Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (45 page)

 
          
 
She bit her lips. "No. Why do you
ask?"

 
          
 
"Never mind."

 
          
 
They sat there.

 
          
 
"The children's eyes," he said.
"They're yellow, too."

 
          
 
"Sometimes growing children's eyes change
color."

 
          
 
"Maybe we're children, too. At least to
Mars. That's a thought." He laughed. "Think I'U swim."

 
          
 
They leaped into the canal water, and he let
himself sink down and down to the bottom like a golden statue and lie there in
green silence. All was water-quiet and deep, all was peace. He felt the steady,
slow current drift him easily.

 
          
 
If I lie here long enough, he thought, the
water will work and eat away my flesh until the bones show like coral. Just my
skeleton left. And then the water can build on that skeleton—green things, deep
water things, red things, yellow things. Change. Change. Slow, deep, silent
change. And isn't that what it is up there?

 
          
 
He saw the sky submerged above him, the sun
made Martian by atmosphere and time and space.

 
          
 
Up there, a big river, he thought, a Martian
river, all of us lying deep in it, in our pebble houses, in our sunken boulder
houses, like crayfish hidden, and the water washing away our old bodies and
lengthening the bones and—

 
          
 
He let himself drift up through the soft
light.

 
          
 
Dan sat on the edge of the canal, regarding
his father seriously.

 
          
 
“Utha,” he said.

 
          
 
"What?" asked his father.

 
          
 
The boy smiled. "You know. Utha's the
Martian word for 'father.'"

 
          
 
"Where did you learn it?"

 
          
 
"I don't know. Around. Utha!"

 
          
 
"What do you want?"

 
          
 
The boy hesitated. "I—I want to change my
name."

 
          
 
"Change it?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
His mother swam over, "What's wrong with
Dan for a name?"

 
          
 
Dan fidgeted. "The other day you called
Dan, Dan, Dan. I didn't even hear. I said to myself, That's not my name. I've a
new name I want to use."

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering held to the side of the canal,
his body cold and his heart pounding slowly. "What is this new name?"

 
          
 
"Linnl. Isn't that a good name? Can I use
it? Can I, please?" Mr. Bittering put his hand to his head. He thought of
the silly rocket, himself working alone, himself alone even among his family,
so alone.

 
          
 
He heard his wife say, "Why not?" He
heard himself say, "Yes, you can use it." "Yaaa!" screamed
the boy. "I'm Linnl, Linnl!" Racing down the meadowlands, he danced
and shouted. Mr. Bittering looked at his wife. "Why did we do that?"
"I don't know," she said. "It just seemed like a good
idea." They walked into the hills. They strolled on old mosaic paths,
beside still pumping fountains. The paths were covered with a thin film of cool
water all summer long. You kept your bare feet cool all the day, splashing as
in a creek, wading.

 
          
 
They came to a small deserted Martian villa
with a good view of the valley. It was on top of a hill. Blue marble halls,
large murals, a swimming pool. It was refreshing in this hot summertime. The
Martians hadn't believed in large cities.

 
          
 
"How nice," said Mrs. Bittering,
"if we could move up here to this villa for the summer."

 
          
 
"Come on," he said. "We're
going back to town. There's work to be done on the rocket."

 
          
 
But as he worked that night, the thought of
the cool blue marble villa entered his mind. As the hours passed, the rocket
seemed less important.

 
          
 
In the flow of days and weeks, the rocket
receded and dwindled. The old fever was gone. It frightened him to think he had
let it slip this way. But somehow the heat, the air, the working conditions—

 
          
 
He heard the men murmuring on the porch of his
metal shop. "Everyone's going. You heard?" "All going. That's
right."

 
          
 
Bittering came out. "Going where?"
He saw a couple of trucks, loaded with children and furniture, drive down the
dusty street.

 
          
 
"Up to the villas," said the man.

 
          
 
"Yeah, Harry. I'm going. So is Sam.
Aren't you, Sam?"

 
          
 
"That's right, Harry. What about
you?"

 
          
 
"I've got work to do here."

 
          
 
"Work! You can finish that rocket in the
autumn, when it's cooler."

 
          
 
He took a breath. "I got the frame all
set up."

 
          
 
"In the autumn is better." Their
voices were lazy in the heat.

 
          
 
"Got to work," he said.

 
          
 
"Autumn," they reasoned. And they
sounded so sensible, so right.

 
          
 
"Autumn would be best," he thought.
"Plenty of time, then."

 
          
 
No! cried part of himself, deep down, put
away, locked tight, suffocating. No! No!

 
          
 
"In the autumn," he said.

 
          
 
"Come on, Harry," they all said.

 
          
 
"Yes," he said, feeling his flesh
melt in the hot liquid air. "Yes, in the autumn. I'U begin work again
then."

 
          
 
"I got a villa near the
Tirra
Canal
," said someone.

 
          
 
"You mean the
Roosevelt
Canal
, don't you?"

 
          
 
"Tirra.
The old
Martian name."

 
          
 
"But on the map—"

 
          
 
"Forget the map. It's Tirra now. Now I found
a place in the Pillan mountains—"

 
          
 
"You mean the Rockefeller range,"
said Bittering.

 
          
 
"I mean the Pillan mountains," said
Sam.

 
          
 
"Yes," said Bittering, buried in the
hot, swarming air. "The Pillan mountains."

 
          
 
Everyone worked at loading the truck in the
hot, still afternoon of the next day.

 
          
 
Laura, Dan, and David carried packages. Or, as
they preferred to be known, Ttil, Linnl, and Werr carried packages.

 
          
 
The furniture was abandoned in the little
white cottage.

 
          
 
"It looked just fine in
Boston
,"
said the mother.
"And here in the cottage.
But up
at the villa? No. We'll get it when we come back in the autumn."

 
          
 
Bittering himself was quiet.

 
          
 
"I've some ideas on furniture for the
villa," he said after a time. "Big, lazy furniture."

 
          
 
"What about your encyclopedia? You're
taking it along, surely?"

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering glanced away. "I'll come
and get it next week."

 
          
 
They turned to their daughter. "What
about
your
New York
dresses?"

 
          
 
The bewildered girl stared. "Why, I don't
want them any more."

 
          
 
They shut off the gas, the water, they locked
the doors and walked away. Father peered into the truck.

 
          
 
"Gosh, we're not taking much," he
said. "Considering all we brought to Mars, this is only a handful!"

 
          
 
He started the truck.

 
          
 
Looking at the small white cottage for a long
moment, he was filled with a desire to rush to it, touch it, say good-by to it,
for he felt as if he were going away on a long journey, leaving something to
which he could never quite return, never understand again.

 
          
 
Just then Sam and his family drove by in
another truck.

 
          
 
"Hi, Bittering! Here we go!"

 
          
 
The truck swung down the ancient highway out
of town. There were sixty others traveling the same direction. The town filled
with a silent, heavy dust from their passage. The canal waters lay blue in the
sun, and a quiet wind moved in the strange trees.

 
          
 
"Good-by, town!" said Mr. Bittering.

 
          
 
"Good-by, good-by," said the family,
waving to it.

 
          
 
They did not look back again.

 
          
 
Summer burned the canals dry. Summer moved
like flame upon the meadows. In the empty Earth settlement, the painted houses
flaked and peeled. Rubber tires upon which children had swung in back yards
hung suspended like stopped clock pendulums in the blazing air.

 
          
 
At the metal shop, the rocket frame began to
rust.

 
          
 
In the quiet autumn Mr. Bittering stood, very
dark now, very golden-eyed, upon the slope above his villa, looking at the
valley.

 
          
 
"It's time to go back," said Cora.

 
          
 
"Yes, but we're not going," he said
quietly. "There's nothing there any more."

 
          
 
"Your books," she said. "Your
fine clothes.

 
          
 
"Your llles and your fine ior uele rre''
she said.

 
          
 
"The town's empty. No one's going
back," he said. "There's no reason to, none at all."

 
          
 
The daughter wove tapestries and the sons
played songs on ancient flutes and pipes, their laughter echoing in the marble
villa.

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering gazed at the Earth settlement
far away in the low valley. "Such odd, such ridiculous houses the Earth
people built."

 
          
 
"They didn't know any better," his
wife mused. "Such ugly people. I'm glad they've gone."

 
          
 
They both looked at each other, startled by
all they had just finished saying. They laughed.

 
          
 
"Where did they go?" he wondered. He
glanced at his wife. She was golden and slender as his daughter. She looked at
him, and he seemed almost as young as their eldest son.