"Is he planning to go to college?"
"He was until a few days ago."
"What happened? Is there a problem?"
"Yes."
"Is that why he called you?"
"Yes."
"Does he call you often now?"
"Once in a while."
"And what is the problem? Money? There are scholarships available, or-"
"It's more complicated than that."
"How so?"
"He has a girlfriend."
"And she doesn't want him to go?"
"It's more complicated than that."
"Can you tell me about it?"
After a brief pause, possibly for consultation with his "friend": "She's pregnant."
"Oh, I see."
"Happens all the time."
"And he feels he has to marry her?"
"Unfortunately." He shrugged.
" 'Unfortunately' because he won't be able to go to college?"
"That and the religion problem."
"What's the religion problem?"
"She's a catholic."
"You don't like Catholics?"
"It's not that I dislike catholics, or any other group defined by its superstitious beliefs. It's that I know what's going to happen."
"What's going to happen?"
"He's going to settle down in this company town that killed his father and he's going to have a bunch of kids that nobody will associate with because their mother is a catholic."
"Where is this town?"
"I told you-he doesn't want me to tell you that."
"I thought he might have changed his mind."
"When he makes up his mind about something, nobody can change it."
"He sounds pretty strong-willed."
"About some things."
"What, for example?"
"About her."
"Who-his girlfriend?"
"Yep.
"I may be dense, but I still don't see why her being a Catholic is such a serious problem."
"That's because you don't live here. Her family lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Literally."
"Maybe they will be able to overcome the problem."
"How?"
"She could change her faith. They could move away."
"Not a chance. She's too attached to her family."
"Do you hate her?"
"Me? I don't hate anyone. I hate the chains people shackle themselves with."
"Like religion."
"Religion, family responsibilities, having to make a living, all that stuff. It's so stifling, don't you think?"
"Sometimes. But they're things we have to learn to live with, aren't they?"
"Not me!"
"Why not?"
"We don't have all that crap on K-PAX."
"Will you be going back there soon?"
"Any time now."
"How long do you usually stay on Earth?"
"Depends. A few days, usually. Just long enough to help him over the rough spots."
"All right. Now listen carefully. I'm going to ask you to come forward in time several days. Let's say two weeks. Where are you now?"
"On K-PAX."
"Good. What do you see?"
"A forest with lots of soft places to lie down on, and fruit trees, and all kinds of other beings wandering around... .
"Much like the kind of forest your friend enjoys hiking in?"
"Something like that, but nobody is bulldozing it down to build a shopping center."
"Tell me about some of the plants and animals in the woods there on K-PAX." I was curious to find out whether the young prot had a fully developed concept of his home planet, or whether that came later. While he was describing the flora and fauna I retrieved his file and pulled out the information that prot had divulged to me in sessions five through eight. I quizzed him on the names of grains, fruits and vegetables, the various animal "beings," even about light travel and the K-PAXian calendar. L won't repeat the questions and answers here, but they confirmed my suspicion that the creation of his alien world was developed over many years. For example, he could tell me the names of only six grains at this stage.
Our time ran out just as prot decided to make a trip to one of the K-PAXian libraries. He asked me whether I would like to join him. I said I was sorry, I had some appointments. "It's your loss," he said.
After I had awakened him, and before he left my examining room, I asked prot whether he could, in fact, talk to animals, as Giselle and I suspected.
"Of course," he replied.
"Can you communicate with all our beings?"
"I have a little difficulty with homo sapiens."
"Can you talk to dolphins and whales?"
"They're beings, aren't they?"
"How do you do that?"
He wagged his head in abject frustration. "You humans consider yourselves the smartest of the EARTHS beings. Am I right?"
"Yes."
"Then obviously the other beings speak much simpler languages than yours, right?"
"Well-"
Out came the notebook, pencil poised. "So if you're so smart, and their languages are so simple, how come you can't communicate with them?" He waited for an answer. Unfortunately, I didn't have one.
JUST before I left for the day Giselle gave me another discouraging report from the police. Her contact had come up with a list of all disappearances of white males born between 1950 and 1965 from the entire United States and Canada. There had been thousands during this period, of course, but not a single one even came close to matching prot's profile. Some were too tall, some were bald, some were blue-eyed, some were dead, some had been found and were accounted for. Unless prot were a female in disguise, was much older or younger than he seemed, or someone whose disappearance had not been noticed, our patient, for all practical purposes, did not exist.
She was also waiting for the names and locations of all the slaughterhouses operating anywhere in North America between 1974 and 1985.
"You can eliminate the ones in or near large cities," I told her. "There's only one movie theater."
She nodded her acknowledgment. She looked tired. "I'm going to go home and sleep for about two days," she said, yawning. How I wished I could have done the same!
I was lying awake that night trying to make some sense of the day's events-why, I wondered hazily, was there no record of Pete's disappearance? And what good, I tried to reason, was a list of slaughterhouses without further information as to where our abattoir might be located?-when I got a call from Dr. Chakraborty. Ernie was in the clinic. Someone had tried to kill him!
"What? Who?" I barked.
"Howie!" came the chilling reply.
All I could think of as I sped down the expressway was: Jesus Christ! What have I done? Whatever happened to Ernie was my fault, my responsibility, just as I was responsible for everything else that happened at the hospital. It was one of the worst moments of my life. But even at that blackest of hours I was heartened by the glow of the city, her throbbing lights bright against the steel-gray background of the dawning sky, as full of defiant life as the night, some forty years earlier, that we futilely rushed my father to the hospital. Same glowing sky, same darkening guilt.
Ernie was still in the emergency room when I got to MPI. Dr. Chakraborty met me in the corridor with: "You are not to worry. He is very fine." And indeed he was sitting up in bed, sans mask, smiling, his hands behind his head.
"How are you feeling, Ernie?"
"Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful." I had never seen a smile quite like his. It was positively beatific. "What happened, for God's sake?"
"My good friend Howie just about strangled me to death." When he threw his head back to laugh, I could see a red abrasion where something had been wrapped around his neck. "That old son-of-a-bitch. I love him."
"Love him? He tried to kill you!"
"No he didn't. He made me think he tried to kill me. Oh, it was fantastic. I was asleep. You know, with my hands tied and everything? He wrapped something around my neck-a handkerchief or something and tightened it up, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it."