by Rudy Rucker
One side of the pyramid furled open. A rod of light darted out, a rod of light with a knob at one end. Dogs were barking, and some of the humans were out in their yards yelling. A police siren sounded in the distance.
Moving rapidly, the stick of light floated over the low cemetery wall and disappeared. One of the barking dogs gave a shrill yelp of terror and fell silent. Conrad stared at the scout ship, unsure whether to run or to keep watching. Just then he noticed a dark shape moving toward him through the gravestones.
A big dog, it looked like, in the light from the houses, a big black dog trotting toward Conrad with a frightening singleness of purpose. The alien had taken it over. It was coming to get Conrad.
Now the dog was only ten yards off. Something glowed at the back of its neck—a large parallelepiped crystal resembling the one Conrad held clutched like a sword hilt in his fist. Moving instinctively, Conrad raised his fist to the back of his neck and—drew out a rod of light. Yes. Drew it out like a sword from a scabbard, pulled his flame-person self out of the human spine where it lived!
The dog charged now, and as it leaped, Conrad stepped sideways and slashed downward with his sword of light. It burned the dog in half; for a moment, Conrad thought the fight was already over.
But now alien energy came oozing out of the dog’s spine, energy that rejoined its crystal to form a sword-thing like Conrad’s. The glowing shape flung itself at Conrad; he hacked and parried as best he could.
It was strange-feeling, this battle—Conrad had double perspective on it. On the one hand, Conrad was the human being wielding the sword; on the other hand, Conrad was the stick of light in the human’s hand. He could feel it either way. Each time he touched the other flame-person, a tingling buzz rushed through him like an electric shock. The main thing was to keep the other from hurting his human body. If he lost his meat, he’d have to go back to the saucer. Thrust and slash, dodge and duck. It was all happening too fast to analyze.
Suddenly the other flame-person knotted itself into Conrad’s sword and began to pull. It was talking to him, Conrad realized—that buzzing was a kind of talk.
Come on, Conrad, it was saying, it’s time to get you out of here. People are going to recognize you from TV, and your next powers are going to use up so much of your crystal-energy that—
Conrad braced himself and refused to budge. Just then, four or five spotlights focused on him and the scout ship pilot.
“DON’T MOVE OR WE’LL SHOOT!” Cops—squad cars full of cops.
Oh, #*!%, buzzed the other flame-person. I give up. It swooped back to the red-flashing spacecraft and, as suddenly as it had come, the UFO tumbled back up into the sky.
WOZZZZ.
Conrad’s bright sword flexed in exultation. Conrad’s human body sighed in relief. The big dog lay there on the ground before him, cut right in two. With the same automatic motion that he’d used before, Conrad raised up his stick of light and slid it down into his spine. Like a sword-swallower. Click. He felt whole again. Good and—
“RAISE YOUR HANDS UP HIGH!”
Fly, thought Conrad. Shrink! Nothing doing. He pocketed the crystal and raised both hands high as if to surrender. The cop cars were about twenty yards off—they couldn’t get any closer, with Conrad in here among the gravestones. Each gravestone cast a dark shadow. It was obvious what to do.
Conrad twitched his left hand and dived down to the right. In a shadow. Good. He scuttled backward, shifted to a new shadow, scuttled further. Further. Bright lights, dark shadows. Someone fired a shot, someone screamed not to. There were more cops, circling up on Conrad’s position from behind.
“WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!”
Cops in front of him, cops behind him. By now, they’d lost track of exactly where he was, here in a patch of shadow behind one of ten thousand identical gravestones. If only I looked like a cop.
The crystal twitched in his pocket, and then Conrad felt his clothes shifting, felt the flesh of his features crawl. All right!
“He’s not over here!” called cop-voiced Conrad, getting to his feet. He could change his face! Third Chinese brother!
“I’m going to check over by the wall!” His handcuffs jingled, and his pistol slapped against his leg. The other officers wandered this way and that.
There was a low stone wall around the cemetery. Conrad found a spot with no people close by and rolled himself over the wall. Mr. Bulber, he thought, as he dropped out of sight. I want to look like Mr. Bulber.
When he got back to his feet, he was a nondescript guy in his early thirties—a carbon copy of his Swarthmore physics teacher, Mr. Bulber. Mr. Bulber had the virtue of being very normal-looking: prim mouth, neatly parted dark hair, horn-rimmed glasses, charcoal-gray suit—
More and more people were coming to see what was up, but no one noticed “Mr. Bulber” walking off. As he walked, Conrad drew out his wallet and took a peek. Money in there, good, and, even better, IDs with Charles Bulber on them.
Conrad started walking along Route 42. But where to? Probably the cops or someone had gotten footage of him dueling with the other flame-person—which meant that his old cover was thoroughly blown. Plenty of people in Louisville would recognize Conrad Bunger from the pictures. He wasn’t going to be able to look like his old self anymore at all. It was time to get out of town.
Some teenagers threw a beer can at him from a passing car. Of course. Who wouldn’t throw a beer can at Mr. Bulber, all neat and square in his charcoal-gray suit? He’d want to pick a new body-look before long; but, for now, this was good and innocuous.
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.
He had half a mind to just throw the crystal into the roadside weeds. But wait. What was it the other flame-person had said? Your next powers are going to use up so much of your crystal-energy that—
That what? And what was the meaning of “crystal-energy”? The other flame-person had consisted of a crystal and a stick of light. Somehow, the troublesome crystal in Conrad’s pocket was part of him—for why else would he have felt such a crazy need to go and steal it? And just as he’d gotten the power of changing his face, the crystal had gotten a bit smaller.
A battery. The crystal was like a battery. His stick of light, after all, had to be living off something. The power for his reality-altering wishes had to come from somewhere. 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 wal
king faster.
The highway traffic made a lot of noise, but he kept having a feeling he was hearing that ZZZZOW 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 actually hold 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.
Dee stared at him tensely. “I just saw the news flash on TV. You were fighting some weird—” She paused and looked around. She seemed quite high. “I phoned Hank, and he said it was true, so I’ve been cruising around here looking for you.” She patted Conrad’s knee. “You can change your shape? You’re an alien?”
“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 or it or she 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 I am 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 to talk to you,” protested Mr. Skelton. “Ah just want to see how you look.” 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 for Professor 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, come on,” hissed Dee. “You have to get out 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 puzzled over these questions.”
“All right,” said Conrad. This was fun.
“Number one,” intoned Mr. Skelton. “Is it true that Hiroshima was the event that got you all interested in Earth? Hiroshima was in forty-six, you know, and the first official saucer sighting was by Kenneth Arnold, in 1947. Did you come here to bring world peace?”
“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 is your 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 and learning 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 what humans 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.
“Life as 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’s part 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?”
“Because you’ve both known me since high school?” Conrad opened the beers and offered Dee one. “Let’s get some gas for the car, and then I’d like to go to the train station downtown. I think it’s at Ninth and Broadway.”