I got up and escorted her out the door. “What else can you tell me?” I asked, when we were out of earshot.
“You’re going for a ride yourself!”
“I’m going to K-PAX??”
“Not that far.”
I heard someone shout, “WHO’S HOWARD?”
One of the patients shouted back, “THE TOAD MAN!”
“Go find him!” the assistant something-or-other ordered a member of the crew.
“I meant, do you know where you’ll be leaving from?”
“Fled wants to tell you that herself.”
“She already knows where it is?”
But she had taken a seat on her favorite bench and was already dreaming of the stars.
I wondered: why would fled want to tell me where she’s departing from? Was she testing me? Did she, in fact, want Dartmouth and Wang to know?”
And then another bizarre thought entered my head from God knows where. If she’s taking more than a hundred people form the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute, might she be taking comparable numbers from other hospitals? Wasshetaking100,000mentalpatientswithherwhenshereturnedtoK-PAX?
I spotted fled lying on the grass, basking in the sun, her yellow shift hiked up to her waist as though she didn’t have a care in the world. The questions could wait. I left her alone and went back inside.
* * *
Feeling a little post-prandial drowsiness I took my place in the lounge, where Priscilla was busily conversing with a man in an expensive suit—the director or a producer, presumably. I tried hard not to nod off. Most of the patients and staff had showed up for fled’s interview as well (I was faintly annoyed that only a few had turned out for mine). Prissy checked her watch. It was 1:59, and fled’s chair was still empty. At two o’clock she was sitting in it, and she had changed into a clean flowered garment of some kind. It almost made her look pretty.
The hostess jumped as if she’d been shot, but she recovered in time to introduce fled, “who claims to be from outer space.” I, too, was completely awake now.
Her guest hooted loudly at this.
Unruffled, Prissy proceeded to engage fled in some harmless banter, apparently to get her into a relaxed frame of mind, or perhaps to lower her guard so she could come in with a sucker punch. What she didn’t know was that fled doesn’t have a guard. Nor was she a sucker. Nevertheless, she politely answered the questions until the interviewer got to the one about how sex would be possible between different species. Fled gently (perhaps she, in turn, was setting up the host) corrected her. “Sex between different species has always been possible. If you don’t believe me, ask 80% of your farm boys. I think you meant to say that reproduction between most species is impossible.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant, of course. But first let me ask you this: are you pregnant, or not?”
“Definitely.”
“For those of us who aren’t familiar with alien reproduction, let me ask you: any problems so far—morning sickness or anything like that?”
“We don’t do morning sickness on K-PAX.”
“How nice for you. And what is the gestation period on your planet?”
“About the same as it is on yours.”
“When I had my son, I was sick all the time. Worst nine months of my life!” She turned to the camera and whispered, “Some of you ladies out there know what I’m talking about.”
“Not me,” countered fled.
“We’ve heard that the father is a human being—is that right?”
“I don’t know. He could be a chimpanzee, too. Maybe a certain bonobo. And there was a time with a gorgeous gorilla….”
“But you’re not human. And I guess you’re not a chimpanzee, either. Or— Or anything else.”
“You catch on quick.”
“So how—”
“I’m sure all this talk about sex is fascinating to your viewers,” fled observed. At this point she turned away from the host and looked directly at the camera, as Prissy had done a moment earlier. “Personally, I prefer to do it, rather than talk about it. The rest of you really should get a life. But let’s get on with why I’m here, shall we? I came to Earth with a warning for all of you.”
“Hey, wait a minute. You can’t just—”
“There’s something wrong with you people in addition to your violent natures. Homo sapiens, as a species, is psychotic. The whole lot of you should be confined to mental institutions. You’re committing suicide and you’re too preoccupied with your own little lives even to realize it.” She paused for a moment, perhaps to let this sink in. Prissy sputtered a bit, but said nothing. “Fact is, no one on K-PAX gives a bleep (yes, she said “bleep,” presumably to save the censors the trouble) whether you kill yourselves or not. We’re a pretty laid-back bunch, and we tend to let beings like yourselves live or die as they see fit. But not everyone in the GALAXY feels the same way we do.”
The chair I was sitting in squeaked when I sat up in it. I wondered whether that would show up on the telecast. If there were a telecast.
“Here is the warning.” She leaned forward and her huge head completely filled the monitor. “Attention! Are you listening? There are certain beings on other PLANETS who are seriously pissed by your belligerence and stupidity. If you kept it to yourselves, they would probably leave you to your own devices. But now you’re sending out feelers to other WORLDS as well. They call themselves the “bullocks.” But for simplicity’s sake, and to give them a name you can understand, let’s call them the “badguys.” These beings are worried that you’re going to contaminate the whole GALAXY with your cruelty and greed.”
The cameraman glanced at the guy in the suit, who shrugged and nodded to keep rolling.
Fled sat back a little. “Let me tell you something about the badguys,” she went on, a little less stridently. “Mercy is an alien concept to them. If they chose to do so, they could be here tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m., and by noon your entire species could be selectively infected with an organism that you won’t know how to deal with for countless millennia. You’d all be history by midnight. Hello? Do you understand what I’m telling you? If they decide to come here, notasinglesapienswouldsurvivetheday.”
She paused again. The message had obviously sunk into Prissy’s head, at least; her eyes were wide and her mouth gaping. “Here’s the second part of the warning: you don’t have much time left to avoid this fate. They have given you another fifteen years. If nothing has changed by the year 2020, you can say good-bye to the UNIVERSE, because you will disappear from it and never be heard of again. No more kfc, no more super bowl—you dig? And the meeker beings of the EARTH will finally inherit it.
“By now, the wiser sapiens among you are asking themselves two things: first, how do we know this alien is telling the truth? Do we take her words on faith? Well, for an illogical species, that’s a reasonable question. Perhaps you will accept the disappearance of 100,000 people when I return to K-PAX as an indication that I know what I’m talking about.
“Your second question is, or ought to be: what can we do to convince the badguys that we’re willing to turn things around? Another good one! It’s a start! And here’s the answer: prot sent a list of suggestions. But in order to prove your sincerity, I need an invitation from your united nations to bring them to the attention of all human beings everywhere. And I’ll need this invitation in time to speak to that forum before our departure. That will occur in exactly—she checked an imaginary watch—six days, twelve hours, thirty-two minutes, and—uh—some seconds.”