Страница 32 из 41
“I knowyou’re not. But youare in a somewhat similar situation.”
“I never understood why Jesus had to get crucified. Couldn’t he just say, ‘Fuck thiscross shit,’ and fly off, or change his face? Why should he let the pigs kill him?” “He had to die so he could rise from the dead. I think the idea was to let the pigs take their best shot at him ... and thenstill come back.”
“Oh, look, I don’t want to start thinking this way. It’s too sick. I’m just a hippie.” Conrad finished the first beer and started on the one he’d opened for Dee.
The news about his being an extraterrestrial seemed to have changed Dee’s attitude toward him considerably. Before this, they’d been good friends, but now she was looking at him with ... veneration.
As if heknew where it was at .
“You’renot just a hippie,” said Dee quietly. “Listen.” She put on the car radio. News, excited news.
“... tentatively identified as Conrad Bunger, aged twenty, formerly a resident of Louisville. Bunger’s family have refused comment until ...”
“I ... I think it might have been Sue,” Dee said. “I told her not to, but she ...”
Conrad groaned and twiddled up and down the dial.
“... indicate a genuine UFO incident. Positive radar contact was made by air traffic controllers at Standiford Field ...”
“... Fort Knox jets scrambled, but the vehicle evaded them easily ...”
“... photographs seem to show one man—now identified as Conrad Bunger, aged twenty—with two alien beings having the appearance of rods of light. An analysis of the images reveals ...”
“... Cornelius Skelton, who states that Conrad Bunger spoke to him in person, giving assurances that ...”
“... here with Cornelius Skelton, who says he saw Conrad Bunger shortly after the Zachary Taylor cemetery incident. Mr. Skelton?” The old man’s voice came on—the reporters must have gotten there right after Dee and Conrad left. “That is correct. Ah spoke briefly with ... the alien. There is every reason to believe that this being’s purpose here is of a peaceful and scientific nature. Ah feel—”
Conrad clicked the radio back off.
“God. We’re going to have to be very cool at the train station, Dee. There’s going to be cops all over the place. You don’t think Skelton gave them your license number, do you?”
“What would be so terrible if the policedid catch you, Conrad? You haven’t done anything wrong.
Maybe you should go public.” She gave him another admiring glance.
“Look, if the police get me, I’ll be on live TV. And any time I’m on live TV, the flame-people will know where to look for me. They want to cancel my mission, Dee. They want to get me out of here. They’ll chop up my body, and take my flame back to the flying wing.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Conrad. Maybe it’s nice in the ... flying wing. What does that mean, anyway,flying wing ?”
“That’s what our saucer looks like. Sure, maybe it is nice there. But I’m scared, all right? I’m scared of a big change, number one, and number two, I have a bad feeling the flame-people might be really mad at me. What if they court-martial me, or something? My instinct is to stretch out this Earth-gig as long as possible. Make the most of it, you know?” They were driving down Broadway now. Conrad glanced back to make sure no cops were following them.
“The flame-people can’t find you unless you’re on TV, or holding that crystal?”
“Right. It’s like a person can’t see what’s going on in an anthill. You can’t keep track of just one ant.
Jesus ... would you look at that?”
There was a police barricade in front of the train station. You had to pass a checkpoint to get inside.
Flashing red lights and excited yokel faces.
“Just drop me here, Dee. Thanks for everything. I’ll miss you.”
“But ...” She looked at him all wide-eyed, like he was a guru or a rock star. This afternoon it had been Dee-and-Conrad , but now it wasHuman-and-Alien . It felt bad.
Dee’s face relaxed into her old smile. “We’re all aliens, one way or another, aren’t we, Conrad?”
It was hard to stop kissing, but—like everything else, like everything—at some point it was over. Last smile, door-slam,putt-putt , goodbye.
Getting past the cops was easy with the Charles Bulber IDs. The next train north was due in forty minutes. Conrad wandered into the train station’s large newsstand and bought himself theSchaum’s Outline Series on General Physics .
Part IV
I got up and went out. Once at the gate, I turned back. Then the garden smiled at me. I leaned against the gate and watched for a long time. The smile of the trees, of the laurel,meant something; that was the real secret of existence.
—Jean-Paul Sartre,Nausea
Chapter 24:
Saturday, August 13, 1966 Charles Bulber
23 Crum Ledge Swarthmore, PA 19084
August 13, 1966
Dear Audrey, I guess you’ve read about me inTime —yeah, this is Conrad here—DON’T TELL ANYONE! BURN
THIS! I mean it, Audrey, if they catch me, it’s my ass. God I miss you. You’ll be back in the U.S. on Sept. 2. You see, I remember. It might not be too cool for me to come up to Columbia, but you can come down here and stay with me at Mr. Bulber’s house, it’s so hard waiting for you, sweet darling.
I hope you don’t think I’m icky for being sort of an extraterrestrial. I can hardly wait to run my pincers and feelers all over your ripe young ... No, wait, it’s not like that; it’s the story we were goofing on at the Gold Rail with Hank Larsen last winter ... it’s really true. My body is real Earthly meat, but there is a kind of stick of flame in my spine, which is what came from the flying saucer. Theflame-people , remember? I mean, it’s obvious, really—that’s why I had those special powers all along. (Remember the time I shrank for you up in NYC and Katha Kahane starts pounding on the door? Yubba!)
Well, I’ve got a new power now, which is that I can change my face. That’s how I escaped in Louisville,I turned into Mr. Bulber . My physics teacher, the one who hated me so much, Professor Charles V.
Bulber, Ph.D.? Do you like older men? With pincers and feelers and a squid-bunch of tentacles under each arm? Genitals of the Universe, Part IX. No, really, I have to stop this or you won’t come see me, and if you don’t come see me, dear Audrey, I willeach arm? Genitals of the Universe, Part IX. No, really, I have to stop this or you won’t come see me, and if you don’t come see me, dear Audrey, I will .
I think it’s your lips I miss the most, or maybe the way you giggle. And your shiny brown eyes, and the way you stick your neck out tocrane . My new Bulber-body isn’t too bad-looking—I’m thirty-two, I have dark hair, I have all my teeth, I’m single, I ...
“All right, Conrad,” I can hear you saying. “What have you done with thereal Mr. Bulber?”
Mr. Bulber is inFrance , Audrey, he’s on sabbatical. His replacement here at the college was going to house-sit for him, but I, the pseudo-Bulber, showed up and told the guy to get fucked, I’d decided not to stay in France, I just wanted to spend the year lying around my house drinking and taking drugs. The replacement flipped, and the Chairman came by to see me—I played it cool and just said I was working on some new ideas and they should leave me alone. It’s my sabbatical, right? I can do what I want.
Meanwhile, I forward all Mr. Bulber’s mail to him in Montpelier, the way the house sitter was supposed to, and I’ve been getting money by selling Bulber-things off. Sooner or later my cover here’ll blow, but for now it’s a wiggy scene. Except for one thing: no Audrey. Audrey, Audrey, Audrey. You smell good, you know? All over.
What I’m really thinking, Audrey, is that you should just move in here with me. Mr. Bulber’s house overlooks the Crum, it’s nice and comfortable, he has a stereo—shitty classical records, but I’m getting some new ones—and I’m pla