The Secret of Life

The ease of taking the man’s keys gave Conrad the notion of robbing a bank, but Audrey talked him out of it. The trip was dragging on longer than they’d imagined, and it was all getting kind of spooky. It was on the last leg—from Cinci

They were weaving along from lane to lane—every now and then skidding out onto the shoulder. Conrad was driving, and Audrey was staring out the open car window.

“Is it always so hazy in Kentucky?” Audrey asked.

“Hazy ...” Conrad realized he’d been squinting for the last couple of hours. Things were getting harder and harder to see. It was like wearing the wrong pair of glasses.

“And look at the sun, Conrad, it’s gotten all fuzzy!”

Indeed the sun was fuzzy, and the landscape hazy. The great tapestry of past reality was begi

“That’s not normal, is it, Conrad?”

“Normal! None of this is normal.” He tried to drive a little faster. Pass a car in his lane, dodge a truck in the other lane, skid around a solid block of three cars either way.

“We’re getting too far away from the main timestream, Conrad! That’s why the world is getting so vague.

It’s out of focus!”

“I’m scared, Conrad.”

“Maybe I should let you go. I could put you out by the roadside, and you’d leave my timestream. You’d be out there with all the regular people.”

“But it’s you I want, Conrad.”

“Well, hang on then, Audrey. Once I get that crystal we’ll see the flamers, and maybe they’ll help me out.”

Fortunately, Conrad remembered Louisville’s roads well, and they were able to find their way to Skelton’s. They pulled up his driveway, and the sun-hazed farmhouse reared up before them like a haystack by Monet. Hand in hand, they left the now-shimmering car and mounted Skelton’s steps. At the touch of Conrad’s feet, the steps grew satisfyingly solid.

They found Skelton on his back porch, poised over a trout fly in a vise. He was busy wrapping it with yellow thread. Like everything else now, Skelton had the gauzy outlines of an Impressionist painting.

Conrad laid his hand on the old man’s shoulder. It took him a moment to get fully solid, and then he looked up.

“Conrad! How’d you sneak in like that, boy?”

“I’m outside of normal time. I just pulled you into my timestream. This here’s Audrey Hayes, who I’m engaged to. Audrey, this is Mr. Skelton.”

“Pleased to meet you, Audrey. Engaged to the saucer-alien, hey? Well, I suppose he can have kids like anyone else.”

“This is the first timeI’ve heard we’re engaged,” said Audrey, smiling. “Conrad and I came here to see if you still had that crystal.”

“That crystal!” exclaimed Skelton. “If you only knew, Conrad, how the feds have been pestering me. Of course I never even allowed as how I had it back, but theywould keep poking around. Yes, sir. I’ve got that crystal hid, and I’ve got it hid good.”

“Well, can I have it?”

“Yes ... if you let me watch you use it. You know how much it would tickle me to see another saucer, Conrad, and—”

“No problem. And the sooner, the better. You notice how hazy everything is getting, Mr. Skelton? If my timestream gets too far off of the old reality, there’s no telling where we’ll end up. I want to get that crystal and call the flame-people for help.”

“Okey-doke. The crystal’s hid out in the smokehouse. I wedged her on into one of my country hams. It was my rolling the hams in rock salt that gave me the idea. It seemed fitting, what with you being made of pigmeat and all in the first place, Conrad.”

“Pigmeat?”exclaimed Audrey.

“Didn’t tell you that did he, hey?” chuckled Skelton. “Yep, that’s how Conrad got here. He was a stick of light attached to that crystal. When his saucer landed, he flew on out, stabbed his light into my prize hog Chester, doctored that pigmeat into human form, and walked off to join the Bungers. March 22,

1956. I saw the lights, but all I found was the crystal. Here we are.”

“Let’s go outside where there’s some light.”

They went out and sat down on the grass. The ham was in the middle, and the three people sat around it.

The haziness had gotten so great now that everything outside of a small circle around them was gone. No house, no smokehouse, no sun, and no sky. Just raw color, lively specks of scintillating brightness.

Skelton felt around under the ham’s outer hide for what seemed quite a long time. Finally he drew out the crystal, shiny and glistening with fat. It was considerably smaller than the last time Conrad had seen it.

“Here, Conrad. You hold it, and I’ll keep my hand on you.”

The crystal tingled in Conrad’s palm. Where earlier it had been big as a matchbox, now it was no larger than a sugar cube. Even so, it nestled into the curves of his palm in the same tight way it had done back in the Zachary Taylor cemetery.

“This may take a few minutes,” said Conrad. “Let’s just sit tight.” He closed his eyes and concentrated.

He could feel his memory pattern flowing down through the crystal and into the subether transmission cha

“Now,why did you say the world’s so blurred?” Skelton asked Audrey. “I had a cousin who had glaucoma—the way he told it, glaucoma makes things look something like this.What did you say was the reason?”

“It’s because we’re on another timestream,” said Audrey. “We’re moving farther and farther away from the old world. Like taking a wrong fork in the road.”

The crystal was hot in Conrad’s hand; and his ears were filled with buzzing. Closer. Closer.

Mr. Skelton was getting nervous and impatient. “I sure don’t like having the real world drift away from us like this. If that saucer doesn’t show up soon, I’ve got a mind to ...”

ZZZZUUUUUHHHUUUUUssss.

Five bright red lights solidified out of the bright haze, coming into focus as they approached. It was a square-based pyramid, two or three meters on a side. Still buzzing, it hovered closer, then touched down on the grass next to Conrad and the two humans.

For a moment the vehicle sat there like a large tent, and then one of its faces split open. Out came a stick of light with a gleaming parallelepiped crystal at one end. Remembering the fight in the graveyard, Conrad tensed himself for battle. He raised his own crystal up to the nape of his neck and got ready to unsheathe his stick of light.

But instead of attacking, the creature slid its flame into the big country ham that lay inside the circle of Conrad, Skelton, and Audrey. The flame-person’s crystal stayed outside the ham, stuck to its narrow end. The wrinkles in the ham’s skin formed themselves into a facelike pattern, and small feet seemed to stick out from the joint’s wide end. Now the leg of pork got up and made a little bow to Conrad. Conrad returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.

“Where’s your-all’s home star?” demanded Mr. Skelton.

“We don’t have one,” said the ham. “We aren’t material beings. The whole stars-and-planets concept is relative to the material condition. I think there’s a human science called quantum mechanics that could express where we come from. Hilbert space? The problem is that none of us knows quantum mechanics!” The ham laughed sharply. “That’s one of the things Conrad was supposed to find out about while looking for the ‘secret of life.’ ” The ham laughed again, not quite pleasantly. “I must say, Conrad, some of your information is valuable, but on the whole—”

“Well, he’s only just starting,” said Audrey protectively. “I’m sure that sooner or later Conrad can learn everything on Earth that you flame-people want to know.”

“You’re Audrey,” said the ham knowingly. “Conrad’s girlfriend. Of course you stick up for him.”

“How do you know about me?”

“See that crystal Conrad’s holding?” asked the ham. “Besides being a power source, it’s a memory transmitter. Every time Conrad touches it, we get copies of all his prior memories. You’re Audrey Hayes, and Conrad is in love with you.” The ham paused, bobbing in thought. “Love. Most interesting. It’s been a mess from the start, but in some ways this is one of the most interesting investigations we’ve done. It’s just a shame that—”