Three miles along the East River Road, it suddenly catches up with me. All of it. I pull the car off the road and I can't stop shaking. Only a few trucks pass me, and nobody stops. It's twenty minutes before I can start the engine again, and there has never been a twenty minutes like them in my life, not even in Bedford. At the end of them, I pray that there never will be again.
I turn on the radio as soon as I've started the engine.
“—in another hospital bombing in New York City, St. Clare's Hospital in the heart of Manhattan. Beleaguered police officials say that a shortage of available officers make impossible the kind of protection called for by Mayor Thomas Flanagan. No group has claimed credit for the bombing, which caused fires that spread to nearby businesses and at least one apartment house.
“Since the Centers for Disease Control's announcement last night of a widespread staphylococcus resistant to endozine, and its simultaneous release of an emergency counterbacteria in twenty-five metropolitan areas around the country, the violence has worsened in every city transmitting reliable reports to Atlanta. A spokesperson for the national team of pathologists and scientists responsible for the drastic countermeasure released an additional set of guidelines for its use. The spokesperson declined to be identified, or to identify any of the doctors on the team, citing fear of reprisals if—”
A burst of static. The voice disappears, replaced by a shrill hum.
I turn the dial carefully, looking for another station with news.
By the time I reach the west side of Emerton, the streets are deserted. Everyone has retreated inside. It looks like the neighborhoods around the hospital look. Had looked. My body still doesn't feel sick.
Instead of going straight home, I drive the deserted streets to the Food Mart.
The parking lot is as empty as everywhere else. But the basket is still there, weighted with stones. Now the stones hold down a pile of letters. The top one is addressed in blue Magic Marker: TO DR. BENNETT. The half-buried wine bottle holds a fresh bouquet, chrysanthemums from somebody's garden. Nearby a foot-high American flag sticks in the ground, beside a white candle on a styrofoam plate, a stone crucifix, and a Barbie doll dressed like an angel. Saran Wrap covers a leather-bound copy of The Prophet. There are also five anti-NRA stickers, a pile of seashells, and a battered peace sign on a gold chain like a necklace. The peace sign looks older than I am.
When I get home, Jack is still asleep.
I stand over him, as a few hours ago I stood over Randy Satler. I think about how Jack visited me in prison, week after week, making the long drive from Emerton even in the bad winter weather. About how he'd sit smiling at me through the thick glass in the visitors' room, his hands with their grease-stained fingers resting on his knees, smiling even when we couldn't think of anything to say to each other. About how he clutched my hand in the delivery room when Jackie was born, and the look on his face when he first held her. About the look on his face when I told him Sean was missing: the sly, secret, not-my-kid triumph. And I think about the two sets of germs in my body, readying for war.
I bend over and kiss Jack full on the lips.
He stirs a little, half wakes, reaches for me. I pull away and go into the bathroom, where I use his tooth-brush. I don't rinse it. When I return, he's asleep again.
I drive to Jackie's school, to retrieve my daughter. Together, we will go to Sylvia Goddard's—Sylvia James's—and get Sean. I'll visit with Sylvia, and shake her hand, and kiss her on the cheek, and touch everything I can. When the kids are safe at home, I'll visit Ceci and tell her I've thought it over and I want to help fight the overuse of antibiotics that's killing us. I'll touch her, and anyone else there, and everyone that either Sylvia or Ceci introduces me to, until I get too sick to do that. If I get that sick. Randy said I wouldn't, not as sick as he is. Of course, Randy has lied to me before. But I have to believe him now, on this.
I don't really have any choice. Yet.
A month later, I am on my way to Albany to bring back another dose of the counterbacteria, which the news calls “a reengineered prokaryote.” They're careful not to call it a germ.
I listen to the news every hour now, although Jack doesn't like it. Or anything else I'm doing. I read, and I study, and now I know what prokaryotes are, and betalactamase, and plasmids. I know how bacteria fight to survive, evolving whatever they need to wipe out the competition and go on producing the next generation. That's all that matters to bacteria. Survival by their own kind.
And that's what Randy Satler meant, too, when he said, “My work is what matters.” Triumph by his own kind. It's what Ceci believes, too. And Jack.
We bring in the reengineered prokaryotes in convoys of cars and trucks, because in some other places there's been trouble. People who don't understand, people who won't understand. People whose family got a lot sicker than mine. The violence isn't over, even though the CDC says the epidemic itself is starting to come under control.
I'm early. The convoy hasn't formed yet. We leave from a different place in town each time. This time we're meeting behind the American Bowl. Sean is already there, with Sylvia. I take a short detour and drive, for the last time, to the Food Mart.
The basket is gone, with all its letters to the dead man. So are the American flag and the peace sign. The crucifix is still there, but it's broken in half. The latest flowers in the wine bottle are half wilted. Rain has muddied the Barbie doll's dress, and her long blonde hair is a mess. Someone ripped up the anti-NRA stickers. The white candle on a styrofoam plate and the pile of seashells are untouched.
We are not bacteria. More than survival matters to us, or should. The individual past, which we can't escape, no matter how hard we try. The individual present, with its unsafe choices. The individual future. And the collective one.
I search in my pockets. Nothing but keys, money clip, lipstick, tissues, a blue marble I must have stuck in my pocket when I cleaned behind the couch. Jackie likes marbles.
I put the marble beside the candle, check my gun, and drive to join the convoy for the city.
The Day the Aliens Came
ROBERT SHECKLEY
Robert Sheckley's reputation is based primarily on the quality of his quirky, subversive, satirical short fiction, a body of work admired by everyone from Kingsley Amis and J. G. Ballard to Roger Zelazny, with whom he has collaborated. He is on par with Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut as an ironic investigator of questions of identity and of the nature of reality. Sheckley first came to prominence in the 1950s as one of the leading writers in Galaxy, became a novelist in the 1960s, and still (but too infrequently) produces fiction today that is thought-provoking, memorable, and stylish. This story is in his classic Galaxy mode, and is another piece from the fine anthology, New Legends.
One day a man came to my door. He didn't quite look like a man, although he did walk on two feet. There was something wrong with his face. It looked as though it had been melted in an oven and then hastily frozen. I later learned that this expression was quite common among the group of aliens called Synesters, and was considered by them a look of especial beauty. The Melted Look, they called it, and it was often featured in their beauty contests. “I hear you're a writer,” he said.
I said that was so. Why lie about a thing like that?
“Isn't that a bit of luck,” he said. “I'm a story-buyer.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“Have you got any stories you want to sell?”
He was very direct. I decided to be similarly so.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“OK,” he said. “I'm sure glad of that. This is a strange city for me. Strange planet, too, come to think of it. But it's the city aspect that's most unsettling. Different customs, all that sort of thing. As soon as I got here, I said to myself, ‘Traveling's great, but where am I going to find someone to sell me stories?”’
“It's a problem,” I admitted.
“Well,” he said, “let's get right to it because there's a
lot to do. I'd like to begin with a ten thousand word novelette.”
“You've as good as got it,” I told him. “When do you want it?”
“I need it by the end of the week.”
“What are we talking about in terms of money, if you'll excuse the expression?”
“I'll pay you a thousand dollars for a ten thousand word novelette. I was told that was standard pay for a writer in this part of Earth. This is Earth, isn't it?”
“It's Earth, and your thousand dollars is acceptable. Just tell me what I'm supposed to write about.”
“I'll leave that up to you. After all, you're the writer.”
“Damn right I am,” I said. “So you don't care what it's about?”
“Not in the slightest. After all, I'm not going to read it.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Why should you care?”
I didn't want to pursue that line of inquiry any further. I assumed that someone was going to read it. That's what usually happens with novelettes.
“What rights are you buying?” I asked, since it's important to be professional about these matters.
“First and second Synesterian,” he said. “And of course I retain Synesterian movie rights although I'll pay you fifty percent of the net if I get a film sale.”
“Is that likely?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” he said. “As far as we're concerned, Earth is new literary territory.”
“In that case, let's make my cut sixty-forty.”
“I won't argue,” he said. “Not this time. Later you may find me very tough. Who knows what I'll be like? For me this is a whole new frankfurter.”
I let that pass. An occasional lapse in English doesn't make an alien an ignoramus.
I got my story done in a week and brought it in to the Synester's office in the old MGM building on Broadway. I handed him the story and he waved me to a seat while he read it.
“It's pretty good,” he said after a while. “I like it pretty well.”
“Oh, good,” I said.
“But I want some changes.”
“Oh,” I said. “What specifically did you have in mind?”
“Well,” the Synester said, “this character you have in here, Alice.”
“Yes, Alice,” I said, though I couldn't quite remember writing an Alice into the story. Could he be referring to Alsace, the province in France? I decided not to question him. No sense appearing dumb on my own story.
“Now, this Alice,” he said, “she's the size of a small country, isn't she?”
He was definitely referring to Alsace, the province in France, and I had lost the moment when I could correct him. “Yes,” I said, “that's right, just about the size of a small country.”
“Well, then,” he said, “why don't you have Alice fall in love with a bigger country in the shape of a pretzel?”
“A what?” I said.
“Pretzel,” he said. “It's a frequently used image in Synestrian popular literature. Synestrians like to read that sort of thing.”
“Do they?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Synestrians like to imagine people in the shape of pretzels. You stick that in, it'll make it more visual.”
“Visual,” I said, my mind a blank.
“Yes,” he said, “because we gotta consider the movie possibilities.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, remembering that I got sixty percent.
“Now, for the film version of your story, I think we should set the action at a different time of day.”
I tried to remember what time of day I had set the story in. It didn't seem to me I had specified any particular time at all. I mentioned this.
“That's true,” he said, “you didn't set any specific time. But you inferred twilight. It was the slurring sound of your words that convinced me you were talking about twilight.”
“Yes, all right,” I said. “Twilight mood.”
“Makes a nice title,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, hating it.
“Twilight Mood,” he said, rolling it around inside his mouth. “You could call it that, but I think you should actually write it in a daytime mode. For the irony.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” I said.
“So why don't you run it through your computer once more and bring it back to me.”
When I got home, Rimb was washing dishes and looking subdued. I should mention that she was a mediumsized blond person with the harassed look that characterizes aliens of the Ghottich persuasion. And there were peculiar sounds coming from the living room. When I gave Rimb a quizzical look, she rolled her eyes toward the living room and shrugged. I went in and saw there were two people there. Without saying a word, I went back to the kitchen and said to Rimb, “Who are they?”
“They told me they're the Bayersons.”
“Aliens?”
She nodded. “But not my kind of aliens. They're as alien to me as they are to you.”
That was the first time I fully appreciated that aliens could be alien to one another.
“What are they doing here?” I asked.
“They didn't say,” Rimb said.
I went back to the living room. Mr. Bayerson was sitting in my armchair reading an evening newspaper. He was about three or four feet tall and had orange hair. Mrs. Bayerson was equally small and orange-haired and she was knitting something orange and green. Mr. Bayerson scrambled out of my chair as soon as I returned to the room.
“Aliens?” I said, sitting down.
“Yes,” Bayerson said. “We're from Capella.”
“And what are you doing in our place?”
“They said it would be all right.”
“Who said?”
Bayerson shrugged and looked vague. I was to get very accustomed to that look.
“But it's our place,” I pointed out.
“Of course it's yours,” Bayerson said. “Nobody's arguing that. But would you begrudge us a little space to live in? We're not very big.”
“But why our place? Why not someone else's?”
“We just sort of drifted in here and liked it,” Bayerson said. “We think of it as home now.”
“Some other place could also feel like home.”
“Maybe, maybe not. We want to stay here. Look, why don't you just consider us like barnacles, or brown spots on the wallpaper. We just sort of attach on here. It's what Capellans do. We won't be in the way.
Rimb and I didn't much want them, but there seemed no overpowering reason to make them go. I mean, they were here, after all. And they were right, they really weren't in the way. In some ways, they were a lot better than some of the other apartment-dwelling aliens we came to know later.
In fact, Rimb and I soon wished the Bayersons would be a little less unobtrusive and give a little help around the apartment. Or at least keep an eye on things. Especially on the day the burglars came in.
Rimb and I were out. The way I understood it, the Bayersons didn't do a thing to stop them. Didn't call the police or anything. Just watched while the burglars poked around the place, moving slowly, because they were so overweight, fat alien thieves from Barnard's Star. They took all of Anna's old silver. They were Barnardean silver thieves and their traditions went back a long way. That's what they told the Bayersons, while they robbed us, and while Mr. Bayerson was going through his eyelid exercises just like nothing at all was happening.
The way it all started, I had met Rimb in Franco's Bar on MacDougal Street in New York. I had seen a few aliens before this, of course, shopping on Fifth Avenue or watching the ice skaters in Rockefeller Center. But this was the first time I'd ever actually talked with one. I inquired as to its sex and learned that Rimb was of the Ghottich Persuasion. It was an interesting-sounding sexual designation, especially for someone like me who was trying to get beyond the male-female dichotomy. I thought it would be fun to mate with someone of the Ghottich Persuasion after Rimb and I had agreed that she was basically a her. Later I checked with Father Hanlin a
t the Big Red Church. He said it was OK in the eyes of the Church, though he personally didn't hold much with it. Rimb and I were one of the first alien-human marriages.
We moved into my apartment in the West Village. You didn't see a lot of aliens around there at first. But soon other alien people showed up and quite a few of them moved into our neighborhood.
No matter where they were from, all aliens were supposed to register with the police and the local authorities in charge of cult control. Few bothered, however. And nothing was ever done about it. The police and municipal authorities were having too much trouble keeping track of their own people.
I wrote stories for the Synestrian market and Rimb and I lived quietly with our house guests. The Bayersons were quiet people and they helped pay the rent. They were easygoing aliens who didn't worry much; not like Rimb, who worried a lot about everything.
At first I liked the Bayerson's ways, I thought they were easygoing and cool. But I changed my mind the day the burglars stole their youngest child, little Claude Bayerson.
I should have mentioned that the Bayersons had a baby soon after moving in with us. Or perhaps they had left the baby somewhere else and brought it in after they'd taken over our spare bedroom. We were never really clear on where the aliens came from, and their babies were a complete mystery to us.
The way the Bayersons told it, the kidnapping of little Claude was simple and straightforward. It was “Good-bye, Claude.” “Good-bye, Daddy.” When we asked them how they could do that, they said, “Oh, it's perfectly all right. I mean, it's what we were hoping for. That's how we Bayersons get around. Someone steals our children.”
Well, I let it drop. What can you do with people like that? How could they stand to have little Claude raised as a Barnardean silver thief? One race one day, another race another. Some aliens have no racial pride. I mean it was cuckoo.
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