Frankie, on the other hand, never did much of anything, though she, too, had apparently been able to shed much of the bitterness she had accumulated on her former world. Indeed, all the hundred beings prot had taken back with him to K-PAX were doing very well. There was a little homesickness, of course, but not one person (mammal, insect, whatever) wanted to return to Earth. Since the publication of K-PAXIII, we’ve (the hospital and myself) received literally thousands of e-mail messages requesting a placement on the passenger list for the next trip to that idyllic planet. Thus, it occurred to me to ask fled, when she finally finished crunching the bowl of beans, whether she planned to take anyone back with her if, and when, she returned.
She sat back and—you guessed it—burped loudly, as though she were a character in some bad movie. From somewhere—an armpit, maybe—she pulled out a small device of some sort. It appeared to be made of a soft metal, or hard plastic, and shaped like a cone. When she set it on its flat end, an apparition immediately flashed into the kitchen. Here, in the dim light, were Robert and Giselle and their son Gene, running naked in a field of flowers and grains among several kinds of animals. The sky was filled with birds, and behind them stood a row of purple mountains. Eventually they headed toward the camera, or whatever it was, waving.
“Hi, Dr. B,” Giselle shouted. “You should come here for a visit. It’s unbelievable!”
Robert added a few words of thanks for my part in getting him there, and finally my godson said something in pax-o. His mother whispered a request in his ear and he repeated, in English, “I want to come and visit you, too!” But it wasn’t like watching a movie. It was as if they were actually in the kitchen with us, except that the walls had disappeared and we were all sitting in the—well, it’s hard to explain. But then something even more magical happened. Giselle stepped up and hugged me! As did Gene and, finally, Robert. Everyone hugged everyone else.
Finally, just before the “materialization” ended, prot appeared, as if in a cameo role. Neither of us said anything, we merely shook hands. I found myself tearing up a little—I thought I’d never see my old friend again.
Then the walls reappeared and K-PAX was gone. Fled stuck the device back under her arm. “Prot said you wouldn’t believe me unless I had proof.” The only thing I had difficulty believing was that they had all been here (or we had been there?—it was impossible to tell the difference). All I could think to say was, “You don’t have another one of those things to give away, do you?”
“I’ll leave this one with you when I go. Until then, I’ll just hang onto it in case I need to use it again.”
“When you go back to K-PAX, you mean.”
“Yes, I will definitely be going back to K-PAX. And to answer your question (I hadn’t asked it yet): when I do I will be taking 100,000 of your beings with me. If that many want to go, of course.”
“A hundred—I presume you mean mostly bugs and worms?”
“No, this time it’s people.”
That I had trouble believing. “Did you say people?”
“Prot told me your hearing was going. I repeat for the deaf among us: I can take 100,000 people back with me when I go.”
“But— But how?”
“Well, I’m happy to see that you’re still curious about math and science, doctor b. It’s simple, really. All I need is a place big enough to hold everyone.”
“You mean… a football stadium or something like that?”
“Something like that. The dimensions have already been programmed, and there’s a comparable place on K-PAX waiting for our arrival. It’s just a matter of setting a time.”
“And may I ask when that might be?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“All right, dammit, what date have you selected?”
“I have reserved six windows for the trip, each about twenty-six days apart, in case we don’t make the first window. Do you think we can gather together everyone who wants to go in three weeks?”
We? I thought. “I haven’t a clue.”
At this point the telephone rang. Karen answered it. It was Will, just checking up on the old folks on a Saturday morning in May. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps fled might be more comfortable living at the Institute while she was on Earth. They could keep an eye on her, she would be safe, there would be food and a place to sleep, and patients who would be delighted to learn that the “legend of K-PAX” had come true again (though none of them had ever doubted it would).
“Sure,” fled agreed. “I’ll stay where prot did when he was here.”
But I hadn’t asked yet. “You— You can read minds?”
“Of course.”
“But prot couldn’t do that, as far as I know.”
“Don’t tell him I said this, but we trods are a little more advanced in some ways than the dremers.”
“How do you do that?”
“Well, the brain gives off electromagnetic waves—that’s how your encephalographs work. Of course you have to know how to interpret them….”
I asked her a bit apprehensively, “Can you project your thoughts into other people’s minds?”
“Not exactly. But we could influence your own thoughts so you would think whatever we’d like you to think.”
“You could, but you don’t?”
“Spoken like a true homo sapiens,” she snorted, and a glob of mucus (or something) plopped onto the table. “Your governments and your clergy would love to know how to do that, wouldn’t they?”
Trying unsuccessfully to ignore the snot lying on my usual eating place, I got up and took the receiver. “Will,” I said, probably a bit too desperately, “How would you like a new patient?”
“I don’t think I can fit in a new patient right now, Dad, but bring her in, anyway, and we’ll find someone to look after her. Let me talk to Virginia (Goldfarb, the hospital director) about it.”
I promised to bring her in the next day and, for the time being, we left it at that. As for fled, herself, I told her the hospital would “put her up” on condition that she cooperate with Goldfarb and Will and the rest of the staff, quickly adding, “and that you would be willing to meet with my son or another staff member two or three times a week to talk about your visit to Earth and the problems of the patients there” (we needed all the help we could get).
“Seems like a fair exchange.”
For the rest of the afternoon and evening fled slept in the backyard, Flower alternately standing guard and curled up beside her.
* * *
She hooted when we started for the city, presumably at the primitive type of conveyance she was riding in. “You just sit here in this little room, is that it?” she asked me, “and the thing moves along by itself on those little round feet?”
“Well,” I corrrected her, “it’s not quite that simple.” I started to explain how a car operates, but found that I had forgotten most of what I had learned in driver’s ed half a century ago. I did mention, however, that the energy came from the oxidation of refined hydrocarbons, which pushed down on the pistons, and somehow this turned the crankshaft, and then the driveshaft, and finally, through a system of gears, the “feet.”
She laughed again. “And I suppose one of your ‘airplanes’ works the same way?”
“Uh, not exactly. The fuel part is similar, but the propeller or jet engine pulls the plane forward.”