was certain it was raining on the sunniest days. Everything that happened seemed to remind her of some tragedy, some terrible incident from her past. Neither electroconvulsive therapy nor a variety of neuroleptic drugs had proven effective. She was the saddest person I had ever met.
But on one of my decreasingly frequent travels through the wards I noticed that she was sitting with her knees up and her arms wrapped around them, paying rapt attention to whatever prot might choose to say. Not smiling, but not crying, either.
And seventy-year-old Mrs. Archer, ex-wife of one of America's foremost industrialists, ceased her constant muttering whenever prot was around. Known in Ward Two as 'the Duchess,' Mrs. Archer takes her meals on fine china in the privacy of her own room. Trained since birth for a life of luxury, she complains constantly about the service she receives, and about everyone's deportment in general. Amazingly, the Duchess, who once ran naked for a mile down Fifth Avenue when her husband left her for a much younger woman, became a lamb in the presence of my new patient.
The only person who seemed to resent prot's proximity was Russell, who decided that prot was scouting the Earth for the devil. 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' he exclaimed periodically, to no one in particular. Although many of the patients continued to flock to him for sympathy and advice, his coterie was shrinking almost daily and gravitating toward prot instead.
But the point I was making was that prot's presence seemed to be beneficial for many of our long-term patients. This raised an interesting dilemma: If we were successful in diagnosing and treating prot's illness, might not his recovery come at the expense of many of his fellow sufferers?
Session Five
BEFORE my next encounter with prot I had a couple of old floor lamps brought in from the storage tunnel and equipped them with fifteen-watt 'nightlight' bulbs, hoping the dimmer radiance would induce him to remove his dark glasses so I could see his eyes. That is exactly what happened and, although now it was too dark in my examining room to see the rest of him with clarity, I could discern his obsidian irises shining across the desk like those of some nocturnal animal as he plucked a papaya from the fruit basket and offered me a bite.
While he ate I casually gave him the date of my birth and asked him to tell me what day of the week it fell on. He shrugged and went on chomping. I asked him to give me the square root of 98,596. His reply was: 'Mathematics is not my strong suit.' Then I asked him to do what I thought he had done earlier, namely to draw the night sky as seen from K-PAX, only in the other direction, away from the Earth. When he had finished I compared it with the one Steve had faxed me the week before. It contained fewer stars than the computer projection, but I could tell that the general pattern was the same.
I didn't waste time asking him how he knew what the night sky looked like from K-PAX. He would undoubtedly have spouted something about 'growing up there.' Instead, I turned on the tape recorder and essentially just let him ramble. I wanted to know exactly how well developed his peculiar delusion was and what, if anything, we might be able to learn from it, both about prot's true background and, perhaps, about the universe in general.
'Tell me about K-PAX,' I said.
He lit up when I asked him that. Munching a star fruit, the significance of which was not lost on him, he said, 'What would you like to know?'
'Everything. Describe a typical day in a typical year.'
'Ah,' he nodded. 'A typical day.' Apparently this was not an unpleasant prospect. He finished his snack, and in the dim light I could see his fingertips coming together and his eyes rolling up. It took a few seconds for him to gather his thoughts, or project them onto his internal screen, or whatever he did with them. 'Well, to begin with, we don't have 'days' in the sense you mean them. We experience rather dusky light conditions most of the time, you see, much like it is in this room right now.' The last phrase was accompanied by a very familiar wry grin. 'Also, KPAXians don't sleep as much as y'all do, nor do we sleep at regular times, but only as the need arises.' I had gotten staff reports to this effect on prot's sleeping habits. He stayed up most of the night reading or writing or, apparently, just thinking, and napped at odd times during the day. 'And finally, K-PAX doesn't rotate unidirectionally as does EARTH, but reverses itself as it reaches the end of its cycle every twenty-one of your years. Thus, the length of a 'day' varies from about one of your weeks to several months as K-PAX slows and reverses its spin.'
At this point I noted down something I had forgotten to mention to Steve: Prot's description of the path of K-PAX around, or between, its suns didn't seem to match Dr. Flynn's 'figure eight' pattern.
'Incidentally,' he said, and his eyes opened for a moment, 'we do have calendars and clocks, though we rarely use them. On the other hand, they never need to be reset or replaced-they are the type you would call 'perpetual.' But to get back to your question, let's say I have just awakened from a little snooze. What would I do? If I were hungry I would eat something. Some soaked grains, perhaps, and some fruit.'
I asked him what he meant by a 'soaked' grain, and to describe some K-PAXian fruits.
His eyes popped open again and he sat up straighter; he seemed to relish the opportunity to explain the details of his 'world.'
'A soaked grain is just what it sounds like,' he said. 'You soak a grain long enough and it gets soft, like your rice or oatmeal. On EARTH you prefer to cook them. We just let them soak, usually in fruit juices. There are twenty-one commonly eaten grains on our PLANET, but, like yours, none is a complete food in itself. They have to be mixed to get the proper amino acid balance. My favorite combination is drak and thon and adro. It has a nutty flavor much like your cashew.'
'Gesundheit. '
Prot had either a well-developed sense of humor or none at all-I was never able to tell. 'Thank you,' he said, without blinking an eye. 'Now the fruits are a different story. We have several wonderful kinds-I especially like the ones we call yorts, or sugar plums-but they can't compare with EARTH's variety, which is due primarily to your great variations in climate. To summarize: If we get hungry we grab some soaked grains, usually in fruit juice, and sit down against a balnok tree and fall to.'
'What about vegetables?'
'What about them?'
'Do you have them?'
'Oh, of course. After the next snooze we might munch a bunch of krees or likas.'
'Meat? Fish? Seafood?'
'No meat. No fish. No seafood. No sea. '
'No animals of any kind?'
He tapped his glasses on the arm of his chair, 'Now, gene, I've already told you about the aps and mots remember?'
'What about pigs and cows and sheep?'
With a deep sigh: 'As I pointed out in session two, we don't have any 'domesticated' beings on K-PAX. But we have wild pigs, wild cows, wild sheep-'
'Wild cows??'
'Well, they're called rulis, but they're much like your cows-big, cumbersome, placid. Have you ever noticed how gentle your large beings are? Your elephants and giraffes and whales, even when they are mistreated?'
'So basically you just eat and sleep on your planet?'
'Perhaps I should back up a step. When I told you that we snooze when we feel the need, you probably imagined a bed in a bedroom in a house much like the one you live in. Wroooong! It's different on K-PAX. You see, our weather is very dependable. Every day is about the same as the one before. It is usually quite warm, and it never rains. There are structures scattered around for storage of utensils and the like, for the use of anyone who happens to pass by. Food is kept there, as well as mats and musical instruments-a variety of things-but no beds. For the most part-'
'Who owns these structures?'
'No one 'owns' anything on K-PAX.'
'Go on.'
