The Secret of Life

Caldwell’s eyes were blazing—with anger, with fear, with hurt. Conrad backed away.

“Don’t try to hit me, Caldwell, I have special powers. If you really can’t stand it, then go ahead and turn me in. My life here’ll be over, but if that’s what you have to do ...”

Caldwell sat down on the MG’s fender and rubbed his face. “Conrad,” he said softly, “don’t tell me you’re not my brother. You’re the only brother I have. Even if youare an alien. Didn’t we grow up together? Don’t you look like Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe they even fixed it so that my body here has the right genes. I think they made the body out of pigmeat, as a matter of fact, but they could have doctored all the amino acids to match.”

“A stick of light. I remember from my dreams. My race is calledthe flame-people . The other flame-people are in a saucer hovering out past the Moon. They monitor Earth’s TV and radio. They snuck me down here to find out what it’s really like. Instead of vaginal deodorant ads, you dig?”

“How do you know they’re out near the Moon? Do you talk to them? Do you hear voices, Conrad?”

Caldwell’s voice was taking on an air of strained normality. He’d decided not to believe the story.

“I don’t hear voices, Caldwell, and I’m not crazy. I don’t care if you believe me, just so you don’t turn me in.

“Time to regroup,” said Hank, stepping into the garage. “Conrad’s television debut has left us all a bit bemused. My mother is askin’ questions.”

“She knows?” asked Conrad, his voice rising.

“She saw the crystal in my room today. She wants us to give it back.”

“Wait,” interrupted Caldwell. “Did Conrad really shrink or not, Hank? He’s been telling me all this shit about—”

“Flying saucers,” said Hank. “I’ve heard it, too. Idid see him shrink last night. But ...”

“Can you do it again?” demanded Caldwell. You could see vague plans for the perfect bank robbery forming in his mind. “Because ...”

“That’s what I was about to tell you,” said Conrad. “Ican’t shrink anymore. I’m programmed to like change powers each time I get exposed. I could feel it happening after Skelton showed the movie on TV.

The flame-people want me to survive, but I have to keep quiet. We don’t want everyone on Earth to know about us, because—”

“Oh, I don’t want to hear any more about it, Conrad,” interrupted Caldwell in sudden revulsion. “You are so fucking nuts.” He got in the MG and fired up the engine. “Open the garage door, would you, Hank? I’ve got a date.”

“Where are you going to sleep?” asked Conrad solicitously.

“Wherever I get laid; wherever I pass out. Get out of my way.”

Hank opened the garage door, and Caldwell backed out. He looked like he couldn’t decide what to think. Big brother. He really cared. Conrad ran over to the car, and the two brothers shook hands.

Caldwell was shaking his head and gri

“I wonder what your new power is going to be,” mused Hank.

“I don’t know. It’s not really clear to me how many more chances I’m going to get. One more fuck-up, and they might just come get me.” Conrad reached into his pocket and felt the magic crystal. “Why don’t I take a walk, and you tell your mother I’ve gone to give the crystal back? Then maybe later we can go over to Pohlboggen’s. She’s hot for you, and Dee’s got more grass.”

“No way. I’ll be over at the Z.T.”

Conrad followed Hank’s street out of the subdivision and crossed Route 42 to get to the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery. “Old Rough-and-Ready” himself was buried there, along with his wife, and about ten thousand World War II soldiers, each soldier with an identical white headstone. The stones seemed almost to glow in the gathering dusk. As Conrad walked among them, they kept shifting into new alignments, like the atoms in a crystal.

Crystal.Conrad took the troublesome stone out of his pocket and peered at it. It lay still in his hand, mockingly inert. What was it for? Why had the flame-people left it?

Here I am, a creature made of pigmeat and a stick of flame. I used to say that I was looking for the secret of life, but now ...

What could the secret of life mean, anyway? Conrad looked at the vast world around him, remembering Audrey, remembering today’s outing with Dee.How could any one formula ever sum it up?

The secret of life—big deal. Conrad thought of a poem he’d read in some beatnik anthology: The beach night of eternal star Sea of possibility and infinite spacetime Mists on the Earth—What a laugh To sell answers in paperback, When you see God Only piss to mark the spot.

Chapter 22:

Saturday, August 6, 1966 Conrad lay there, on the cemetery grass, not thinking anything in particular. As full darkness set in, lightning bugs appeared, blink-------------blink--blink--------------------blinking around the cedars and the weeping willows. The stars were out, high overhead. Every now and then you could see the abrupt streak of a meteorite. It was peaceful, peaceful lying there, alone in the Louisville night. Conrad held the crystal in his right hand; somehow its sharp planes and skewed edges made for a perfect fit.

A quarter-hour passed, then another and another. Conrad still felt a little high, lying there in the dry grass, too high to fall asleep. It would be nice with Hank and Sue and Dee later—they could all go to a drive-in or—

ZZZZOW.

A tumbling pattern of red lights swooped down out of the sky and thudded into the ground a hundred meters from where Conrad lay. The object was a good-sized pyramid with a bright light at each of its five corners... .It was a UFO!

There were houses all around the Zachary Taylor cemetery—and everyone’s lights were coming on.

Conrad wasn’t the only one who’d seen the pyramid land. Was it the flame-people? This ship certainly didn’t look like the good old flying wing, but maybe it was a scout ship or ...

One side of the pyramid furled open. A rod of light darted out, a rod of light with a knob at one end.

Dogs were barking, and some of the humans were out in their yards yelling. A police siren sounded in the distance.

Moving rapidly, the stick of light floated over the low cemetery wall and disappeared. One of the barking dogs gave a shrill yelp of terror and fell silent. Conrad stared at the scout ship, unsure whether to run or to keep watching. Just then he noticed a dark shape moving toward him through the gravestones.

A big dog, it looked like, in the light from the houses, a big black dog trotting toward Conrad with a frightening singleness of purpose. The alien had taken it over. It was coming to get Conrad.

Now the dog was only ten yards off. Something glowed at the back of its neck—a large parallelepiped crystal resembling the one Conrad held clutched like a sword hilt in his fist. Moving instinctively, Conrad raised his fist to the back of his neck and ... drew out a rod of light. Yes. Drew it out like a sword from a scabbard, pulled his flame-person self out of the human spine where it lived!

The dog charged now, and as it leaped, Conrad stepped sideways and slashed downward with his sword of light. It burned the dog in half; for a moment, Conrad thought the fight was already over.

But now alien energy came oozing out of the dog’s spine, energy that rejoined its crystal to form a sword-thing like Conrad’s. The glowing shape flung itself at Conrad; he hacked and parried as best he could.

It was strange-feeling, this battle—Conrad had double perspective on it. On the one hand,Conrad was the human being wielding the sword; on the other hand,Conrad was the stick of light in the human’s hand. He could feel it either way. Each time he touched the other flame-person, a tingling buzz rushed through him like an electric shock. The main thing was to keep the other from hurting his human body. If he lost his meat, he’d have to go back to the saucer. Thrust and slash, dodge and duck. It was all happening too fast to analyze.