That had already happened, a couple of times; she just didn’t notice.
She was saying, “I’m not going to tell you anything unless
“About what?”
“That my name will never be mentioned.”
“That’s fine with me,” I shrugged. “Have you broached this subject with Mr. Pearson?”
“He’s given me that assurance. Can I trust him?”
“On this score, yes. One person he won’t betray is a source; I believe he’d go to jail for contempt first.”
“Well, I could get into a lot of trouble … I was warned to forget everything I saw. There’s still pressure-talk of a transfer, and I
“Look?”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Mr. Heller, I’m going to tell you my story, and before this evening is out, you’ll wonder if I’m a liar, or a lunatic. And those may seem to you the only reasonable choices … and there’s not a thing I can do about it.”
This was setting a ponderous, even foreboding tone that would not be conducive to a good interview; something had to be done.
I leaned forward, gave her my most ingratiating, unthreatening smile. “Mrs. Selff … would it be all right if I called you ‘Maria’? And you maybe call me ‘Nate,’ or ‘Nathan’? I feel like we’re hitting it off pretty well, and this ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’ stuff is for the birds.”
“That would be nice … Nathan.”
“Before we get started, would you like something to drink? I can call room service.”
She perked up. “Don’t bother-there are soft drinks in the little refrigerator behind the bar; I’m afraid I snooped a little, before you got here.”
“For shame.”
“Shall I get us something? To drink?”
“Please.”
Then she was back behind there, calling out, “Coca-Cola or 7 UP?”
“Coke.”
“You know, I think I noticed an ice machine down the hall …”
Soon I’d returned, handing Maria a brimming bucket of ice and a small plastic bag of toiletries.
Accepting them like awards, she asked brightly, “What, are you a magician, Nathan?”
Out in the hall, I’d intercepted the maid delivering the complimentary toiletries.
“Yes,” I said.
The ice was broken, or anyway cubes of it were floating in our respective glasses of Coke, and we returned to our seats in the warm orange glow of the fire, and I got out my spiral notepad and pen.
“I’m not going to be shocked by what you tell me, Maria, and I promise I won’t be judgmental, either. I’ve already heard our mortician friend’s account, including what you told him at that officers’ club, over lunch, the morning after.”
She smirked, humorlessly.
“I need you to tell me about it, Maria. Tell me what happened at the hospital-on the evening of Saturday … July fifth, is it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Day after Independence Day. But the Fourth of July couldn’t compare to those fireworks….”
Maria Selff said that she had been performing perfunctory duties in the emergency room when she entered an examination room, to get some supplies from a cabinet, only to stumble onto a bizarre tableau. Two doctors were performing preliminary autopsies under rather makeshift conditions; she didn’t recognize either of the medics, and she certainly didn’t recognize the three bodies they were working on, “foreign bodies,” laid out on gurneys. But even before the strangeness of the corpses could fully register, the first thing that hit Maria was the overwhelmingly foul odor.
“Such a horrible stench … you just immediately gagged. It was hot in there, because the air-conditioning had been turned off-the smell was so terrible, the doctors were afraid it might spread throughout the hospital. It was almost impossible to stay in that room and work … I didn’t last long, and some of the doctors staggered out of there, too-at least one passed out in the hall.”
“You called them ‘foreign’ bodies, Maria … but you don’t mean they were foreigners, do you?”
She frowned. “You know I don’t. Glenn told you.”
“Please. Don’t think about Glenn’s story; give me your account of the events, as you remember them.”
“I tried to turn around and run out of there-I don’t know what kept me from screaming, unless that stench immobilized me…. Then one of the doctors told me to stay and assist them, and take notes … but I didn’t take many notes. About all the doctors were saying were things like, ‘This isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen,’ and ‘There’s nothing in the textbooks like this.’”
“What did the ‘foreign’ bodies look like, Maria?”
“I never saw anything so gruesome in my life. Two were badly mutilated, mangled, dismembered, probably by predators … one was mostly intact; I think he may have survived the crash, but died of exposure-all three bodies were black, but it wasn’t pigmentation, I’d say prolonged exposure to the sun.”
“What did they look like, Maria?”
“I worked as long as I could, but finally it got the best of me, the nausea, that all-pervasive odor. The doctors were having as much trouble as I was; finally they put the bodies in body bags and packed them in dry ice for shipment to Wright Field. And that’s … that’s all I know.”
“Maria-what did they look like?”
Her eyes narrowed as she stared into her memory. “… Three and a half feet, four feet tall. Small, fragile, no hair. If they looked like anything human, it’d be an ancient Chinaman. Their heads were large for their bodies, larger than ours … noses didn’t protrude, more concave, with two little slits. Where the ears should be, just slight indentations, with little flaps, like lobes. Deep, sunken eyes-concave eyes. Slit for a mouth, no lips at all … one thing the doctors said, something I do remember writing down, was that there was heavy cartilage instead of teeth, like a … like a piece of rawhide. Their bones were like cartilage, too, pliable, the head like a newborn baby’s, nothing like the bone structure of a human being. Could I … could I please have some water?”
“Sure.” I got up and went to the wet bar and poured her a glass of water over ice, brought it back to her, returned to my seat as she drank it as greedily as if she had been lost out in the desert.
“Go on, Maria.”
“There were some basic anatomy differences…. For example, the distance between wrist and elbow was longer than the distance between elbow and shoulder. Oh, and they didn’t have thumbs, but four fingers that were long and slender, almost like tentacles … and on the fingertips-they had no fingernails, by the way-on the fingertips were little hollowed pads, like suction cups.”
“Did they have any sex organs? Were they men, or women, or something else?”
“I think probably something else. There were no signs of sex organs, or secondary sexual characteristics, either. But then that’s the sort of tissue predators go after, first, and also the first thing that decomposes, so how can we be sure?”
“Did they have any kind of clothing on? Had the doctors removed any garments …?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t remember seeing anything like that, but frankly, it was all so horrible and gruesome, and I was so overcome with nausea, and the desire to get the hell out of there, I just didn’t pay the close attention I should’ve.”
“I think you did just fine. You came out of there with more details than most people could ever have managed.”
“Well … maybe my nurses’ training came through for me, a little. Nathan … are you humoring me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Pretending to believe all this, while you think it’s nonsense?”
“Maria, I don’t know what you saw, but I believe you saw something.”
“Glenn thinks they’re from outer space. He thinks the debris he saw was from wrecked ‘escape pods.’”
