Goldfarb wasn’t much help. Fled had disappeared early Saturday morning and hadn’t returned until a few hours ago. There wasn’t much point in asking her how our alien visitor had managed to leave the hospital—we both knew the answer to that—but I was somewhat miffed that fled hadn’t told me she was planning an early escapade.
“Why?” she demanded. “What would you have done about it?”
I had to confess that I wouldn’t have done anything, but added that, if I were to be her “host,” I needed to know what she was up to in order to co-ordinate—
“You’ll find out soon enough. She doesn’t seem to be reticent about telling anyone what’s on her mind.”
And neither, I thought with an inward smile, are you.
Goldfarb showed me a chart describing fled’s physical parameters. Basically, she seemed to be just about what she looked like: her facial features, tooth structure, and blood type were amazingly like those of our earth-bound cousins, the chimpanzees. But her eyes, like prot’s, were capable of seeing UV light. Her sensitivity to visible light, however, was considerably less than his, and she apparently had no need for sunglasses, which would have given her an even more comical appearance, like that of a circus performer. The results of the DNA and detailed blood analyses, of course, would have to wait for the lab reports.
I handed back the chart and mumbled something like, “Well, here we go again,” as I got up to leave.
“Not quite,” she said, with dead seriousness. “She’s a different animal, so to speak, from prot. If I were you, I’d watch my back.”
* * *
I found fled in the Ward Two (the floor that houses patients with serious neuroses and nonviolent psychoses) game room playing darts with Howard (not to be confused with Howie, a well-known chamber violinist and former inmate). She was wearing a loose-fitting yellow shift, but had nothing on her feet. Perhaps the hospital hadn’t been able to find anything big enough to fit them. To my surprise she wasn’t surrounded by a cadre of denizens eager to go off with her to K-PAX, as I had expected. The room, in fact, normally filled with a couple of dozen patients engaged in various activities, especially when it was raining outside, was empty except for fled and Howard. “Where is everyone?” I asked him.
The “toad man” candidly informed me that the other inmates, as well as most of the staff, were staying away from fled.
“Why is that?”
“They’re repulsed by her.”
“Repulsed?” Fled was standing nearby, but for once was keeping her big mouth shut.
“She acts like a talking ape.”
“So?”
“They don’t want to talk to an ape who can talk back. Especially one who is smarter than they are.”
“Why not?”
His bulging eyes took careful aim at the board. “Because she reminds them that they are part ape, too. Nobody seems to be able to deal with that image.”
I had imagined many difficulties accruing from fled’s visit, but nothing like that one. “What about you, Howard? How are you able to deal with it?”
The dart fluttered toward its target. When it thunked into the wall a foot from the board, he turned back to me. “Dr. Brewer, I’m the ugliest man alive. I have no image to protect.”
Even Howard’s parents and siblings were repulsed and disgusted by him. He had not been a cute baby—his eyes and mouth, as well as his head itself, were way too big, while his nose and ears were almost nonexistent. “But fled isn’t an ape,” I reminded him. “She’s not even an Earth being.”
“No,” he agreed, “she’s a beautiful orf. But to most people she would be considered ugly. Humans hate ugliness. ‘There but for the grace of God…’ and all that shit.” I was afraid he was going to break into tears. His extreme sensitivity to that truth was, in fact, the reason he was with us.
But I didn’t want to get into that just then. Instead, I turned to fled. “Do you want to talk here, or would you rather go up to Dr. Goldfarb’s examining room?”
“I can’t go anywhere. My heart is broken….”
“Listen: you shouldn’t take anything the patients—”
“Just joking, doc. Let’s go and let the patients have their playroom back.” Without looking at the target, she flung a dart sidelong into the bullseye. “Will you excuse us, Howard?”
He nodded dismally and clumped toward the board.
On the way to the elevator (I headed that way; fled turned toward the stairs and I hurried to catch up with her) I asked her what she thought about his observation. “Beauty is truth, yet it’s a mystery. It’s inseparable from sex, though it’s only skin deep in the mind of the beholder. Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, but beauty and virtue rarely go together. It provokes—”
“All right! I get it!”
“Are you sure?”
“Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”
“Like what, may I be so bold as to ask?”
“Like where you went over the weekend.”
“I visited the place you call Congo.”
“Congo?” I panted. “Why Congo?”
“Prot said it was a beautiful spot to visit. Did you know it was called Zaire when he first came here?”
“Was he right?” I wheezed.
“Yes, the government changed its name following—”
I gasped, “I meant was he right about its being beautiful?”
We finally made it to Five. “You know the answer to that, doctor b. Anyway, it’s the most beautiful country I’ve visited so far.”
“How many have you visited?”
“Two.”
“What’s the other one?”
“The United States.”
“Oh.” Still breathing heavily, barely able to focus my eyes, I unlocked Room 520. As if she wanted to prove she could do it, fled turned the knob with a flair and pushed open the door with her foot. She sprang into the room and promptly nosed around the few papers on the back of the desk, as if she were trying to find something. When she was finished she sat down, not on the patients’ chair but on the back of it, her huge bare feet resting on the seat. After contemplating her hairy toes for a moment, I took the one behind Goldfarb’s desk.
Fled grinned at me, apparently amused by my awkward situation. “Where’s the produce? Prot promised there would be produce!”
“Sorry. I’ll try to have some here next time. Bananas will work for you, I presume?”
“I prefer vegetables.”
“But I thought—your being a—”
“I’ll say it one last time: I’m not a chimpanzee, you numbskull! Get it?”
“I know that.”
She glared at me. “It’s because I don’t look human, like prot, isn’t it? You’re not a speciesist like most sapiens, are you, doctor b?”
I ignored that absurd comment. “Before we go any further with this, I want to ask you something. Why do you keep calling me disparaging names impugning my intelligence? We consider that to be pretty impolite on our planet.”
“Oh, yeah, prot told me about your aversion to the truth.”
“But he never called me a numbskull!”
“Yes, the dremers are more tolerant of fools than the rest of us, I’m afraid.” She slipped down to the seat of the chair and thrust a huge bare foot on the desk. “All right, I won’t call you ‘stupid,’ unless you say something stupid. Fair enough?”
“For your information, even stupid people don’t like to be reminded of their shortcomings.”
“Why not?”
“Just take my word for it, all right? Now let’s get on with it.”