The Secret of Life

The crystal sat on a square of pegboard, surrounded by bright little doodads: striped-sausage resistors, plastic-disc capacitors, buglike transistors, and wires of every color. The largest component was a many-fi

“Why aren’t any wires co

“That’s just it,” said Hank, his voice a tense, exasperated whisper. “Look at my thumb, fucker.” He held out his thumb for inspection. There was a charred blister on it. “And the other hand, too.” Hank’s left palm was crossed by a deep, scabbed scratch. “Every time I try to do anything with that bastard-ass crystal, I get hurt.”

“The crystal attacks you?”

“No!”Hank caught himself and forced his voice back to a whisper. “I burned my thumb with the soldering gun; and I scratched my palm with the screwdriver. But it’s the crystal’s fault. You don’t believe me? Go ahead and try for yourself. It’sweird . See that masking tape? Try and tape the crystal down onto the pegboard. I dare you.”

Conrad picked up the roll of tape and stared uncertainly at the crystal. “If I try, I’ll get spastic and hurt myself.”

“Go ahead, dammit. This was your idea in the first place.”

Conrad measured out a length of tape and tried to tear it off the roll. The tape was tougher than he’d expected. He pulled harder. Just then his thumb slipped oddly. The thumbnail caught in a wrinkle of the tape—caught, bent, and snapped.

“Shit! I just broke my goddamn thumbnail!” Conrad dropped the tape and put his tongue to the wound.

“I broke it right down to the quick. I can’t believe I ...” He stopped talking then as he realized what had just happened.

“It’s been like that all afternoon,” said Hank quietly. “I suggest you pocket that crystal, Conrad, and forget about trying to build anything with it. Sooner or later, you’ll find out what it’s really for.”

“Seven o’clock!” called Caldwell from the kitchen. “Didn’t you guys want to watch the news?”

Chapter 21:

Saturday, August 6, 1966 Hank’s parents and one of his brothers were already down in the basement. “Conrad here wants to see the news,” Hank explained after the greetings. “Catch up on all the big doings.”

“The local news is the only thing on right now anyway,” said Mrs. Larsen agreeably. “We still only have two cha

“There’s no sports on that cha

The local news ran along uneventfully: a new candidate for mayor, problems with the sewage plant, a change in zoning, but then ...

“A bizarre robbery at a farmhouse in Louisville’s East End last night.” The newscaster was a trim young woman with heavily coiffed brown hair. “When Mr. Cornelius Skelton called police officers at 3:00A.M. , they found a broken window lock and only one item missing: a large, semiprecious mineral crystal which had rested on Mr. Skelton’s mantel. Skelton asserted that he had ‘expected the robbery.’ The crystal was coupled to an alarm system—a very special system which included an automatic movie camera!

Here is Skelton’s incredible film of the robbery taking place.”

“Cornelius Skelton,” Mr. Larsen was saying. “Isn’t he the rich fellow who has that farm down the road?”

“A jewel heist in our own neighborhood!” exclaimed Mrs. Larsen. “How exciting!”

Caldwell favored Conrad with a hard, questioning stare.

The film started: silent, black and white.

A blurred shape, jellylike in slowed time. A young man’s back. He jerks grayly, then blurs out into cloud. He’s gone? No ... there he is again, at the bottom of the screen, tiny before the looming fireplace. He’s the size of a thumb! He wears a white bandit-mask, the little scuttler, and now he hurries off out of the picture, lugging Skelton’s crystal on his tiny back.

The news show cut to Skelton’s face, in color. Old Cornelius looked as calm and gentlemanly as ever, laying down his bizarre rap in an emotionless Kentucky drawl. “I’ve said this time and again. A flahn saucer landed on my farm in the spring of fifty-six. It butchered one of my hogs and left a crystal in its place. I anticipated that the aliens might return for the crystal, and I rigged my camera accordingly. View the film with an open mind, and ask yourself if any human being couldshrink that way .”

They ran the film again in slow motion. This time Conrad could recognize himself. The arms, the eyes. All of a sudden, he was starting to feel fu

The brunette came back on. “The incredible shrinking man? This afternoon, our WHAS news team showed Skelton’s film to Dr. Mario Turin, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Louisville.”

Cut to a black-goateed man with a sliding smile. A mellow-voiced male interviewer, off-camera, asked the questions.

“Dr. Turin, what do you think of Mr. Skelton’s assertion that his film shows an alien from outer space?”

Turin smiled and jerked his head. “Cornelius Skelton is well known for his strong beliefs in UFO

phenomena. I think it’s only natural that he would interpret his film in terms of extraterrestrial visitation.”

“No, I don’t. I think it’s more likely that Mr. Skelton is the perpetrator—or the dupe—of a hoax. The

‘shrinking’ effect could easily be produced by an ordinary zoom lens. What we have here is an unusual film ... of an ordinary robbery.”

Conrad was finding it harder and harder to pay attention. It was unsettling enough to see himself on TV—and to have Caldwell angrily elbowing him whenever the Larsens looked away—but his head was filled with a fu

It was an odd feeling, yet not totally unfamiliar. Conrad had felt this way once before: in Paris, right after he’d seen the picture of Audrey and him hovering off the Eiffel Tower ...

That was the last time that one of my powers was publicly recorded. The picture of me flying was in the paper, and then I couldn’t fly anymore.His head throbbed thickly. It was the news report for sure. Somehow Conrad was programmed to change his special survival power each time he was unmasked. He was turning into a new “Chinese brother.”

The news ended on a light note, and a vaginal-deodorant commercial came on, the one with Dorothy Provine. With the marijuana still in his system, Conrad slid into a heavy paranoid fantasy that Caldwell and the Larsens were all staring at him. In Caldwell’s case, this was no fantasy.

“Let’s go out to the car,” said Caldwell, poking Conrad sharply. “I have to pick up Sherry soon.” He thanked Mrs. Larsen for the di

“What do you think you’re doing, breaking into Mr. Skelton’s house?” demanded Caldwell. “He’s an old friend of the family! Have you turned into a junkie or something?”

“How ... how do you know it was me?” essayed Conrad.

“I know what you look like, even with a snot-rag on your face. And the way you and Hank have been acting, it’s been obvious that something’s up. What did you do with the crystal, sell it?”

“No. I’ve got it right here.” Conrad took the crystal out of his pocket and opened his hand a little to show it to Caldwell. “I’m not giving it back, either. It’s mine.”

“Whyis it yours, Conrad?”

“Because ... because it comes from the same flying saucer thatI came from.” Conrad couldn’t hold the secret back any longer. “The flying wing! It put me down at Skelton’s the day you all moved to Louisville. I’m not really your brother. You were just hypnotized into thinking I am. The aliens picked the Bunger family because they had no friends or relatives.”