on Martian children, but she could never get a grant." "I dated a girl once who said she was from Mars . She was very insistent on it. When I tried to get serious with her, she turned me down flat. She said she really liked me, but it wouldn't work out between us. When I asked her why, she said it was because she was from Mars. That's all. I guess Martians have a rule against marrying outside their species." "I heard about a Martian when I was in high school. He killed himself. I didn't know him. I only heard about it afterward." "I thought I was from Mars once. I even had memories of being on Mars. It had a pink sky. That's how I knew it was Mars. When the photos came in from JPL showing that Mars really did have a pink sky, just like in my memories, I thought that proved something. When I told my parents, they took me to see a doctor. I was in therapy for a long time, but I'm fine now. Maybe you should get your son into therapy It was the last one that really got to me. I knew the person who sent it meant to be reassuring, but instead, his message had the opposite effect. Okay, maybe it's me. Maybe it's because I'm a writer. I read subtext where none is intended. And maybe the cumulative effect of all these messages, especially the wistful, almost plaintive tone of the last one left me with a very uncomfortable feeling. I replied to all of these messages. I know this sounds silly, but please indulge me. What did your Martian friend/relative look like? Did he/she have any special physical characteristics or medical problems? What was his/her personality like? Do you know what happened to him other? Does he/she still believe that he/she is from Mars? It took a week or two to compile the responses. Of the ten Martians specifically mentioned, two had committed suicide. One was successful in business. Three refused to talk about Mars. Two were "cured." The whereabouts of the others were unknown. Three were missing. Two of the missing had been repeated runaways during their teen years. I wondered where they thought they were running to. Of the ten Martians, six were known to have had golden-brown skin, round faces, brown eyes and very long eyelashes. The hair color was generally dark blond or brown. That was an interesting statistical anomaly. Of the ten Martians, five were hyperactive, two were epileptic. The other three weren't known. I asked the fellow whose ex-wife had been a child psychologist if she'd ever noticed any statistical patterns among her Martians. He said he didn't know and he didn't even know her whereabouts anymore. She had disappeared two years earlier. I called my friend, Steve Barnes. He'd written one of the character references I'd needed to adopt Dennis, and because of that I regarded him as an unofficial godfather to the boy. We chatted about this and that and the other thing for awhile. And then, finally, I said, "Steve -- do you know about the Martian phenomenon?" He didn't. I told him about it. He asked me if I was smoking dope again. "I'm serious, Steve." "So am I." "I haven't touched that crap since I kicked out she-who-must-not-be-named," I said it angrily. "Just checking. You gotta admit that's a pretty bizarre story, though." "I know that. That's why I'm telling you. You're one of the few people I know who will actually consider it fairly. Geez -- why is it that science fiction writers are the most skeptical animals of all?" "Because we get to deal with more crazies than anyone else," Steve replied without missing a beat. "I don't know what to do with this," I said, admitting my frustration. "I know it sounds like one more crazy UFO mystery. Only this one is something that can actually be validated. This is the kind of statistical anomaly that can't be explained away by coincidence. And I bet there's a lot more to it too. Like, what was the blood type of all those children? What was the position of the Earth and Mars when they were conceived? What was the phase of the moon? What are their favorite foods? How well did they do in school? What if there's something really going on here? -- maybe not Martians, maybe some kind of social phenomenon or syndrome -- I don't know what it is, I don't know what else to ask, and I don't know who to tell. Most of all, I don't want to end up on the front page of the Inquirer. Can't you just see it? `SCI-FI WRITER HAS MARTIAN CHILD!'" "It might be good for your career," Steve said thoughtfully. "I wonder how many new readers you could pick up." "Oh, yeah, sure. And I wonder how many old readers I'll lose. I'd like to be taken seriously in my old age, Steve. Remember what happened to what's-his-name." "I'll never forget old what's-his-name," Steve said. "Yeah, that was a real sad story." "Anyway ... " I said. "You see my point? Where do I go from here?" "You want my real advice?" Steve asked. He didn't wait for my reply. "Don't go anywhere with it. Drop it. Let someone else figure it out. Or no one. You said it yourself, David. `It's almost always dangerous to be right too soon.' Don't go borrowing trouble. Turn it into a story if you must and let people think it's a harmless fantasy. But don't let it screw up your life. You wanted this kid, didn't you? Now you have him. Just parent him. That's the only thing that's really wanted and needed." He was right. I knew it. But I couldn't accept it. "Sure. That's easy for you to say. You don't have a Martian in the house." "Yes I do." He laughed. "Only mine's a girl." "Huh -- ?" "Don't you get it? All children are Martians. We get thirteen years to civilize the little monsters. After that, it's too late. Then they start eating our hearts out for the rest of our lives." "You sound like my mother now." "I'll take that as a compliment." "It's a good thing you don't know her, or you wouldn't say that." "Listen to me, David," and his tone of voice was so serious that six different jokes died before they could pass my lips . "You're right on schedule. Have you ever really looked at the faces of new parents? Most of them are walking around in a state of shock, wondering what happened -- what is this loathsome reptilian thing that has suddenly invaded their lives? It's part of the process of assimilation. The only difference is that you have a more active imagination than most people. You know how to name your fears. Trust me on this, Toni and I went through it too with Nicki. We thought she was a -- never mind. Just know that this normal. There are days when you are absolutely certain that you've got a cute and stinky little alien in your house." "But every day?" "Trust me. It passes. In a year or two, you won't even remember what your life was like before." "Hmm. Maybe that's how long it takes a Martian to brainwash his human hosts...." Steve sighed. "You've got it bad." "Yes, I do," I admitted. The Martian thing gnawed at me like an ulcer. I couldn't get it out of my head. No matter what we did, the thought was there. If we went out front to swat koosh-balls back and forth, I wondered if the reason he was having trouble with his coordination was the unfamiliar gravity of Earth. If we went in the back yard and jumped in the pool together, I wondered if his attraction to water was because it was so scarce on Mars. I wondered about his ability to hear a piece of music a single time and still remember the melody so clearly that he could sing it again, note for note, a month later; he would walk through the house singing songs that he could not have heard except on the tapes I occasionally played; how many nine-year-olds know how to sing My Clone Sleeps Alone like Pat Benatar? I wondered why he had so little interest in comic books, but loved to watch television dramas about the relationships of human beings. He hated Star Trek, he thought it was "too silly." He loved the Discovery channel -- especially all the shows about animals and insects. There was no apparent pattern to his behavior, nothing that could be pointed to as evidence of otherworldliness. Indeed, the fact that he was making his father paranoid was a very strong argument that he was a normal Earth kid. And then, just when I'd forgotten ... something would happen. Maybe he'd react to something on television with an off-the-wall comment that would make me look over at him curiously. There was that Bugs Bunny cartoon, for instance, where the rabbit is making life difficult for Marvin the Martian, stealing the eludium-235 detonator so he can't blow up the Earth. In the middle of it, Dennis quietly declared, "No, that's wrong. Martians aren't like that." Then he got up and turned the television set off. "Why did you do that?" I asked. "Because it was wrong," he said blandly. "But it's only a cartoon." One of my favorite cartoons, I might add. "It's still wrong." And then he turned and went outside as if the whole concept of television would never be interesting to him again. And now, almost two years to the day since I'd filled out the first application, the nickel finally dropped and I sat up in bed in the middle of the night. Why were so many adopted children hyperactive? The evidence was all around me. I just hadn't noticed it before. It was there in the photo-listing books. It seemed as if every third child was hyperactive. It was acknowledged in the books, the articles, the seminars, the tapes ... that a higher proportion of foster children have Attention Deficit Disorder, also called Hyperactivity. Why was that? Some theorists suggested that it was the result of substance abuse by the parents, which is why we saw it more in abandoned and unwanted children. Some doctors believed that hyperactivity was the result of the body's failure to produce certain key enzymes in response to physical stimulation; therefore the child needed to overstimulate himself in order to produce an equivalent amount of calming. Still others postulated that there was an emotional component to the disorder; that it was a response to a lack of nurturing. Most interesting of all to me was the offhand note in one article that some theorists believed that many cases of ADD were actually misdiagnoses. If you were unattached and didn't know who you were or where you had come from or where you were going, you'd have a lot to worry about; your attention might be distracted too. Or ... what if the behavior that was judged abnormal for Earth children was perfectly normal for Martian children? What if there was no such thing as ADD ... in Martians? At this point, I'd reached the limits of my ability to research the question. Who could I tell? Who would have the resources to pursue this further? And who would take me seriously? Suppose I picked up the Los Angeles Times tomorrow and saw that Ben Bova had called a press conference to announce that he'd been kidnapped by aliens and taken into space where they'd performed bizarre sexual experiments on him ... would I believe him? Ben is one of the most believable men in the world. Once, he almost talked me into voting for Ronald Reagan. But if I saw a report like that in the newspaper, the first thing I'd do would be to call Barbara and ask if Ben were all right. In other words ... there was simply no way for me to research this question without destroying all of my credibility as a writer. Even worse, there was no way to research it without also destroying my credibility as a parent. Up until this time, I'd always been candid with the caseworkers and therapists; I'd talked to them about our discipline problems, about my feelings of frustration, about ever little step in the right direction and every major victory. But ... suddenly, I realized this was something I couldn't talk to them about. Suppose I called Kathy Bright. What could I say? "Uh, Kathy, it's David. I want to talk to you about Dennis. You know how he says he's a Martian? Well, I think he might really be a Martian and ... " Uh-huh. If the adoptive father was starting to have hallucinations about the child, how long would the Department of Children's Services leave the child in that placement? About twenty minutes, I figured. About as long as it took to get out there and pick him up. She'd pull him out of my house so fast they'd be hearing sonic booms in Malibu. And I wouldn't even be able to argue. She'd be right to do so. A child needs a stable and nurturing environment. How stable and nurturing would it be for him to be living with an adult who suspects he's from another planet and is wondering about his ultimate motives. If I pursued this, I'd lose my son. The thought was intolerable. I might never recover. I was sure that he wouldn't. For the first time in his life, he'd finally formed an attachment. What would it do to him to have it broken so abruptly? It would truly destroy his ability to trust any other human being. I couldn't do that to him. I couldn't do anything that might hurt him. And what about me? I had my own "attachment issues." I couldn't stand the thought of another failure. Another brick in the wall, as they say. That was where I stayed stuck for the longest time. I walked around the house in physical pain for three weeks. My chest hurt. My head hurt. My legs hurt. My back hurt. My eyes hurt. My throat hurt. The only part of me that didn't hurt was my brain. That was so numb, I couldn't think. I didn't know if he was a Martian or not. But something weird was going on. Wasn't it? And if it was just me -- if I was going insane -- then what right do I have to try to parent this child anyway? Either way I lose. If he's a Martian, I can't tell anyone. And if he isn't a Martian, then I'm going crazy. I started looking for local evidence. I began browsing through my journal. I'd been making daily notes of interesting incidents, in case I ever wanted to write a book about our experiences. At first, I couldn't find anything. Most of the incidents I'd written about were fairly mundane. Not even good Readers` Digest material. For instance, the week after he moved in, I'd taken him to the baseball game at Dodger Stadium. For the first part of the game, he'd been more interested in having a pennant and getting some cotton candy than in what was going on down on the stadium floor. But along about the fifth inning, he'd climbed up onto my lap and I began explaining the game to him. "See that man at home plate, holding the bat. Wish for him to hit the ball right out of the park." "Okay," said Dennis. Cra-a-ack! The ball went sailing straight out into the right field stands. Someone in the lower deck caught it and the runner sauntered easily around the bases while the organist played, "Glory, glory, Hallelujah." "You're a good wisher, Dennis. That was terrific. Want to try it again?" "No." "Okay." Two innings later, the Dodgers were one run behind. I asked Dennis to wish for hits again. Four pitches later, there were runners at first and third. It didn't matter to me who came up to bat now; I hadn't remembered the names of any ballplayers since Roy Campanella was catching for Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. As far as I was concerned, Who was on first, What was on second, and I Don't Know still played third. I liked baseball only so long as I didn't have to be an expert; but I'd never seen the Dodgers win a game. Every time I came to the stadium they lost; so I'd made it a point to stay away from Dodger Stadium to give them a fair chance at winning. I didn't expect them to win tonight; but Dennis's wishes had brought them from three runs behind. "Okay, Dennis," I said, giving him a little squeeze. "It's time for one last wish. See that guy at the home plate, holding the bat. You gotta wish for him to hit a home run. All the way out of the park. Just like before. Okay?" "Okay." And just like before -- cra-a-ack -- the ball went sailing deep into right field, triggering a sudden cluster of excited fans scrambling down across the seats. The Dodgers won that night. All the way home, I kept praising Dennis for his excellent wishing. A couple of weeks after that, we were stopped at a light, waiting for it to change. It was one of those intersections that existed slightly sideways to reality. Whenever you stopped there, time slowed down to a crawl. Without even thinking, I said, "Dennis, wish for the light to turn green please." "Okay," he said. -- and abruptly the light turned green. I frowned. It seemed to me the cycle hadn't quite completed. Nah. I must have been daydreaming. I eased the car through the intersection. A moment later, we got caught at the next red light . I said a word. "Why'd you say that?" "These lights are supposed to be synchronized," I said. "So you only get green ones. We must be out of synch. Why don't you wish for this light to change too please." "Okay." -- green. "Boy! You are really a good wisher." "Thank you." A minute later, I said, "Can you wish this light to turn green too?" "No," he said, abruptly angry. "You're going to use up all my wishes." "Huh?" I looked over at him. "I only have so many wishes and you're going to use them all up on stoplights." There was a hurt quality in his voice. I pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped. I turned to him and put my hand gently on his shoulder. "Oh, sweetheart. I don't know who told you that, but that's not so. The wish bag is bottomless. You can have as many wishes as you want." "No, you can't," he insisted. "I have to save my wishes for things that are important." "What's the most important thing you ever wished for? " I asked, already knowing the answer. He didn't answer. "What's the most important wish?" I repeated. Very softly, he admitted, "I wished for a dad. Someone who would be nice to me." "Uh-huh. And did you get your wish?" He nodded. "So, you see, sweetheart. There's no shortage of miracles." I didn't know if he believed me. It was still too early in the process. We were still learning who each other was . I noted the conversation in my journal and let the matter slide. But it left me with an uncomfortable feeling. What has to happen to a child to make him believe there's a limit to wishes? A year later, I looked at the words I'd written glowing on the computer screen, and wondered about Dennis's ability to wish. It was probably a coincidence. But maybe it wasn't. That time we'd matched four out of six numbers in the lottery and won eighty-eight dollars -- was that the week I'd asked him to wish real hard for us to win? Maybe Martians have precognitive or telekinetic powers ... ? Dennis likes cleaning things. Without asking, he'll go out and wash the car, or the patio. He'll give the dogs baths. He'll vacuum the rugs and take the Dustbuster to the couch. He'll mop the floors. His favorite toys are a sponge and a squirt-bottle of Simple Green. I've seen him take a rusty old wrench he found in a vacant field and scrub the rust off of it until it shone like new. One night after dinner, after he finished methodically loading the dishwasher, I sat him down at the kitchen table and told him I had a surprise for him. "What?" "It's a book of puzzles." "Oh." He sounded disappointed. "No, listen. Here's the game. You have twenty minutes to do these puzzles, and then when you finish. I add them up and we'll find out how smart you are. Do you want to do this?" "It'll really tell you how smart I am?" "Uh-huh. " He grabbed for the book and a pencil. "Wait a minute -- let me set the timer. Okay? Now once you start, you can't stop. You have to go all the way through to the end. Okay?" "Okay." "Ready? " "Ready. " "One, two, three ... go." He attacked the first three puzzles with a vengeance. They were simple. Pick the next shape in a series: triangle, square, pentagon ... ? Which object doesn't belong: horse, cow, sheep, scissors? Feather is to Bird as Fur is to: dog, automobile, ice cream ... ? Then the puzzles started getting harder and he started to frown. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and once he stopped to clean his glasses; but he stayed interested and involved and when the timer went off, he didn't want to stop. He insisted that he be allowed to finish the puzzle he was working on. What the hell. I let him. "What does it say?" Dennis asked as I computed the percentile. He wanted to grab the test book out of my hand. "Well ... let me finish here. " I held it out of his reach as I checked the table of percentiles. The test showed that he had above-average intelligence -- not unexpected; hyperactive kids tend to be brighter than average -- but well within the normal range for a nine-year-old. "It says that you are fifty-two inches high, that you weigh sixty-six pounds, and that your daddy loves you very much. It also says that you are very smart." "How smart?" "Well, if this test were given to one hundred children, you would be smarter than ninety-two of them." "How good is that?" "That's very good. You can't get much better. And it means we should go out for ice cream after dinner. What do you think?" "Yeah! " Oh, that was another thing. He didn't like chocolate. He preferred rainbow sherbet. I'd never seen that in a kid before. A couple of weeks later, we played another game. I made sure to pick a quiet evening, one with no distractions. "This game is even harder," I explained. "It's a kind of card game," I explained. "See these cards? There are six different shapes here. A circle, a square, a star, three squiggly lines, a cross, and a figure-eight. All you have to do is guess which one I'm looking at. See if you can read my mind, okay?" He frowned at me, and I had to explain it two or three more times. This was not a game he wanted to play. I said okay and started to put the deck away. If he didn't want to cooperate, the results would be inconclusive. "Can we go for ice cream after we do this?" he asked abruptly. "Sure," I said. "Okay, let's do it then." "All night. We have to do it five times. Do you think you can do it that many times?" He shrugged. I laid out a paper in front of him, showing him the shapes so he would be able remember them all. I told him he could close his eyes if it would help him concentrate. The test conditions were less than perfect, but if there were any precognitive or telepathic powers present, five trials should be enough to demonstrate them. Half an hour later, I knew. Martians aren't telepathic. But they do like rainbow sherbet. A lot. There were other tests. Not many. Not anything too weird. Just little ones that might indicate if there was something worth further investigation. There wasn't. As near as I could determine, there was nothing so unusual about Dennis that it would register as a statistical anomaly in a repeatable testable circumstance. He couldn't levitate. He couldn't move objects. He couldn't make things disappear. He didn't know how to grok. He could only hold his breath for thirty-three seconds. He couldn't think muscles. He couldn't see around comers. But -- He could predict elevators. Take him into any building, anywhere. Take him to the elevator bank. Let him push the up button. Don't say a word. Without fail, the door he stands in front of will be the one where the first elevator arrives. Was he wishing them or predicting them? I don't know. It's useful only at science fiction conventions, which are legendary for recalcitrant elevators. It has little value anywhere else in the world. He could make stop lights turn green -- sometimes. Mostly, he waited until he saw the lights for the cross street turn yellow before he announced his wish. Maybe he could still make the Dodgers score four runs in two innings -- but it wasn't consistent. We went back to Dodger Stadium in May, and either Dennis wasn't wishing or he really had used up all his wishes. He could sing with perfect pitch, especially if the lyrics were about Popeye's gastrointestinal distress. He could play a video game for four hours straight without food or water. He could invent an amazing number of excuses for not staying in bed. He could also hug my neck so hard that once I felt a warning crack in my trachea. My throat hurt for a week afterward. I began to think that maybe I had imagined the whole thing. On school nights, I tucked him in at 9:30. We had a whole ritual. If there was time, we read a storybook together; whatever was appropriate. Afterward, prayers -- "I'm sorry God for ... I didn't do anything to be sorry for." "How about sassing your dad? Remember you had to take a timeout?" "Oh, yeah. I'm sorry God for sassing my dad. Thank you God for ... um, I can't think of anything." "Going swimming." "No. Thank you God for Calvin, my cat." "Good. Anything else you want to say to God?" "Does God hear the prayers of Martians?" "Uh ... of course he does. God hears everybody's prayers." "Not Martians." "Yes, even Martians." "Uh-uh." "Why do you say no?" "Because God didn't make any Martians." "If God didn't make the Martians, then who did?" "The devil." "Did the devil make you?" "Uh-huh." "How do you know?" "Because ... I'm a Martian." "Mm," I said, remembering a little speech I'd made just about a year ago. Let it be all right for him to be a Martian for as long as he needs to be. "All right," I said. "But let me tell you a secret," I whispered. "The devil didn't make any Martians. That's just a lie the devil wants you to believe. God made the Martians." "Really? " "Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a noodle in my eye." "How do you know?" He was very insistent. "Because I talk to God every night," I said. "Just like you, I say my prayers. And God made everything in the world." "But Martians aren't from this world -- " "That's night. But God made Mars too. And everything on it. Just like she made this world, she made a whole bunch of others, and Mars was one of them. Honest." "How come you say `she' when you talk about God?" "Because sometimes God is female and sometimes God is male. God is everything. And now it's time for you to stop asking questions and go to sleep. Hugs and kisses -- ? " "Hugs and kisses." "G'night. No more talking." "I love you." "I love you too. Now no more talking." "Dad?' "What?" "I have to tell you something." "What? " "I love you." "I love you too. Now, shhh. No more talking, Dennis." "G'night." "Sleep tight -- " Finally, I got smart. I stopped answering. Control freaks. We each wanted to have the last word. I padded barefoot down the hall. I stopped in the living room long enough to turn off the television set, the VCR, and the surround-sound system. I continued on through the dining room and finally to my office. Two computers sat on my desk, both showing me that it was 9:47. The monster-child had manipulated an extra seventeen minutes tonight. I sat down in my chair, leaned back, put my feet up on my desk, and stared out at the dark waters of the swimming pool in the back yard . The pool glowed with soft blue light. The night was ... silent. Somewhere, a dog, barked. Somewhere -- that was his name, yes; he was a writer's dog -- lived under my desk. Whenever I said," Let's go to work," wherever he was in the house, Somewhere would pick himself up and laboriously pad-pad-pad into my office where he'd squelch himself flat and scrooch his way under the desk, with a great impassioned Jewish sigh of, "I hope you appreciate what I do for you. ` He'd stay there all day -- as long as the computer was on. Somewhere would only come out for two things: cookies and the doorbell...and the doorbell was broken. It had been broken for as long as I'd lived in this house. I'd never had the need to get it fixed. If someone came to the door, the dog barked. Somewhere, the dog, barked. That was why I loved him so much. He was a living clich‚. He was the only possible justification for one of the most infamous sentences in bad writing. It was just a matter of placing the commas correctly. Somewhere had just enough intelligence to keep out of the way and more than enough intelligence to find his dinner dish -- as long as no one moved it. He spent his mornings resting under my desk, his afternoons snoozing behind the couch, his evenings snoring next to Dennis; he spent the hours before dawn in the dark space underneath the headboard of my bed, dreaming about the refrigerator. Almost every night, just as Dennis began saying his prayers, Somewhere would come sighing down the hall, a shaggy, absent-minded canine-American. He'd step over everything that was in his way, uncaring if he knocked over a day's worth of Lego construction. He'd climb onto the bed, over my lap, over Dennis, grumbling softly as he found his position next to Dennis. With his prehensile tongue, he could slurp the inside of Dennis's right ear from the left side of his head, taking either the internal or external route. Tonight, though, he knew I wasn't finished working. I had some serious thinking to do. He remained under the desk, sighing about the overtime. "You're in super-golden hours," I said to him; he shut up. Whenever I'm in doubt about something, I sit down and start writing. I write down everything I'm feeling or thinking or worrying about. I say everything there is to say until there's nothing left to say. The first time I did this was the day after my dad died. I sat and wrote for two days. When I was finished, I had a Nebula nominated story, In the Deadlands. To this day I still don't fully understand what the story was about, but the emotional impact of it is undeniable. It still gives me the shudders. But the lesson I learned from that experience was the most important thing I've ever learned about storytelling. Effective writing isn't in the mechanics. Anyone can master the mechanical act of stringing together words and sentences and paragraphs to make a character move from A to B. The bookstores are full of evidence. But that's not writing. Writing isn't about the words, it's about the experience. It's about the feeling that the story creates inside of you. If there's no feeling, there's no story. But sometimes, there's only the feeling without any meaning or understanding. And that's not a story either. What I was feeling about Dennis was so confusing and troubling and uncertain that I couldn't even begin to sort it out. I needed to write down all the separate pieces -- as if in the act of telling, it would sort itself out. Sometimes the process worked. When I looked up again, three hours had passed. My back and shoulders ached. The dog had gone to bed, and I felt I had accomplished nothing at all except to delineate the scale of my frustration. Why would an alien species come to this planet? The last time I spent that much time on this question, I came up with giant pink man-eating slugs in search of new flavors. Why would Martians send their children to Earth? The most logical idea that I came up with was that they were here as observers. Spies. Haven't you ever been pulling on your underwear and realized that your dog or your cat is watching you? Haven't you ever considered the possibility that the creature is sharing your secrets with some secret network of dogs and cats? "Oh, you think that's weird? My human wears underwear with pictures of Rocky and Bullwinkle on them." But dogs and cats are limited in what they can observe. If you really want to know a culture, you have to be a member of it. But an alien couldn't step in and pretend to be a member of this culture, could he? He'd have to learn. He'd have to be taught.... Where could a Martian go to get lessons in being a human? Who gives lessons in human beingness? Mommies and Daddies. That's right. "You're too paranoid," my sane friend said. He asked me to leave his name out of this narrative, so I'll just call him my sane friend. "What do you mean?" "You think that aliens are all motivated by evil intentions. You've written four novels about evil aliens eating our children, and you're working on a fifth. Isn't it possible that you're wrong?" "Moi? Wrong?" "Do you ever think about the cuckoo?" my sane friend asked. "No," I said. "Well, think about the cuckoo for a moment." "Okay." "How do you feel about the cuckoo?" he asked. "It's an evil bird," I said. "It lays its egg in the sparrow's nest. The cuckoo chick pushes the other babies out of the nest. The sparrow ends up raising it -- even at the expense of her own young. It's a parasite." "See, that's your judgment talking -- " "That's the truth -- " I started to object. "Is it? Is that what you tell Dennis about his birth-mother?" "Uh -- I tell him that his birth-mom couldn't take care of him. And that she loves him and misses him. And that's the truth. Sort of ... whitewashed." My sane friend grinned at me. "Okay," I admitted. "I'm protective of my son. So what?" My sane friend shrugged. "How do you think the cuckoo feels?" "Birds don't feel." "If it could feel, how do you think it would feel?" I thought about it. The first image that came to mind was the silly little bird from the Dr. Seuss story; the one who flew off, leaving Horton the elephant to hatch her egg. I shook my head. "I'm not getting anything useful -- ~} "How do you think Dennis's mother feels?" I shook my head again. "Everything I've heard about her ... I can't empathize." "All right, try it this way. Under what circumstances would you give Dennis up?" "I'd die before I'd give him up," I said. "He makes me happier than anybody I've ever known before. Just looking at him, I get an endorphin rush. If anybody started proceedings to take him out of my home, I'd have him on a plane to New Zealand so fast -- " I stopped. "Oh, I see what you mean." I thought about it. "If I wasn't able to take care of him, or if I thought I was hurting him, or if I thought I wasn't doing a good enough job -- " There was that old familiar twinge again. "If I thought he'd really be better off with someone else, I'd want him to have the best chance possible. But I just can't see that happening." "Uh-huh...." My sane friend grinned. "Now, how do you think the Martians feel?" "Huh?" He repeated the question. I thought about it for a while. "I'd have to assume that if they have the capability to implant their children in human wombs that they would have a highly developed science and technology and that implies -- to me anyway -- a highly developed emotional structure and probably a correspondingly well-developed moral structure as well. At least, that's what I'd like to believe." "And if what you believe is true ... " he started to say. I finished the thought for him. " ... then the Martians are trusting us with their children." "Aren't they?" he asked. I didn't answer. I didn't like where that train of thought might lead. But I followed it anyway. "Would you trust your child to apes or wolves? " my sane friend asked. "No," I said. "You know what happens to feral children." He nodded. "I've read the same books you have." "So, if the Martians are trusting us with their children ... then that implies that either they don't care about their children very much -- or they do." "You want my best guess?" "This is where you resolve everything for me, isn't it?" "No. This is where I tell you what I think. I think they're engaged in a long-term breeding experiment ... to upgrade the level of intelligence and compassion in the human race." "Yeah?" I gave him my best raised-eyebrow look. "Remember what happened to Spock? He was a half-breed too. His parents wanted to breed a logical human. Instead, they got an emotional Vulcan." "Have you got a better guess?" "No," I admitted. "But what kind of Martians are we raising?" "What kind of Martian are you raising?" he corrected. And that really did it for me. That was the question. "I don't know," I finally admitted. "But -- he is mine to raise, isn't he?" "Yep," my sane friend agreed. That thought echoed for a long long moment. Finally, I acknowledged the truth of it with a grin. "Yeah," I said. "I can live with that...." As a literary puzzle, this is incomplete. As a story, it doesn't work. There's no ending. There isn't enough evidence for me to even suggest a conclusion. What do we know about the Martians? For that matter, what do we really know about ourselves? There's nothing to extrapolate. And if the Martians are really engaged in some kind of large-scale genetic engineering we won't really know what their intentions are until the Martian children start reaching adulthood. Dennis will be old enough to vote in 2005. And that raises another question. How long have the Martians been planting their babies in human homes? Maybe we already live in a Martian-influenced world? ) Maybe the Martian children will be super geniuses, inventing cold fusion and silicon sentience and nanotechnological miracles -- Stephen Hawking and Buckminster Fuller. Maybe they'll be spiritual saviors, bringing such superior technology of consciousness that those of us brave enough to follow will achieve the enlightenment of saints. Maybe they'll be demagogues and dictators. Or maybe they'll be madmen and all end up in institutions. And maybe they'll be monsters, giving us a new generation of serial killers and cult-leaders -- Jack the Ripper and Charles Manson. All we can do is wait and see how it works out. There's one more thing. In reviewing the material for this story, I came across a curious coincidence. Kathy Bright had given me several huge stacks of reports on Dennis, written by various therapists and counselors. I hadn't had time to read them all, and after the first few, I stopped -- I didn't want their experience of Dennis; I wanted to make up my own mind. But as I paged through the files, looking for Martian stuff, one of them caught my eye. On Saturday, June 27th, 1992, Carolyn Green (the counselor on his case at the time) had noted, "Dennis thinks God doesn't hear his prayers, because he wished for a dad and nothing happened." I first saw Dennis's picture on Saturday, June 27th, 1992, at about two in the aftemoon. According to Carolyn Green's report, that was the exact time of his weekly session. I cannot help but believe that he was wishing for a dad at the exact moment I first saw his picture. A Martian wish. Was that what I felt so strongly? Does it mean anything? Maybe. Maybe not. In any case, I know better than to argue with Martian wishes. Tonight, at bed time, he wished for me to be happy. I had to smile. "Was that a Martian wish?" I asked. "Yes," he said, in a voice that left no room for disagreement. "Then, I'm happy," I said. And in fact, I was. I hadn't realized it be