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I hold up a hand to stop the argument from happening.  Just tell me when you feel ready, I say.
Matt continues to fiddle with the guitar. I can tell he loves it. Later, I ll have to figure out a way to give it to him. While he strums the instrument, I ask Teri to
take a walk with me. The official reason is to explain her job responsibilities, but I can feel she wants to talk. We hike through the nearby woods. They feel
so peaceful, yet I keep alert, listening for the slightest sound that would tell me we are being followed.
 I don t know why he cut you off like that, Teri says after we ve hiked maybe a quarter of a mile.  I hope you didn t feel he was being rude.
 Not at all. He wants to make it on his own. I respect that.
 Matt s a hard one to do favors for. He s super independent.
 So are you.
She blushes.  What makes you say that?
 No one s helping you pay for college.
 I was lucky to get my track scholarship.
 It wasn t luck that allowed you to win so many races in high school. You worked your butt off.
 I did, but . . . She doesn t finish.
 What?
 Running comes easier to me than most people. It must be my genes. Sometimes I wonder if I could run in the Olympics.
 The metric mile? The fifteen hundred meters?
 Yeah.
 Tell me about it.
Teri stops walking as she struggles to find the words.  I train mostly on the track because the coach expects it. And I m good at running intervals. I know
it s a quick way to build strength. But I feel at home when I go out for longer runs, alone, either late at night or early in the morning. Sometimes I slip into a
rhythm it s hard to describe where I don t get tired no matter how fast I run. At times like that I feel I could break the world record in the mile.
I understand perfectly. But then, I m not human.
 So you want a gold medal and you want to graduate medical school before you re twenty-five. Anything else?
Teri laughs.  You re making me sound like Ms. Super Achiever.
 There s nothing wrong with fulfilling your desires.
 What if there are ones you feel you ll never fulfill?
 You re talking about Matt again.
 No. Yes! How did you know?
 You can control what you do. But you know you can t control him. I pause.  By the way, that was brave of you to encourage him to audition.
 He has so much talent. You re right, I can t hold him back.
 But it scares you just the same.
 Sure. You saw the way the girls all cheered when he came on last Friday. If he gets his foot in the door, he ll hit it big, and then he s going to get hit on
by every chick between New York and LA.
 Do you want my advice?
 If you have some to give me, sure.
 Actually, I usually hate giving advice. People never listen to it. In the end, they just do what they want to do.
 I m listening . . . Alisa.
 Trust.
 Trust in what?
 Just trust.
 You mean, trust in his love for me?
 That s part of it. Trust in the big picture as well.
 What s the big picture?
 No one knows. That s why you have to trust in it.
Teri considers for a moment, then smiles.  How did you get so wise?
 Oh, I ve been around.
We walk for another hour without talking. I enjoy the exercise, but I m also looking for places to set up monitoring devices to increase my security.
Back at my house, we find Matt reading a short story that I wrote for a sci-fi anthology. It s a personal favorite; I left it out on purpose. It follows the
observations of K-8-P or Kap the name my hero goes by while he s on earth. Matt reads it aloud to catch Teri up.
Although from another planet, Kap is a low-level grunt who, along with his partner, has been assigned the job of destroying the earth. Kap s own world is
only a few centuries further along than earth, but it belongs to an advanced galactic civilization that has been monitoring earth s TV and radio programs for
decades, and that has determined we are far too hostile a race to be allowed to expand out into the galaxy.
My story begins with Kap and his partner spraying a ten-mile-long asteroid with a special type of black paint that reduces its albedo ratio its ability to
reflect light to near zero. Then the two outfit the asteroid with rockets that fire for a month and slowly alter its orbit so that it will intercept the earth in three
years. Because it s so dark, earth astronomers won t notice the asteroid until it s days away from destroying our home.
The job done, the two enter a deep freeze that will keep them asleep for a decade while they cruise home. Only Kap sets his hibernaculum so that he
awakens as soon as his partner is asleep. He turns their ship around and heads for the earth. He is curious to meet humanity. This is the tenth planet he s
destroyed, and he wonders what criteria the top dogs in the galaxy are using to decide who lives and who dies.
The story takes off when Kap takes a shuttle down to earth and is fired upon by America s missile shield. His shuttle is damaged, and he crash-lands a
couple of miles offshore, near San Francisco. The shuttle is equipped with a device that instantly gives Kap amnesia, lest he accidentally or intentionally
warn any backward planet that it is about to be destroyed.
Kap survives the crash and is rescued by a fishing ship.
The rest of the story deals with Kap s innocent observation of human life. In one sense he sees everything with a child s eyes. But in another sense his
observations are profound because they re completely unbiased.
I called the tale  Eyes of the Stars, and it won both a Nebula and a Hugo award for best sci-fi short story of the year. Like most of my work, I published it
under the name Lara Adams.
 Why do you use a pen name when you write? Matt asks as he finishes the story.
 Don t be so nosy. Her reasons might be private, Teri scolds.
 I do it to maintain my privacy, I say.
 I don t believe that, Matt teases.  Most people, when they re nobodies, talk about how they wouldn t mind the money fame brings, but they d hate to
have people chasing after them taking their picture. But I think everybody wants fame.
 Not me, I say flatly.
 Come on, Matt insists.  Wouldn t you love to have your picture taken by paparazzi and splashed all over the magazine covers?
 Paparazzi are vultures. They re the last people I d want near me.
 I couldn t agree with you more, Teri says.  Our society suffers from celebrity addiction. So much reality TV gives people the impression that the only
way to be happy is to be famous.
 Hear, hear, I mutter.
 Would Kap agree with you guys? Matt asks.
 You know he would. You just read my story.
Matt disagrees.  Kap s observations of mankind are confined to small things. How people push ahead of each other in checkout lines. He never reads
a paper while on earth. He doesn t study our politics. He doesn t go after the bigger picture of why we re a danger to the rest of the galaxy.
 Remember, for the bulk of the story, Kap s lost his memory 
 I don t know why you set it up that way, Matt interrupts, a bad habit of his.  Kap s observations would be more interesting if he could mentally compare
his home world to earth.
 Kap s observations are worthwhile because they re innocent, I say.  He focuses on the small things we do because they re the most telling. When he
sees a herd of cattle being rounded up for slaughter, it s his gut reaction that makes the story ring true. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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