The Martian Chronicles Page 13

  Poor impossible, defeated Pikes! How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, clutching them in coils and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with the senseless anger. So what more natural than they would one day talk over endless coffeepots into innumerable midnights, and out of all the talk and the bitter brewings would come--the House of Usher.

  A great church bell rang. The guests were arriving.

  Smiling he went to greet them.

  Full grown without memory, the robots waited. In green silks the color of forest pools, in silks the color of frog and fern, they waited. In yellow hair the color of the sun and sand, the robots waited. Oiled, with tube bones cut from bronze and sunk in gelatin, the robots lay. In coffins for the not dead and not alive, in planked boxes, the metronomes waited to be set in motion. There was a smell of lubrication and lathed brass. There was a silence of the tomb yard. Sexed but sexless, the robots. Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans everything but humanity, the robots stared at the nailed lids of their labeled F.O.B. boxes, in a death that was not even a death, for there had never been a life. And now there was a vast screaming of yanked nails. Now there was a lifting of lids. Now there were shadows on the boxes and the pressure of a hand squirting oil from a can. Now one clock was set in motion, a faint ticking. Now another and another, until this was an immense clock shop, purring. The marble eyes rolled wide their rubber lids. The nostrils winked. The robots, clothed in hair of ape and white of rabbit, arose: Tweedledum following Tweedledee, Mock-Turtle, Dormouse, drowned bodies from the sea compounded of salt and whiteweed, swaying; hanging blue-throated men with turned-up, clam-flesh eyes, and creatures of ice and burning tinsel, loam-dwarfs and pepper-elves, Tik-tok, Ruggedo, St. Nicholas with a self-made snow flurry blowing on before him, Bluebeard with whiskers like acetylene flame, and sulphur clouds from which green fire snouts protruded, and, in scaly and gigantic serpentine, a dragon with a furnace in its belly reeled out the door with a scream, a tick, a bellow, a silence, a rush, a wind. Ten thousand lids fell back. The clock shop moved out into Usher. The night was enchanted.

  A warm breeze came over the land. The guest rockets, burning the sky and turning the weather from autumn to spring arrived.

  The men stepped out in evening clothes and the women stepped out after them, their hair coiffed up in elaborate detail.

  "So that's Usher!"

  "But where's the door?"

  At this moment Stendahl appeared. The women laughed and chattered. Mr. Stendahl raised a hand to quiet them. Turning, he looked up to a high castle window and called:

  "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."

  And from above, a beautiful maiden leaned out upon the night wind and let down her golden hair. And the hair twined and blew and became a ladder upon which the guests might ascend, laughing, into the House.

  What eminent sociologists! What clever psychologists! What tremendously important politicians, bacteriologists, and neurologists! There they stood, within the dank walls.

  "Welcome, all of you!"

  Mr. Tryon, Mr. Owen, Mr. Dunne, Mr. Lang, Mr. Steffens, Mr. Fletcher, and a double-dozen more.

  "Come in, come in!"

  Miss Gibbs, Miss Pope, Miss Churchil, Miss Blunt, Miss Drummond, and a score of other women, glittering.

  Eminent, eminent people, one and all, members of the Society for the Prevention of Fantasy, advocators of the banishment of Halloween and Guy Fawkes, killers of bats, burners of books, bearers of torches; good clean citizens, every one, who had waited until the rough men had come up and buried the Martians and cleansed the cities and built the towns and repaired the highways and made everything safe. And then, with everything well on its way to Safety, the Spoil-Funs, the people with mercurochrome for blood and iodine-colored eyes, came now to set up their Moral Climates and dole out goodness to everyone. And they were his friends! Yes, carefully, carefully, he had met and befriended each of them on Earth in the last year!

  "Welcome to the vasty halls of Death!" he cried.

  "Hello, Stendahl, what is all this?"

  "You'll see. Everyone off with their clothes. You'll find booths to one side there. Change into costumes you find there. Men on this side, women on that."

  The people stood uneasily about.

  "I don't know if we should stay," said Miss Pope. "I don't like the looks of this. It verges on--blasphemy."

  "Nonsense, a costume ball!"

  "Seems quite illegal." Mr. Steffens sniffed about.

  "Come off it." Stendahl laughed. "Enjoy yourselves. Tomorrow it'll be a ruin. Get in the booths!"

  The House blazed with life and color; harlequins rang by with belled caps and white mice danced miniature quadrilles to the music of dwarfs who tickled tiny fiddles with tiny bows, and flags rippled from scorched beams while bats flew in clouds about gargoyle mouths which spouted down wine, cool, wild, and foaming. A creek wandered through the seven rooms of the masked ball. Guests sipped and found it to be sherry. Guests poured from the booths, transformed from one age into another, their faces covered with dominoes, the very act of putting on a mask revoking all their licenses to pick a quarrel with fantasy and horror. The women swept about in red gowns, laughing. The men danced them attendance. And on the walls were shadows with no people to throw them, and here or there were mirrors in which no image showed. "All of us vampires!" laughed Mr. Fletcher. "Dead!"

  There were seven rooms, each a different color, one blue, one purple, one green, one orange, another white, the sixth violet, and the seventh shrouded in black velvet. And in the black room was an ebony clock which struck the hour loud. And through these rooms the guests ran, drunk at last, among the robot fantasies, amid the Dormice and Mad Hatters, the Trolls and Giants, the Black Cats and White Queens, and under their dancing feet the floor gave off the massive pumping beat of a hidden and telltale heart.

  "Mr. Stendahl!"

  A whisper.

  "Mr. Stendahl!"

  A monster with the face of Death stood at his elbow. It was Pikes. "I must see you alone."

  "What is it?"

  "Here." Pikes held out a skeleton hand. In it were a few half-melted, charred wheels, nuts, cogs, bolts.

  Stendahl looked at them for a long moment. Then he drew Pikes into a corridor. "Garrett?" he whispered.

  Pikes nodded. "He sent a robot in his place. Cleaning out the incinerator a moment ago, I found these."

  They both stared at the fateful cogs for a time.

  "This means the police will be here any minute," said Pikes. "Our plan will be ruined."

  "I don't know." Stendahl glanced in at the whirling yellow and blue and orange people. The music swept through the misting halls. "I should have guessed Garrett wouldn't be fool enough to come in person. But wait!"

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing. There's nothing the matter. Garrett sent a robot to us. Well, we sent one back. Unless he checks closely, he won't notice the switch."

  "Of course!"

  "Next time he'll come himself. Now that he thinks it's safe. Why, he might be at the door any minute, in person! More wine, Pikes!"

  The great bell rang.

  "There he is now, I'll bet you. Go let Mr. Garrett in."

  Rapunzel let down her golden hair.

  "Mr. Stendahl?"

  "Mr. Garrett. The real Mr. Garrett?"

  "The same." Garrett eyed the dank walls and the whirling people. "I thought I'd better come see for myself. You can't depend on robots. Other people's robots, especially. I also took the precaution of summoning the Dismantlers. They'll be here in one hour to knock the props out from under this horrible place."

  Stendahl bowed. "Thanks for telling me." He waved his hand. "In the meantime, you might as well enjoy this. A little wine?"

  "No, thank you. What's going on? How low can a
man sink?"

  "See for yourself, Mr. Garrett."

  "Murder," said Garrett.

  "Murder most foul," said Stendahl.

  A woman screamed. Miss Pope ran up, her face the color of a cheese. "The most horrid thing just happened! I saw Miss Blunt strangled by an ape and stuffed up a chimney!"

  They looked and saw the long yellow hair trailing down from the flue. Garrett cried out.

  "Horrid!" sobbed Miss Pope, and then ceased crying. She blinked and turned. "Miss Blunt!"

  "Yes," said Miss Blunt, standing there.

  "But I just saw you crammed up the flue!"

  "No," laughed Miss Blunt. "A robot of myself. A clever facsimile!"

  "But, but ... "

  "Don't cry darling. I'm quite all right. Let me look at myself. Well, so there I am! Up the chimney. Like you said. Isn't that funny?"

  Miss Blunt walked away, laughing.

  "Have a drink, Garrett?"

  "I believe I will. That unnerved me. My God, what a place. This does deserve tearing down. For a moment there ... "

  Garrett drank.

  Another scream. Mr. Steffens, borne upon the shoulders of four white rabbits, was carried down a flight of stairs which magically appeared in the floor. Into a pit went Mr. Steffens, where, bound and tied, he was left to face the advancing razor steel of a great pendulum which now whirled down, down, closer and closer to his outraged body.

  "Is that me down there?" said Mr. Steffens, appearing at Garrett's elbow. He bent over the pit. "How strange, how odd, to see yourself die."

  The pendulum made a final stroke.

  "How realistic," said Mr. Steffens, turning away.

  "Another drink, Mr. Garrett?"

  "Yes, please."

  "It won't be long. The Dismantlers will be here."

  "Thank God!"

  And for a third time, a scream.

  "What now?" said Garrett apprehensively.

  "It's my turn," said Miss Drummond. "Look."

  And a second Miss Druxnmond, shrieking, was nailed into a coffin and thrust into the raw earth under the floor.

  "Why, I remember that," gasped the Investigator of Moral Climates. "From the old forbidden books. The Premature Burial. And the others. The Pit, the Pendulum, and the ape, the chimney, the Murders in the Rue Morgue. In a book I burned, yes!"

  "Another drink, Garrett. Here, hold your glass steady."

  "My lord, you have an imagination, haven't you?"

  They stood and watched five others die, one in the mouth of a dragon, the others thrown off into the black tarn, sinking and vanishing.

  "Would you like to see what we have planned for you?" asked Stendahl.

  "Certainly," said Garrett. "What's the difference? We'll blow the whole damn thing up, anyway. You're nasty."

  "Come along then. This way."

  And he led Garrett down into the floor, through numerous passages and down again upon spiral stairs into the earth, into the catacombs.

  "What do you want to show me down here?" said Garrett.

  "Yourself killed."

  "A duplicate?"

  "Yes. And also something else."

  "What?"

  "The Amontillado," said Stendahl, going ahead with a blazing lantern which he held high. Skeletons froze half out of coffin lids. Garrett held his hand to his nose, his face disgusted.

  "The what?"

  "Haven't you ever heard of the Amontillado?"

  "No!"

  "Don't you recognize this?" Stendahl pointed to a cell.

  "Should I?"

  "Or this?" Stendahl produced a trowel from under his cape smiling.

  "What's that thing?"

  "Come," said Stendahl.

  They stepped into the cell. In the dark, Stendahl affixed the chains to the half-drunken man.

  "For God's sake, what are you doing?" shouted Garrett, rattling about.

  "I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite. There!"

  "You've locked me in chains!"

  "So I have."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Leave you here."

  "You're joking."

  "A very good joke."

  "Where's my duplicate? Don't we see him killed?"

  "There's no duplicate."

  "But the others!"

  "The others are dead. The ones you saw killed were the real people. The duplicates, the robots, stood by and watched."

  Garrett said nothing.

  "Now you're supposed to say, 'For the love of God, Montresor!'" said Stendahl. "And I will reply, 'Yes, for the love of God.' Won't you say it? Come on. Say it."

  "You fool."

  "Must I coax you? Say it. Say 'For the love of God, Montresor!'"

  "I won't, you idiot. Get me out of here." He was sober now.

  "Here. Put this on." Stendahl tossed in something that belled and rang.

  "What is it?"

  "A cap and bells. Put it on and I might let you out."

  "Stendahl!"

  "Put it on, I said!"

  Garrett obeyed. The bells tinkled.

  "Don't you have a feeling that this has all happened before?" inquired Stendahl, setting to work with trowel and mortar and brick now.

  "What're you doing?"

  "Walling you in. Here's one row. Here's another."

  "You're insane!"

  "I won't argue that point."

  "You'll be prosecuted for this!"

  He tapped a brick and placed it on the wet mortar, humming.

  Now there was a thrashing and pounding and a crying out from within the darkening place. The bricks rose higher. "More thrashing, please," said Stendahl. "Let's make it a good show."

  "Let me out, let me out!"

  There was one last brick to shove into place. The screaming was continuous.

  "Garrett?" called Stendahl softly. Garrett silenced himself. "Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett."

  Garrett was silent.

  "I want this to be perfect," said Stendahl, holding his lantern up so its light penetrated in upon the slumped figure. "Jingle your bells softly." The bells rustled. "Now, if you'll please say, 'For the love of God, Monstresor,' I might let you free."

  The man's face came up in the light. There was a hesitation. Then grotesquely the man said, "For the love of God, Montresor."

  "Ah," said Stendahl, eyes closed. He shoved the last brick into place and mortared it tight. "Requiescat in pace, dear friend."

  He hastened from the catacomb.

  In the seven rooms the sound of a midnight clock brought everything to a halt.

  The Red Death appeared.

  Stendahl turned for a moment at the door to watch. And then he ran out of the great House, across the moat, to where a helicopter waited.

  "Ready, Pikes?"

  "Ready."

  "There it goes!"

  They looked at the great House, smiling. It began to crack down the middle, as with an earthquake, and as Stendahl watched the magnificent sight he heard Pikes reading behind him in a low, cadenced voice: "' ... my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher.'"

  The helicopter rose over the steaming lake and flew into the west.

  August 2005: THE OLD ONES

  And what more natural than that, at last, the old people come to Mars, following in the trail left by the loud frontiersmen, the aromatic sophisticates, and the professional travelers and romantic lecturers in search of new grist.

  And so the dry and crackling people, the people who spent their time listening to their hearts and feeling th
eir pulses and spooning syrups into their wry mouths, these people who once had taken chair cars to California in November and third-class steamers to Italy in April, the dried-apricot people, the mummy people, came at last to Mars ...

  September 2005: THE MARTIAN

  The blue mountains lifted into the rain and the rain fell down into the long canals and old LaFarge and his wife came out of their house to watch.

  "First rain this season," LaFarge pointed out.

  "It's good," said his wife.

  "Very welcome."

  They shut the door. Inside, they warmed their hands at a fire. They shivered. In the distance, through the window, they saw rain gleaming on the sides of the rocket which had brought them from Earth.

  "There's only one thing," said LaFarge, looking at his hands.

  "What's that?" asked his wife.

  "I wish we could have brought Tom with us."

  "Oh, now, Lafe!"

  "I won't start again; I'm sorry."

  "We came here to enjoy our old age in peace, not to think of Tom. He's been dead so long now, we should try to forget him and everything on Earth."

  "You're right," he said, and turned his hands again to the heat. He gazed into the fire. "I won't speak of it any more. It's just I miss driving out to Green Lawn Park every Sunday to put flowers on his marker. It used to be our only excursion."

  The blue rain fell gently upon the house.

  At nine o'clock they went to bed and lay quietly, hand in hand, he fifty-five, she sixty, in the raining darkness.

  "Anna?" he called softly.

  "Yes?" she replied.

  "Did you hear something?"

  They both listened to the rain and the wind.

  "Nothing," she said.

  "Someone whistling," he said.

  "No, I didn't hear it."

  "I'm going to get up to see anyhow."

  He put on his robe and walked through the house to the front door. Hesitating, he pulled the door wide, and rain fell cold upon his face. The wind blew.

  In the dooryard stood a small figure.

  Lightning cracked the sky, and a wash of white color illumined the face looking in at old LaFarge there in the doorway.

  "Who's there?" called LaFarge, trembling.