GisELLE called me from Guelph the next morning. One of Robert's sisters, she reported, was indeed living in Alaska, the other in Hawaii. Sarah's family didn't have either address, but she (Giselle) was working with a friend at Northwest Airlines to try to determine Robert's mother's destination when she left Montana. In addition, she had gathered photographs and other artifacts from his school years and those of his wife-to-be, thanks to Sarah's mother and the high school principal, who had spent most of the previous night going through the files with her. 'Find his mother,' I told her. 'If you can, get her back here. But fax all the pictures and the other stuff now.'
'They should already be on, your desk.'
I cancelled my interview with the Search Committee. Villers was not pleased-I was the last candidate for the directorship.
There were photos of Robert as a first-grader on up to his graduation picture, with the yearbook caption, 'All great men are dead and I'm not feeling well,' along with pictures of the wrestling teams and informal snapshots of soda fountains and pizza parlors. There were copies of his birth certificate, his immunization records, his grade transcripts (A's and B's), his citation for top marks in the county Latin contest, his diploma. There were also pictures of his sisters, who had graduated a few years before he had, and some information on them. And one of Sarah, a vivacious looking blonde, leading a cheer at a basketball game. Finally, there was a photograph of the family standing in front of their new house in the country, all smiles. Judging by the age of the daughter, it must have been taken not long before the tragedy occurred. Mrs. Trexler brought me some coffee as I was gazing at it, and I showed it to her. 'His wife and daughter,' I said. 'Somebody killed them.' Without warning she burst into tears and ran from the room. I remember thinking that she must be more sympathetic toward the plights of the patients than I had thought. It wasn't until much later, while paging through her personnel file at the time of her retirement, that I learned her own daughter had been raped and murdered nearly forty years earlier.
I had lunch in Ward Two and laid down the law: no cats on the table. I sat across from Mrs. Archer, who was now taking all her meals in the dining room. She was flanked by prot and Chuck. Both were talking animatedly with her. She looked uncertainly from one to the other, then slowly lifted a spoonful of soup to her, mouth. Suddenly, with a sound that could have been heard clear up in Ward Four, she slurped it in. Then she grabbed a handful of crackers and crumbled them vigorously into her bowl. She finished her meal with half the soup smeared all over her leathery face. 'God,' she said happily, 'I've always wanted to do that.'
'Next time,' said Chuck, 'belch!'
I thought I saw Bess smile a little, though it might have been wishful thinking on my part.
After the meal I returned to my office and asked Mrs. Trexler, who had regained her composure, to cancel all my appointments for the rest of the day. She mumbled something unintelligible about doctors, but agreed to do so. Then I went to find prot.
He was in the lounge, surrounded by all the patients and staff from Wards One and Two. Even Russell, who had experienced some sort of revelation after he understood that it was prot who had been responsible for Maria's deciding to become a nun, was there. When I came into the room he exclaimed, 'The Teacher saith, My time is at hand.' The corners of his mouth were caked with dried spittle.
'Not just yet, Russ,' I said. 'I need to talk to him first. Will everyone excuse us, please?' I calmed a chorus of protest by assuring them he would be back shortly.
On the way to his room I remarked, 'Every one of them would do anything you asked them to. Why do you suppose that is?'
'Because I speak to them as equals. That's something you doctors seem to have a hard time with. I listen to them being to being.'
'I listen to them!'
'You listen to them in a different way. You are not as concerned with them or their problems as you are with the papers and books you get out of it. Not to mention your salary, which is far too high.'
He was wrong about that, but this wasn't the time to argue the matter. 'You have a point,' I said, 'but my professional manner is necessary in order to help them.'
'Let's see-if you believe that, then it must be true. Right?''That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.' We came to his room, the first time I had been there since his earlier disappearance. It was virtually bare except for his notebooks lying on the desk. 'I've got some pictures and documents to show you,' I said, spreading the file out on its surface, gently shoving aside his still-unfinished report. A few of the photographs I held back.
He looked over the pictures of himself, the birth and graduation certificates. 'Where did you get these?'
'Giselle sent them to me. She found them in Guelph, Montana. Do you recognize the boy?'
'Yes. It is robert.'
'No. It is you.'
'Haven't we been over this before?'
'Yes, but at that time I didn't have anything to prove that you and Robert were the same person.'
'And we aren't.'
'How do you explain the fact that he looks so much like you?'
'Why is a soap bubble round?'
'No, I mean why does he look exactly like you?'
'He doesn't: He is thinner and fairer than I am. My eyes are light-sensitive and his aren't. We are different in a thousand ways, as you are different from your friend bill siegel. '
'No. Robert is you. You are Robert. You are each part of the same being.'
'You are wrong. I'm not even human. We are just close friends. Without me he'd be dead by now.'
'And so would you. Whatever happens to him also happens to you. Do you understand what I am saying?'
'It is an interesting hypothesis.' He wrote something in one of the notebooks.
'Look. Do you remember telling me that the universe was going to expand and contract over and over again, forever?'
'Naturally.'
'And you said later that if we were in the contraction phase, time would run backward but we'd never know the difference because all we would have would be our memories of the past and a lack of knowledge of the future. Remember?'
'Of course.'
'All right. It's the same here. From your perspective Robert is a separate individual. From my perspective the truth is perfectly logical and obvious. You and Robert are one and the same person.'
'You misunderstand the reversal of time. Whether it is moving forward or backward, the perception is the same.'
'So?'
'So it makes no difference whether you are correct or not.'
'But you admit the possibility that I'm right?'
His smile widened markedly. 'I'll admit that, if you'll admit it's possible that I came from K-PAX.'
From his point of view there wasn't the slightest doubt about his background. Given several more months or years I might have been able to convince him otherwise. But there was no more time. I pulled the pictures of Sarah and Rebecca from my pocket. 'Do you recognize them?'
He seemed shocked, but only for a moment. 'It is his wife and daughter.'
'And this one?'
'This is his mother and father.'
'Giselle is trying to locate your mother and sister in Alaska. She is going to try to bring your mother here. Please, prot, don't leave, until you talk to her.'
He threw up his hands. 'How many times must I tell you-I have to leave at 3:31 in the morning. Nothing can change that!'
'We are going to get her here as soon as we can.' Without looking at a clock he said, 'Well, you have exactly twelve hours and eight minutes to do it in.'
THAT evening Howie and Ernie threw prot a bon voyage party in the recreation room. There were many gifts for their 'alien' friend, souvenirs of his visit to Earth: records, flowers, all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Mrs. Archer hammered out popular tunes on the piano accompanied by Howie on the violin. Cats were everywhere.
Chuck gave him a copy of Gulliver's Travels, which he had lifted from the bookshelves in the quiet room. I
