a smirk? In any case the clock was moving and I turned on the tape recorder. I also switched on my backup machine, this one to play back a Schubert song I had recorded earlier. When it was finished, I asked him to sing it back to me. He couldn't even hum the first phrase. Obviously music wasn't one of his talents. Nor was sculpture. I asked him to create a human head with a piece of clay the result looked more like Mr. Peanut. He couldn't even draw a house or a tree. Everything came out looking like the work of a third-grader.
All of this, however, took up half our session. 'Okay,' I said, somewhat disappointedly, 'last time we talked about medicine on K-PAX, or the lack of it. Tell me about your science in general.'
'What would you like to know?'
'Who does it and how is it is done? Are there, in fact, any scientists?'
'We are all scientists on K-PAX.'
'I knew you were going to say that.'
'Most human beings I've met have a rather negative opinion of science. They think it is dull and abstruse, possibly even dangerous. But everyone, even on EARTH, is a scientist, really, whether he realizes it or not. Anyone who has ever watched and wondered how a bird flies, or a leaf unfurls, or concluded anything on the basis of his own observations, is a scientist. Science is a part of life.'
'Well, are there any formal laboratories on K-PAX?'
'They are part of the libraries. Of course the whole UNIVERSE is a laboratory. Anyone can observe.'
'What sorts of scientific observations do K-PAXians usually carry out?'
'Every species now living on our PLANET, or that ever lived there, or on several other PLANETS, is catalogued and thoroughly described. The same for the rocks, geological formations, for the STARS and other ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTS. Every medicinal herb and what it can do is indexed. All this from millions and millions of years of observing and recording.'
'And what goes on in the laboratories?'
'Oh, identifying the odd new compound that might turn up in a novel plant variant, for example.'
'You mean its chemistry?'
'Yes.'
'I assume your chemists can produce all these natural products synthetically. Why do you still get them from plants?'
'No one ever 'synthesizes' anything on K-PAX.'
'Why not?'
'What's the point?'
'Well, you might find a useful new drug, for example. Or a better floor wax.'
'We have a herbal preparation for every known disease. And we don't have floors to wax. Why should we make red grass or blue trees?'
'You're saying that everything is already known.'
'Not everything. That's why I'm here.'
'Aside from the occasional interstellar trip, though, it sounds pretty dull living on your planet.'
He snapped back with: 'Is it any duller than on EARTH?
Whose inhabitants spend most of their lives trying to get laid, watching sitcoms on television, and grunting for money?'
I noted down this sudden outburst and remarked, casually: 'I mean it seems pretty dull with nothing much left to discover.'
'Gene, gene, gene.' It sounded like a bell tolling. 'No single individual knows very much. No matter how much one learns, there is always more to know.'
'But someone already knows it.'
'Have you ever listened to a mozart symphony?'
'Once or twice.'
'Is it dull the second time, or the third, or the twentieth?'
'No, if anything...'
'Exactly.'
'What about physics?'
'What about it?'
'Are all the laws of physics known?'
'Have you ever heard of heisenberg?'
'Yes, I've heard of him.'
'He was wrong.'
'With that in mind, what can you tell us about the fundamental laws of the universe? Light travel, for example.'His customary smile became even broader than usual.
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'Nothing.'
'Why not?'
'If I told you, you'd blow yourselves up. Or worse, someone else.'
'Perhaps you could tell me one thing, at least. What do you use for power on K-PAX?'
'That I can tell you because you have it already, or soon will. We use type one and type two solar energies. Except for traveling, and certain other processes, when we use that of light. You'd be surprised how much energy there is in a beam of light.'
'What are type one and type two solar energies?'
'Type one is the energy of the stars: nuclear fusion. The other is the type of radiation that warms your planet.'
'Isn't there enough of the fusion type? Why do you need the other?'
'Spoken like a true homo sapiens.'
'Meaning?'
'You humans just can't seem to learn from your mistakes. You finally discover that burning all that coal and oil and wood destroys your air and your climate. Then what do you do but go hell-bent after solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy without any thought whatsoever about the consequences. People!' He sighed and wagged his head.
'You haven't answered my question.'
'Isn't it obvious? The use of one produces heat; the other consumes it. The net effect is that we neither warm nor cool our planet. And there is no waste or pollution.'
'Have you always been able to tap these energy sources?'
'Of course not. Only for the last few billion years.'
'What about before that?'
'Well, we fooled around with magnetic fields for a while, and bacterial decay and the like. But we soon realized that no matter what we tried, there was some effect or other on our air, or our temperature, or our climate. Gravitation energy is even worse. So we made do with our muscles until someone figured out how to fuse atoms safely.'
'Who figured that out?'
'You mean his name?'
'Yes.'
'I have no idea. We don't worship heroes on K-PAX.'
'What about nuclear fission?'
'Impossible. Our beings rejected it immediately.'
'Why? Because of the danger, of an accident?'
'That is a small matter compared to the waste that's produced.'
'You never found anything to contain it?'
'Where would we find something that lasts forever?'
'Let's turn to astronomy. Or better yet, cosmology.'
'One of my favorite subjects.'
