Starman

by Alan Dean Foster

  “It isn’t late,” he told her softly. “Time passes swiftly when one is able to use it for contemplation.”

  “Really?” She sat up, holding the blanket around her. “And what have you been contemplating?”

  “Various things.” He gestured outside. “I think your world is at its most attractive when both it and its inhabitants are at their quietest. I think we come to Winslow soon.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I like to watch you sleep. That was also for contemplation. It must be an interesting state of being for an intelligent person to experience. I cannot experience it, I can only hypothesize what it must be like, but I enjoy watching you do it.” He hesitated before continuing. “I do not know why. It is very strange. Adaptation works both ways. I was chosen explorer because I am very adaptable, more so than most of my kind. But the more time I spend in this body, the more I become like a planet Earth person. To me this is both an enjoyment and a danger.”

  She shuffled around, trying to get comfortable on the hard floor. “Do you have to go back? Isn’t there some way you could stay here, like a permanent observer or something?” Still holding the blanket around her, she crawled over to be next to him. He reached out and touched her lightly.

  “No. I must go back. Even if I could remain in this body, I could not stay in this mind.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I miss my own kind. This is not my world, not my home. Not my way of life. I was not designed for it. My adaptation to your form is as temporary as my adaptation to your ways. Spirit does not follow shape.” He looked away from her, back out into the night. When he spoke again there was a new solemnity in his voice.

  “There is something I must tell you. I do not know how such things are said, so I will simply say it. I gave you a baby tonight.”

  She inhaled sharply. “No. That’s impossible. Even if you were human it’d be impossible. I can’t have a child. I told you, I’ve been to a half dozen doctors and they all say the same thing. It’s not a matter of choice; it’s a matter of bad plumbing.”

  “This is outside their experience.”

  She thought back to what had happened earlier that evening. “Well, I don’t think any of them would argue that one with you, but still . . .”

  “Believe what I tell you, Jennyhayden. When you were shot by the policeman, I healed you. When our car struck the big truck filled with gas you would have burned but I prevented it. Both times I repaired your body. This time I fixed earlier damage. It was not difficult. To you your system may seem terribly complicated. To me it is no more so than the innards of this train.

  “You will have a baby. A boy baby. Not a probrecita. I was very careful. It is a matter of careful engineering.”

  She didn’t know what to do, how to react. She would have laughed if not for the blatant absurdity of what he was saying. There was too much warmth surrounding her for her to scream. So she just sat and stared.

  “He will be human, this child of your dead husband. The only genes involved are his and yours. But at the same time he will also be my—new person. Offspring. Baby.” He nodded to himself. “Yes, baby. That word is best. He will be mine because I engineered those genes. That is difficult to do, but not impossible. Biochemistry. There is much about your own makeup, your own DNA, that you do not understand. Much that is not used properly by your bodies. There are parts of your genetic code that are blank, like pieces of paper. I wrote on the blank pieces. That part of the baby will be me.” He turned to look deeply into her eyes.

  “There is one more thing I can do. If you do not want this baby, say so now and I will stop it. I can do that as painlessly as I started it. It will be as if it never was.”

  She considered quietly, realizing that here was something Important she was going to have to deal with even if she didn’t quite understand.

  “He’ll look normal? Like any other human baby? Like the one belonging to the woman who gave us the blanket?”

  “Like any normal human child, yes,” he assured her. “Except that it will not hurt when it gets its teeth. I fixed that, too.”

  Now she did laugh, softly, out of amazement. “I’ve had some surprises dumped on me early in the morning, but this . . .” She took a deep breath and looked past him, tilting her head back to stare up into the brilliantly clear sky. “Tell me, which of those is your star? Your sun? Can you see it from here?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ll want to show him where his other father came from—if he’ll believe me.”

  “When he has matured, he will understand.” He searched the heavens. “There—no, wait—over to the right a little, near that bright grouping low on the horizon. Your atmosphere is so thick and variable that sometimes it is hard to be certain. But if you look hard you can see.”

  She strained her eyes. “Where? There are so many.”

  He pointed to a saddle between two hills. “Down there. See it? just above that notch in the rocks and slightly to the right. It is not very bright from here, but it is much like your own star, though older. As our world is older. As we are.”

  “I see it. I see it.”

  Intervening hills cut off her view as the train swept around a wide curve. Pink light began to wash out the sky anyway, a sure indication that they were coming into a good-size town.

  “You’d better get dressed,” he told her, leaning out the opening to look past the distant engine. “I think we must be coming into Winslow.”

  Jenny ignored her clothing to stare at the city lights that were growing steadily brighter ahead of them. She frowned. “I didn’t think Winslow would be so big. ’Course, the geography of the southwest isn’t exactly my specialty. I have a tough time finding my way around Madison. I just hope to God we’re on the right train.”

  “Something is the matter?”

  “I hope not, but those lights are so bright. And there are so many of them.” Now she turned away and retreated back into the boxcar to get dressed. He was watching her again, but she no longer minded his stare.

  An hour passed before the starman cautiously slid the door aside and peered out into the railyard. The train had been at rest for some time now and still no one had come along to check the empty cars. He hopped out, reached back up and in to help Jenny down.

  They started walking toward the bright glow in the sky. “There are a lot of tracks.”

  “Maybe Winslow’s a major siding. That’s where they put trains that are waiting to go someplace else. A Sot of small towns are like that; a grocery, a couple of bars, gas station at each end, maybe a cafe—and twenty acres of track.”

  They crossed a parking lot. “There’s a building up ahead. Looks like it might be a station.” Her stomach was churning. This didn’t feel right. A town like Winslow shouldn’t rate a station.

  But that’s what the building turned out to be; a terminal, and much too big to belong to any town the size of Winslow. Though empty of people at this early morning hour, it. was brightly lit and well cared for. A single sign above the double doorway said it all:

  LAS VEGAS

  “Las Vegas! We were on the right train but we didn’t get off in time. We went past Winslow. Way past.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see? We’ve come too far. We’re in the wrong town.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s still the middle of the night. We’ve got time—I hope.”

  A couple of porters appeared on the station platform. They were busy talking and didn’t notice the man and woman standing down on the tracks. Jenny grabbed the starman’s arm and hustled him around the side, into an empty storage alcove.

  She cautioned him to be quiet and listened to the conversation above, ignoring the stench of oil and grease. Eventually the two porters went away, probably back into the station to wait for customers. She whispered to her patient companion.

  “We’ve gone about three hundred miles past Winslow, but we’re still all r
ight. All we’ve got to do is rent a car. With any kind of luck we can still make it back to Winslow before dawn. That means we’ve got to go into town. Just try not to be conspicuous, okay? Last thing we want is to attract any attention.”

  He nodded, extracted the baseball cap from his back pocket and placed it on his head. He put it on back to front, the way Scott used to wear it. When he saw the anguished expression this produced he hasted to correct it.

  “I am sorry. I was not being thoughtful.”

  “Never mind. Just leave it like that, please?” He nodded understandingly. She led him up a service ladder onto the side of the passenger platform. There was no sign of the porters or anyone else. “Come on.”

  They hitched a ride downtown and the cheerful lineman dropped them off on Fremont Street. “Thanks for the lift,” Jenny told him.

  “Hey, no sweat. I been broke in this town myself. That was ten years ago. Had to get a job to eat and ended up staying. Not a bad place to live. Not everybody here’s a crook or a conman, y’know.”

  “Right,” said the starman, giving the lineman the thumbs-up.

  “Take care, you two, and hang onto your money.” He waved as he drove off into the glitter.

  The starman was absolutely delighted: with the flashing lights, the rippling neon art, the screams of excited winners at the nickel slots, and the echoing bark of the crap-table croupiers. One small casino had a live barker stationed out front, standing and gesturing wildly beneath a sign that spelled out in explosive red and yellow—

  WIN WIN WIN

  GIANT JACKPOT $500,000!!!

  “Half-a-million dollars, folks. Who’s gonna take it home? Hit the giant jackpot and your troubles are over! Come on, friends, it’s burning a hole in our pockets and it might as well end up in yours. Free drinks and dollar ninety-eight steak dinner, it’s all on us folks!”

  The starman looked back over his shoulder at the frantic pitchman until he was swallowed up by the crowd, then down at Jenny. “Define ‘giant jackpot.’ ”

  “A giant jackpot is a lot of money,” she explained absently. She was searching the smaller doorways. There should be several rent-a-car places scattered among the casinos and hotels. She’d always heard that people who came to Vegas often ended up selling their cars to pay their debts. That meant they’d need some way of returning home.

  Sure enough, a modest sign above a door across the street was flashing:

  RENT-A-WRECK—OPEN 24 HOURS,

  365 DAYS A YEAR

  The starman was still working on her definition of giant jackpot. “Lot of money? Like geetus, bread, an arm and a leg?”

  Jenny led him across the street, watching the traffic while hunting through her purse. “Yeah, that’s right, but we don’t have time to fool around with slot machines and stuff. If we’re going to get back to Winslow in time then we . . .” She stopped as she stepped up onto the sidewalk. “Hey, where the hell’s my wallet?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She was pawing anxiously through her purse, shoving aside lipstick, comb and brush, safety pins, a stubby pen, finding everything except what she wanted.

  “My wallet, my credit cards. Everything, gone. I—oh my God.”

  She remembered: Elmo’s, back in Colorado. The phone call, setting her wallet down next to the telephone, the waitress telling her where the starman had gone. Rushing out of the booth and leaving the wallet behind.

  That was it, then. It was the end.

  She dug through the detritus one last time, found only a quarter, two pennies, and a postage stamp. She turned to face him, stricken. “I left my wallet in a restaurant in Colorado. I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.”

  “Is all right.”

  “No, is not all right! I don’t think you understand. We have no money, no credit cards, nothing. No way to pay for a car. I’ve ruined everything. I could wire Mrs. Gilman for some money, but even if I could get ahold of her it would never get here in time. The banks back home are closed and nobody here’s going to loan me any money without some identification.”

  He took the quarter from her hand, inspected it briefly. “Is all right,” he told her again. “I watched as we walked.” He stepped past her, crossed back to the casino with the barker out front. Numbly, she followed.

  Through the mirrored entryway, into the back of the casino, past the roulette wheels and crap tables he led her, finally halting in front of a line of quarter slots that were somewhat isolated from the rest of the late-night action. Jenny’s temporary shock dissipated as she realized what he had in mind. She had a clear memory of what he’d done to a certain recalcitrant Coke machine, but it was still a dangerous ploy. Yet she had no alternatives to propose.

  She could still help, though, and made him wait until the floorman had walked past. He hadn’t so much as glanced in their direction.

  “Now,” she whispered to her companion.

  The starman dropped the quarter into the slot, pulled the handle on the side of the machine. He watched the three wheels rotate for a moment, then put a hand on each side of the metal box. A faint humming noise was barely audible above the whirr and clank of the machinery. A pale luminosity emanated from the glass window. The wheels stopped one at a time, left to right. A bar, another bar, and—a lemon.

  Jenny slumped. She’d had only the one quarter. She was about to turn away when he seemed to nudge the machine ever so slightly. The lemon struggled with itself and gave way to a third bar. Coins began to pour out of the hole at the bottom of the one-armed bandit, which was ringing wildly.

  Someone had left a small plastic bucket atop a nearby machine. It was one of those cheap ice buckets that lower-class hotels and motels supply to every room. Grabbing the bucket she stuck it under the orifice, but it still wasn’t enough to hold the seemingly endless stream of quarters. She dropped to hands and knees and began picking them off the carpet.

  “That’s a handy little talent you’ve got there,” she told him, “but let’s spread it around a little. We’d better move to another casino. See, they get curious if you hit too many jackpots in one place. Besides, we’ll only need another couple like this one to . . . hey?”

  She rose, cradling the heavy bucket in both arms. Her companion was nowhere to be seen. He could have wandered off anywhere, into a floor show or worse, back out onto the street. She tried to see over the ranked machines, wishing she was taller, when suddenly all hell broke loose. Whistles were blowing, sirens wailing, bells shrilling madly. Above everything a recorded voice could be. heard repeating over and over, with just the right mixture of hysteria and delight:

  GIANT JACKPOT

  GIANT JACKPOT

  GIANT JACKPOT!!!

  “Oh no.” She forced her way through the gathering crowd, ignoring the quarters that spilled from the ice bucket.

  Sure enough, there he was, standing glibly in front of the oversized slot machine, wondering at the sudden commotion and bewilderedly accepting the congratulations of enthusiastic spectators. In the big glass window in the middle of the machine five sevens were lined up neatly in a row like so many toy soldiers. People packed in tight around him: women in beehive hairdos, men in slick suits whose true status was revealed by the state of their shoes, all manners of hangers-on who believed proximity to such luck might bring them a little of their own.

  Jenny tried to reach him but it was slow going through the dense crowd. From a side door marked MANAGER a neatly dressed middle-aged man emerged. He was trailed by an older man carrying a camera.

  They were met by another individual almost as big as the two of them put together who had “Security” written all over him.

  “What happened?” the manager asked quietly.

  “One buck!” The security man was shaking his head in disbelief. “One lousy buck. He changed four quarters for a silver dollar and hit for half a million.”

  The manager digested this as he gave orders to his PR man. “Get plenty of shots.” To the security bull, “Is he a mechanic?” Th
e photographer moved around them to do his job while the two older men considered the still growing crowd.

  “I can’t make him but—I don’t know. It’s weird, but I’d swear I’ve seen his face before. There’s something familiar about it that I can’t put my finger on.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I guess if I’ve seen it it’s got to be in the weekly casino updates.”

  “Well go and find it, and try to make it some time this month.” The security man vanished like a wraith. The manager sighed and began making his way through the crowd. Of all the duties attendant upon running a Las Vegas casino, the task he was about to perform was the least pleasant.

  The publicity man was grabbing one picture after another, doing his job, making sure to get plenty of full-face shots. The latter were for the police, not the newspapers. To the manager the lucky winner looked concerned, but not nervous. A mechanic, no matter how carefully he tried to hone his act, would be nervous.

  The starman was relieved to see a familiar face pushing toward him through the crowd. “Jennyhayden!”

  “Hang on!” A moment later she was standing next to him. There was nothing she could do about the photographer, so she ignored the repeated blasts from his flash. It didn’t matter. By the time any pictures could be developed and recognized, their subject would be long gone.

  If they didn’t waste anymore time, that is.

  “You went and did it, didn’t you?”

  “I did wrong?”

  She stared at the five sevens in a row, saw the big “5” beneath it followed by a string of fat zeroes, and shook her head. “It’s not exactly that you did wrong. It’s kind of hard to explain . . .”

  Before she could do so the manager joined them, introduced himself with a big smile, and insisted on having formal pictures taken with the lucky winner in front of the traitorous machine. The crowd dispersed along with the initial excitement, taking with them a little fresh hope. If the quiet young man could get rich in one night, so could they. Within the casino the action intensified, the levers of one-armed bandits were pulled with a bit more panache.