The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  …and next to Arnold, Alexander himself, the whole reason the drawing is so important. Because, once you take his limited drafting skills into account, it’s an accurate drawing. It shows a boy with a big round head that seems too large for his body, and big long fingers disproportionately long for their hands, and big black eyes shaped like almonds.

  In the picture, he’s smiling. That’s important. Alexander wasn’t very good at smiling; his facial muscles weren’t really built for it. He couldn’t maintain the expression for long. But in the drawing he’s smiling, and waving: like for all the world a still from one of those old-time Spielberg movies.

  The picture’s important because it shows that Alexander, at that age, already understood just how different he looked. He just wasn’t self-conscious about it, that’s all.

  Not even the day Faye brought him to his first day at the local elementary school—a small brick building midway between Sweethaven and Monarch, a somewhat larger town that sat fifteen miles up the road.

  Sweethaven and Monarch shared the school between them, in order to make the classes large enough to support a teacher for every grade. That was still an average of only ten or eleven children per class. Six of the kids in Alexander’s class were natives of Monarch and three of those would now be meeting the Space Boy for the very first time.

  On the school’s insistence, Alexander was ushered in half an hour late, after his teacher, Mrs. Hirschman, had a chance to deliver her little speech about what to expect. The speech included the standard warning that he might look a little scary, but he shouldn’t be treated any differently than anybody else. As a result, the five children who knew Alexander from Sweethaven, and the three children from Monarch who had met him already, were now reminded to consider him odd, and the three children who’d never seen him before watched his entrance with the awed fascination they would have awarded a strange and colorful new species of bug.

  As he took his seat, the girl in the desk next to him, Sally Watkins, said the first thing that came to mind. “He looks like a spaceman.”

  Mrs. Hirschman was scandalized. “Sally! That’s rude!”

  “That’s okay,” Alexander said. “I do look like a spaceman.”

  “That may be true, but we don’t like to make fun of the way people look in this class.”

  “But everybody says it….”

  Mrs. Hirschman now definitely had the look of a woman who feared losing control. “It’s still not a subject we’re going to discuss here. Is that clear?”

  Alexander hesitated. “Okay. Sure.”

  “Thank you, Alexander.”

  She turned her back, to write something on the blackboard.

  He simply followed her with his big black eyes, bemused by her reaction, and wondering just what he’d said to get her so upset.

  He looked around at his classmates to see what they thought—and was startled to find several of them staring at him with expressions ranging from loathing to morbid fascination. Those who were looked away quickly as soon as he made eye contact, afraid to admit their interest, scared that he’d notice them as they’d noticed him. He’d seen such reactions before (notably from his dad, and by at most a couple of other people in Sweethaven), but he was treated so normally by his mom and the rest of his family that he’d just written that off as something that strangers happened to do.

  Now, looking at the faces of his classmates, it occurred to him for the very first time that this was the way some people looked at boys who looked like spacemen.

  It’s a tribute to the Drier family and the people of Sweethaven that Alexander, a remarkably bright kid, didn’t have enough experiential data to reach this seemingly obvious conclusion until he was almost six. But it still hurt. In this, the first moment where he really had a taste of what it meant to be a freak, he felt so tremendously self-conscious that he actually considered bolting from the room in tears.

  Then he noticed Sally Watkins, the little girl who’d called him a spaceman, sticking out her tongue at him.

  He blinked, unsure how to react.

  She looked away, then turned back, and stuck out her tongue again.

  Experimentally, because it was the only response that seemed to make sense, he stuck out his own tongue in kind.

  She crossed her eyes.

  And he felt better.

  Popularity, it seemed, was not going to be a serious problem.

  Space Boy’s Secret Mission on Earth!

  Veni, Vidi, Vici

  In a particularly frightening nationwide poll, astrology became the only “science” seventy percent of Americans could identify by name. A certain national news magazine ran a cover story about the prophecies of Nostradamus, and how they’d all come true, sorta. There was another evolution debate in the Department of Education, with Darwin evicted from over half the nation’s schools and creationism installed as the officially recognized curriculum. Reports of UFO abductions reached an all-time high, to the point where they were reportedly taking place out in the open, on crowded city streets, with nobody ever managing to get one on film.

  Somehow, Alexander learned. He was so anxious to get back into Mrs. Hirchman’s good graces that he paid attention to her boring lectures and did all his homework, and before long he realized he was enjoying it.

  There was a problem with a couple of local adults who objected to having their kid go to the same school as Alexander. They actually picketed the school, declaring it, “OFF LIMITS TO ALIENS.” It was ugly, and stupid…but it also died down once the idiots in question realized that nobody was going to buy it. Alexander was the local celebrity. He was the reason the world knew Sweethaven and Monarch existed. They were proud of him. Plus the owners and employees of the half dozen businesses in town owed their increased sales to him, and they knew it.

  Time passed.

  When Alexander was eight he surprised his mother by announcing that he wanted to become a spaceman. Faye deserves credit for immediately understanding what he meant. “Maybe you better say ‘astronaut,’ dear.”

  That seemed reasonable enough to him. “Astronaut,” he agreed.

  Uncle George, who was listening, said, “You know, son, that’s a pretty hard thing to want to grow up to be.”

  “Why?” Alexander wanted to know.

  “Because, right now, there aren’t any astronauts.”

  “There are the Israelis.”

  Uncle George shook his head. “They’ll quit soon. That always happens. We got tired and quit. The Russians got tired and quit. The Japanese got tired and quit. The Saudis got tired and quit. Pretty soon the Israelis will get tired too. I don’t know if anybody will still be doing it by the time you grow up.”

  Alexander was at the stage of life where historical precedent didn’t mean a damn thing to him. “That’s okay. I’m still going to be an astronaut.”

  “How?” Uncle George wanted to know. “You gonna build a rocket ship in your backyard?”

  Alexander shrugged. “If I have to.”

  “And where are you going to go?”

  “Venus. Saturn. Pluto. One of those places.”

  “Pluto,” Uncle George repeated dubiously.

  “It’s cold there,” Alexander said. “It’s cold and Mercury’s hot. But I’ll go anywhere they want to send me. It doesn’t matter where as long as I get to go.”

  Faye, who was digging up a clog in the sink, grunted, “And as long as you also get to come back.”

  “Well, duh,” Alexander said.

  Much later, when the boy was watching Gilligan, Uncle George took Faye aside to bring up a concern last expressed by Mark Drier during the Saudi moon landing. “Listen, are you sure it’s a good idea to encourage him to talk about that kind of thing? Let the wrong person hear him talking about going off into space, and they’ll turn it into E.T. wanting to go home.”

  Faye said, “I don’t care what they turn it into. I care what my son turns it into.”

  “Oh, come on—”

  “N
o, you come on. He’s eight years old. Are you going to tell him not to dream?”

  “He can dream all he wants,” Uncle George said. “But you have to teach him to keep some things secret. He has too many people listening to him…some of whom would love to hear him talk about wanting to be an astronaut. Don’t you see that they could twist that into anything? Don’t you understand that he’s gotten to the age where we’re going to have to keep a tight rein on the kind of things that come out of his mouth?”

  Faye sighed. “I’m not going to keep him gagged, George.”

  “It’s not as simple as that—”

  “I’m sorry,” Faye said. “But it’s as simple, or as complicated, as my son and I choose to make it.”

  Space Boy’s Plot to Hypnotize the World on TV!

  Don’t Watch His Eyes, Experts Warn

  When Alexander was ten, he was interviewed on TV. He’d actually appeared on television any number of times before that—starting with his birth, and continuing throughout his childhood, whenever enterprising newspeople went back to Sweethaven for regular updates. But that was just news footage. This was a fully authorized, in-depth interview, promoted on prime time and aired on the highest-rated, most influential TV news magazine of its time. It was considered a coup by all involved—not only by the network and the newspeople, but also by Faye and Alexander Drier.

  This was because Faye’s refusal to exploit her son’s notoriety had prevented the Driers from earning any of the millions that might have been raised by Space Boy merchandise. In supporting him, she’d been helped not only by regular checks from Alexander’s absent father, but also by her family, which had helped her maintain their home, and by her community, which had determinedly kept her employed and protected from the worst of the UFO-abduction crazies. But that hadn’t provided for much more than necessities, birthdays, and Christmases. And when Alexander, whose interest in astronautics had not faded, and whose bedroom was now overflowing with Saturn V models, Armstrong and Aldrin posters, and models of the solar system, announced that the one birthday present he wanted more than any other was a day at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, Faye had felt her back forced against a wall.

  And so she finally let it be known that she was amenable to an interview. As long as whoever performed the interview did it in Washington, providing security and travel expenses for herself, Alexander, one of Alexander’s school friends (he chose Sally Watkins), the parents of the child he chose, and two relatives to be named later. So many news organizations leaped on this offer that she’d needed almost two weeks just to decide which one was least likely to provide unpleasant surprises; she chose the one she did, despite its decades-old confrontational stance toward corrupt businessmen and politicians, because it was also a fairly honorable enterprise that could be trusted to take it easier on a kid.

  As a result, Alexander enjoyed several firsts: his first trip outside Wyoming, his first airplane flight, his first journey among strangers whose reactions to him could not be safely predicted, his first time speaking for himself on television…and one other thing, which he wouldn’t find out until two days after the interview aired.

  From all accounts, he acquitted himself admirably.

  There was the incident on the connecting flight to Philadelphia, when a fifteen-year-old kid across the aisle elbowed his sister and said: “Hey, look. We’ve been abducted.”

  “Shut up!” the sister hissed. “You’re awful!”

  Instead of ignoring them, Alexander leaned over and responded in a spooky voice that carried throughout that entire section of the plane: “Actually, he’s right. And we’re not really landing in Philadelphia…Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  That made a hit. So did his unannounced appearance at the Air and Space Museum, where he found himself attracting more attention than any of the exhibits. He might have ignored the people who gathered around him to gawk. He might have gotten frightened and asked them to leave him alone. He did neither. Instead, armed with his own intense interest in the subject, he became a tour guide: pointing out the Apollo capsule, the Space Shuttle, Skylab, and everything else he recognized from his own reading, explaining what they were and where they had gone in a loud, clear voice that communicated more enthusiasm than factual accuracy. (He was, after all, a ten-year-old.) Midway through his presentation, a local news team arrived and filmed him describing how astronauts went to the bathroom in space—scooping the interview show he was slated to do in three days, but capturing for the very first time on national television his declaration that he was going to be an astronaut himself.

  There was more. He went to Arlington, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Clinton Museum, the Memorial for the Victims of the Toxic Spill in Honolulu. He spent one sad morning in the National Holocaust Museum, silently moving from one exhibit to another, speaking only when he encountered the Nazis’ own footage of a dwarf executed for his deformities. Alexander’s response upon realizing just how doomed his own life could have been (an angry “Were all these people stupid, or what?”) made the news that night. The local anchorman joked about comments from an alien visitor. I remember wanting to kill him.

  Alexander’s live interview turned out to be more than a way to cadge a free trip to Washington; it was also a masterstroke of public relations on the part of his mother. Because it was the last thing the UFO fanatics had expected: nothing more than a friendly conversation with a bright, articulate ten-year-old. Alexander talked about his favorite teachers at school, what TV shows he liked, the things he’d seen in Washington, even his dinner with the President (breaking up the host by taking that opportunity to wave at the camera and say “Hi”.)

  At one point the conversation turned to how Alexander got along with other kids.

  Q: Do your friends make a big deal about you being famous?

  A: Sometimes.

  Q: Does it change the way they treat you?

  A: I don’t know. I’ve never been any different, so I don’t have any other experience to compare with.

  Q: Well, let’s put it this way. When you play Star Trek, do they always make you play the alien?

  A: No. We take turns.

  Q: Do you play Kirk?

  A: Sometimes. But everybody says I look more like Picard.

  By the first commercial break, most people who’d tuned in to see the Space Boy were already realizing that this was just a smart and likeable kid. Unfortunately, most was not all, and polls revealed that there were still twenty million Americans more convinced of his extraterrestrial origins than ever before.

  Part of that may have had something to do with the third segment, which turned out to be Alexander’s eulogy for the space program. He talked about John Glenn and he talked about the walk on the Moon and he talked about the space shuttle and he talked about wanting to be an astronaut and he talked about how everybody told him that wouldn’t happen and he talked about how he wanted to make sure it happened anyway. He talked about the planets and what they were like and which ones he’d like to visit if he only got a chance. He was, as it happens, particularly enthused about Mars, and he said he’d rather go there than just about anywhere else.

  The final segment culminated in the moment of self-description that defined Alexander for millions of Americans:

  Q: Do you really think you’ll be an astronaut when you grow up?

  A: One way or another.

  Q: What does that mean?

  A: It means that I’ll do whatever I have to to make it happen.

  Q: And then you’ll really be the boy from space.

  A: No. I’ll never be the boy from space. I’ll be…(groping for a phrase)…the astronaut from Wyoming.

  I was on the phone to the studio thirty seconds later.

  What Was Spaceboy’s Real Mission in Washington?

  Congressional Leaders Refuse to Comment

  Two days later, the Driers were surprised in their hotel suite by their network liason, Ms. Wallace. The woman’s manner wa
s so hesitant that Faye Drier, who answered the door, immediately assumed that something terrible had happened back home.

  “Oh, no,” Ms. Wallace colored. “I’m sorry. It’s just…well, it turns out that there’s something else we’d like to ask Alexander to do for us….”

  Faye was on guard at once. “The deal was for one interview. Not two.”

  “I know, and we appreciate that…but this isn’t about an interview. We don’t even need him to appear on TV again. It’s…well, it’s somewhat special…” The woman peered over Faye’s shoulder, saw the pajama-clad Alexander emerge from his bedroom, and spoke more quickly, “We would have told you before, but we got almost five thousand phone calls during the broadcast…and, well, it took a while before this one was reported to somebody with authority to make a decision…”

  Faye, still suspecting the worst, unchained the door and ushered the poor woman in. Ms. Wallace sat on the couch, said hi to Alexander, looked at her hands, and went on: “The call came from an…unfortunate young man in Georgetown. That’s a residential neighborhood here…”

  “I know,” Alexander said.

  “Well, we checked this out very carefully, and he’s real. His name’s Colin Forsythe. He’s…well, an almost complete shut-in. Severe muscular dystrophy, can’t walk, can’t do much with his arms. He was five years old before his parents and his doctors realized he wasn’t hopelessly retarded. But he’s far from that—he got his high school equivalency at fifteen, and he’s now working on an on-line physics doctorate, through a special curriculum devised at George Washington University. He’s also a big fan of the space program, just like you. And when he saw the show, he called and asked if it was possible for you to visit him.”