You Don't Walk Alone — Themes and Context

Which was a laugh, in a way, because while he wouldn't know what I had been doing, I couldn't help but know what he had been doing. And so would you if I told you his right name. You wouldn't have recognized him, of course. He was the inconspicuous type, the sort of man who blended in so well with his background you would have had to hunt to find him, even if he was standing right in front of you. He was thin, not particularly tall, with limp, straw colored hair that clung close to his scalp and a complexion that had never been exposed to the sun. He was dressed in an old blue suit, a shapeless hat that might have been new five years ago, and a lightweight gray topcoat that hadn't been cleaned and pressed since he had bought it.

See? You wouldn't have noticed him at all.

It's a somewhat deceptive description, of course. John could have afforded a Brooks Brothers suit and at least one Cadillac but the fact was that he preferred being inconspicuous and in his job it was a definite advantage. Both John and I were reporters but the difference was--as Oscar Levant would say--the difference between talent and genius.

He ordered coffee then gave me a once-over with a pair of tired blue eyes that took in everything from my brown shoes that needed a shine to the newest thing in string bow-ties.

"How's it going, Charley?"

I blew the loose sugar off a doughnut and dangled it just over the edge of the cup. "It goes all right. It could be better but I suppose it could be worse, too. What brings you to Chicago?"

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to pry."

He got a refill on his coffee and stirred in half a pound of sugar. "You're not prying. As a matter of fact, maybe you can help me."

"I'm doing a story about an invasion. It's one that started just a few years ago, one that I'm afraid was highly successful, and one that I think is still going on."

I looked at him blankly. "Invasion? What invasion?"

"One from out in space," he said casually. "You know, one from another planet or another star. That type of invasion."

I sat there letting my coffee grow cold because all the time I was thinking that the one thing in the world John Kelley didn't possess was a sense of humor. As long as I had known him he had never told a joke and came damn close to never laughing at any.

"I don't recall any reports of anybody running around with six arms or green skin or tentacles instead of limbs," I protested mildly.

He shook his head, deadly serious. "You're not looking at it logically, Charley. The only beings who would be interested in the planet in the first place are beings who could live here. And if they could live here, then it's possible they could have the same sort of physical make-up." He paused. "Maybe the exact same sort of physical make-up. Even to the extent of the average man's desire to avoid trouble."

Kelley had something there. Every time you think of an invasion from outer space, you think of a hundred huge rocket ships settling down with ray guns going full blast and king-sized atomic bombs breaking up the landscape. Actually, of course, it doesn't have to be like that at all. Granted a physical resemblance in the first place, then maybe it wouldn't be an invasion. It might be more of an ... infiltration.

I jerked my thumb towards the people who crowded around the train gates and sprawled out on the benches. "You mean that some of those people aren't ... genuine?"

"That's right," John said slowly. "Some of them aren't the real McCoy."

I watched the people for a moment more, staring hard at the old man buying a paper at the newsstand and the old woman who was selling it to him.

"How can you tell which are which?"

"I can't. So far as I know, there isn't any way."

He had forgotten his coffee now. It sat at his elbow, an unappetizing mixture of lukewarm grounds, cigarette ash, and disintegrated doughnut.

"You've been reading them every day, Charley. A dozen times a year somebody sees flashes in the sky, a dozen times lights settle down in relatively uninhabited sections of the country. Sure, people see them and report them. And what happens?" He shrugged. "The papers treat them as part of the silly season, readers only glance at the reports. You know as well as I that nobody packs up a camera to go out and investigate."