by Ralph Church
“Look, this is Mindy McConnell, a good friend of the John Doe in there. I’m gonna take her in for a quick chat with him.”
“What for? Has the chief cleared this?”
“Um.” Tilwick’s eyes wandered as he. tried to think of something. “She can help with the identification.”
The deputy smiled slyly. “I see,” he said, leering. “But I thought he was in on a psycho.”
Tilwick took Mindy’s arm and began walking past, saying, “A little of this, a little of that. You know how my arrests are.” The deputy laughed and forgot about asking any more questions. Tilwick mumbled something to the jailer and went on into the cell area.
Mindy said, “Let me go in alone, okay?”
Tilwick looked doubtful.
“Please,” Mindy said, trying to look as pretty and young as she could, and she could look very pretty and young.
“All right,” Tilwick said, his heart melted by her eyes. “But don’t do anything foolish.”
Mindy promised she wouldn’t. When she reached Mork’s cell, she was very glad she had convinced Tilwick to let her go in alone, because Mork was sound asleep, hanging upside down from the bunk. “Mork!” she whispered intently. “Mork!” she said again.
Orkans wake up quickly and always by jumping immediately to their feet. Mindy backed away, she was so startled by Mork’s backflip. “Mindy,” Mork said in a tone that sounded unexcited to Mindy, but that was close to a shout of joy for an Orkan. “You are well?” he asked.
“Mork, how are you?”
“I am distressed, my Earth friend.”
“I know,” Mindy said, looking sympathetic. “I’m sorry about this. My father went crazy and got his friend Tilwick to—”
Mork was shaking his head with super sadness. When Mindy stopped speaking at this unexpected sight, he said, “I am sorry to hear of your father’s mental illness, but I am referring to your treatment of spacemen.”
Mindy stared. “My what?”
“I know that as a primitive people you eat many living things, but I had no suspicion that you went so far as to consume intelligent life.”
“Mork,” Mindy said, almost ready to cry from frustration, “we don’t have a lot of time, so could you tell me what you’re talking about?”
“I am speaking of your placing spacemen in the cold machine—in that box with the title, ‘Grade-A medium white eggs.’”
Mindy instantly realized the situation. “Mork, those aren’t spacemen. They just happen to be shaped like spacemen from your planet. On Earth, they are eggs. I mean, they are the unborn—uh, let me see, how can I explain this? They are produced by a chicken, an animal. They are not intelligent life; in fact, by the time I buy them, they are not alive at all.”
Mork put his finger in the air. “Ah! Is that why they couldn’t fly? I thought the cold machine had placed them in a state of suspended animation.”
“No, no.” Mindy breathed deeply. “Anyway, I promise I’ll never eat them again if it bothers you.”
Mork tilted his head to one side. He was impressed by this. He hadn’t realized that humans were capable of reforming their behavior. He had assumed that they were victims of uncontrollable passions. He felt much better, though, learning that he hadn’t been the cause of two deaths this morning. “But,” he said, “I have also heard that you sell music.”
Mindy frowned. She didn’t know what that was about, but she didn’t have the time to explain all these things now. “We’ll talk about that later, Mork. You have to listen carefully now. A doctor will be coming to see you, and you must be careful not to say anything about your coming from Outer Space. Pretend that you come from New York City.”
“Is New York like Ork?”
“No. You must pretend that you are a human. Don’t use your finger to do anything that a human can’t do.”
“Why do I have to see this doctor? I would prefer to leave with you.”
“No, Mork. If you do that, then everybody will be looking for you and eventually we’d have to tell them you’re from Outer Space.”
“What would be wrong with that?”
“Mork, you don’t realize what they’d do to you.”
Mork nodded. “Yug,” he said, the daytime Orkian “yes.” They’ll force me to become a celebrity. Movies, fame, stuck in a box on ‘Hollywood Squares.’ It’s disgusting. I saw A Star Is Born.”
“Mork,” Mindy said, “that’s the good side of it.”
Mork was astonished. “It is?”
“Oh, yes. You’d never have any privacy. Everybody’ll be saying Na-No, Na-No. They’ll be dolls, games. It’ll be like living in a zoo.”
Mork’s eyes widened with fear. Orkans are afraid of crowds. The record attendance for the Kerkle Bowl, the most important athletic event of the year on Ork, is twenty-one Orkans. It was called an unruly mob by their one sportswriter. “Shazbot!” he said, the only legal Orkian swear word—legal because it has no meaning.
“And the government,” Mindy said, “you have no idea what they might do. They’ll probably think you re a threat to our security. They’ll lock you up and try to find out how your technology works. The Russians will probably demand that you be given over to the United Nations for study. They might do anything—they could put you in a bottle.”
“Oh, no,” Mork said. “My grandfather was a bottle. He died a broken man.”
“I’d probably never see you again,” Mindy said, too worried to react to Mork’s strange remark.
“They’d make me invisible?” Mork asked, frightened again. Ork scientists had played around with invisibility at one time. At first, their experiments had gone well, but as they made more and more Orkans invisible, they had trouble finding them, and they lost many. The program came under heavy criticism and was canceled in disgrace. Apparently, after a few days of invisibility, Orkans would forget who they were and fade away for good.
“No, they’d take you away.”
“I would not like that, Mindy-Earthling,” Mork said unemotionally, but it moved Mindy. She felt so badly that she had caused him all this trouble.
“Okay, now, listen. This doctor will be examining you because he thinks you might be insane. Do you know what I mean by that?”
Mork put his index finger up in the air. “It means I am Ka-bloink.”
“That’s right. So I want you to act like a human would.”
Tilwick’s voice broke in. “Mindy,” he said from the door leading to the cells, “your time’s up.”
“Okay,” she said and turned back to Mork. “Remember—just like a human.” She smiled at Mork and said, “I’ll get you out of here later—by tonight.”
Mork nodded. Okay,” he said. “Good-bye.”
Mindy left feeling reassured. After all, Mork had said good-bye just like any human would. Once she was back with Tilwick, she began pestering him about how they could get Mork out of police custody. Tilwick said that it was impossible until they got some proof of Mork’s identity.
“Oh,” Mindy said, crushed. Tilwick took her and Fred to Mindy’s apparent. She was silent all the way and the two men were afraid to talk, they both felt so guilty.
Just before Tilwick left them off, Mindy asked him if she could see Mork again that night. When Tilwick began to say it was impossible, Fred glared at him, and he changed his mind. “Okay,” he said with a sigh, “at nine o’clock, when my shift begins.”
Mindy was relieved again. During the ride home she had figured out a way to get Mork identification. She wasn’t sure if it would work, but seeing Mork was the first step—provided, of course, that Mork didn’t do anything outrageous with the psychiatrist. Like tell him his grandfather was a bottle. Or Kerkle his chest.
***
13
After Mindy left, Mork thought carefully about what she had said. She had certainly worried him. He had no idea that humans would react that way to discovering he was from another planet. For Orkans, people from other planets is as common an event as people fr
om other states are in America. So Mork was bent upon fooling this earth doctor, which shouldn’t be hard, he told himself. After all, Mork was an advanced form of life, and this doctor was ignorant of even the most ordinary medical techniques, such as deep-cloning. Deep-cloning is the Orkian method of psychoanalysis. A clone of a troubled Orkan is made and placed in a room. The clone has a perfect memory of every event that has occurred to the original Orkan. When the clone describes the traumatic event that has made the original ill, doctors go to the original and make the event illegal. It had once happened to Mork. He had been upset because he learned that his father, an eye-dropper, had run off with another microscope glass. A tart with infrared glass, Mork was told. His clone pinpointed that event as the cause for Mork’s problem, which was that he kept walking into mirrors. The cure was simple. Doctors made it illegal for Mork to say the Orkian word for glass.
So Mork tried to remember everything he had heard on television about earth life. He was busy doing that when Dr. Litney, the psychiatrist, arrived. Dr. Litney was in his late thirties, a big man who carried a briefcase filled with I.Q. tests. Otherwise, he looked very ordinary. He smiled at Mork in an insincere way and said, “Hello. My name is Dr. Litney.” He took out a pad and waited for Mork to say something. When a minute passed, Litney realized he would have to proceed with care. “So, what is your name?” he asked, overly polite.
“Mork.”
“Is that M-O-R-C-K?”
Mork had no idea what that meant. He hadn’t watched “Sesame Street” and so he knew little of our alphabet. He took a guess and nodded yes.
Dr. Litney wrote that down. “Now, I understand that you don’t have a last name?”
Mork knew about last names. He had seen a documentary about feminism and listened carefully to all that talk about maiden names. “My married name is Ricardo,” he said, using his favorite television character’s last name. Mork had spent a lot of time watching the reruns of “I Love Lucy” when he was on Ork.
The doctor looked up. He peered at Mork’s serious face. He suspected him of kidding. “Now,” he said, leaning close and smiling, “I know that fraternities sometimes go in for pretty crazy stunts. I was young once, too, you know.”
“You don’t look a day over thirty,” Mork said, remembering that Fonzie had told him flattery was important.
“Thank you,” Litney said, pleased. But then he caught himself and wondered if Mork was being a wiseguy. “All right, look, what’s all this about your being from another planet?”
“Just a joke. Ha! Ha!” Mork barked, throwing his head back and slapping his knee so hard that it made a resounding noise.
Litney wrote down something and said, ‘Well, now that the joke is over, could you tell me where you were born?”
“In Cuba,” Mork said.
“So your name is Mork Ricardo and you come from Cuba? Are you a citizen of the United States?”
“Oh, sí. I mean, yes I am.”
“And when were you born?”
Mork had to think about that one. “In the 1950s,” he said at last.
“Well, when in the 1950s? What year? What month? What day?”
Mork put his hands on his head and rocked it from side to side. “I have to ask my wife, Lucy. I don’t know.”
“You can’t remember when you were born?”
“Well…I know roughly,” Mork said. “I was a summer replacement. Sometime in the early ’50s. Our records are not in the best condition,” Mork said, thinking of all that intergalactic interference.
“Oh, yes,” Litney said, it suddenly dawning on him. “The Revolution. I forgot.” Litney made a note. “So, I gather that you are married?”
“Oh, yes, and I have a baby.”
“And your wife’s name is—”
“Lucille,” Mork said, watching the doctor as he wrote it down. “And my son’s name is little Morky.”
Litney finished writing all that down. “All right, I’m glad the kidding is over. Now, I’m just going to do a few simple tests and then maybe we can check on all this. I gather you don’t have any identification?”
“What do you mean?” Mork said. He remembered his earlier answers to Tilwick hadn’t been taken well. Mork was being cautious because he knew that this was going very well.
“Well, a birth certificate, a passport, a draft card. You know—checks, et cetera.”
“Ah!” Mork thought quickly. “I left them with my friends.”
“Who are they?” Dr. Litney said with interest, his pen poised to write down the information.
“Fred and Ethel Mertz.”
The doctor looked up. Something about this was not right. He couldn’t put his finger on it. He looked at Mork to see if the young man was smirking or showing some sign that he might be still joking. But Mork’s face was serious, his eyes clear and unblinking. “Well, can you get in touch with them and have them bring your identification here?”
“Not right now,” Mork said. “I have to see my other friend first.”
“Who is that?”
“Mindy,” Mork said.
“Oh, yes,” Litney said, staring at the sheet the deputy had given him. “Mindy McConnell. That’s whose apartment you were arrested at. Okay, very good. Now, let’s get to these tests.” Dr. Litney opened his briefcase and took out Rorschach cards. Rorschach cards are blotches of ink that suggest images. From the kinds of images people make out of them, psychiatrists can evaluate the person. Litney showed the first one, which looked like two naked women to him.
Mork was delighted. “Postcards!” he said, amazed. “That’s a lovely drawing.”
“What are you talking about?” Litney said.
“That drawing of a Grewtz—” Mork caught himself. Humans don’t have Grewtz’s. “Ha! Ha!” he barked. “A little humor to brighten up the day. I am very sorry.”
Uses bad jokes as a defense, Litney wrote down.
“Okay, now let’s get serious. What does this look like?”
“Ink on paper.”
“No, no. Haven’t you ever taken one of these tests before?”
Mork shook his head. “No. They don’t have this in Cuba.”
“Well, just try and imagine. Try and tell me what this might look like to you.”
Mork stared, at the drawing. Other than a Grewtz, it looked like someone spilled ink. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got it: spilled ink.”
Litney controlled himself. This fellow had the most irritating manner, he thought. He teases with such a serious face. Uncooperative on the Rorschach, he wrote. “All right, let’s try something else,” he said, pulling out a board with holes set into it. The holes were of various shapes: squares, triangles, and the like. Litney placed the board on Mork’s bunk and then handed him blocks of wood of various shapes. Each block of wood corresponded to one of the shapes on the board. Litney explained that to Mork, brought out a timer, and said, “When I say go, I want you to fit them in as quickly as you can.” Litney set his timer and said, “Go!”
Mork considered the situation. He knew that Earth science was on a very different level from Ork’s. But he had no television reference point for this. He had no idea of what an Earthling’s notion of correct was. Perhaps they were clonish and thought that square fits into square, and so on. Perhaps they were a bit more advanced and had gotten as far as triangle into a rectangle. He was sure they didn’t know that an octagon was as good as a circle. Well, he would take a guess. Mork picked up the square shape and watched Litney’s eyes as he hovered over the square shape and then over the circle shape. There was more eye movement for the circle shape, so Mork decided that must be the right one. Mork took the square and easily fit it into the circle.
Litney exclaimed at the sight. It was impossible to do what Mork had just done. He grabbed the board away and tried to pull the block out. He pulled so hard that when he momentarily lost his grip, he fell off his chair.
“Are you hurt?” Mork asked.
“How did you do that?” Litney d
emanded. “It’s impossible to do that!”
Mork was alarmed. “I thought you wanted it there,” Mork said.
Litney got off the floor and pulled at the block again. It wouldn’t budge. Mork could get it out, but he realized that if he did that, then the doctor would know something really strange was going on.
“You’ve ruined it,” Litney said bitterly.
“I am most sorry.” Mork hung his head very low.
“Now, you listen to me, Mr. Ricardo, I don’t think this kidding around is very healthy behavior. I think you are behaving anti-socially. And unless you stop right now, I’m going to recommend that there be a sanity hearing.”
“I am very sorry, Doctor. I will try to improve.” Litney stared at Mork. His eyes certainly gave the impression of honesty. He’d give the boy one more chance. “All right.” Litney reseated himself and glanced at Mork as he looked down at a sheet of paper with words on one side and blanks on the other. “Now, I’m going to say words at random and you should say the first word that comes into your head. It doesn’t matter whether it makes any sense. Just say what comes into your mind. Like, if I say ‘black,’ you might say ‘white.’ All right? Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Mork said solemnly.
“Dog,” Litney said.
“Alpo.”
Litney looked up. “What?”
Mork spoke louder. “Alpo.”
Litney sighed He wrote the answer down. “Woman.”
“Chanel Number Five.”
Litney dropped his pen. “Are you going to give me the name of products for everything I say?”
“I was merely saying what came into my mind. You do not wish me to mention material things?”
“Those two items were the first things that came into your mind?’
Mork nodded.
Litney picked up his pen. “Well, try and come up with answers that are a little more human, all right?” Mork nodded at him and Litney cleared his throat, getting ready to say the next word.
Mork, however, interpreted this noise as Litney’s next question, and he promptly answered,