WHY DO BIRDS
Damon Knight
Tell of the day when We shall blot out the mountains and make the earth a barren waste; when We shall gather all mankind together, leaving not a soul behind.
--The Koran: "The Cave," translated by N.J. Dawood
"Well, there's certainly something screwy going on around here."
--The Marx Brothers, Room Service
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK
WHY DO BIRDS
Copyright © 1992 by Damon Knight
A Tor Book
ISBN 0-312-85174-X
First edition: December 1992
CHAPTER 1
Well, Mr. Stone, what seems to be your problem?" "I think I was kidnapped from nineteen thirty-one and brought here, and I think the aliens sent me back to put the whole human race in a box."
"And why do you think that?"
"Because I'm crazy. "
The psychiatrist blinked and looked more closely at the detainee. He appeared to be a man in his late twenties or early thirties, clean-shaven, with a round cheerful face. He was wearing a brown suit and necktie, and carried a fedora.
The psychiatrist and the detainee were sitting on opposite sides of a chipped gray acrylic conference table with a mandala of coffee rings on it. The panels overhead were humming and buzzing in an irritating lack of rhythm.
"Mr. Stone, can you tell me what year it is?"
"Twenty ought two."
"And who's the President?"
"Tennafly."
The psychiatrist scribed a note. "So, then, you believe you're here because you're crazy?"
"Don't you?"
The psychiatrist blinked again. "Let's go back a little. When did you first realize that you had been kidnapped by aliens?"
"When I woke up on their spaceship."
"And when was that?"
"April fifteenth, nineteen thirty-one. Or the next morning, maybe. That would be the sixteenth."
"What happened then?"
"They hypnotized me and told me to come back and put everybody in a box."
"I see. And so you came back?"
"Well, they brought me back. I got in trouble in the hotel because I wasn't registered, and I didn't have any ID, the kind you use now. All I had on me was some money with old dates on it, and an expired driver's license. The cops took the money. "
"I see. Where were you when you were kidnapped by aliens?"
"Right here, Trenton. I was staying in the same hotel, but it's all different now."
"How is it different?"
The detainee gestured vaguely. "Wallpaper, lights. All the new buildings. Halos, and those gadgets like the one you're using."
The psychiatrist looked at his memopad, scribed in a comment. "And when did your driver's license expire?"
"Thirty-two."
"Nineteen thirty-two?"
"Right. I mean, it was good when I had it, but it ran out the next year, because I was on the spaceship. I was wearing this suit and hat when they arrested me, and the dentist said I have the kind of fillings they used then."
"That would be the correction center dentist?"
"Right. They arrested me for suspicion of felony, and then the judge ordered me to see you, to find out if I'm crazy."
"And you think you are crazy?"
"Well, what else could it be? I think I was born in nineteen ought one, but that would make me a hundred and one years old, right? And I have these ideas about aliens and spaceships, so I'm crazy."
The psychiatrist cleared his throat. "How do you account for the fillings?"
"I can't. The dentist couldn't figure it out either."
The psychiatrist scrolled through the documents in his file. No previous record, no prints. "Tell me, how do you feel about the aliens?"
"I love them, but they scare me."
"Why do they scare you?"
" Because I don't know what they're going to do with us after they get us all in a box."
"What do you think they're going to do?"
"Well, they say they're going to take us to another planet before the Earth is destroyed, but I'm not so sure."
"What is the name of this other planet?"
"I don't know. The aliens don't use words like we do."
"How do they use words?"
"I mean, they don't use them at all. They have these symbols, kind of like Chinese writing, that flash on their foreheads."
The psychiatrist nodded several times. "And is that how they told you about the other planet?"
"No, they used a telepathy helmet when they hypnotized me. Are you going to tell the judge to send me to a nuthouse?"
"Is that what you want me to do?"
"I don't care. I can get out all right, but I don't want this charge hanging over me."
"You mean you can get out of the mental health care facility?"
"Oh, sure."
"What will you do, just walk out?"
"No, I'll tell the head doctor to certify me sane, and he'll let me go."
"Why will he do that?"
"Because I'll touch him with my ring."
Guardperson Eldon Wiggan, forty-six, anglo, five feet eight, two hundred fifty pounds, took the detainee back to the tank. "Hey, do you have to grab me that hard?" the detainee asked.
Wiggan slammed him against the wall. "That hurt?"
"Oh, yeah."
CHAPTER 2
Patrolperson G. W. Griffin, thirty-four, male, anglo, blond, six feet one, one hundred eighty pounds, drove the detainee from the County Correctional Center across town to the New Jersey State Mental Health Care Facility.
It was a bright November day; a wind was whipping the tops of the bare trees, and all the smog from New York had blown off to the east.
The patrol, whose eyesight was 20/20, watched the detainee now and then in the rearview mirror. Stone appeared to be curious about everything he saw. As the cruiser whispered down a residential street, he turned around to look at a yard enclosed by a white picket fence where a boy was struggling with a cat under a spruce tree. The cat was biting him in the stomach, and the boy couldn't pull away. Something dark was hanging from the tree, possibly the tail of another cat. Stone kept watching until they were out of sight; then he straightened around and sat quietly behind the mesh, with his wrists Velcroed.
A moment later the patrol saw a contrail streaking overhead; there was a deafening concussion.
"What was that!" Stone shouted in the ringing silence.
"Sonic boom. Concordes fly too damn low."
"Are they propelled by detonite?" Stone asked. The patrol didn't answer. He turned in to the drive in front of the Facility, unlocked the rear door and pulled the detainee out.
"Do you like being a cop?" Stone asked.
"Sure. Do you like being a coo-coo?"
"No. Thanks for asking."
Two white-coated attendants were waiting outside the door. The patrol stripped the Velcro and turned the detainee over to them. "Have a nice day," he said, and walked back to his humming cruiser.
Early Tuesday morning, when attendants opened the main entrance of the Facility, they found Stone shivering in his pajamas under the roof of the portico. He offered no resistance when they restrained him and took him back to his room.
Dr. Gary Lipshitz, the Chief of Psychiatry, visited him there on his morning rounds. " Edwin," he said, "how did you get outside last night?" Stone was in a straitjacket, but seemed cheerful and talkative.
"The aliens came and got me," he said. "They can go through walls. They knew I wanted to get out of here, but they don't understand about clothing. "
"They don't understand what about clothing?"