think it might have been Sue,” Dee said. “I told her not to, but she ...”
Conrad groaned and twiddled up and down the dial.
“... indicate a genuine UFO incident. Positive radar contact was made by air traffic controllers at Standiford Field ...”
“... Fort Knox jets scrambled, but the vehicle evaded them easily ...”
“... photographs seem to show one man—now identified as Conrad Bunger, aged twenty—with two alien beings having the appearance of rods of light. An analysis of the images reveals ...”
“... Cornelius Skelton, who states that Conrad Bunger spoke to him in person, giving assurances that ...”
“... here with Cornelius Skelton, who says he saw Conrad Bunger shortly after the Zachary Taylor cemetery incident. Mr. Skelton?” The old man’s voice came on—the reporters must have gotten there right after Dee and Conrad left. “That is correct. Ah spoke briefly with ... the alien. There is every reason to believe that this being’s purpose here is of a peaceful and scientific nature. Ah feel—”
Conrad clicked the radio back off.
“God. We’re going to have to be very cool at the train station, Dee. There’s going to be cops all over the place. You don’t think Skelton gave them your license number, do you?”
“What would be so terrible if the policedid catch you, Conrad? You haven’t done anything wrong.
Maybe you should go public.” She gave him another admiring glance.
“Look, if the police get me, I’ll be on live TV. And any time I’m on live TV, the flame-people will know where to look for me. They want to cancel my mission, Dee. They want to get me out of here. They’ll chop up my body, and take my flame back to the flying wing.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Conrad. Maybe it’s nice in the ... flying wing. What does that mean, anyway,flying wing ?”
“That’s what our saucer looks like. Sure, maybe it is nice there. But I’m scared, all right? I’m scared of a big change, number one, and number two, I have a bad feeling the flame-people might be really mad at me. What if they court-martial me, or something? My instinct is to stretch out this Earth-gig as long as possible. Make the most of it, you know?” They were driving down Broadway now. Conrad glanced back to make sure no cops were following them.
“The flame-people can’t find you unless you’re on TV, or holding that crystal?”
“Right. It’s like a person can’t see what’s going on in an anthill. You can’t keep track of just one ant.
Jesus ... would you look at that?”
There was a police barricade in front of the train station. You had to pass a checkpoint t
o get inside.
Flashing red lights and excited yokel faces.
“Just drop me here, Dee. Thanks for everything. I’ll miss you.”
“But ...” She looked at him all wide-eyed, like he was a guru or a rock star. This afternoon it had been Dee-and-Conrad , but now it wasHuman-and-Alien . It felt bad.
Dee’s face relaxed into her old smile. “We’re all aliens, one way or another, aren’t we, Conrad?”
It was hard to stop kissing, but—like everything else, like everything—at some point it was over. Last smile, door-slam,putt-putt , goodbye.
Getting past the cops was easy with the Charles Bulber IDs. The next train north was due in forty minutes. Conrad wandered into the train station’s large newsstand and bought himself theSchaum’s Outline Series on General Physics .
Part IV
I got up and went out. Once at the gate, I turned back. Then the garden smiled at me. I leaned against the gate and watched for a long time. The smile of the trees, of the laurel,meant something; that was the real secret of existence.
—Jean-Paul Sartre,Nausea
Chapter 24:
Saturday, August 13, 1966 Charles Bulber
23 Crum Ledge Swarthmore, PA 19084
August 13, 1966
Dear Audrey, I guess you’ve read about me inTime —yeah, this is Conrad here—DON’T TELL ANYONE! BURN
THIS! I mean it, Audrey, if they catch me, it’s my ass. God I miss you. You’ll be back in the U.S. on Sept. 2. You see, I remember. It might not be too cool for me to come up to Columbia, but you can come down here and stay with me at Mr. Bulber’s house, it’s so hard waiting for you, sweet darling.
I hope you don’t think I’m icky for being sort of an extraterrestrial. I can hardly wait to run my pincers and feelers all over your ripe young ... No, wait, it’s not like that; it’s the story we were goofing on at the Gold Rail with Hank Larsen last winter ... it’s really true. My body is real Earthly meat, but there is a kind of stick of flame in my spine, which is what came from the flying saucer. Theflame-people , remember? I mean, it’s obvious, really—that’s why I had those special powers all along. (Remember the time I shrank for you up in NYC and Katha Kahane starts pounding on the door? Yubba!)
