Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (44 page)

 
          
 
And they stood looking at the green roses.

 
          
 
And two days later Dan came running.
"Come see the cow. I was milking her and I saw it. Come on!"

 
          
 
They stood in the shed and looked at their one
cow.

 
          
 
It was growing a third horn.

 
          
 
And the lawn in front of their house very
quietly and slowly was coloring itself like spring violets. Seed from Earth but
growing up a soft purple.

 
          
 
"We must get away," said Bittering.
"We'll eat this stuff and then we'll change—who knows to what? I can't let
it happen. There's only one thing to do. Bum this food!"

 
          
 
"It's not poisoned."

 
          
 
"But it is. Subtly, very subtly. A little
bit. A very little bit. We mustn't touch it."

 
          
 
He looked with dismay at their house.
"Even the house. The wind's done something to it. The air's burned it. The
fog at night. The boards, all warped out of shape. It's not an Earthman's house
any more."

 
          
 
"Oh, your imagination!"

 
          
 
He put on his coat and tie. "I'm going
into town. We've got to do something now. I'll be back."

 
          
 
"Wait, Harry!" his wife cried.

 
          
 
But he was gone.

 
          
 
In town, on the shadowy step of the grocery
store, the men sat with their hands on their knees, conversing with great
leisure and ease.

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering wanted to fire a pistol in the
pack.

 
          
 
What are you doing, you fools! he thought.
Sitting here! You've heard the news—we're stranded on this planet. Well, move!
Aren't you frightened? Aren't you afraid? What are you going to do?

 
          
 
"Hello, Harry," said everyone.

 
          
 
'Took," he said to them. "You did
hear the news, the other day, didn't you?"

 
          
 
They nodded and laughed. "Sure. Sure,
Harry."

 
          
 
"What are you going to do about it?"

 
          
 
"Do, Harry, do? What can we do?"

 
          
 
"Build a rocket, that's what!"

 
          
 
"A rocket, Harry? To go back to all that
trouble? Oh, Harry!"

 
          
 
"But you must want to go back. Have you
noticed the peach blossoms, the onions, the grass?"

 
          
 
"Why, yes, Harry, seems we did,"
said one of the men.

 
          
 
“Doesn't it scare you?"

 
          
 
"Can't recall that it did much,
Harry."

 
          
 
"Idiots!"

 
          
 
"Now, Harry."

 
          
 
Bittering wanted to cry. "You've got to
work with me. If we stay here, we'll all change. The air. Don't you smell it?
Something in the air. A Martian virus, maybe; some seed, or a poUen. Listen to
me!"

 
          
 
They stared at him.

 
          
 
"Sam," he said to one of them.

 
          
 
"Yes, Harry?"

 
          
 
"Will you help me build a rocket?"

 
          
 
"Harry, I got a whole load of metal and some
blueprints. You want to work in my metal shop on a rocket, you're welcome, I'll
sell you that metal for five hundred dollars. You should be able to construct a
right pretty rocket, if you work alone, in about thirty years."

 
          
 
Everyone laughed.

 
          
 
"Don't laugh."

 
          
 
Sam looked at him with quiet good humor.

 
          
 
"Sam," Bittering said. "Your
eyes—"

 
          
 
"What about them, Harry?"

 
          
 
“Didn't they used to be grey?"

 
          
 
"Well now, I don't remember."

 
          
 
"They were, weren't they?"

 
          
 
"Why do you ask, Harry?"

 
          
 
"Because now they're kind of
yellow-colored."

 
          
 
"Is that so, Harry?" Sam said,
casually.

 
          
 
"And you're taller and thinner—"

 
          
 
"You might be right, Harry."

 
          
 
"Sam, you shouldn't have yellow
eyes."

 
          
 
"Harry, what color eyes have you
got?" Sam said.

 
          
 
"My eyes? They're blue, of course."

 
          
 
"Here you are, Harry." Sam handed
him a pocket mirror. "Take a look at yourself."

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering hesitated, and then raised the
mirror to his face.

 
          
 
There were little, very dim flecks of new gold
captured in the blue of his eyes.

 
          
 
"Now look what you've done," said
Sam a moment later. "You've broken my mirror."

 
          
 
Harry Bittering moved into the metal shop and
began to build the rocket. Men stood in the open door and talked and joked
without raising their voices. Once in a while they gave him a hand on lifting
something. But mostly they just idled and watched him with their yellowing
eyes.

 
          
 
"It's suppertime, Harry," they said.

 
          
 
His wife appeared with his supper in a wicker
basket.

 
          
 
"I won't touch it," he said.
"I'll eat only food from our Deepfreeze. Food that came from Earth.
Nothing from our garden."

 
          
 
His wife stood watching him. "You can't
build a rocket."

 
          
 
"I worked in a shop once, when I was
twenty. I know metal. Once I get it started, the others will help," he
said, not looking at her, laying out the blueprints.

 
          
 
"Harry, Harry," she said,
helplessly.

 
          
 
"We've got to get away, Cora. We've got
to!"

 
          
 
The nights were full of wind that blew down the
empty moonlit sea meadows past the little white chess cities lying for their
twelve-thousandth year in the shallows. In the Earthmen's settlement, the
Bittering house shook with a feeling of change.

 
          
 
Lying abed, Mr. Bittering felt his bones
shifted, shaped, melted like gold. His wife, lying beside him, was dark from
many sunny afternoons. Dark she was, and golden-eyed, burnt almost black by the
sun, sleeping, and the children metallic in their beds, and the wind roaring
forlorn and changing through the old peach trees, the violet grass, shaking out
green rose petals.

 
          
 
The fear would not be stopped. It had his
throat and heart. It dripped in a wetness of the arm and the temple and the
trembling palm.

 
          
 
A green star rose in the east.

 
          
 
A strange word emerged from Mr. Bittering's
lips.

 
          
 
"lorrt, lorrt,” He repeated it.

 
          
 
It was a Martian word. He knew no Martian.

 
          
 
In the middle of the night he arose and dialed
a call through to Simpson, the archeologist.

 
          
 
"Simpson, what does the word lorrt
mean?"

 
          
 
"Why that's the old Martian word for our
planet Earth. Why?"

 
          
 
"No special reason."

 
          
 
The telephone slipped from his hand.

 
          
 
"Hello, hello, hello, hello," it
kept saying while he sat gazing out at the green star. "Bittering? Harry,
are you there?"

 
          
 
The days were full of metal sound. He laid the
frame of the rocket with the reluctant help of three indifferent men. He grew
very tired in an hour or so and had to sit down.

 
          
 
"The altitude," laughed a man.

 
          
 
"Are you eating, Harry?" asked
another.

 
          
 
"Fm eating," he said, angrily.

 
          
 
"From your Deepfreeze?"

 
          
 
"Yes!"

 
          
 
"You're getting thinner, Harry."

 
          
 
"I'm not!"

 
          
 
"And taller."

 
          
 
"Liar!"

 
          
 
His wife took him aside a few days later.
"Harry, I've used up all the food in the Deepfreeze. There's nothing left.
I'll have to make sandwiches using food grown on Mars."

 
          
 
He sat down heavily.

 
          
 
"You must eat," she said.
"You're weak."

 
          
 
"Yes," he said.

 
          
 
He took a sandwich, opened it, looked at it,
and began to nibble at it.

 
          
 
"And take the rest of the day off,"
she said. "It's hot. The children want to swim in the canals and hike.
Please come along."

 
          
 
"I can't waste time. This is a
crisis!"

 
          
 
"Just for an hour," she urged.
"A swim'll do you good."

 
          
 
He rose, sweating. "All right, all right.
Leave me alone. I'll come."

 
          
 
"Good for you, Harry."

 
          
 
The sun was hot, the day quiet. There was only
an immense staring burn upon the land. They moved along the canal, the father,
the mother, the racing children in their swim suits. They stopped and ate meat
sandwiches. He saw their skin baking brown. And he saw the yellow eyes of his
wife and his children, their eyes that were never yellow before. A few
tremblings shook him, but were carried off in waves of pleasant heat as he lay
in the sun. He was too tired to be afraid.

 
          
 
"Cora, how long have your eyes been
yellow?"

 
          
 
She was bewildered. "Always, I
guess."

 
          
 
"They didn't change from brown in the
last three months?"