I tried to explain to her, too, that fled wasn’t actually a chimpanzee, or an ape of any kind, though I don’t think she heard me.
But it was Steve who was, by far, the most excited. Usually pretty taciturn, my son-in-law, who never fully accepted prot’s alien nature despite the latter’s profound knowledge of cosmology, reasoned that fled’s presence on Earth confirmed our earlier visitor’s K-PAX connection, giving them both an added measure of credibility. He wanted to know everything she could tell him, especially about the elusive graviton.
I tried to tell him that fled didn’t seem to be interested in those things. “Ah find that hard to believe,” he whined, pressing me about when he could speak with her. I told him I didn’t know what her plans were or how much time she had, but would let him know if she would be willing to meet with him.
When everyone was preparing to leave I beseeched them all to be patient. At this point I hadn’t yet talked to her in depth myself, and I promised them that they would all get a chance to present their cases when the time was right. Nobody was entirely satisfied with this arrangement, but for once I was holding all the cards, or so I thought. It wasn’t long before I learned that fled would be making all the decisions about entertaining visitors and giving interviews, not me.
* * *
Almost as soon as my family had left, the doorbell rang. I figured someone had forgotten something. When I answered the bell I found two men standing at the door. One was quite tall, perhaps 6’6” and very thin, the other maybe a foot shorter and much stockier. Both wore crewcuts and ill-fitting blue suits. They identified themselves as Mr. Dartmouth and Mr. Wang. I had met them before, when they had come to MPI to talk with prot about his knowledge of light travel. Nevertheless, seeming not to recognize me, they waved their badges to identify themselves as Central Intelligence agents, and asked very politely, almost humbly, whether they could come in. Unfortunately, Mr. Dartmouth promptly stumbled on the door sill, plunging forward and banging his face on the tiles. At that moment Flower loped into the living room, barking, surprising agent Wang, who sprung into a defensive crouch. When all the commotion had settled, and Dartmouth had wiped the blood from his nose and the entryway with a huge red handkerchief, they proceeded smartly to the sofa as if they’d been here before, Wang keeping an eye on our dog in case of another surprise “attack.”
When they were seated, and had declined my offer of beverages, they got right to the point: what did I know about prot’s return?
“Prot?”
“Please don’t pretend ignorance, doctor. We have our sources.”
I was tempted to stonewall, but thought better of it. “I think you mean fled. She’s another visitor from K-PAX.”
Dartmouth, still dabbing at his nose, pulled out a thick, worn, notepad, with pages sticking out everywhere, and consulted it. He leaned over and whispered something to Wang, who turned to me. “Our sources tell us that prot has returned.”
“Your sources are wrong. Who are they, anyway?”
“That’s classified.”
“Well, he hasn’t. Her name is fled.”
He nodded to Dartmouth, who crossed out something and penciled in something else. Bits of paper flew from the notebook. He patiently retrieved them and carefully shoved them back in while tweaking his nose from time to time, to determine whether it was broken, presumably.
“My apologies, sir. Can you tell us why she’s here?”
At this point it occurred to me that they might have already bugged the house and were merely trying to confirm what I had told Abby, Will, and the others. I repeated that I knew very little about her plans. They wanted to know what little I knew. I told them she had come to study us as alien life forms, and wasn’t interested in light energy or weaponry. I declined to mention that she was planning to take 100,000 people with her when she departed, unsure of what they might think of such an idea. Perhaps their sources would fill them in on that. They asked the exact same questions in various other ways until suddenly, as if able to communicate with each other through telepathy or the like, they leaped simultaneously to their feet. “When will you be seeing her again?” Wang pleasantly inquired.
“Tomorrow.”
“Thank you, doctor. We’ll be in touch.” Despite his courteous demeanor, I felt a sudden chill when I looked into his granite eyes.
Flower, a toy in her mouth, escorted them to the front door, Wang shouting, “Back! Back!” They stumbled out of the house and quickly closed the door behind them.
* * *
I was up early on Monday. It was pouring rain, and ordinarily I would’ve picked a better day to go into the city. But, like the rest of my family (and the federal government, apparently), I couldn’t wait to see fled. After all, I didn’t know how long she would be on Earth. At least a few weeks, presumably, but who knew? Maybe she had earlier departure opportunities she hadn’t mentioned for one reason or another. Emergency escape options, as it were.
I almost couldn’t find the front gate of the hospital. Someone had put up one of those plywood walls used by construction crews to hide what was going behind it. Obviously Goldfarb had already made sure that curious onlookers wouldn’t see too much.
As I entered the old, familiar building and shook off my umbrella as I had done countless times before, I couldn’t believe I was coming in again to work. Well, it wasn’t work, exactly, I was just chatting with a special visitor. Nevertheless, it was a rather nice feeling, a sort of Indian summer in the winter of my professional life. And as prot would have reminded me, it wasn’t really work anyway, not when you’re doing something you love. I had been lucky. What I had done for a living was actually fun, a game, little different in its way from being a professional athlete, perhaps. Except, of course, for the money. But for something you love, that’s relatively unimportant, isn’t it?
A lot of memories flooded my mind as I strode through the first-floor lounge—memories of special breakthrough moments when the veil is lifted and a pure ray of sunlight illuminates the mind of a sick patient. These, unfortunately, are very few, but they’re the ones that keep us going, like a great golf shot brings us back to the links. And I remembered the staff members who have since departed but were here when I first arrived at MPI, including my one-time secretary, Joyce Trexler. Even Betty McAllister, our exceptional head nurse, had taken leave to raise her family (triplets are a lot to handle), and Jasmine Chakraborty, our chief clinician for many years, had returned to India. Of course I, too, was no longer on the faculty, and I wondered whether Will and the others ever thought of me as they passed through this venerable corridor….
My first stop was Goldfarb’s office to pick up the key to her examination room. I also wanted to ask her how fled had spent the weekend, how she was getting along with the patients, what she thought of them and of humans in general, what her immediate plans were. Virginia’s ebullient young secretary, Margie Garafoli, escorted me right into the inner sanctum. “She’s been waiting for you,” she reported cheerfully. I nodded and watched her go. It’s hard to take your eyes off Margie—she’s not only pretty, but quite shapely as well. Margie always makes me feel younger somehow.