Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (43 page)

 
          
 
"How long did you stay in the
hospital?"

 
          
 
"Two days. Then I was up and around, feeling
no better, no worse. By that time my wife had picked up and skedaddled."

 
          
 
"Oh, my goodness, my goodness," said
Miss Fremwell, recovering her breath, "My heart's going like an egg
beater. I can hear and feel and see it all, Mr. Lemon. Why, why, oh, why did
she do it?"

 
          
 
"I already told you, for no reason I
could see. She was just took with a notion, I guess."

 
          
 
"But there must have been an
argument—?"

 
          
 
Blood drummed in Mr. Lemon's cheeks. He felt
that place up there on his head glow like a fiery crater. "There wasn't no
argument. I was just sitting, peaceful as you please. I like to sit, my shoes
off, my shirt unbuttoned, afternoons."

 
          
 
"Did you—did you know any other
women?"

 
          
 
"No, never, none!"

 
          
 
"You didn't-drink?"

 
          
 
"Just a nip once in a while, you know how
it is."

 
          
 
"Did you gamble?"

 
          
 
"No, no, no!"

 
          
 
"But a hole punched in your head like
that, Mr. Lemon, my land, my land! All over nothing?"

 
          
 
"You women are all alike. You see
something and right off you expect the worst. I tell you there was no reason.
She just fancied hammers."

 
          
 
"What did she say before she hit
you?"

 
          
 
"Just 'Wake up, Andrew.'"

 
          
 
"No, before that."

 
          
 
"Nothing. Not for half an hour or an hour,
anyway. Oh, she said something about wanting to go shopping for something or
other, but I said it was too hot. I'd better lie down, I didn't feel so good.
She didn't appreciate how I felt. She must have got mad and thought about it
for an hour and grabbed that hammer and come in and gone kersmash. I think the
weather got her too."

 
          
 
Miss Fremwell sat back thoughtfully in the
lattice shadow, her brows moving slowly up and then slowly down.

 
          
 
"How long were you married to her?"

 
          
 
"A year. I remember we got married in
July and in July it was I got sick."

 
          
 
"Sick?"

 
          
 
"I wasn't a well man. I worked in a
garage. Then I got these backaches so I couldn't work and had to lie down
afternoons. Ellie, she worked in the First National Bank."

 
          
 
"I see," said Miss Fremwell.

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"Nothing," she said.

 
          
 
"I'm an easy man to get on with. I don't
talk too much. I'm easygoing and relaxed. I don't waste money. I'm economical.
Even Ellie had to admit that. I don't argue. Why, sometimes Ellie would jaw at
me and jaw at me, like bouncing a ball hard on a house, but me not bouncing
back. I just sat. I took it easy. What's the use of always stirring around and
talking, right?"

 
          
 
Miss Fremwell looked over at Mr. Lemon's brow
in the moonlight. Her lips moved, but he could not hear what she said.

 
          
 
Suddenly she straightened up and took a deep
breath and blinked around surprised to see the world out beyond the porch
lattice. The sounds of traffic came in to the porch now, as if they had been
tuned up; they had been so quiet for a time. Miss Fremwell took a deep breath
and let it out.

 
          
 
"As you yourself say, Mr. Lemon, nobody
ever got anywhere arguing."

 
          
 
"Right!" he said. "I'm
easygoing, I tell you—"

 
          
 
But Miss Fremwell's eyes were lidded now and
her mouth was strange. He sensed this and tapered off.

 
          
 
A night wind blew fluttering her light summer
dress and the sleeves of his shirt.

 
          
 
"It's late," said Miss Fremwell.

 
          
 
"Only
nine
o'clock
!"

 
          
 
"I have to get up early tomorrow."

 
          
 
"But you haven't answered my question
yet. Miss Fremwell."

 
          
 
"Question?" She blinked. "Oh,
the question. Yes." She rose from the wicker seat. She hunted around in
the dark for the screen-door knob. "Oh now, Mr. Lemon, let me think it
over."

 
          
 
"That's fan: enough," he said.
"No use arguing, is there?"

 
          
 
The screen door closed. He heard her find her
way down the dark warm hall. He breathed shallowly, feeling of the third eye in
his head, the eye that saw nothing.

 
          
 
He felt a vague unhappiness shift around
inside his chest like an illness brought on by too much talking. And then he
thought of the fresh white gift box waiting with its lid on in his room. He
quickened. Opening the screen door, he walked down the silent hall and went
into his room. Inside he slipped and almost fell on a slick copy of True
Romance Tales, He switched on the light excitedly, smiling, fumbled the box
open, and lifted the toupee from the tissues. He stood before the bright mirror
and followed directions with the spirit gum and tapes and tucked it here and

 
          
 
Stuck it there and shifted it again and combed
it neat. Then he opened the door and walked along the hall to knock for Miss
Fremwell.

 
          
 
"Miss Naomi?" he called, smiling.

 
          
 
The light under her door clicked out at the
sound of his voice.

 
          
 
He stared at the dark keyhole with disbelief.

 
          
 
"Oh, Miss Naomi?" he said again,
quickly.

 
          
 
Nothing happened in the room. It was dark.
After a moment he tried the knob experimentally. The knob rattled. He heard Miss
Fremwell sigh. He heard her say something. Again the words were lost. Her small
feet tapped to the door. The light came on.

 
          
 
"Yes?" she said, behind the panel.

 
          
 
"Look, Miss Naomi," he entreated.
"Open the door. Look."

 
          
 
The bolt of the door snapped back. She jerked
the door open about an inch. One of her eyes looked at him sharply.

 
          
 
"Look," he announced proudly,
adjusting the toupee so it very definitely covered the sunken crater. He
imagined he saw himself in her bureau mirror and was pleased. "Look here,
Miss Fremwell!"

 
          
 
She opened the door a bit wider and looked.
Then she slammed the door and locked it. From behind the thin paneling her
voice was toneless.

 
          
 
"I can still see the hole, Mr.
Lemon," she said.

 
          
 
The rocket metal cooled in the meadow winds.
Its lid gave a bulging pop. From its clock interior stepped a man, a woman, and
three children. The other passengers whispered away across the Martian meadow,
leaving the man alone among his family.

 
          
 
The man felt his hair flutter and the tissues
of his body draw tight as if he were standing at the center of a vacuum. His
wife, before him, seemed almost to whirl away in smoke. The children, small
seeds, might at any instant be sown to all the Martian climes.

 
          
 
The children looked up at him, as people look
to the sun to tell what time of their life it is. His face was cold.

 
          
 
"What's wrong?" asked his wife.

 
          
 
"Let's get back on the rocket."

 
          
 
"Go back to Earth?"

 
          
 
"Yes! Listen!"

 
          
 
The wind blew as if to flake away their
identities. At any moment the Martian air might draw his soul from him, as
marrow comes from a white bone. He felt submerged in a chemical that could
dissolve his intellect and bum away his past.

           
 
They looked at Martian hills that time had
worn with a crushing pressure of years. They saw the old cities, lost in their
meadows, lying like children's delicate bones among the blowing lakes of grass.

 
          
 
"Chin up, Harry," said his wife.
"It's too late. We've come over sixty million miles."

 
          
 
The children with their yellow hair hollered
at the deep dome of Martian sky. There was no answer but the racing hiss of
wind through the stiff grass.

 
          
 
He picked up the luggage in his cold hands.
"Here we go," he said—a man standing on the edge of a sea, ready to
wade in and be drowned.

 
          
 
They walked into town.

 
          
 
Their name was Bittering. Harry and his wife
Cora; Dan, Laura, and David. They built a small white cottage and ate good breakfasts
there, but the fear was never gone. It
lay
with Mr.
Bittering and Mrs. Bittering, a third unbidden partner at every
midnight
talk, at every dawn awakening.

 
          
 
"I feel like a salt crystal," he
said, "in a mountain stream, being washed away. We don't belong here.
We're Earth people. This is Mars. It was meant for Martians. For heaven's sake,
Cora, let's buy tickets for home!"

 
          
 
But she only shook her head. "One day the
atom bomb will fix Earth. Then we'll be safe here."

 
          
 
"Safe and insane!"

 
          
 
Tick-tock,
seven
o'clock
sang the voice-clock; time to get up. And they did.

 
          
 
Something made him check everything each
morning—warm hearth, potted blood-geraniums—precisely as if he expected
something to be amiss. The morning paper was toast-warm from the
6 A.M.
Earth rocket. He broke its seal and
tilted it at his breakfast place. He forced himself to be convivial.

 
          
 
"Colonial days all over again," he
declared. "Why, in ten years there'll be a million Earthmen on Mars. Big
cities, everything! They said we'd fail. Said the Martians would resent our
invasion. But did we find any Martians? Not a living soul! Oh, we found their
empty cities, but no one in them. Right?"

 
          
 
A river of wind submerged the house. When the
windows ceased rattling Mr. Bittering swallowed and looked at the children.

 
          
 
"I don't know," said David.
"Maybe there're Martians around we don't see. Sometimes nights I think I
hear 'em. I hear the wind. The sand hits my window. I get scared. And I see
those towns way up in the mountains where the Martians lived a long time ago.
And I think I see things moving around those towns. Papa. And I wonder if those
Martians mind us living here. I wonder if they won't do something to us for
coming here."

 
          
 
"Nonsense!" Mr. Bittering looked out
the windows. "We're clean, decent people." He looked at his children.
"All dead cities have some kind of ghosts in them. Memories, I mean."
He stared at the hills. "You see a staircase and you wonder what Martians
looked like climbing it. You see Martian paintings and you wonder what the
painter was like. You make a little ghost in your mind, a memory. It's quite
natural. Imagination." He stopped. "You haven't been prowling up in
those ruins, have you?"

 
          
 
"No, Papa." David looked at his
shoes.

 
          
 
"See that you stay away from them. Pass
the jam."

 
          
 
"Just the same," said Httle David,
"I bet something happens."

 
          
 
Something happened that afternoon.

 
          
 
Laura stumbled through the settlement, crying.
She dashed blindly onto the porch.

 
          
 
"Mother, Father—the war, Earth!" she
sobbed. "A radio flash just came. Atom bombs hit
New
York
!
All the space rockets blown
up.
No more rockets to Mars, ever!"

 
          
 
"Oh, Harry!" The mother held onto
her husband and daughter.

 
          
 
"Are you sure, Laura?" asked the
father quietly.

 
          
 
Laura wept. "We're stranded on Mars,
forever and ever!"

 
          
 
For a long time there was only the sound of
the wind in the late afternoon.

 
          
 
Alone, thought Bittering. Only a thousand of
us here. No way back. No way. No way. Sweat poured from his face and his hands
and his body; he was drenched in the hotness of his fear. He wanted to strike
Laura, cry, "No, you're lying! The rockets will come back!" Instead,
he stroked Laura's head against him and said, "The rockets will get
through someday."

 
          
 
"Father, what will we do?"

 
          
 
"Go about our business, of course. Raise
crops and children. Wait. Keep things going until the war ends and the rockets
come again."

 
          
 
The two boys stepped out onto the porch.

 
          
 
"Children," he said, sitting there,
looking beyond them, "I've something to tell you."

 
          
 
"We know," they said.

 
          
 
In the following days, Bittering wandered
often through the garden to stand alone in his fear. As long as the rockets had
spun a silver web across space, he had been able to accept Mars. For he had
always told himself: Tomorrow, if I want, I can buy a ticket and go back to
Earth.

 
          
 
But now: The web gone, the rockets lying in
jigsaw heaps of molten girder and unsnaked wire. Earth people left to the
strangeness of Mars, the cinnamon dusts and wine airs, to be baked like
gingerbread shapes in Martian summers, put into harvested storage by Martian
winters. What would happen to him, the others? This was the moment Mars had
waited for. Now it would eat them.

 
          
 
He got down on his knees in the flower bed, a spade
in his nervous hands. Work, he thought, work and forget.

 
          
 
He glanced up from the garden to the Martian
mountains. He thought of the proud old Martian names that had once been on
those peaks. Earthmen, dropping from the sky, had gazed upon hills, rivers,
Martian seas left nameless in spite of names. Once Martians had built cities,
named cities; climbed mountains, named mountains; sailed seas, named seas.
Mountains melted, seas drained, cities tumbled. In spite of this, the Earthmen
had felt a silent guilt at putting new names to these ancient hills and
valleys.

 
          
 
Nevertheless, man lives by symbol and label.
The names were given.

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering felt very alone in his garden
under the Martian sun, anachronism bent here, planting Earth flowers in a wild
soil.

 
          
 
Think. Keep thinking. Different things. Keep
your mind free of Earth, the atom war, the lost rockets.

 
          
 
He perspired. He glanced about. No one
watching. He removed his tie. Pretty bold, he thought. First your coat off, now
your tie. He hung it neatly on a peach tree he had imported as a sapling from
Massachusetts
,

 
          
 
He returned to his philosophy of names and
mountains. The Earthmen had changed names. Now there were
Hormel
Valleys
,
Roosevelt
Seas
, Ford Hills, Vanderbilt
Plateaus,
Rockefeller
Rivers
, on Mars. It wasn't right.
The American settlers had shown wisdom, using old Indian prairie names:
Wisconsm
,
Minnesota
,
Idaho
,
Ohio
,
Utah
,
Milwaukee
,
Waukegan
,
Osseo
.
The old names, the old
meanings.

 
          
 
Staring at the mountains wildly, he thought:
Are you up there? All the dead ones, you Martians? Well, here we are, alone,
cut off! Come down, move us out! We're helpless!

 
          
 
The wind blew a shower of peach blossoms.

 
          
 
He put out his sun-browned hand, gave a small
cry. He touched the blossoms, picked them up. He turned them, he touched them
again and again. Then he shouted for his wife.

 
          
 
"Cora!"

 
          
 
She appeared at a window. He ran to her.

 
          
 
"Cora, these blossoms!"

 
          
 
She handled them.

 
          
 
“Do you see? They're different. They've
changed! They're not peach blossoms any more!"

 
          
 
"Look all right to me," she said.

 
          
 
"They're not. They're wrong! I can't tell
how. An extra petal, a leaf, something, the color, the smell!"

 
          
 
The children ran out in time to see their
father hurrying about the garden, pulling up radishes, onions, and carrots from
their beds.

 
          
 
"Cora, come look!"

 
          
 
They handled the onions, the radishes, the
carrots among them.

 
          
 
"Do they look like carrots?"

 
          
 
"Yes . . . no." She hesitated.
"I don't know."

 
          
 
"They're changed."

 
          
 
"Perhaps."

 
          
 
"You know they have! Onions but not
onions, carrots but not carrots. Taste: the same but different. Smell: not like
it used to be." He felt his heart pounding, and he was afraid. He dug his
fingers into the earth. "Cora, what's happening? What is it? We've got to
get away from this." He ran across the garden. Each tree felt his touch.
"The roses. The roses. They're turning green!"