The Martian Chronicles Page 15

  It was too late. The night, the event, was over. LaFarge twisted the mooring rope in his fingers. He was very cold and lonely. The people raised and put down their feet in the moonlight, drifting with great speed, wide-eyed, until the crowd, all ten of them, halted at the landing. They peered wildly down into the boat. They cried out.

  "Don't move, LaFarge!" Spaulding had a gun.

  And now it was evident what had happened. Tom flashing through the moonlit streets, alone, passing people. A policeman seeing the figure dart past. The policeman pivoting, staring at the face, calling a name, giving pursuit "You, stop!" Seeing a criminal face. All along the way, the same thing, men here, women there, night watchmen, rocket pilots. The swift figure meaning everything to them, all identities, all persons, all names. How many different names had been uttered in the last five minutes? How many different faces shaped over Tom's face, all wrong?

  All down the way the pursued and the pursuing, the dream and the dreamers, the quarry and the hounds. All down the way the sudden revealment, the flash of familiar eyes, the cry of an old, old name, the remembrances of other times, the crowd multiplying. Everyone leaping forward as, like an image reflected from ten thousand mirrors, ten thousand eyes, the running dream came and went, a different face to those ahead, those behind, those yet to be met, those unseen.

  And here they all are now, at the boat, wanting the dream for their own, just as we want him to be Tom, not Lavinia or William or Roger or any other, thought LaFarge. But it's all done now. The thing has gone too far.

  "Come up, all of you!" Spaulding ordered them.

  Tom stepped up from the boat. Spaulding seized his wrist. "You're coming home with me. I know."

  "Wait," said the policeman. "He's my prisoner. Name's Dexter; wanted for murder."

  "No!" a woman sobbed. "It's my husband! I guess I know my husband!"

  Other voices objected. The crowd moved in.

  Mrs. LaFarge shielded Tom. "This is my son; you have no right to accuse him of anything. We're going home right now!"

  As for Tom, he was trembling and shaking violently. He looked very sick. The crowd thickened about him, putting out their wild hands, seizing and demanding.

  Tom screamed.

  Before their eyes he changed. He was Tom and James and a man named Switchman, another named Butterfield; he was the town mayor and the young girl Judith and the husband William and the wife Clarisse. He was melting wax shaping to their minds. They shouted, they pressed forward, pleading. He screamed, threw out his hands, his face dissolving to each demand. "Tom!" cried LaFarge. "Alice!" another. "William!" They snatched his wrists, whirled him about, until with one last shriek of horror he fell.

  He lay on the stones, melted wax cooling, his face all faces, one eye blue, the other golden, hair that was brown, red, yellow, black, one eyebrow thick, one thin, one hand large, one small.

  They stood over him and put their fingers to their mouths. They bent down.

  "He's dead," someone said at last.

  It began to rain.

  The rain fell upon the people, and they looked up at the sky.

  Slowly, and then more quickly, they turned and walked away and then started running, scattering from the scene. In a minute the place was desolate. Only Mr. and Mrs. LaFarge remained, looking down, hand in hand, terrified.

  The rain fell upon the upturned, unrecognizable face.

  Anna said nothing but began to cry.

  "Come along home, Anna, there's nothing we can do," said the old man.

  They climbed down into the boat and went back along the canal in the darkness. They entered their house and lit a small fire and warmed their hands, They went to bed and lay together, cold and thin, listening to the rain returned to the roof above them.

  "Listen," said LaFarge at midnight. "Did you hear something?"

  "Nothing, nothing."

  "I'll go look anyway."

  He fumbled across the dark room and waited by the outer door for a long time before he opened it.

  He pulled the door wide and looked out.

  Rain poured from the black sky upon the empty dooryard, into the canal and among the blue mountains.

  He waited five minutes and then softly, his hands wet, he shut and bolted the door.

  November 2005: THE LUGGAGE STORE

  It was a very remote thing, when the luggage-store proprietor heard the news on the night radio, received all the way from Earth on a light-sound beam. The proprietor felt how remote it was.

  There was going to be a war on Earth.

  He went out to peer into the sky.

  Yes, there it was. Earth, in the evening heavens, following the sun into the hills. The words on the radio and that green star were one and the same.

  "I don't believe it," said the proprietor.

  "It's because you're not there," said Father Peregrine, who had stopped by to pass the time of evening.

  "What do you mean, Father?"

  "It's like when I was a boy," said Father Peregrine. "We heard about wars in China. But we never believed them. It was too far away. And there were too many people dying. It was impossible. Even when we saw the motion pictures we didn't believe it. Well, that's how it is now. Earth is China. It's so far away it's unbelievable. It's not here. You can't touch it. You can't even see it. All you see is a green light. Two billion people living on that light? Unbelievable! War? We don't hear the explosions."

  "We will," said the proprietor. "I keep thinking about all those people that were going to come to Mars this week. What was it? A hundred thousand or so coming up in the next month or so. What about them if the war starts?"

  "I imagine they'll turn back. They'll be needed on Earth."

  "Well," said the proprietor, "I'd better get my luggage dusted off. I got a feeling there'll be a rush sale here any time."

  "Do you think everyone now on Mars will go back to Earth if this is the Big War we've all been expecting for years?"

  "It's a funny thing, Father, but yes, I think we'll all go back. I know, we came up here to get away from things--politics, the atom bomb, war, pressure groups, prejudice, laws--I know. But it's still home there. You wait and see. When the first bomb drops on America the people up here'll start thinking. They haven't been here long enough. A couple years is all. If they'd been here forty years, it'd be different, but they got relatives down there, and their home towns. Me, I can't believe in Earth any more; I can't imagine it much. But I'm old. I don't count. I might stay on here."

  "I doubt it."

  "Yes, I guess you're right."

  They stood on the porch watching the stars. Finally Father Peregrine pulled some money from his pocket and handed it to the proprietor. "Come to think of it, you'd better give me a new valise. My old one's in pretty bad condition ..."

  November 2005: THE OFF SEASON

  Sam Parkhill motioned with the broom, sweeping away the blue Martian sand.

  "Here we are," he said. "Yes, sir, look at that!" He pointed. "Look at that sign. SAM'S HOT DOGS! Ain't that beautiful, Elma?"

  "Sure, Sam," said his wife.

  "Boy, what a change for me. If the boys from the Fourth Expedition could see me now. Am I glad to be in business myself while all the rest of them guys're off soldiering around still. We'll make thousands, Elma, thousands."

  His wife looked at him for a long time, not speaking. "Whatever happened to Captain Wilder?" she asked finally. "That captain that killed that guy who thought he was going to kill off every other Earth Man, what was his name?"

  "Spender, that nut. He was too damn particular. Oh, Captain Wilder? He's off on a rocket to Jupiter, I hear. They kicked him upstairs. I think he was a little batty about Mars too. Touchy, you know. He'll be back down from Jupiter and Pluto in about twenty years if he's lucky. That's what he gets for shooting off his mouth. And while he's freezing to death, look at me, look at this place!"

  This was a crossroads where two dead highways came and went in darkness. Here Sam Parkhill had flung up this
riveted aluminum structure, garish with white light, trembling with jukebox melody.

  He stooped to fix a border of broken glass he had placed on the footpath. He had broken the glass from some old Martian buildings in the hills. "Best hot dogs on two worlds! First man on Mars with a hot-dog stand! The best onions and chili and mustard! You can't say I'm not alert. Here's the main highways, over there is the dead city and the mineral deposits. Those trucks from Earth Settlement 101 will have to pass here twenty-four hours a day! Do I know my locations, or don't I?"

  His wife looked at her fingernails.

  "You think those ten thousand new-type work rockets will come through to Mars?" she said at last.

  "In a month," he said loudly. "Why you look so funny?"

  "I don't trust those Earth people," she said. "I'll believe it when I see them ten thousand rockets arrive with the one hundred thousand Mexicans and Chinese on them."

  "Customers." He lingered on the word. "One hundred thousand hungry people."

  "If," said his wife slowly, watching the sky, "there's no atomic war. I don't trust no atom bombs. There's so many of them on Earth now, you never can tell."

  "Ah," said Sam, and went on sweeping.

  From the corners of his eyes he caught a blue flicker. Something floated in the air gently behind him. He heard his wife say, "Sam. A friend of yours to see you."

  Sam whirled to see the mask seemingly floating in the wind.

  "So you're back again!" And Sam held his broom like a weapon.

  The mask nodded. It was cut from pale blue glass and was fitted above a thin neck; under which were blowing loose robes of thin yellow silk. From the silk two mesh silver bands appeared. The mask mouth was a slot from which musical sounds issued now as the robes, the mask, the hands increased to a height, decreased.

  "Mr. Parkhill, I've come back to speak to you again," the voice said from behind the mask.

  "I thought I told you I don't want you near here!" cried Sam. "Go on, I'll give you the Disease!"

  "I've already had the Disease," said the voice. "I was one of the few survivors. I was sick a long time."

  "Go on and hide in the hills, that's where you belong, that's where you've been. Why you come on down and bother me? Now, all of a sudden. Twice in one day."

  "We mean you no harm."

  "But I mean you harm!" said Sam, backing up. "I don't like strangers. I don't like Martians. I never seen one before. It ain't natural. All these years you guys hide, and all of a sudden you pick on me. Leave me alone."

  "We come for an important reason," said the blue mask.

  "If it's about this land, it's mine. I built this hot-dog stand with my own hands."

  "In a way it is about the land."

  "Look here," said Sam. "I'm from New York City. Where I come from there's ten million others just like me. You Martians are a couple dozen left, got no cities, you wander around in the hills, no leaders, no laws, and now you come tell me about this land. Well, the old got to give way to the new. That's the law of give and take. I got a gun here. After you left this morning I got it out and loaded it."

  "We Martians are telepathic," said the cold blue mask. "We are in contact with one of your towns across the dead sea. Have you listened on your radio?"

  "My radio's busted."

  "Then you don't know. There's big news. It concerns Earth--"

  A silver hand gestured. A bronze tube appeared in it.

  "Let me show you this."

  "A gun," cried Sam Parkhill.

  An instant later he had yanked his own gun from his hip holster and fired into the mist, the robe, the blue mask.

  The mask sustained itself a moment. Then, like a small circus tent pulling up its stakes and dropping soft fold on fold, the silks rustled, the mask descended, the silver claws tinkled on the stone path. The mask lay on a small huddle of silent white bones and material.

  Sam stood gasping.

  His wife swayed over the huddled pile.

  "That's no weapon," she said, bending down. She picked up the bronze tube. "He was going to show you a message. It's all written out in snake-script, all the blue snakes. I can't read it. Can you?"

  "No, that Martian picture writing, it wasn't anything. Let it go!" Sam glanced hastily around. "There may be others! We've got to get him out of sight. Get the shovel!"

  "What're you going to do?"

  "Bury him, of course!"

  "You shouldn't have shot him."

  "It was a mistake. Quick!"

  Silently she fetched him the shovel.

  At eight o'clock he was back sweeping the front of the hotdog stand self-consciously. His wife stood, arms folded, in the bright doorway.

  "I'm sorry what happened," he said. He looked at her, then away. "You know it was purely the circumstances of Fate."

  "Yes," said his wife.

  "I hated like hell to see him take out that weapon."

  "What weapon?"

  "Well, I thought it was one! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! How many times do I say it!"

  "Ssh," said Elma, putting one finger to her lips. "Ssh."

  "I don't care," he said. "I got the whole Earth Settlements, Inc., back of me!" He snorted. "These Martians won't dare--"

  "Look," said Elma.

  He looked out onto the dead sea bottom. He dropped his broom. He picked it up and his mouth was open, a little free drop of saliva flew on the air, and he was suddenly shivering.

  "Elma, Elma, Elma!" he said.

  "Here they come," said Elma.

  Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue ghosts, like blue smoke.

  "Sand ships! But there aren't any more, Elma, no more sand ships."

  "Those seem to be sand ships," she said.

  "But the authorities confiscated all of them! They broke them up, sold some at auction! I'm the only one in this whole damn territory's got one and knows how to run one."

  "Not any more," she said, nodding at the sea.

  "Come on, let's get out of here!"

  "Why?" she asked slowly, fascinated with the Martian vessels.

  "They'll kill me! Get in our truck, quick!"

  Elma didn't move.

  He had to drag her around back of the stand where the two machines stood, his truck, which he had used steadily until a month ago, and the old Martian sand ship which he had bid for at auction, smiling, and which, during the last three weeks, he had used to carry supplies back and forth over the glassy sea floor. He looked at his truck now and remembered. The engine was out on the ground; he had been puttering with it for two days.

  "The truck don't seem to be in running condition," said Elma.

  "The sand ship. Get in!"

  "And let you drive me in a sand ship? Oh no."

  "Get in! I can do it!"

  He shoved her in, jumped in behind her, and flapped the tiller, let the cobalt sail up to take the evening wind.

  The stars were bright and the blue Martian ships were skimming across the whispering sands. At first his own ship would not move, then he remembered the sand anchor and yanked it in.

  "There!"

  The wind hurled the sand ship keening over the dead sea bottom, over long-buried crystals, past upended pillars, past deserted docks of marble and brass, past dead white chess cities, past purple foothills, into distance. The figures of the Martian ships receded and then began to pace Sam's ship.

  "Guess I showed them, by God!" cried Sam. "I'll report to the Rocket Corporation. They'll give me protection! I'm pretty quick."

  "They could have stopped you if they wanted," Elma said tiredly. "They just didn't bother."

  He laughed. "Come off it. Why should they let me get off? No, they weren't quick enough, is all."

  "Weren't they?" Elma nodded behind him.

  He did not turn. He felt a cold wind blowing. He was afraid to turn. He felt something in the seat behind him, something as frail as your breath on a cold morning something as blue as hickory-wood smoke at t
wilight, something like old white lace, something like a snowfall, something like the icy rime of winter on the brittle sedge.

  There was a sound as of a thin plate of glass broken--laughter. Then silence. He turned.

  The young woman sat at the tiller bench quietly. Her wrists were thin as icicles, her eyes as clear as the moons and as large, steady and white. The wind blew at her and, like an image on cold water, she rippled, silk standing out from her frail body in tatters of blue rain.

  "Go back," she said.

  "No." Sam was quivering, the fine, delicate fear-quivering of a hornet suspended in the air, undecided between fear and hate. "Get off my ship!"

  "This isn't your ship," said the vision. "It's old as our world. It sailed the sand seas ten thousand years ago when the seas were whispered away and the docks were empty, and you came and took it, stole it. Now turn it around, go back to the crossroad place. We have need to talk with you. Something important has happened."

  "Get off my ship!" said Sam. He took a gun from his holster with a creak of leather. He pointed it carefully. "Jump off before I count three or--"

  "Don't!" cried the girl. "I won't hurt you. Neither will the others. We came in peace!"

  "One," said Sam.

  "Sam!" said Elma.

  "Listen to me," said the girl.

  "Two," said Sam firmly, cocking the gun trigger.

  "Sam!" cried Elma.

  "Three," said Sam.

  "We only--" said the girl.

  The gun went off.

  In the sunlight, snow melts, crystals evaporate into a steam, into nothing. In the firelight, vapors dance and vanish. In the core of a volcano, fragile things burst and disappear. The girl, in the gunfire, in the heat, in the concussion, folded like a soft scarf, melted like a crystal figurine. What was left of her, ice, snowflake, smoke, blew away in the wind. The tiller seat was empty.

  Sam holstered his gun and did not look at his wife.

  "Sam," she said after a minute more of traveling, whispering over the moon-colored sea of sand, "stop the ship."

  He looked at her and his face was pale. "No, you don't. Not after all this time, you're not pulling out on me."

  She looked at his hand on his gun. "I believe you would," she said. "You actually would."

  He jerked his head from side to side, hand tight on the tiller bar. "Elma, this is crazy. We'll be in town in a minute, we'll be okay!"