The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy

BIRDS CAN’T COUNT by Mildred Clingerman

If we went sailing off through the sky to somebody else’s planet, you may depend upon it, every one who went would have a different purpose in mind. There’d be conquerors and colonists and missionaries and (by the millions, sooner or later) tourists.

Mrs. Clingerman suggests that extra-terrestrial visitors on Earth might also have mixed motives . . .

Everybody has his own way of weathering a hangover. Maggie’s husband’s way was to ignore the whole matter, stoutly denying, if pressed, that he suffered at all. Maggie never denied Mark the right to this brave pretense, but she had long ago rioted that on such days the family car needed a great deal of tinkering with, which necessitated Mark’s lying down under it or in it for several hours. Maggie refused any such face-saving measures. Right after breakfast on the day after the party she took to her bed, fortified with massive doses of B₁, a dull book and, for quiet companionship, Gomez, the cat.

The window cooler hummed invitingly in the darkened bedroom; the curtains belled out in the breeze, and Maggie, shedding everything but her slip, climbed gratefully into bed. The book was called Hunting Our Feathered Friends With a Camera, and Maggie, who knew nothing of photography or birds, began to read it in the hope of being bored into sudden sleep.

Sleep had been very elusive lately. It was silly of her to become so disturbed over shadows ... or, more often, the lack of shadows. But how to explain her uneasiness to Mark, or to anybody? Once, last night at the party, she’d come very close to asking her friends for help or, maybe, just sympathy—the talk had turned to ghosts and hauntings—but luckily she’d called back the words before they’d formed. The whole thing was too nebulous to talk about. From the first, Mark had labeled it paranoiac, laughing at her wide-eyed account of something that looked at her in the bathroom, trundled after her to the bedroom, then watched her in the kitchen while she pared potatoes. When Mark had asked where for pete’s sake was there room in that small kitchen for a secret watcher, Maggie had shut up. Not for worlds would she leave herself open to Mark’s delighted shouts (she could just hear him) by answering that question.

“If I’d said: ‘on top of the refrigerator,’” Maggie thought drowsily, “I’d never have heard the last of it.”

...The hunting urge is deeply ingrained in man. It is no longer necessary to hunt for food; take a camera in your hands and stalk your prey. The prime hunter, anyway, from the days of the caveman, has been the artist, tracking down and recording beauty...Allow your children and yourself the thrill of the chase; satisfy this primitive urge with a safe weapon, the camera. Patience do not harm the nests natural setting...build yourself a blind...patience...catch them feeding...mating ... battling ... patience ... quick exposure ... patience ...

Maggie slept

Minutes later she woke to find Gomez, the cat, sitting on her stomach. She and Gomez, good friends, regarded each other gravely. Gomez, aware that he had her full attention, tossed his head skittishly.

“You woke me,” Maggie accused.

“Mmm-ow-rannkk?” He was giving her the three-syllable, get-up-and-feed-me treatment. Maggie was supposed to find this coaxing irresistible.

“Blast and damn,” Maggie said gently, not moving. Gomez trod heavily towards her chin.

“All right,” Maggie muttered. “But stop flouncing. Whoever heard of a flouncing tomcat—”

Both Maggie and Gomez froze, staring at something close to the ceiling.

“Do you see it, too?” Maggie rolled her eyes at Gomez, which so terrified him he immediately began evasive action—bounding off the bed, stumbling over her shoes, caroming off her desk, falling into the lid of her portable typewriter, his favorite sleeping spot. Gomez cowered deep in the lid, one scalloped ear doing radar duty for whatever danger hovered.

“That’s my brave, contained cat.” Maggie crooned through her teeth. She raised herself up on her elbows to stare at one corner of the ceiling; her eyes moved slowly with the slow movement there. But was it movement? Strictly speaking, it was not. Only some subtle shifting of the light in the room, she thought. That was all. The ceiling was blank and bare. Gradually the tumult of her heart subsided. Maggie caught sight of her face in the dressing table mirror. She was interestingly pale.

“It’s all done with mirrors, Gomez, and who’s afraid of a mirror? Neither you nor I... a car went by, or a cloud. Take one cloud, a mirror, and a hangover; divide by . .. Wait a minute. I just thought of something.”

Gomez waited, relaxing somewhat in his tight-fitting box. Maggie sat cross-legged in the middle of the double bed silently pursuing an elusive memory.

White face ... tents ... carnival... yes, the spider lady! It was one of the first dates I had with Mark, and how much I impressed him, because I saw through the illusion at once. There in the tent, behind a roped-off section, sat a huge, hairy spider with the head of a woman. The head turned and talked and laughed with the crowd, but glared at me when I began to point out to Mark the arrangement of the mirrors. It was all simple enough and fairly obvious, but not to Mark. Not to most people. Later, over coffee and doughnuts, I explained rather proudly to him that magic shows, pickpocket shows, that kind of thing, were always dull for me, because I could see so clearly what was really happening—that the way to look, to watch, was not straight on, but in a funny kind of oblique way, head tilted. Mark squeezed my hand then and made some remark about a crazy female who goes through life with her head on one side, seeing too deeply into things. . . .

It is nice to remember young love, Maggie thought, but I’m losing the track of that thought. Oh, yes . . . and then during the war there was the General at Mark’s basic training camp—he definitely lacked my peculiar ability— who came to check on the trainees’ camouflaged foxholes. Mark wrote me about it. The old boy cursed them all for inept idiots who couldn’t decently camouflage a flea, and then, right in front of the whole company and still cursing the obviousness of their efforts, stepped straight into one of the concealed holes and broke his leg. So ... ?

Maggie lay back on her bed, her usual abstracted look considerably deepened. Her mind wheeled around to the party last night. Something said or done then nagged at her now. What was it? It had been a good party. Nobody mad or sad or very bad. The summer bachelor had flitted about like an overweight hummingbird stealing sips of kisses . . . and almost drowned in the blonde, bless her. A mercurial young man had explained to Maggie what a bitch his first wife was, while staring rather gloomily at his second. The talk had ranged from ghosts to sex, from religion to sex, from flying saucers to sex, and everybody had come out strongly on the side of the angels and sex. The rocket engineer believed passionately in the flying saucers, but—that was it!

He’d said: “Maggie, it’s silly and sweet of you to hope for a deus ex machina, come to save civilization, but have you considered ye may mean nothing to them emotionally? Haven’t you ever watched ants struggling with a load too big for them? How much did you care? Even if, like God, you marked the fall of every sparrow, you might simply be conducting a survey or expressing colossal boredom, like the people who delight in measuring things. You know what I mean—if so and so were laid end to end . . .” And right there the talk had turned back to sex.

“So,” Maggie said aloud, “I’m being watched. Cataloged. Maybe photographed. Either that, or I’m nuts, loony, strictly for the birds.” She grabbed the dull book and began to read again, not quite sure what she was looking for. She studied the photographs in the book, and for the first time it struck her how self-consciously posed some of the birds looked. “Hams,” Maggie dismissed them. “Camera hogs.” She glanced at herself in the mirror, hesitated, then got up and combed her hair and lipsticked her mouth. In the mirror she could see Gomez peering cautiously from the typewriter lid toward a spot over the window cooler. The shadowy coolness of the room lightened for a moment, and Gomez’ eyes registered the change, but Maggie didn’t mind. She was posing sultrily and liking the effect. Maggie had decided to cooperate for the time being and give the unseen watcher an eyeful.

Mind, you, she was thinking furiously, if this is camouflage, it’s out of my class ... maybe out of this world. Then how am I to prove it? It might be easier just to go quietly nuts.... But I’ve got too much to do this week to go crazy. Next week, perhaps. What am I saying! Fie on this character, whoever it may be. With my tilted, eagle eye I will ferret him out!

Cheered, she began to do sitting-up exercises. Next, she stood on her head. Unfortunately she couldn’t see anything, since her only garment fell down around her ears. Mark opened her bedroom door and peered in. “Good God, Maggie!” he said. “What’s up?” Maggie’s head emerged from the folds of the slip, and she lay full length on the rug. “Just a game,” she said. “Wanta play?”

“Please, Maggie,” he said plaintively. “Not just now. I’ve got to go polish the car.”

“Idiot,” Maggie said. “I’m studying photography I think. Go away, you’re apt to ruin the exposure.”

“I am not,” Mark said doggedly. “It’s a lovely exposure, it’s just that I have to—”

“—polish the car!” Maggie threatened him with a shoe. Mark sighed and withdrew, closing the door gently behind him.

Maggie got up and dressed in shirt and shorts and tried the headstand again. Gomez watched her with wide-startled eyes. Next she bent down and peered back between her legs while turning slowly to survey all four, sides of the room. Nothing. Wearily she sat a moment on the rug, rubbing her aching brow. Her eyes felt sandy, and she rubbed them, too. She glanced at Gomez and saw that he looked like two cats, one barely offsetting the other, like a color overlay on a magazine page that wasn’t quite right. She rubbed her eyes harder to dispel the illusion, and just then she saw the watcher.

She and the watcher stared at each other across the intervening space and across the little black box the watcher held. Even now his image was not clear to Maggie. One moment he was there, the next he was a something-nothing, then he was gone.

Maggie rubbed furiously at her eyes again and brought him back to her vision. This time she was able to hold him there, though the image danced and swam and her eyes watered a little with the effort. It was just like any illusion, she thought; once you know the trick of looking at it, you feel stupid not to have seen it at once.

“Peek-a-boo,” she said. “I see you. But stop wiggling.”

The watcher’s expression did not change. He continued to gaze at her raptly. But all the rest of him changed. He reminded Maggie of mirages she’d seen, linking and flattening mountain tops. Was he human? A moment ago, he might have been. But now he was a great whirl of gray petals with the black box and the staring eyes remaining still and cool in the center. The eyes were large, dark and unblinking. The gray petals now drooped like melted wax and flowed into stiffening horizontal lines like a stylized Christmas tree, and the liquid eyes became twin stars decorating its apex, with the black box dangling below like a gift tied to a branch. The tree dissolved and turned into a vase-shape, with delicate etchings of light on the gray that reminded Maggie of fine lace.

Maggie got up purposefully and walked toward the fluidly shifting image. The watcher shrank into a small square shape that was like a window open onto cold, slanting lines of rain. Maggie reached out a hand and touched the solid plaster wall.

“Nuts,” Maggie said. “I know you’re there. Come out, come out, and we’ll all take tea.”

The watcher’s gaze now turned toward her feet, and his form lengthened and narrowed so drastically that he reminded Maggie of nothing so much as a barber pole with gray and white stripes. The barber pole grew an appendage that pointed downward. It seemed to be pointing at Gomez, who had seated himself just where Maggie might most conveniently step on him, and was yawning as unconcernedly as if the watcher did not exist, or as if he were quite used to him. The watcher grew another appendage, raised the black box, and just then a tiny shaft of light touched Gomez on the nose.

Maggie watched carefully, but Gomez did not seem to be hurt. He began to wash his face. “Is it a camera, then?” Maggie asked. No answer. She looked wildly around the room, grabbed up the framed photograph of her mother-in-law and showed it to the watcher. The staring eyes looked dubious. But by dint of using her eyebrows and all her facial muscles Maggie finally made her question clear to him. One appendage disappeared into the black box and drew out a tiny replica of Gomez yawning. It was a perfect little three-dimensional figurine, and Maggie coveted it with all her heart. She reached for it, but the wavering barber pole drew itself up stiffly, the eyes admired the figurine a few moments, glared haughtily at Maggie, and the figurine disappeared. Maggie’s face expressed her disappointment.

“What about me?” Maggie pointed to herself, pantomimed the way he held the box, then touched her own nose lightly. The eyes at the top of the barber pole gazed at her blandly. The barber pole shuddered. Then the watcher pantomimed that Maggie should pick up Gomez and hold him. Maggie did, and again the little shaft of light hit Gomez on the nose.

“Hey!” Maggie said. “Did you get me, too? Let me see.” No response from the watcher. “Oh well,” Maggie said, maybe that one wasn’t so good. How about this pose?” She smiled and pirouetted gracefully for the watcher, but the watcher only looked bored. There’s nothing so disconcerting, Maggie thought, as a bored barber pole. She subsided into deep thought. Come to think of it, Gomez had been with her each time she’d sensed the presence of the thing.

“Blast and damn,” she said. “I will not play a supporting role for any cat, even Gomez.” She made fierce go-away motions to the image-maker. She shoved Gomez outside the bedroom. She created a host of nasty faces and tried them on for the watcher. She made shooing motions as if he were a chicken. Finally, in a burst of inspiration she printed the address of the Animal Shelter on a card and drew pictures of cats all around it. She held it up for the barber pole to read. The eyes looked puzzled, but willing. The little black box was being folded into itself until now it was no larger than an ice cube. The barber pole swelled into a caricature of a woman, a woman with enormous brandy-snifter-size breasts and huge flopping buttocks. The eyes were now set in a round, doughy, simpering face that somehow (horribly, incomprehensibly) reminded Maggie of her own. The watcher then, gazing straight at Maggie, mimicked all the nasty faces she’d made, stood on his (her?) head, peered between his legs, smiled and pirouetted, pretended to leer at himself in a mirror, and then, very deliberately, indicated with one spiraling finger atop his head that Maggie was nuts. He gave her one look of pure male amusement and disappeared.

“Come back and fight,” Maggie said. “I dare you to say that again.” She rubbed her eyes without much hope, and she was right. The watcher was gone.

Rather forlornly, Maggie took to her bed again. “It’s the worst hangover I’ve ever had,” Maggie moaned. “So maybe I wasn’t looking my best, but it’s a bitter blow...”

The worst of it was, she could never tell anybody, even Mark. What woman could ever admit she had less charm than a beat-up old tomcat? “But I’ve found out one thing,” Maggie thought. “I know now what dogs and cats stare at when people can’t see anything there. . . .” But she almost wept when she remembered her old day-dream—of watchers lovingly studying and guiding mankind, or at least holding themselves ready to step in and help when the going got too rough. Suppose, though, the watchers considered mankind no more than servants to the other animals? Feeding and bathing them, providing warm houses and soft, safe beds. ...”

It was a sickening thought. Maggie harbored it for two minutes, and then resolutely dismissed it from mind.

“Fiddlesticks! He wasn’t that stupid. In fact, he was a damn smart-aleck. So he liked Gomez. So what? Maybe he’s a woman-hater.”

She settled back against her pillow and opened the bird book:

Remember, birds can’t count. When you build your blind, let two people enter it. Let one person go away, and the birds will return without fear, thinking they are safe. In this way, you will get good, natural pictures of our friends eating, fighting, and mating. . .

Mark opened the bedroom door and walked in. “Maggie?”

“Hmm?” Maggie went on reading.

“I couldn’t polish the car....”, Mark grinned at her.

“Why not?” Maggie dropped the dull book with alacrity. She knew that grin.

“I kept thinking about that new game you were playing. . . Some type of photography, did you say? Then I know the perfect name for it.”

“What?

“It’s called see-the-birdie, and it isn’t a new game at all—it’s just part of an old one.”

Maggie stretched luxuriously and made an apparently irrelevant remark: “So long, hangover.”