Free Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz Page B

who claimed to be a Roseland security guard even though he hadn’t worn the uniform—gray slacks, white shirt, blue blazer—that the other guards wore and though he was in so many ways more flamboyant than Henry and his colleagues.
    Waiting, I watched what appeared to be a peregrine, judging by its immense wingspan and the universal pattern of its underwings. These falcons generally hunted smaller birds, rather than rodents, making spectacular swoops and seizing their prey in midair.
    When Henry closed the book and looked up, a lost expression marked his eyes, as if he knew neither me nor where he was.
    I said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir.”
    His confusion, or whatever it might be, ebbed, and in ebbing washed a smile onto his beach-smooth face. He appeared as boyish as any preadolescent in a Norman Rockwell painting—as long as you did not care to see more in his eyes than the green of them.
    “No, no,” Henry said. “I enjoy our chats. Sit down, sit down.”
    To the left of the door, he had earlier put out a second chair, apparently in anticipation of my visit. I settled in it, deciding there was no point in asking about an eclipse.
    “I’ve been brushing up on my UFO history,” Henry said.
    He was intrigued by reports of abductions by extraterrestrials and alien bases on the far side of the moon. Although I could not say why I felt so, I suspected that he sought the same thing in UFO lore that he pursued in poetry.
    Aware of the irony of a spirit-seer debunking the possibility ofvisitors from outer space, I nevertheless said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I just can’t buy into flying saucers and all that.”
    “Several of those who’ve been abducted have passed lie-detector tests. There’s a lot of documentation.”
    “See, it doesn’t make sense to me that a superintelligent race would come all the way across the galaxy just to abduct people and put probes up their rectums.”
    “Well, that’s not the
only
thing they do in their examinations.”
    “But it always seems to be the first and most important thing.”
    “Don’t you think a colonoscopy is advisable now and then?”
    “I can get one from a doctor.”
    “Not as thorough as the one the aliens give you.”
    “But, sir, why would aliens be interested in whether I have colon cancer?”
    “Maybe because they
care
,” Henry said.
    I had learned that to get to a subject that I wished to discuss, I had to indulge Henry’s bizarre fascination with proctologists from other worlds. Indulging him, however, didn’t mean taking a craziness pill and tripping with him, and I remained a skeptic.
    “I suspect they’re just very caring,” Henry persisted.
    “Coming fifty light-years to give me a colonoscopy is so caring it’s downright creepy.”
    “No, Odd, you see, fifty light-years to them might be like fifty miles to us.”
    “Coming even fifty miles to force a probe up my butt without my permission is a pretty good definition of a pervert.”
    Henry’s face was alight with wonder at the idea of aliens, and dimpled with the amusement that any mischievous boy feels when he gets a seemingly legitimate chance to talk about butts and such.
    “They’re probably taking DNA samples, too.”
    I shrugged. “So I’ll give them a lock of my hair.”
    Smiling dreamily, but turning the book of poetry over and over in his hands as if agitated, he said, “Some UFO experts think the aliens have conquered death and just want to give us immortality.”
    “Give it to everyone?”
    “They’re so compassionate.”
    “Lady Gaga’s cool,” I said. “But a thousand years from now, I don’t want to have to listen to Lady Gaga’s seven hundredth album.”
    “It wouldn’t be boring like that. Immortal, you could change careers again and again. Be a singer like Lady Gaga, and she can be a fry cook.”
    I grimaced. “I can’t sing, and I have a hunch she can’t cook.”
    He thumbed repeatedly, insistently through the pages of the book without looking at