K-PAX

by Gene Brewer

  I didn't waste time asking him how he knew what the night sky looked like from K-PAX. He would undoubtedly have spouted something about "growing up there." Instead, I turned on the tape recorder and essentially just let him ramble. I wanted to know exactly how well developed his peculiar delusion was and what, if anything, we might be able to learn from it, both about prot's true background and, perhaps, about the universe in general.

  "Tell me about K-PAX," I said.

  He lit up when I asked him that. Munching a star fruit, the significance of which was not lost on him, he said, "What would you like to know?"

  "Everything. Describe a typical day in a typical year."

  "Ah," he nodded. "A typical day." Apparently this was not an unpleasant prospect. He finished his snack, and in the dim light I could see his fingertips coming together and his eyes rolling up. It took a few seconds for him to gather his thoughts, or project them onto his internal screen, or whatever he did with them. "Well, to begin with, we don't have 'days' in the sense you mean them. We experience rather dusky light conditions most of the time, you see, much like it is in this room right now." The last phrase was accompanied by a very familiar wry grin. "Also, KPAXians don't sleep as much as y'all do, nor do we sleep at regular times, but only as the need arises." I had gotten staff reports to this effect on prot's sleeping habits. He stayed up most of the night reading or writing or, apparently, just thinking, and napped at odd times during the day. "And finally, K-PAX doesn't rotate unidirectionally as does EARTH, but reverses itself as it reaches the end of its cycle every twenty-one of your years. Thus, the length of a 'day' varies from about one of your weeks to several months as K-PAX slows and reverses its spin."

  At this point I noted down something I had forgotten to mention to Steve: Prot's description of the path of K-PAX around, or between, its suns didn't seem to match Dr. Flynn's "figure eight" pattern.

  "Incidentally," he said, and his eyes opened for a moment, "we do have calendars and clocks, though we rarely use them. On the other hand, they never need to be reset or replaced-they are the type you would call 'perpetual.' But to get back to your question, let's say I have just awakened from a little snooze. What would I do? If I were hungry I would eat something. Some soaked grains, perhaps, and some fruit."

  I asked him what he meant by a "soaked" grain, and to describe some K-PAXian fruits.

  His eyes popped open again and he sat up straighter; he seemed to relish the opportunity to explain the details of his "world."

  "A soaked grain is just what it sounds like," he said. "You soak a grain long enough and it gets soft, like your rice or oatmeal. On EARTH you prefer to cook them. We just let them soak, usually in fruit juices. There are twenty-one commonly eaten grains on our PLANET, but, like yours, none is a complete food in itself. They have to be mixed to get the proper amino acid balance. My favorite combination is drak and thon and adro. It has a nutty flavor much like your cashew."

  "Gesundheit. "

  Prot had either a well-developed sense of humor or none at all-I was never able to tell. "Thank you," he said, without blinking an eye. "Now the fruits are a different story. We have several wonderful kinds-I especially like the ones we call yorts, or sugar plums-but they can't compare with EARTH's variety, which is due primarily to your great variations in climate. To summarize: If we get hungry we grab some soaked grains, usually in fruit juice, and sit down against a balnok tree and fall to."

  "What about vegetables?"

  "What about them?"

  "Do you have them?"

  "Oh, of course. After the next snooze we might munch a bunch of krees or likas."

  "Meat? Fish? Seafood?"

  "No meat. No fish. No seafood. No sea. "

  "No animals of any kind?"

  He tapped his glasses on the arm of his chair, "Now, gene, I've already told you about the aps and mots remember?"

  "What about pigs and cows and sheep?"

  With a deep sigh: "As I pointed out in session two, we don't have any 'domesticated' beings on K-PAX. But we have wild pigs, wild cows, wild sheep-"

  "Wild cows??"

  "Well, they're called rulis, but they're much like your cows-big, cumbersome, placid. Have you ever noticed how gentle your large beings are? Your elephants and giraffes and whales, even when they are mistreated?"

  "So basically you just eat and sleep on your planet?"

  "Perhaps I should back up a step. When I told you that we snooze when we feel the need, you probably imagined a bed in a bedroom in a house much like the one you live in. Wroooong! It's different on K-PAX. You see, our weather is very dependable. Every day is about the same as the one before. It is usually quite warm, and it never rains. There are structures scattered around for storage of utensils and the like, for the use of anyone who happens to pass by. Food is kept there, as well as mats and musical instruments-a variety of things-but no beds. For the most part-"

  "Who owns these structures?"

  "No one 'owns' anything on K-PAX."

  "Go on."

  "For the most-part we sleep out of doors-except there are no doors-usually for an hour or two, your hour, at a time. Where we won't get stepped on by an ap, of course. By the way," he interrupted himself, sitting up again, "since sexual contact is not a desirable thing on our PLANET, or on most others, men and women are free to share everything without fear or the need for guile. You might find yourself lying down for a nap near someone of the opposite gender, but you don't need to worry about what your wife or husband-or whatever-might think if he or she hears about it, or suffer embarrassment or discomfort of any kind, even though we usually wear little or no clothing. Sexual apparati are simply no big deal on K-PAX, especially since there are only two varieties and, as you know, when you've seen both, you've seen them all."

  He leaned back and closed his eyes again, obviously enjoying the exposition. "Okay, we've awakened, we've eaten something, we've urinated, picked our teeth, what do we do now? Well, whatever needs to be done. Soak some more grains for next time, wipe out our bowls, fix anything that's broken. Otherwise, anything we want! Some prefer to search the skies, others observe the leafing of the trees or the antics of the aps or the behavior of the korms or horns, or play music or paint or sculpt. When I'm not traveling I usually spend most of my time in one of the libraries, which are usually filled with beings at any given time of cycle."

  "Tell me more about the libraries."

  "There are some books there, of course, but those are very old, and there is something much better. Let me see if I can describe it for you." Prot's eyes rolled up again, and his fingers began tapping together, more rapidly this time. "Imagine a computer with a monitor that projects three-dimensional images complete with all-sense capability. Now suppose you are interested in ballooning. Let's say you want to know what it was like to pilot a balloon a hundred million, cycles ago, before we learned how to travel with light. You just set up the computer, tap in the instructions, and there you are! You would find yourself in an ancient gondola, floating at whatever location and altitude you specified, at the authentic wind speed and direction on the date you selected. Feel the ropes in your hands and the suns on your face! Smell the trees below! Hear the korms of that time who perch on top of the bladder or join you in the gondola! Taste the fruit and nuts provided for the trip! The surface features you see below you are perfectly accurate. It is exactly like being there!" By now prot was virtually quivering with excitement.

  "What happens if you fall off?"

  His bright eyes opened once more and his fingers became still. "That's a question only a human being would ask! But the answer is: nothing. You would find yourself back in the library, ready for another adventure."

  "What other kinds of adventures might you have?"

  "Use your imagination, doc. Anything that has happened on K-PAX in the last few million years is yours to experience, in three dimensions and all senses. You could recreate your own birth, if you wanted to. Or relive any part of your life. Or t
hat of any other being."

  "These holograms-do you have any for other planets? Will you be taking something back from Earth?"

  "Planetary travel is still somewhat new to us. We've only been at it for a few hundreds of thousands of your years, mostly just scouting expeditions, and our library is rather incomplete on that subject. As for EARTH-well, I find it to be a very interesting place, and I will so state in my report. But whether anyone will want to set up all the parameters..." He shrugged and reached for a mango, bit into it without peeling off the skin. "But that's only the beginning!" he exclaimed, with a noisy slurp. "Suppose you are interested in geology. Tap in the instructions, and samples of any and every rock, ore, gem, slag, or meteorite, complete with name, origin, composition, chemistry, density, from whatever source you specify, will be at your fingertips. You can pick them up, feel them, smell them. Same with flora and fauna or any group or species thereof. Science. Medicine. History. The arts. You like opera, nicht wahr? In a matter of seconds you could select anything you wished to see and hear, from a list of everything ever written or performed on K-PAX or certain other PLANETS, organized by title, subject, setting, types of voices, composer, performers, et cetera, et cetera, all cross-referenced. If you had this capability on EARTH you could take part in a performance yourself alongside Ponselle or Caruso! Sound good?" I had to admit that it did. "Or you could sail with Columbus, sign the Magna Carta, drive the Indy Five Hundred, pitch to Babe Ruth-you name it.

  "After a time in the library," he continued, a little more placidly now, "I might go for a walk in the woods or just sit or lie down somewhere for a while. That's one of the nicest things of all." He paused for a moment, apparently deep in thought, then said: "A few months ago I sat beside a pond in alabama. There was no wind at all and it was absolutely quiet, wonderfully still except for the occasional jumping of a fish or croaking of a frog or the sound of insects making tiny ripples on the surface. Have you ever experienced that? It is beautiful. There are no ponds on KPAX, but the feeling is the same."

  "When was this?"

  "Last october." He leaned back with that perpetual smile on his face as if he were, at that moment, actually sitting beside the pond he had just described. Then he sat up and sang, rather loudly and not on key, "And that's a typical daaayyyy" (tap, tap), "in dogpatch (tap), u.s.aaayyyy." A reference, according to my son Fred, to a popular Broadway musical of the fifties called Li'l Abner.

  And then he said something totally unexpected, something precipitated, apparently, by his "reminiscing" about life on his "world." He said, "No offense intended, gene, but my time is almost up here and I can't wait to get back."

  This took me completely by surprise. I said, "What-to K-PAX?"

  "Where else?"

  Now it was my turn to sit up straighter. "When are you planning to return?"

  Without a moment's hesitation: "On august seventeenth."

  "August seventeenth. Why August seventeenth?"

  He said, "It's 'Beam me up, scotty' time."

  "You're 'beaming' back to K-PAX on that date?"

  "Yes," he replied. "And I shall miss you. And all the other patients. And," he nodded toward the nearly empty basket, "all your delicious fruits."

  I said, "Why does it have to be August seventeenth?"

  "Safety reasons."

  "Safety reasons?"

  "You see, I can go anywhere on EARTH without fear of bumping into anyone traveling at superlight speed. But beings are going to and coming from K-PAX all the time. It has to be coordinated, like your airport control towers."

  "August seventeenth."

  "At 3:31 A.M. Eastern time."

  I was disappointed to find that our own time was up for this session. "I'd like to take this up again next week, if that's all right with you. Oh, and could you draw up a KPAXian calendar for me some time? Just a typical cycle or so would be fine."

  "Anything you say. Until august seventeenth, I'm all yours. Except for a little side trip up north, of course. I haven't been to a few places yet, remember?" He was already out the door. "Ciao, " he called on his way down the corridor.

  AFTER he had gone I returned to my office to recopy my notes. As I was trying to make some sense of them I found myself gazing at Chip's picture sitting on my desk. "Ciao" is one of his favorite expressions, along with "Truly," and "You know?" Now on summer vacation, he had gotten a job as a lifeguard at one of the public beaches. A good thing, too, since he had already weaseled two years' advances on his allowance. The last of my children, soon out of the nest.

  I should wax philosophical here and report that I pondered long and hard the implications of that inevitable fledging, both for Chip and for myself, but the truth is that it brought me back to prot's "departure date." August seventeenth was only two months away. What did it mean? It would be like Russell's saying that on such-and-such a day he would be returning to heaven. But in all the years he had been with us Russell has never announced a date for that journey and, to my knowledge, neither has any other delusional. It was totally unprecedented in the annals of psychiatry. And since it was patently impossible for prot to travel to K-PAX, or anywhere else, what would happen to him on that day? Would he withdraw completely into his amnesiacal armor? The only possible way I could see to prevent that from happening would be to find out who this man really was and where he had come from before it was too late.

  But suddenly it occurred to me that August seventeenth would have been the approximate date that prot claimed he had arrived on Earth nearly five years earlier. With this in mind I asked Mrs. Trexler to put in a call to the precinct where he had been brought in originally, as indicated on his admission records, to request that they check whether anyone answering his description had disappeared on or about that particular date. And to inform them of prot's possible visit to Alabama in October. She came in later with a batch of letters for me to sign, and mentioned that the police had promised to let us know if anything turned up. "But don't hold your breath," she snorted.

  WE find out a lot about our patients not only from the nursing staff but also from the other inmates, who love to talk about one another. Thus it was from his roommate Ernie that I first learned that Howie had become an entirely different person-cheerful, even relaxed! I went to see for myself.

  Ernie was right. On a cool Thursday afternoon I found him calmly sitting in the wide sill of the second-

  floor lounge gazing out the window toward the sky. No dictionaries, no encyclopedias, no counting the threads in the big green carpet. His glasses, whose lenses were usually fogged with grime, had been cleaned.

  I requested permission to sit down with him, and struck up a casual conversation pertaining to the flowers lining the high wall on the other side of the lawn. He was happy to produce, as he had many times in the past, the common and Latin names of each of them, something of their genetic history, nutritional value, medical and industrial uses. But he never took his eyes from the dark gray sky. He seemed to be looking for something-scanning was the word that came to mind. I asked him what it was.

  "The bluebird," he said.

  "The bluebird?"

  "The bluebird of happiness."

  That was an odd thing for Howie to say. He might well have known everything about bluebirds, from their eye color to their migratory habits to the total number worldwide. But the bluebird? Of happiness? And where did he get that gleam in his eye? When I pressed him on this I learned that the idea had originated with prot. Indeed, my problem patient had assigned Howie this "task," the first of three. I didn't know at the time what the other two were, and neither did Howie. But the first was assigned and accepted: Find the bluebird of happiness.

  Some of the temporaries in Ward One quickly dubbed Howie "the bluenerd of sappiness," and in Ward Four there was talk of a blue beard stalking the grounds, but Howie was oblivious to all this. Indeed, he was as single-minded as ever toward his illusive goal. Nevertheless, I was struck by the placidity with which he had taken up his stint by the wi
ndow. Gone were the fitful checking and rechecking, the rushing from book to book, the feverish scratching of pen on reams and reams of paper. In fact, his tablets and ledgers were still spread out all over his desk and the little table he shared with Ernie; apparently he had dropped what he was doing and didn't even care enough about his lifetime of records and notes to file them away. It was such a refreshing sight to see him calmly sitting at the window that I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief myself, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my own shoulders, as well as Howie's.

  Just before I left him the sun came out, illuminating the flowers and bathing the lawn in gold. Howie smiled. "I never noticed how beautiful that is," he said.

  Thinking that hell would freeze over before he spotted a bluebird in upper Manhattan I didn't bother to change his semiannual interview, scheduled for September, to an earlier date. But it was only a few days later, on a warm, drizzly morning that the wards were filled with the rare and delightful sound of a happy voice crying, "Bluebird! Bluebird!" Howie was running down the corridors (I didn't witness this personally, but Betty told me about it later), bursting into the exercise room and the quiet room, interrupting card games and meditation, finally grabbing a smiling prot by the hand and tugging him back to the lounge, shouting, "Bluebird! Bluebird!" By this time, of course, all the patients-and staff, too-were rushing to see the bluebird for themselves, and the windows were full of faces peering out at the wet lawn, shouting "Bluebird!" as they spotted it, until everyone was shouting "Bluebird! Bluebird! Bluebird!" Ernie and Russell and even the Duchess were caught up in the excitement. Betty said she could almost hear movie music playing. Only Bess seemed unmoved by the event, recalling all the dead and injured birds she had encountered in her joyless lifetime.

  Eventually the bluebird flew away and everything settled back to normal, or almost so. Or was there a subtle change? A gossamer thread of something-hope, maybe?-had been left by the bird, and someone rushed out to retrieve it. It was so fine that, after it had dried out, no one could actually see it, except for prot, perhaps. It remains in Ward Two today, passed invisibly from patient to patient as a sort of talisman to alleviate depression and replace it with hope and good cheer. And, amazingly, it often works.