Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (559 page)

“Oh, there you are,” Phii Lek said. “I’ve been trying to attract your attention for hours.”

“I was busy,” I said, and my brother leered knowingly. “Are you all right? Are you recovered?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “But I’m, well, off-duty. The alien’ll come back any minute, though, so I can’t talk long.” He paused. “Maybe that girlfriend of yours should hear this,” he said. At that moment Mary crept in beside us, and we crouched together under the netting. The electric fan made the nets billow like ghosts.

“You have to take me to that archaeological dig of yours,” he said. “There’s an artifact…it’s got some kind of encoded information…you have to take it back to Professor Ubermuth at UCLA—”

“I’ve heard of him!” Mary whispered. “He’s in a loony bin. Apparently he became convinced he was an extraterre—oh, Jesus!” she said in English.

“He
is
one,” Phii Lek said. “So am I. There are hundreds of us on this planet. But my controlling alien’s resting right now. Look, Ai Noi, I want you to go down to the kitchen and get me as many chili peppers as you can find. On the
manus tang dao’s
home planet the food is about as bland as rice soup.”

I hurried to obey. When I got back, he wolfed down the peppers until he started weeping from the influx of spiciness. Suspiciously I said, “If you’re really an alien, what about spaceships?”

“Spaceships…we do have them, but they are drones, taking millennia to reach the center of the galaxy. We ourselves travel by tachyon psychic transference. But the device is being sent by drone.”

“Device?”

“From the excavation! Haven’t you been listening? It’s got to be dug up and secretly taken to America and…I’m not sure what or why, but I get the feeling there’s danger if we don’t make our rendezvous. Something to do with upsetting the tachyon fields.”

“I see,” I said, humoring him.

“You know what I look like on the home planet, up there? I look like a giant
mangdaa.”

“What’s that?” said Mary.

“It’s sort of a giant cockroach,” I said. “We use its wings to flavor some kinds of curry.”

“Yech!” she squealed. “Eating insects. Gross!”

“What do you mean? You’ve been enjoying it all week, and you’ve never complained about eating insects,” I said. She started to turn slightly bluish. A
farang’s
complexion, when he or she is about to be sick, is one of the few truly indescribable hues on the face of this earth.

“Help me…” Phii Lek said. “The sooner this artifact is unearthed and loaded onto the drone, the sooner I’ll be released from this—oh, no, it’s coming back!” Frantically he gobbled down several more chilies. But it was too late. They came right back up again, and he was scampering around the room on all fours and emitting pigeonlike cooing noises.

“Come to think of it,” I said, “he
is
acting rather like a cockroach, isn’t he?”

* * * *

A week later our home was invaded by nine monks. My mothers had been cooking all the previous day, and when I came into the main living room they had already been chanting for about an hour, their bass voices droning from behind huge prayer fans. The house was fragrant with jasmine and incense.

I prostrated myself along with the other members of the family. My brother was there too, wriggling around on his belly; his hands were tied up with a sacred rope which ran all the way around the house and through the folded palms of each of the monks. Among them was my father, who looked rather self-conscious and didn’t seem to know all the words of the chants yet…now and then he seemed to be opening his mouth at random, like a goldfish.

“This isn’t going to work,” I whispered to my grandmother, who was kneeling in the
phraphrieb
position with her palms folded, her face frozen in an expression of beatific piety. “Mary and I have found out what the problem is, and it’s not possession.”

“Buddhang sarnang gacchami,”
the monks intoned in unison.

“What are they talking about?” Mary said. She was properly prostrate, but seemed distracted. She was probably uncomfortable without her trusty notebook.

“I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s all in Pali or Sanskrit or something,” I said.

“Namodasa phakhavato arahato
—” the monks continued inexorably.

At length they laid their prayer fans down and the chief
luangphoh
doused a spray of twigs in a silver dipper of lustral water and began to sprinkle Phii Lek liberally.

“It’s got to be over soon,” I said to Mary. “It’s getting toward noon, and you know monks are not allowed to eat after twelve o’clock.”

As the odor of incense wafted over me and the chanting continued, I fell into a sort of trance. These were familiar feelings, sacred feelings. Maybe my brother
was
in the grip of some supernatural force that could be driven out by the proper application of Buddha, Dharma and Sangkha. However, as the
luangphoh
became ever more frantic, waving the twigs energetically over my writhing brother to no avail, I began to lose hope.

Presently the monks took a break for their one meal of the day, and we took turns presenting them with trays of delicacies. After securing my brother carefully to the wall with the sacred twine, I went to the kitchen, where my grandmother was grinding fresh betelnut with a mortar and pestle. To my surprise, my father was there too. It was rather a shock to see him bald and wearing a saffron robe, when I was so used to seeing him barechested with a
phakhoma
loosely wrapped about his loins, and with a whiskey bottle rather than a begging bowl in his arms. I did not know whether to treat him as father or monk. To be on the safe side, I fell on my knees and placed my folded palms reverently at his feet.

My father was complaining animatedly to my grandmother in a weird mixture of normal talk and priestly talk. Sometimes he’d remember to refer to himself as
atma,
but at other times he’d speak like anyone off the street. He was saying, “But mother,
atma
is miserable, they only feed you once a day, and I’m hornier than ever! It’s obviously not going to work, so why don’t I just come home?”

My grandmother continued to pound vigorously at her betelnut.

“Anyway,
atma
thinks that it’s time for more serious measures. I mean, calling in a professional exorcist.”

At this, my grandmother looked up. “Perhaps you’re right, holy one,” she said. I could see that it galled her to have to address her wayward son-in-law in terms of such respect. “But can we afford it?”

“Phra Boddhisatphalo,
atma’s
guru, is an astrologer on the side, and he says that the stars for the movie theater are exceptionally bad. Well,
atma
was thinking, why not perform an act of merit while simultaneously ridding ourselves of a potential financial liability? I say sell out the half-share of the cinema and use the proceeds to hire a really competent exorcist. Besides,” he added slyly, “with the rest of the cash I could probably obtain me one of those nieces of yours, the ones whose beauty your daughters are always bragging about.”

“You despicable cad,” my grandmother began, and then added, “holy one,” to be on the safe side of the karmic balance.

“Honored father and grandmother,” I ventured, “have you not considered the notion that Phii Lek’s body might indeed be inhabited by an extraterrestrial being?”

“I fail to see the difference,” my father said, “between a being from another planet and one from another spiritual plane. It is purely a matter of attitude. You and your brother, whose wits have been addled by exposure to too many American movies, think in terms of visitations from the stars; your grandmother and I, being older and wiser, know that ‘alien’ is merely another word for spirit. Earthly or unearthly, we are all spokes in the wheel of karma, no? Exorcism ought to work on both.”

I didn’t like my father’s new approach at all; I thought his drunkenness far more palatable than his piety. But of course this would have been an unconscionably disrespectful thing to say, so I merely
wai
-ed in obeisance and waited for the ordeal to end.

My grandmother said, “Well, son-in-law, I can see a certain progress in you after all.” My father turned around and winked at me. “Very well,” she said, sighing heavily, “perhaps your mentor can find us a decent exorcist. But none of those foreigners, mind you,” she added pointedly as Mary entered the kitchen to fetch another tray of comestibles for the monks’ feast.

* * * *

The interview with the spirit doctor was set for the following week. By that time the wonder of my brother’s possession had attracted tourists from a radius of some ten kilometers; his performances were so spectacular as to outdraw even the talking cinema in Ban Kraduk.

It turned out to be a Brahmin, tall, dark, white-robed, with a long white beard that trailed all the way down to the floor. He wore a necklace of bones—they looked suspiciously human—and several flower wreaths over his uncut, wispy hair; moreover he had an elaborate third eye painted in the middle of his forehead.

“Narayana, Narayana,”
he said, with the portentousness of a paunchy deva in one of those Indian historical movies. This, I realized, was a sham to impress the credulous populace, who were swarming around the stilts of our house. One or two children were peering from behind the horns of waterbuffaloes, and one was even peeping from a huge rainwater jar. The Brahmin had an accolyte just for the purpose of removing his sandals and splashing his feet from the foot-washing trough, an occupation of such ignominy that I was surprised even a boy would stoop to it. He surveyed my family (which had been suddenly expanded by visiting cousins, aunts, uncles, and several other grandmothers junior to my own) and inquired haughtily, “And which of you is the possessed one?”

“He can’t even tell?” my grandmother whispered to me. Then she pointed at Phii Lek, who was crawling around the front porch moaning “tachyon, tachyon.”

“Ah,” said the exorcist. “A classic case of possession by a phii krasue. Dire measures are indicated, I’m afraid.”

At the mention of the dreaded
phii krasue,
the entire family recoiled as a single entity. For the
phii krasue
is, as everyone knows, a spirit who looks like a normal enough creature in the daytime, but at night detaches its head from its body and, dragging its entrails behind it, propels itself forward by its tongue. It also lives on human excrement. It is, in short, one of the most loathsome and feared of spirits. The idea that we might have been harboring one in our very house sent chills of terror through me.

Presently I heard dissenting voices. “But a
phii krasue
can’t act this way in the daytime!” one said. “Anyway, Where’s the trail of guts?” said another. “This fellow’s obviously a quack…never trust a Brahmin exorcist, I tell you.” “Well, let’s give him the benefit. See if he comes up with anything.”

The Brahmin spirit doctor took a good look at us, clearly appraising our finances. “Can he be cured?” my Elder Mother asked him.

“Given your very secure monetary standing,” the Brahmin said, “I see no reason why not. You can take him inside now; I shall discuss the—ah, your merit-making donation—with the head of the household.”

My grandmother came forward, her palms uplifted in supplication. “Fetch him a drink,” she muttered to my mothers.

My mother said, “Does the
than mo phii
want a glass of water? Or would he prefer Coca-Cola?”

“A glass of Mekong whiskey,” said the spirit doctor firmly. “Better yet, bring the whole bottle. We’ll probably be haggling all night.”

* * * *

Since Phii Lek was no longer the center of attention, Mary and I obeyed the spirit doctor and brought him inside. He chose that moment to snap back into a state of relative sanity. We knew he had come to because he immediately began demanding chili peppers.

“All right,” he said at last. “I’ve been authorized to tell you a few more things, since it seems to be the only hope.”

“What about that monstrous charlatan out there?” Mary said. “He’s only going to delay your plans, isn’t he?”

“Not necessarily. I want you to insist that he perform the exorcism
at
the archaeological dig. Once there, I’ll be able to home in on the device and get rid of the giant cockroach at the same time. You know, that exorcist wasn’t far wrong when he said I’d been possessed by a
phii krasue.
Would you be interested in knowing what my alien overlords like for dinner?”

“I take it they’re scavengers?” Mary said.

“Exactly,” said my brother. “But no more of this excremental subject. You have to convince that exorcist of yours. Unless the device is returned, there will be awful consequences. You see…the aliens were here once before, about eight hundred years ago. They planted a number of these devices as…well, tachyon calibration beacons. Well, this one is going dangerously out of synch, and some of the aliens aren’t ending up in the bodies they were destined for. I mean, this psychic transference business is expensive, and the military ruler of nine star systems doesn’t want to get thrust into the body of a leprous janitor from Milwaukee. That is precisely what happened last week, and the diplomatic consequences happen to be rippling through the entire galaxy at this very minute. Anyway, if the beacon isn’t sent back post-haste for deactivation, guess who gets it?”