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could easily order the grenades tossed.
But I'm much too nice to be blown to bits, thought
Spender. That's what the captain thinks. He wants me with only
one hole in me. Isn't that odd? He wants my death to be clean.
Nothing messy. Why? Because he understands me. And because
he understands, he's willing to risk good men to give me a
clean shot in the head. Isn't that it?
Nine, ten shots broke out in a rattle. Rocks around him
jumped up. Spender fired steadily, sometimes while glancing at
the silver book he carried in his hand.
The captain ran in the hot sunlight with a rifle in his
hands. Spender followed him in his pistol sights but did not
fire. Instead he shifted and blew the top off a rock where
Whitie lay, and heard an angry shout.
Suddenly the captain stood up. He had a white handkerchief
in his hands. He said something to his men and came walking up
the mountain after putting aside his rifle. Spender lay there,
then got to his feet, his pistol ready.
The captain came up and sat down on a warm boulder, not
looking at Spender for a moment.
The captain reached into his blouse pocket. Spender's
fingers tightened on the pistol.
The captain said, "Cigarette?"
"Thanks." Spender took one.
"Light?"
"Got my own."
They took one or two puffs in silence.
"Warm," said the captain.
"It is."
"You comfortable up here?"
"Quite."
"How long do you think you can hold out?"
"About twelve men's worth."
"Why didn't you kill all of us this morning when you had
the chance? You could have, you know."
"I know. I got sick. When you want to do a thing badly
enough you lie to yourself. You say the other people are all
wrong. Well, soon after I started killing people I realized
they were just fools and I shouldn't be killing them. But it
was too late. I couldn't go on with it then, so I came up here
where I could lie to myself some more and get angry, to build
it all up again.
"Is it built up?"
"Not very high. Enough."
The captain considered his cigarette. "Why did you do it?"
Spender quietly laid his pistol at his feet. "Because I've
seen that what these Martians had was just as good as anything
we'll ever hope to have. They stopped where we should have
stopped a hundred years ago. I've walked in their cities and
I know these people and I'd be glad to call them my ancestors."
"They have a beautiful city there." The captain nodded at
one of several places.
"It's not that alone. Yes, their cities are good. They
knew how to blend art into their living. It's always been a
thing apart for Americans. Art was something you kept in the
crazy son's room upstairs. Art was something you took in Sunday
doses, mixed with religion, perhaps. Well, these Martians have
art and religion and everything."
"You think they knew what it was all about, do you?"
"For my money."
"And for that reason you started shooting people."
"When I was a kid my folks took me to visit Mexico City.
I'll always remember the way my father acted--loud and big. And
my mother didn't like the people because they were dark and
didn't wash enough. And my sister wouldn't talk to most of
them. I was the only one really liked it. And I can see my
mother and father coming to Mars and acting the same way here.
"Anything that's strange is no good to the average
American. If it doesn't have Chicago plumbing, it's nonsense.
The thought of that! Oh God, the thought of that! And then--the
war. You heard the congressional speeches before we left. If
things work out they hope to establish three atomic research
and atom bomb depots on Mars. That means Mars is finished; all
this wonderful stuff gone. How would you feel if a Martian
vomited stale liquor on the White House floor?"
The captain said nothing but listened.
Spender continued: "And then the other power interests
coming up. The mineral men and the travel men. Do you remember
what happened to Mexico when Cortez and his very fine good
friends arrived from Spain? A whole civilization destroyed
by greedy, righteous bigots. History will never forgive
Cortez."
"You haven't acted ethically yourself today," observed
the captain.
"What could I do? Argue with you? It's simply me against
the whole crooked grinding greedy setup on Earth. They'll
be flopping their filthy atoms bombs up here, fighting for
bases to have wars. Isn't it enough they've ruined one planet,
without ruining another; do they have to foul someone else's
manger? The simple-minded windbags. When I got up here I felt
I was not only free of their so-called culture, I felt I was
free of their ethics and their customs. I'm out of their frame
of reference, I thought. All I have to do is kill you all off
and live my own life."
"But it didn't work out," said the captain.
"No. After the fifth killing at breakfast, I discovered
I wasn't all new, all Martian, after all. I couldn't throw
away everything I had learned on Earth so easily. But now
I'm feeling steady again. I'll kill you all off. That'll delay
the next trip in a rocket for a good five years. There's no
other rocket in existence today, save this one. The people on
Earth will wait a year, two years, and when they hear nothing
from us, they'll be very afraid to build a new rocket. They'll
take twice as long and make a hundred extra experimental models
to insure themselves against another failure."
"You're correct."
"A good report from you, on the other hand, if you
returned, would hasten the whole invasion of Mars. If I'm lucky
I'll live to be sixty years old. Every expedition that lands
on Mars will be met by me. There won't be more than one ship at
a time coming up, one every year or so, and never more than
twenty men in the crew. After I've made friends with them
and explained that our rocket exploded one day--I intend to
blow it up after I finish my job this week--I'll kill them off,
every one of them. Mars will be untouched for the next half
century. After a while, perhaps the Earth people will give
up trying. Remember how they grew leery of the idea of building
Zeppelins that were always going down in flames?"
"You've got it all planned," admitted the captain.
"I have."
"Yet you're outnumbered. In an hour we'll have you
surrounded. In an hour you'll be dead."
"I've found some underground passages and a place to live
you'll never find. I'll withdraw there to live for a few weeks.
Until you're off guard. I'll come out then to pick you off, one
by one."
The captain nodded. "Tell me about your civilization
here," he said, waving his hand at the mountain towns.
"They knew how to live with nature and get along with
nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal.
That's the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced
him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered
that Darwin and our religions didn't mix. Or at least we didn't
think they did, We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and
Huxley and Freud. They wouldn't move very well. So, like
idiots, we tried knocking down religion.
"We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went
around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than
a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more
than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given
us answers to all things. But it all went down the drain with
Freud and Darwin. We were and still are a lost people."
"And these Martians are a _found_ people?" inquired
the captain.
"Yes. They knew how to combine science and religion so the
two worked side by side, neither denying the other, each
enriching the other."
"That sounds ideal."
"It was. I'd like to show you how the Martians did it."
"My men are waiting."
"We'll be gone half an hour. Tell them that, sir."
The captain hesitated, then rose and called an order down
the hill.
Spender led him over into a little Martian village built
all of cool perfect marble. There were great friezes of
beautiful animals, white-limbed cat things and yellow-limbed
sun symbols, and statues of bull-like creatures and statues of
men and women and huge fine-featured dogs.
"There's your answer, Captain."
"I don't see."
"The Martians discovered the secret of life among animals.
The animal does not question life. It lives. Its very reason
for living _is_ life; it enjoys and relishes life. You see--the
statuary, the animal symbols, again and again."
"It looks pagan."
"On the contrary, those are God symbols, symbols of life.
Man had become too much man and not enough animal on Mars too.
And the men of Mars realized that in order to survive they
would have to forgo asking that one question any longer: _Why
live?_ Life was its own answer. Life was the propagation of
more life and the living of as good a life is possible. The
Martians realized that they asked the question 'Why live at
all?' at the height of some period of war and despair, when
there was no answer. But once the civilization calmed, quieted,
and wars ceased, the question became senseless in a new way.
Life was now good and needed no arguments."
"It sounds as if the Martians were quite naive."
"Only when it paid to be naive. They quit trying too hard
to destroy everything, to humble everything. They blended
religion and art and science because, at base, science is no
more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain,
and art is an interpretation of that mirade. They never let
science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It's all simply
a matter of degree. An Earth Man thinks: 'In that picture,
color does not exist, really. A scientist can prove that color
is only the way the cells are placed in a certain material
to reflect light. Therefore, color is not really an actual part
of things I happen to see.' A Martian, far cleverer, would say:
"This is a fine picture. It came from the hand and the mind of
a man inspired. Its idea and its color are from life. This
thing is good.'"
There was a pause. Sitting in the afternoon sun, the
captain looked curiously around at the little silent cool town.
"I'd like to live here," he said.
"You may if you want."
"You ask _me_ that?"
"Will any of those men under you ever really understand
all this? They're professional cynics, and it's too late for
them. Why do you want to go back with them? So you can keep up
with the Joneses? To buy a gyro just like Smith has? To listen
to music with your pocketbook instead of your glands? There's
a little patio down here with a reel of Martian music in it
at least fifty thousand years old. It still plays. Music you'll
never hear in your life. You could hear it. There are books.
I've gotten on well in reading them already. You could sit
and read."
"It all sounds quite wonderful, Spender."
"But you won't stay?"
"No. Thanks, anyway."
"And you certainly won't let me stay without trouble. I'll
have to kill you all."
"You're optimistic."
"I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me
a better killer. I've got what amounts to a religion, now.
It's learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in
the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how
to hear music and how to read a book. What does your
civilization offer?"
The captain shifted his feet. He shook his head. "I'm
sorry this is happening. I'm sorry about it all."
"I am too. I guess I'd better take you back now so you
can start the attack."
"I guess so."
"Captain, I won't kill you. When it's all over, you'll
still be alive."
"What?"
"I decided when I started that you'd be untouched."
"Well . . ."
"I'll save you out from the rest. When they're dead,
perhaps you'll change your mind."
"No," said the captain. "There's too much Earth blood in
me. I'll have to keep after you."
"Even when you have a chance to stay here?"
"It's funny, but yes, even with that. I don't know why.
I've never asked myself. Well, here we are." They had returned
to their meeting place now. "Will you come quietly, Spender?
This is my last offer."
"Thanks, no." Spender put out his hand. "One last thing.
If you win, do me a favor. See what can be done to restrict
tearing this planet apart, at least for fifty years, until
the archaeologists have had a decent chance, will you?"
"Right."
"And last--if it helps any, just think of me as a very
crazy fellow who went berserk one summer day and never was
right again. It'll be a little easier on you that way."
"I'll think it over. So long, Spender. Good luck."
"You're an odd one," said Spender as the captain walked
back down the trail in the warm-blowing wind.
The captain returned like something lost to his dusty men.
He kept squinting at the sun and breathing bard.
"Is there a drink?" he said. He felt a bottle put cool
into his hand. "Thanks." He drank. He wiped his mouth.
"All right," he said. "Be careful. We have all the time
we want. I don't want any more lost. You'll have to kill him.
He won't come down. Make it a clean shot if you can. Don't mess
him. Get it over with."
"I'll blow his damned brains out," said Sam Parkhill.
"No, through the chest," said the captain. He could
see Spender's strong, clearly determined face.
"His bloody brains," said Parkhill.
The captain handed him the bottle jerkingly. "You heard
what I said. Through the chest"
Parkhill muttered to himself.
"Now," said the captain.
They spread again, walking and then running, and then
walking on the hot hillside places where there would be sudden
cool grottoes that smelled of moss, and sudden open blasting
places that smelled of sun on stone.
I hate being clever, thought the captain, when you don't
really feel clever and don't want to be clever. To sneak around
and make plans and feel big about making them. I hate this
feeling of thinking I'm doing right when I'm not really certain
I am. Who are we, anyway? The majority? Is that the answer?
The majority is always holy, is it not? Always, always; just
never wrong for one little insignificant tiny moment, is it?
Never ever wrong in ten million years? He thought: What is
this majority and who are in it? And what do they think and how
did they get that way and will they ever change and how the
devil did I get caught in this rotten majority? I don't
feel comfortable. Is it claustrophobia, fear of crowds, or
common sense? Can one man be right, while all the world thinks
they are right? Let's not think about it. Let's crawl around
and act exciting and pull the trigger. There, and _there!_
The men ran and ducked and ran and squatted in shadows
and showed their teeth, gasping, for the air was thin, not
meant for running; the air was thin and they had to sit for
five minutes at a time, wheezing and seeing black lights in
their eyes, eating at the thin air and wanting more, tightening
their eyes, and at last getting up, lifting their guns to tear
holes in that thin summer air, holes of sound and heat.
Spender remained where he was, firing only on occasion.
"Damned brains all over!" Parkhill yelled, running uphill.
The captain aimed his gun at Sam Parkhill. He put it down
and stared at it in horror. "What were you doing?" he asked of
his limp hand and the gun.
He had almost shot Parkhill in the back.
"God help me."
He saw Parkhill still running, then falling to lie safe.
Spender was being gathered in by a loose, running net of
men. At the hilltop, behind two rocks, Spender lay, grinning
with exhaustion from the thin atmosphere, great islands of
sweat under each arm. The captain saw the two rocks. There was
an interval between them of some four inches, giving free
access to Spender's chest.
"Hey, you!" cried Parkhill. "Here's a slug for your head!"
Captain Wilder waited. Go on, Spender, he thought. Get
out, like you said you would. You've only a few minutes to
escape. Get out and come back later. Go on. You said you would.
Go down in the tunnels you said you found, and lie there and
live for months and years, reading your fine books and bathing
in your temple pools. Go on, now, man, before it's too late.
Spender did not move from his position.
"What's wrong with him?" the captain asked himself.
The captain picked up his gun. He watched the running,
hiding men. He looked at the towers of the little clean Martian
village, like sharply carved chess pieces lying in the
afternoon. He saw the rocks and the interval between where
Spender's chest was revealed.
Parkhill was charging up, screaming in fury.
"No, Parkhill," said the captain. "I can't let you do it.
Nor the others. No, none of you. Only me." He raised the gun
and sighted it.
Will I be clean after this? he thought. Is it right that
it's me who does it? Yes, it is. I know what I'm doing for
what reason and it's right, because I think I'm the right
person. I hope and pray I can live up to this.
He nodded his head at Spender. "Go on," he called in a
loud whisper which no one heard. "I'll give you thirty seconds
more to get away. Thirty seconds!"
The watch ticked on his wrist, The captain watched it
tick. The men were running. Spender did not move. The watch
ticked for a long time, very loudly in the captain's ears. "Go
on, Spender, go on, get away!"
The thirty seconds were up.
The gun was sighted. The captain drew a deep breath.
"Spender," he said, exhaling.
He pulled the trigger.
All that happened was that a faint powdering of rock went
up in the sunlight. The echoes of the report faded.
The captain arose and called to his men: "He's dead."
The other men did not believe it. Their angles had
prevented their seeing that particular. fissure in the rocks.
They saw their captain run up the hill, alone, and thought
him either very brave or insane.
The men came after him a few minutes later.
They gathered around the body and someone said, "In the
chest?"
The captain looked down. "In the chest," he said, He saw
how the rocks had changed color under Spender. "I wonder why
he waited. I wonder why he didn't escape as he planned. I
wonder why he stayed on and got himself killed."
"Who knows?" someone said.
Spender lay there, his hands clasped, one around the gun,
the other around the silver book that glittered in the sun.
Was it because of me? thought the captain. Was it because
I refused to give in myself? Did Spender hate the idea of
killing me? Am I any different from these others here? Is that
what did it? Did he figure he could trust me? What other answer
is there?
None. He squatted by the silent body.
I've got to live up to this, he thought. I can't let him
down now. If he figured there was something in me that was
like himself and couldn't kill me because of it, then what a
job I have ahead of me! That's it, yes, that's it. I'm Spender
all over again, but I think before I shoot. I don't shoot at
all, I don't kill. I do things with people. And he couldn't
kill me because I was himself under a slightly different
condition.
The captain felt the sunlight on the back of his neck.
He heard himself talking: "If only he had come to me and talked
it over before he shot anybody, we could have worked it
out somehow."
"Worked what out?" said Parkhill. "What could we have
worked out with _his_ likes?"
There was a singing of heat in the land, off the rocks and
off the blue sky. "I guess you're right," said the captain.
"We could never have got together. Spender and myself, perhaps.
But Spender and you and the others, no, never, He's better off
now. Let me have a drink from that canteen."
It was the captain who suggested the empty sarcophagus
for Spender. They had found an ancient Martian tomb yard. They
put Spender into a silver case with waxes and wines which were
ten thousand years old, his hands folded on his chest. The last
they saw of him was his peaceful face.
They stood for a moment in the ancient vault. "I think
it would be a good idea for you to think of Spender from time
to time," said the captain.
They walked from the vault and shut the marble door.
The next afternoon Parkhill did some target practice in
one of the dead cities, shooting out the crystal windows and
blowing the tops off the fragile towers. The captain caught
Parkhiil and knocked his teeth out.
August 2001: THE SETTLERS
The men of Earth came to Mars.
They came because they were afraid or unafraid, because
they were happy or unhappy, because they felt like Pilgrims or
did not feel like Pilgrims. There was a reason for each man.
They were leaving bad wives or bad jobs or bad towns; they
were coming to find something or leave something or get
something, to dig up something or bury something or leave
something alone. They were coming with small dreams or large
dreams or none at all. But a government finger pointed
from four-color posters in many towns: THERE'S WORK FOR YOU IN
THE SKY: SEE MARS! and the men shuffled forward, only a few
at first, a double-score, for most men felt the great illness
in them even before the rocket fired into space. And this
disease was called The Loneliness, because when you saw your
home town dwindle the size of your fist and then lemon-size and
then pin-size and vanish in the fire-wake, you felt you had
never been born, there was no town, you were nowhere, with
space all around, nothing familiar, only other strange men. And
when the state of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, or Montana vanished
into cloud seas, and, doubly, when the United States shrank to
a misted island and the entire planet Earth became a muddy
baseball tossed away, then you were alone, wandering in the
meadows of space, on your way to a place you couldn't imagine.
So it was not unusual that the first men were few. The
number grew steadily in proportion to the census of Earth
Men already on Mars. There was comfort in numbers. But the
first Lonely Ones had to stand by themselves.
December 2001: THE GREEN MORNING
When the sun set he crouched by the path and cooked a
small supper and listened to the fire crack while he put the
food in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. It had been a day
not unlike thirty others, with many neat holes dug in the dawn
hours, seeds dropped in, and water brought from the bright
canals. Now, with an iron weariness in his slight body, he lay
and watched the sky color from one darkness to another.
His name was Benjamin Driscoll, and he was thirty-one
years old. And the thing that be wanted was Mars grown green
and tall with trees and foliage, producing air, more air,
growing larger with each season; trees to cool the towns in
the boiling summer, trees to hold back the winter winds. There
were so many things a tree could do: add color, provide shade,
drop fruit, or become a children's playground, a whole sky
universe to climb and hang from; an architecture of food
and pleasure, that was a tree. But most of all the trees would
distill an icy air for the lungs, and a gentle rustling for the
ear when you lay nights in your snowy bed and were gentled to
sleep by the sound.
He lay listening to the dark earth gather itself, waiting
for the sun, for the rains that hadn't come yet. His ear to
the ground, he could hear the feet of the years ahead moving at
a distance, and he imagined the seeds he had placed today
sprouting up with green and taking hold on the sky, pushing
out branch after branch, until Mars was an afternoon forest,
Mars was a shining orchard.
In the early morning, with the small sun lifting faintly
among the folded hills, he would be up and finished with a
smoky breakfast in a few minutes and, trodding out the fire
ashes, be on his way with knapsacks, testing, digging, placing
seed or sprout, tamping lightly, watering, going on, whistling,
looking at the clear sky brightening toward a warm noon.
"You need the air," he told his night fire. The fire was
a ruddy, lively companion that snapped back at you, that slept
close by with drowsy pink eyes warm through the chilly night.
"We all need the air. It's a thin air here on Mars. You get
tired so soon. It's like living in the Andes, in South America,
high. You inhale and don't get anything. It doesn't satisfy."
He felt his rib case. In thirty days, how it had grown.
To take in more air, they would all have to build their lungs.
Or plant more trees.
"That's what I'm here for," he said. The fire popped.
"In school they told a story about Johnny Appleseed walking
across America planting apple trees. Well, I'm doing more.
I'm planting oaks, elms, and maples, every kind of tree, aspens
and deodars and chestnuts. Instead of making just fruit for
the stomach, I'm making air for the lungs. When those trees
grow up some year, _think_ of the oxygen they'll make!"
He remembered his arrival on Mars. Like a thousand others,
he had gazed out upon a still morning and thought, How do I
fit here? What will I do? Is there a job for me?
Then he had fainted.
Someone pushed a vial of ammonia to his nose and,
coughing, he came around.
"You'll be all right," said the doctor.
"What happened?"
"The air's pretty thin. Some can't take it. I think you'll
have to go back to Earth."
"No!" He sat up and almost immediately felt his eyes
darken and Mars revolve twice around under him. His nostrils
dilated and he forced his lungs to drink in deep nothingness.
"I'll be all right. I've got to stay here!"
They let him lie gasping in horrid fishlike motions. And
he thought, Air, air, air. They're sending me back because of
air. And he turned his head to look across the Martian fields
and hills. He brought them to focus, and the first thing he
noticed was that there were no trees, no trees at all, as far
as you could look in any direction. The land was down upon
itself, a land of black loam, but nothing on it, not even
grass. Air, he thought, the thin stuff whistling in his
nostrils. Air, air. And on top of hills, or in their shadows,
or even by little creeks, not a tree and not a single green
blade of grass. Of course! He felt the answer came not from
his mind, but his lungs and his throat. And the thought was
like a sudden gust of pure oxygen, raising him up. Trees and
grass. He looked down at his hands and turned them over. He
would plant trees and grass. That would be his job, to fight
against the very thing that might prevent his staying here.
He would have a private horticultural war with Mars. There lay
the old soil, and the plants of it so ancient they had
worn themselves out. But what if new forms were introduced?
Earth trees, great mimosas and weeping willows and magnolias
and magnificent eucalyptus. What then? There was no guessing
what mineral wealth hid in the soil, untapped because the old
ferns, flowers, bushes, and trees had tired themselves to
death.
"Let me up!" he shouted. "I've got to see the
Co-ordinator!"
He and the Co-ordinator had talked an entire morning about
things that grew and were green. It would be months, if not
years, before organized planting began. So far, frosted food
was brought from Earth in flying icicles; a few community
gardens were greening up in hydroponic plants.
"Meanwhile," said the Co-ordinator, "it's your job. We'll
get what seed we can for you, a little equipment. Space on
the rockets is mighty precious now. I'm afraid, since these
first towns are mining communities, there won't be much
sympathy for your tree planting--"
"But you'll let me do it?"
They let him do it. Provided with a single motorcycle, its
bin full of rich seeds and sprouts, he had parked his vehicle
in the valley wilderness and struck out on foot over the land.
That had been thirty days ago, and he had never glanced
back. For looking back would have been sickening to the heart.
The weather was excessively dry; it was doubtful if any seeds
had sprouted yet. Perhaps his entire campaign, his four weeks
of bending and scooping were lost. He kept his eyes only ahead
of him, going on down this wide shallow valley under the sun,
away from First Town, waiting for the rains to come.
Clouds were gathering over the dry mountains now as he
drew his blanket over his shoulders. Mars was a place
as unpredictable as time. He felt the baked hills simmering
down into frosty night, and he thought of the rich, inky soil,
a soil so black and shiny it almost crawled and stirred in your
fist, a rank soil from which might sprout gigantic beanstalks
from which, with bone-shaking concussion, might drop screaming
giants.
The fire fluttered into sleepy ash. The air tremored to
the distant roll of a cartwheel. Thunder. A sudden odor of
water. Tonight, he thought, and put his hand out to feel for
rain. Tonight.
He awoke to a tap on his brow.
Water ran down his nose into his lips. Another drop hit
his eye, blurring it, Another splashed his chin.
The rain.
Raw, gentle, and easy, it mizzled out of the high air,
a special elixir, tasting of spells and stars and air, carrying
a peppery dust in it, and moving like a rare light sherry on
his tongue.
Rain.
He sat up. He let the blanket fall and his blue denim
shirt spot, while the rain took on more solid drops. The fire
looked as though an invisible animal were dancing on it,
crushing it, until it was angry smoke. The rain fell. The great
black lid of sky cracked in six powdery blue chips, like
a marvelous crackled glaze, and rushed down. He saw ten billion
rain crystals, hesitating long enough to be photographed by
the electrical display. Then darkness and water.
He was drenched to the skin, but he held his face up and
let the water hit his eyelids, laughing. He clapped his hands
together and stepped up and walked around his little camp, and
it was one o'clock in the morning.
It rained steadily for two hours and then stopped. The
stars came out, freshly washed and clearer than ever.
Changing into dry clothes from his cellophane pack,
Mr. Benjamin Driscoll lay down and went happily to sleep.
The sun rose slowly among the hills. It broke out upon the
land quietly and wakened Mr. Driscoll where he lay.
He waited a moment before arising. He had worked and
waited a long hot month, and now, standing up, he turned at
last and faced the direction from which he had come.
It was a green morning.
As far as he could see the trees were standing up against
the sky. Not one tree, not two, not a dozen, but the thousands
he had planted in seed and sprout. And not little trees, no,
not saplings, not little tender shoots, but great trees, huge
trees, trees as tall as ten men, green and green and huge and
round and full, trees shimmering their metallic leaves,
trees whispering, trees in a line over hills, lemon trees,
lime trees, redwoods and mimosas and oaks and elms and aspens,
cherry, maple, ash, apple, orange, eucalyptus, stung by
a tumultuous rain, nourished by alien and magical soil and,
even as he watched, throwing out new branches, popping open
new buds.
"Impossible!" cried Mr. Benjamin Driscoll.
But the valley and the morning were green.
And the air!
All about, like a moving current, a mountain river, came
the new air, the oxygen blowing from the green trees. You could
see it shimmer high in crystal billows. Oxygen, fresh, pure,
green, cold oxygen turning the valley into a river delta. In
a moment the town doors would flip wide, people would run
out through the new miracle of oxygen, sniffing, gusting
in lungfuls of it, cheeks pinking with it, noses frozen with
it, lungs revivified, hearts leaping, and worn bodies lifted
into a dance.
Mr. Benjamin Driscoll took one long deep drink of green
water air and fainted.
Before he woke again five thousand new trees had climbed
up into the yellow sun.
February 2002: THE LOCUSTS
The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to
lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmitted water to steam, made
sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered
mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came
like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like
locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And
from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat
the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye,
to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with
nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them
into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages
and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie
stars, and fit green shades to pull against the night. And when
the carpenters had hurried on, the women came in with
flowerpots and chintz and pans and set up a kitchen clamor to
cover the silence that Mars made waiting outside the door and
the shaded window.
In six months a dozen small towns had been laid down upon
the naked planet, filled with sizzling neon tubes and yellow
electric bulbs. In all, some ninety thousand people came to
Mars, and more, on Earth, were packing their grips. . . .
August 2002: NIGHT MEETING
Before going up into the blue hills, Tomбs Gomez stopped
for gasoline at the lonely station.
"Kind of alone out here, aren't you, Pop?" said Tomбs.
The old man wiped off the windshield of the small truck.
"Not bad."
"How do you like Mars, Pop?"
"Fine. Always something new. I made up my mind when I came
here last year I wouldn't expect nothing, nor ask nothing, nor
be surprised at nothing. We've got to forget Earth and how
things were. We've got to look at what we're in here, and
how _different_ it is. I get a hell of a lot of fun out of just
the weather here. It's _Martian_ weather. Hot as hell daytimes,
cold as hell nights. I get a big kick out of the different
flowers and different rain. I came to Mars to retire and I
wanted to retire in a place where everything is different. An
old man needs to have things different. Young people don't want
to talk to him, other old people bore hell out of him. So
I thought the best thing for me is a place so different that
all you got to do is open your eyes and you're entertained. I
got this gas station. If business picks up too much, I'll move
on back to some other old highway that's not so busy, where I
can earn just enough to live on and still have time to feel
the _different_ things here."
"You got the right idea, Pop," said Tomбs, his brown hands
idly on the wheel. He was feeling good. He had been working in
one of the new colonies for ten days straight and now he had
two days off and was on his way to a party.
"I'm not surprised at anything any more," said the old
man. "I'm just looking. I'm just experiencing. If you can't
take Mars for what she is, you might as well go back to
Earth. Everything's crazy up here, the soil, the air, the
canals, the natives (I never saw any yet, but I hear they're
around), the clocks. Even my clock acts funny. Even _time_ is
crazy up here. Sometimes I feel I'm here all by myself, no one
else on the whole damn planet. I'd take bets on it. Sometimes
I feel about eight years old, my body squeezed up and
everything else tall. Jesus, it's just the place for an old
man. Keeps me alert and keeps me happy. You know what Mars is?
It's like a thing I got for Christmas seventy years ago--don't
know if you ever had one--they called them kaleidoscopes, bits
of crystal and cloth and beads and pretty junk. You held it up
to the sunlight and looked in through at it, and it took your
breath away. All the patterns! Well, that's Mars. Enjoy it.
Don't ask it to be nothing else but what it is. Jesus, you know
that highway right there, built by the Martians, is over
sixteen centuries old and still in good condition? That's one
dollar and fifty cents, thanks and good night."
Tomбs drove off down the ancient highway, laughing
quietly.
It was a long road going into darkness and hills and he
held to the wheel, now and again reaching into his lunch bucket
and taking out a piece of candy. He had been driving steadily
for an hour, with no other car on the road, no light, just the
road going under, the hum, the roar, and Mars out there, so
quiet. Mars was always quiet, but quieter tonight than any
other. The deserts and empty seas swung by him, and the
mountains against the stars.
There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled
and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did
Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if
you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water
running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down
upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did
Time _look_ like? Time looked like snow dropping silently into
a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient
theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New
Year balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time
smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight--Tomбs shoved a
hand into the wind outside the truck--tonight you could almost
_touch_ Time.
He drove the truck between hills of Time. His neck
prickled and he sat up, watching ahead.
He pulled into a little dead Martian town, stopped the
engine, and let the silence come in around him. He sat,
not breathing, looking out at the white buildings in the
moonlight. Uninhabited for centuries. Perfect, faultless, in
ruins, yes, but perfect, nevertheless.
He started the engine and drove on another mile or more
before stopping again, climbing out, carrying his lunch bucket,
and walking to a little promontory where he could look back at
that dusty city. He opened his thermos and poured himself a cup
of coffee. A night bird flew by. He felt very good, very much
at peace.
Perhaps five minutes later there was a sound. Off in the
hills, where the ancient highway curved, there was a motion, a
dim light, and then a murmur.
Tomбs turned slowly with the coffee cup in his hand.
And out of the hills came a strange thing.
It was a machine like a jade-green insect, a praying
mantis, delicately rushing through the cold air, indistinct,
countless green diamonds winking over its body, and red jewels
that glittered with multifaceted eyes. Its six legs fell upon
the ancient highway with the sounds of a sparse rain which
dwindled away, and from the back of the machine a Martian with
melted gold for eyes looked down at Tomбs as if he were looking
into a well.
Tomбs raised his hand and thought Hello! automatically but
did not move his lips, for this _was_ a Martian. But Tomбs had
swum in blue rivers on Earth, with strangers passing on the
road, and eaten in strange houses with strange people, and
his weapon had always been his smile. He did not carry a gun.
And he did not feel the need of one now, even with the little
fear that gathered about his heart at this moment
The Martian's hands were empty too. For a moment they
looked across the cool air at each other.
It was Tomis who moved first.
"Hello!" he called.
"Hello!" called the Martian in his own language.
They did not understand each other.
"Did you say hello?" they both asked.
"What did you say?" they said, each in a different tongue.
They scowled.
"Who are you?" said Tomбs in English.
"What are you doing here?" In Martian; the stranger's
lips moved.
"Where are you going?" they said, and looked bewildered.
"I'm Tomбs Gomez."
"I'm Muhe Ca."
Neither understood, but they tapped their chests with the
words and then it became clear.
And then the Martian laughed. "Wait!" Tomбs felt his
head touched, but no hand had touched him. "There!" said the
Martian in English. "That is better!"
"You learned my language, so quick!"
"Nothing at all!"
They looked, embarrassed with a new silence, at the
steaming coffee he had in one hand.
"Something different?" said the Martian, eying him and
the coffee, referring to them both, perhaps.
"May I offer you a drink?" said Tomбs.
"Please."
The Martian slid down from his machine.
A second cup was produced and filled, steaming. Tomбs held
it out.
Their hands met and--like mist--fell through each other.
"Jesus Christ!" cried Tomбs, and dropped the cup.
"Name of the gods!" said the Martian in his own tongue.
"Did you see what happened?" they both whispered.
They were very cold and terrified.
The Martian bent to touch the cup but could not touch it.
"Jesus!" said Tomбs.
"Indeed." The Martian tried again and again to get hold of
the cup, but could not. He stood up and thought for a moment,
then took a knife from his belt. "Hey!" cried Tomбs.
"You misunderstand, catch!" said the Martian, and tossed it.
Tomбs cupped his hands. The knife fell through his flesh. It
hit the ground. Tomбs bent to pick it up but could not touch
it, and he recoiled, shivering.
Now he looked at the Martian against the sky.
"The stars!" he said.
"The stars!" said the Martian, looking, in turn, at Tomбs.
The stars were white and sharp beyond the flesh of the
Martian, and they were sewn into his flesh like scintillas
swallowed into the thin, phosphorescent membrane of a
gelatinous sea fish. You could see stars flickering like violet
eyes in the Martian's stomach and chest, and through his
wrists, like jewelry.
"I can see through you!" said Tomбs.
"And I through you!" said the Martian, stepping back.
Tomбs felt of his own body and, feeling the warmth,
was reassured. _I_ am real, he thought
The Martian touched his own nose and lips. "_I_ have
flesh," he said, half aloud. "_I_ am alive."
Tomбs stared at the stranger. "And if _I_ am real, then
_you_ must be dead."
"No, you!"
"A ghost!"
"A phantom!"
They pointed at each other, with starlight burning in
their limbs like daggers and icicles and fireflies, and then
fell to judging their limbs again, each finding himself intact,
hot, excited, stunned, awed, and the other, ah yes, that other
over there, unreal, a ghostly prism flashing the accumulated
But I'm much too nice to be blown to bits, thought
Spender. That's what the captain thinks. He wants me with only
one hole in me. Isn't that odd? He wants my death to be clean.
Nothing messy. Why? Because he understands me. And because
he understands, he's willing to risk good men to give me a
clean shot in the head. Isn't that it?
Nine, ten shots broke out in a rattle. Rocks around him
jumped up. Spender fired steadily, sometimes while glancing at
the silver book he carried in his hand.
The captain ran in the hot sunlight with a rifle in his
hands. Spender followed him in his pistol sights but did not
fire. Instead he shifted and blew the top off a rock where
Whitie lay, and heard an angry shout.
Suddenly the captain stood up. He had a white handkerchief
in his hands. He said something to his men and came walking up
the mountain after putting aside his rifle. Spender lay there,
then got to his feet, his pistol ready.
The captain came up and sat down on a warm boulder, not
looking at Spender for a moment.
The captain reached into his blouse pocket. Spender's
fingers tightened on the pistol.
The captain said, "Cigarette?"
"Thanks." Spender took one.
"Light?"
"Got my own."
They took one or two puffs in silence.
"Warm," said the captain.
"It is."
"You comfortable up here?"
"Quite."
"How long do you think you can hold out?"
"About twelve men's worth."
"Why didn't you kill all of us this morning when you had
the chance? You could have, you know."
"I know. I got sick. When you want to do a thing badly
enough you lie to yourself. You say the other people are all
wrong. Well, soon after I started killing people I realized
they were just fools and I shouldn't be killing them. But it
was too late. I couldn't go on with it then, so I came up here
where I could lie to myself some more and get angry, to build
it all up again.
"Is it built up?"
"Not very high. Enough."
The captain considered his cigarette. "Why did you do it?"
Spender quietly laid his pistol at his feet. "Because I've
seen that what these Martians had was just as good as anything
we'll ever hope to have. They stopped where we should have
stopped a hundred years ago. I've walked in their cities and
I know these people and I'd be glad to call them my ancestors."
"They have a beautiful city there." The captain nodded at
one of several places.
"It's not that alone. Yes, their cities are good. They
knew how to blend art into their living. It's always been a
thing apart for Americans. Art was something you kept in the
crazy son's room upstairs. Art was something you took in Sunday
doses, mixed with religion, perhaps. Well, these Martians have
art and religion and everything."
"You think they knew what it was all about, do you?"
"For my money."
"And for that reason you started shooting people."
"When I was a kid my folks took me to visit Mexico City.
I'll always remember the way my father acted--loud and big. And
my mother didn't like the people because they were dark and
didn't wash enough. And my sister wouldn't talk to most of
them. I was the only one really liked it. And I can see my
mother and father coming to Mars and acting the same way here.
"Anything that's strange is no good to the average
American. If it doesn't have Chicago plumbing, it's nonsense.
The thought of that! Oh God, the thought of that! And then--the
war. You heard the congressional speeches before we left. If
things work out they hope to establish three atomic research
and atom bomb depots on Mars. That means Mars is finished; all
this wonderful stuff gone. How would you feel if a Martian
vomited stale liquor on the White House floor?"
The captain said nothing but listened.
Spender continued: "And then the other power interests
coming up. The mineral men and the travel men. Do you remember
what happened to Mexico when Cortez and his very fine good
friends arrived from Spain? A whole civilization destroyed
by greedy, righteous bigots. History will never forgive
Cortez."
"You haven't acted ethically yourself today," observed
the captain.
"What could I do? Argue with you? It's simply me against
the whole crooked grinding greedy setup on Earth. They'll
be flopping their filthy atoms bombs up here, fighting for
bases to have wars. Isn't it enough they've ruined one planet,
without ruining another; do they have to foul someone else's
manger? The simple-minded windbags. When I got up here I felt
I was not only free of their so-called culture, I felt I was
free of their ethics and their customs. I'm out of their frame
of reference, I thought. All I have to do is kill you all off
and live my own life."
"But it didn't work out," said the captain.
"No. After the fifth killing at breakfast, I discovered
I wasn't all new, all Martian, after all. I couldn't throw
away everything I had learned on Earth so easily. But now
I'm feeling steady again. I'll kill you all off. That'll delay
the next trip in a rocket for a good five years. There's no
other rocket in existence today, save this one. The people on
Earth will wait a year, two years, and when they hear nothing
from us, they'll be very afraid to build a new rocket. They'll
take twice as long and make a hundred extra experimental models
to insure themselves against another failure."
"You're correct."
"A good report from you, on the other hand, if you
returned, would hasten the whole invasion of Mars. If I'm lucky
I'll live to be sixty years old. Every expedition that lands
on Mars will be met by me. There won't be more than one ship at
a time coming up, one every year or so, and never more than
twenty men in the crew. After I've made friends with them
and explained that our rocket exploded one day--I intend to
blow it up after I finish my job this week--I'll kill them off,
every one of them. Mars will be untouched for the next half
century. After a while, perhaps the Earth people will give
up trying. Remember how they grew leery of the idea of building
Zeppelins that were always going down in flames?"
"You've got it all planned," admitted the captain.
"I have."
"Yet you're outnumbered. In an hour we'll have you
surrounded. In an hour you'll be dead."
"I've found some underground passages and a place to live
you'll never find. I'll withdraw there to live for a few weeks.
Until you're off guard. I'll come out then to pick you off, one
by one."
The captain nodded. "Tell me about your civilization
here," he said, waving his hand at the mountain towns.
"They knew how to live with nature and get along with
nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal.
That's the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced
him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered
that Darwin and our religions didn't mix. Or at least we didn't
think they did, We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and
Huxley and Freud. They wouldn't move very well. So, like
idiots, we tried knocking down religion.
"We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went
around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than
a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more
than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given
us answers to all things. But it all went down the drain with
Freud and Darwin. We were and still are a lost people."
"And these Martians are a _found_ people?" inquired
the captain.
"Yes. They knew how to combine science and religion so the
two worked side by side, neither denying the other, each
enriching the other."
"That sounds ideal."
"It was. I'd like to show you how the Martians did it."
"My men are waiting."
"We'll be gone half an hour. Tell them that, sir."
The captain hesitated, then rose and called an order down
the hill.
Spender led him over into a little Martian village built
all of cool perfect marble. There were great friezes of
beautiful animals, white-limbed cat things and yellow-limbed
sun symbols, and statues of bull-like creatures and statues of
men and women and huge fine-featured dogs.
"There's your answer, Captain."
"I don't see."
"The Martians discovered the secret of life among animals.
The animal does not question life. It lives. Its very reason
for living _is_ life; it enjoys and relishes life. You see--the
statuary, the animal symbols, again and again."
"It looks pagan."
"On the contrary, those are God symbols, symbols of life.
Man had become too much man and not enough animal on Mars too.
And the men of Mars realized that in order to survive they
would have to forgo asking that one question any longer: _Why
live?_ Life was its own answer. Life was the propagation of
more life and the living of as good a life is possible. The
Martians realized that they asked the question 'Why live at
all?' at the height of some period of war and despair, when
there was no answer. But once the civilization calmed, quieted,
and wars ceased, the question became senseless in a new way.
Life was now good and needed no arguments."
"It sounds as if the Martians were quite naive."
"Only when it paid to be naive. They quit trying too hard
to destroy everything, to humble everything. They blended
religion and art and science because, at base, science is no
more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain,
and art is an interpretation of that mirade. They never let
science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It's all simply
a matter of degree. An Earth Man thinks: 'In that picture,
color does not exist, really. A scientist can prove that color
is only the way the cells are placed in a certain material
to reflect light. Therefore, color is not really an actual part
of things I happen to see.' A Martian, far cleverer, would say:
"This is a fine picture. It came from the hand and the mind of
a man inspired. Its idea and its color are from life. This
thing is good.'"
There was a pause. Sitting in the afternoon sun, the
captain looked curiously around at the little silent cool town.
"I'd like to live here," he said.
"You may if you want."
"You ask _me_ that?"
"Will any of those men under you ever really understand
all this? They're professional cynics, and it's too late for
them. Why do you want to go back with them? So you can keep up
with the Joneses? To buy a gyro just like Smith has? To listen
to music with your pocketbook instead of your glands? There's
a little patio down here with a reel of Martian music in it
at least fifty thousand years old. It still plays. Music you'll
never hear in your life. You could hear it. There are books.
I've gotten on well in reading them already. You could sit
and read."
"It all sounds quite wonderful, Spender."
"But you won't stay?"
"No. Thanks, anyway."
"And you certainly won't let me stay without trouble. I'll
have to kill you all."
"You're optimistic."
"I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me
a better killer. I've got what amounts to a religion, now.
It's learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in
the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how
to hear music and how to read a book. What does your
civilization offer?"
The captain shifted his feet. He shook his head. "I'm
sorry this is happening. I'm sorry about it all."
"I am too. I guess I'd better take you back now so you
can start the attack."
"I guess so."
"Captain, I won't kill you. When it's all over, you'll
still be alive."
"What?"
"I decided when I started that you'd be untouched."
"Well . . ."
"I'll save you out from the rest. When they're dead,
perhaps you'll change your mind."
"No," said the captain. "There's too much Earth blood in
me. I'll have to keep after you."
"Even when you have a chance to stay here?"
"It's funny, but yes, even with that. I don't know why.
I've never asked myself. Well, here we are." They had returned
to their meeting place now. "Will you come quietly, Spender?
This is my last offer."
"Thanks, no." Spender put out his hand. "One last thing.
If you win, do me a favor. See what can be done to restrict
tearing this planet apart, at least for fifty years, until
the archaeologists have had a decent chance, will you?"
"Right."
"And last--if it helps any, just think of me as a very
crazy fellow who went berserk one summer day and never was
right again. It'll be a little easier on you that way."
"I'll think it over. So long, Spender. Good luck."
"You're an odd one," said Spender as the captain walked
back down the trail in the warm-blowing wind.
The captain returned like something lost to his dusty men.
He kept squinting at the sun and breathing bard.
"Is there a drink?" he said. He felt a bottle put cool
into his hand. "Thanks." He drank. He wiped his mouth.
"All right," he said. "Be careful. We have all the time
we want. I don't want any more lost. You'll have to kill him.
He won't come down. Make it a clean shot if you can. Don't mess
him. Get it over with."
"I'll blow his damned brains out," said Sam Parkhill.
"No, through the chest," said the captain. He could
see Spender's strong, clearly determined face.
"His bloody brains," said Parkhill.
The captain handed him the bottle jerkingly. "You heard
what I said. Through the chest"
Parkhill muttered to himself.
"Now," said the captain.
They spread again, walking and then running, and then
walking on the hot hillside places where there would be sudden
cool grottoes that smelled of moss, and sudden open blasting
places that smelled of sun on stone.
I hate being clever, thought the captain, when you don't
really feel clever and don't want to be clever. To sneak around
and make plans and feel big about making them. I hate this
feeling of thinking I'm doing right when I'm not really certain
I am. Who are we, anyway? The majority? Is that the answer?
The majority is always holy, is it not? Always, always; just
never wrong for one little insignificant tiny moment, is it?
Never ever wrong in ten million years? He thought: What is
this majority and who are in it? And what do they think and how
did they get that way and will they ever change and how the
devil did I get caught in this rotten majority? I don't
feel comfortable. Is it claustrophobia, fear of crowds, or
common sense? Can one man be right, while all the world thinks
they are right? Let's not think about it. Let's crawl around
and act exciting and pull the trigger. There, and _there!_
The men ran and ducked and ran and squatted in shadows
and showed their teeth, gasping, for the air was thin, not
meant for running; the air was thin and they had to sit for
five minutes at a time, wheezing and seeing black lights in
their eyes, eating at the thin air and wanting more, tightening
their eyes, and at last getting up, lifting their guns to tear
holes in that thin summer air, holes of sound and heat.
Spender remained where he was, firing only on occasion.
"Damned brains all over!" Parkhill yelled, running uphill.
The captain aimed his gun at Sam Parkhill. He put it down
and stared at it in horror. "What were you doing?" he asked of
his limp hand and the gun.
He had almost shot Parkhill in the back.
"God help me."
He saw Parkhill still running, then falling to lie safe.
Spender was being gathered in by a loose, running net of
men. At the hilltop, behind two rocks, Spender lay, grinning
with exhaustion from the thin atmosphere, great islands of
sweat under each arm. The captain saw the two rocks. There was
an interval between them of some four inches, giving free
access to Spender's chest.
"Hey, you!" cried Parkhill. "Here's a slug for your head!"
Captain Wilder waited. Go on, Spender, he thought. Get
out, like you said you would. You've only a few minutes to
escape. Get out and come back later. Go on. You said you would.
Go down in the tunnels you said you found, and lie there and
live for months and years, reading your fine books and bathing
in your temple pools. Go on, now, man, before it's too late.
Spender did not move from his position.
"What's wrong with him?" the captain asked himself.
The captain picked up his gun. He watched the running,
hiding men. He looked at the towers of the little clean Martian
village, like sharply carved chess pieces lying in the
afternoon. He saw the rocks and the interval between where
Spender's chest was revealed.
Parkhill was charging up, screaming in fury.
"No, Parkhill," said the captain. "I can't let you do it.
Nor the others. No, none of you. Only me." He raised the gun
and sighted it.
Will I be clean after this? he thought. Is it right that
it's me who does it? Yes, it is. I know what I'm doing for
what reason and it's right, because I think I'm the right
person. I hope and pray I can live up to this.
He nodded his head at Spender. "Go on," he called in a
loud whisper which no one heard. "I'll give you thirty seconds
more to get away. Thirty seconds!"
The watch ticked on his wrist, The captain watched it
tick. The men were running. Spender did not move. The watch
ticked for a long time, very loudly in the captain's ears. "Go
on, Spender, go on, get away!"
The thirty seconds were up.
The gun was sighted. The captain drew a deep breath.
"Spender," he said, exhaling.
He pulled the trigger.
All that happened was that a faint powdering of rock went
up in the sunlight. The echoes of the report faded.
The captain arose and called to his men: "He's dead."
The other men did not believe it. Their angles had
prevented their seeing that particular. fissure in the rocks.
They saw their captain run up the hill, alone, and thought
him either very brave or insane.
The men came after him a few minutes later.
They gathered around the body and someone said, "In the
chest?"
The captain looked down. "In the chest," he said, He saw
how the rocks had changed color under Spender. "I wonder why
he waited. I wonder why he didn't escape as he planned. I
wonder why he stayed on and got himself killed."
"Who knows?" someone said.
Spender lay there, his hands clasped, one around the gun,
the other around the silver book that glittered in the sun.
Was it because of me? thought the captain. Was it because
I refused to give in myself? Did Spender hate the idea of
killing me? Am I any different from these others here? Is that
what did it? Did he figure he could trust me? What other answer
is there?
None. He squatted by the silent body.
I've got to live up to this, he thought. I can't let him
down now. If he figured there was something in me that was
like himself and couldn't kill me because of it, then what a
job I have ahead of me! That's it, yes, that's it. I'm Spender
all over again, but I think before I shoot. I don't shoot at
all, I don't kill. I do things with people. And he couldn't
kill me because I was himself under a slightly different
condition.
The captain felt the sunlight on the back of his neck.
He heard himself talking: "If only he had come to me and talked
it over before he shot anybody, we could have worked it
out somehow."
"Worked what out?" said Parkhill. "What could we have
worked out with _his_ likes?"
There was a singing of heat in the land, off the rocks and
off the blue sky. "I guess you're right," said the captain.
"We could never have got together. Spender and myself, perhaps.
But Spender and you and the others, no, never, He's better off
now. Let me have a drink from that canteen."
It was the captain who suggested the empty sarcophagus
for Spender. They had found an ancient Martian tomb yard. They
put Spender into a silver case with waxes and wines which were
ten thousand years old, his hands folded on his chest. The last
they saw of him was his peaceful face.
They stood for a moment in the ancient vault. "I think
it would be a good idea for you to think of Spender from time
to time," said the captain.
They walked from the vault and shut the marble door.
The next afternoon Parkhill did some target practice in
one of the dead cities, shooting out the crystal windows and
blowing the tops off the fragile towers. The captain caught
Parkhiil and knocked his teeth out.
August 2001: THE SETTLERS
The men of Earth came to Mars.
They came because they were afraid or unafraid, because
they were happy or unhappy, because they felt like Pilgrims or
did not feel like Pilgrims. There was a reason for each man.
They were leaving bad wives or bad jobs or bad towns; they
were coming to find something or leave something or get
something, to dig up something or bury something or leave
something alone. They were coming with small dreams or large
dreams or none at all. But a government finger pointed
from four-color posters in many towns: THERE'S WORK FOR YOU IN
THE SKY: SEE MARS! and the men shuffled forward, only a few
at first, a double-score, for most men felt the great illness
in them even before the rocket fired into space. And this
disease was called The Loneliness, because when you saw your
home town dwindle the size of your fist and then lemon-size and
then pin-size and vanish in the fire-wake, you felt you had
never been born, there was no town, you were nowhere, with
space all around, nothing familiar, only other strange men. And
when the state of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, or Montana vanished
into cloud seas, and, doubly, when the United States shrank to
a misted island and the entire planet Earth became a muddy
baseball tossed away, then you were alone, wandering in the
meadows of space, on your way to a place you couldn't imagine.
So it was not unusual that the first men were few. The
number grew steadily in proportion to the census of Earth
Men already on Mars. There was comfort in numbers. But the
first Lonely Ones had to stand by themselves.
December 2001: THE GREEN MORNING
When the sun set he crouched by the path and cooked a
small supper and listened to the fire crack while he put the
food in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. It had been a day
not unlike thirty others, with many neat holes dug in the dawn
hours, seeds dropped in, and water brought from the bright
canals. Now, with an iron weariness in his slight body, he lay
and watched the sky color from one darkness to another.
His name was Benjamin Driscoll, and he was thirty-one
years old. And the thing that be wanted was Mars grown green
and tall with trees and foliage, producing air, more air,
growing larger with each season; trees to cool the towns in
the boiling summer, trees to hold back the winter winds. There
were so many things a tree could do: add color, provide shade,
drop fruit, or become a children's playground, a whole sky
universe to climb and hang from; an architecture of food
and pleasure, that was a tree. But most of all the trees would
distill an icy air for the lungs, and a gentle rustling for the
ear when you lay nights in your snowy bed and were gentled to
sleep by the sound.
He lay listening to the dark earth gather itself, waiting
for the sun, for the rains that hadn't come yet. His ear to
the ground, he could hear the feet of the years ahead moving at
a distance, and he imagined the seeds he had placed today
sprouting up with green and taking hold on the sky, pushing
out branch after branch, until Mars was an afternoon forest,
Mars was a shining orchard.
In the early morning, with the small sun lifting faintly
among the folded hills, he would be up and finished with a
smoky breakfast in a few minutes and, trodding out the fire
ashes, be on his way with knapsacks, testing, digging, placing
seed or sprout, tamping lightly, watering, going on, whistling,
looking at the clear sky brightening toward a warm noon.
"You need the air," he told his night fire. The fire was
a ruddy, lively companion that snapped back at you, that slept
close by with drowsy pink eyes warm through the chilly night.
"We all need the air. It's a thin air here on Mars. You get
tired so soon. It's like living in the Andes, in South America,
high. You inhale and don't get anything. It doesn't satisfy."
He felt his rib case. In thirty days, how it had grown.
To take in more air, they would all have to build their lungs.
Or plant more trees.
"That's what I'm here for," he said. The fire popped.
"In school they told a story about Johnny Appleseed walking
across America planting apple trees. Well, I'm doing more.
I'm planting oaks, elms, and maples, every kind of tree, aspens
and deodars and chestnuts. Instead of making just fruit for
the stomach, I'm making air for the lungs. When those trees
grow up some year, _think_ of the oxygen they'll make!"
He remembered his arrival on Mars. Like a thousand others,
he had gazed out upon a still morning and thought, How do I
fit here? What will I do? Is there a job for me?
Then he had fainted.
Someone pushed a vial of ammonia to his nose and,
coughing, he came around.
"You'll be all right," said the doctor.
"What happened?"
"The air's pretty thin. Some can't take it. I think you'll
have to go back to Earth."
"No!" He sat up and almost immediately felt his eyes
darken and Mars revolve twice around under him. His nostrils
dilated and he forced his lungs to drink in deep nothingness.
"I'll be all right. I've got to stay here!"
They let him lie gasping in horrid fishlike motions. And
he thought, Air, air, air. They're sending me back because of
air. And he turned his head to look across the Martian fields
and hills. He brought them to focus, and the first thing he
noticed was that there were no trees, no trees at all, as far
as you could look in any direction. The land was down upon
itself, a land of black loam, but nothing on it, not even
grass. Air, he thought, the thin stuff whistling in his
nostrils. Air, air. And on top of hills, or in their shadows,
or even by little creeks, not a tree and not a single green
blade of grass. Of course! He felt the answer came not from
his mind, but his lungs and his throat. And the thought was
like a sudden gust of pure oxygen, raising him up. Trees and
grass. He looked down at his hands and turned them over. He
would plant trees and grass. That would be his job, to fight
against the very thing that might prevent his staying here.
He would have a private horticultural war with Mars. There lay
the old soil, and the plants of it so ancient they had
worn themselves out. But what if new forms were introduced?
Earth trees, great mimosas and weeping willows and magnolias
and magnificent eucalyptus. What then? There was no guessing
what mineral wealth hid in the soil, untapped because the old
ferns, flowers, bushes, and trees had tired themselves to
death.
"Let me up!" he shouted. "I've got to see the
Co-ordinator!"
He and the Co-ordinator had talked an entire morning about
things that grew and were green. It would be months, if not
years, before organized planting began. So far, frosted food
was brought from Earth in flying icicles; a few community
gardens were greening up in hydroponic plants.
"Meanwhile," said the Co-ordinator, "it's your job. We'll
get what seed we can for you, a little equipment. Space on
the rockets is mighty precious now. I'm afraid, since these
first towns are mining communities, there won't be much
sympathy for your tree planting--"
"But you'll let me do it?"
They let him do it. Provided with a single motorcycle, its
bin full of rich seeds and sprouts, he had parked his vehicle
in the valley wilderness and struck out on foot over the land.
That had been thirty days ago, and he had never glanced
back. For looking back would have been sickening to the heart.
The weather was excessively dry; it was doubtful if any seeds
had sprouted yet. Perhaps his entire campaign, his four weeks
of bending and scooping were lost. He kept his eyes only ahead
of him, going on down this wide shallow valley under the sun,
away from First Town, waiting for the rains to come.
Clouds were gathering over the dry mountains now as he
drew his blanket over his shoulders. Mars was a place
as unpredictable as time. He felt the baked hills simmering
down into frosty night, and he thought of the rich, inky soil,
a soil so black and shiny it almost crawled and stirred in your
fist, a rank soil from which might sprout gigantic beanstalks
from which, with bone-shaking concussion, might drop screaming
giants.
The fire fluttered into sleepy ash. The air tremored to
the distant roll of a cartwheel. Thunder. A sudden odor of
water. Tonight, he thought, and put his hand out to feel for
rain. Tonight.
He awoke to a tap on his brow.
Water ran down his nose into his lips. Another drop hit
his eye, blurring it, Another splashed his chin.
The rain.
Raw, gentle, and easy, it mizzled out of the high air,
a special elixir, tasting of spells and stars and air, carrying
a peppery dust in it, and moving like a rare light sherry on
his tongue.
Rain.
He sat up. He let the blanket fall and his blue denim
shirt spot, while the rain took on more solid drops. The fire
looked as though an invisible animal were dancing on it,
crushing it, until it was angry smoke. The rain fell. The great
black lid of sky cracked in six powdery blue chips, like
a marvelous crackled glaze, and rushed down. He saw ten billion
rain crystals, hesitating long enough to be photographed by
the electrical display. Then darkness and water.
He was drenched to the skin, but he held his face up and
let the water hit his eyelids, laughing. He clapped his hands
together and stepped up and walked around his little camp, and
it was one o'clock in the morning.
It rained steadily for two hours and then stopped. The
stars came out, freshly washed and clearer than ever.
Changing into dry clothes from his cellophane pack,
Mr. Benjamin Driscoll lay down and went happily to sleep.
The sun rose slowly among the hills. It broke out upon the
land quietly and wakened Mr. Driscoll where he lay.
He waited a moment before arising. He had worked and
waited a long hot month, and now, standing up, he turned at
last and faced the direction from which he had come.
It was a green morning.
As far as he could see the trees were standing up against
the sky. Not one tree, not two, not a dozen, but the thousands
he had planted in seed and sprout. And not little trees, no,
not saplings, not little tender shoots, but great trees, huge
trees, trees as tall as ten men, green and green and huge and
round and full, trees shimmering their metallic leaves,
trees whispering, trees in a line over hills, lemon trees,
lime trees, redwoods and mimosas and oaks and elms and aspens,
cherry, maple, ash, apple, orange, eucalyptus, stung by
a tumultuous rain, nourished by alien and magical soil and,
even as he watched, throwing out new branches, popping open
new buds.
"Impossible!" cried Mr. Benjamin Driscoll.
But the valley and the morning were green.
And the air!
All about, like a moving current, a mountain river, came
the new air, the oxygen blowing from the green trees. You could
see it shimmer high in crystal billows. Oxygen, fresh, pure,
green, cold oxygen turning the valley into a river delta. In
a moment the town doors would flip wide, people would run
out through the new miracle of oxygen, sniffing, gusting
in lungfuls of it, cheeks pinking with it, noses frozen with
it, lungs revivified, hearts leaping, and worn bodies lifted
into a dance.
Mr. Benjamin Driscoll took one long deep drink of green
water air and fainted.
Before he woke again five thousand new trees had climbed
up into the yellow sun.
February 2002: THE LOCUSTS
The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to
lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmitted water to steam, made
sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered
mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came
like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like
locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And
from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat
the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye,
to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with
nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them
into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages
and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie
stars, and fit green shades to pull against the night. And when
the carpenters had hurried on, the women came in with
flowerpots and chintz and pans and set up a kitchen clamor to
cover the silence that Mars made waiting outside the door and
the shaded window.
In six months a dozen small towns had been laid down upon
the naked planet, filled with sizzling neon tubes and yellow
electric bulbs. In all, some ninety thousand people came to
Mars, and more, on Earth, were packing their grips. . . .
August 2002: NIGHT MEETING
Before going up into the blue hills, Tomбs Gomez stopped
for gasoline at the lonely station.
"Kind of alone out here, aren't you, Pop?" said Tomбs.
The old man wiped off the windshield of the small truck.
"Not bad."
"How do you like Mars, Pop?"
"Fine. Always something new. I made up my mind when I came
here last year I wouldn't expect nothing, nor ask nothing, nor
be surprised at nothing. We've got to forget Earth and how
things were. We've got to look at what we're in here, and
how _different_ it is. I get a hell of a lot of fun out of just
the weather here. It's _Martian_ weather. Hot as hell daytimes,
cold as hell nights. I get a big kick out of the different
flowers and different rain. I came to Mars to retire and I
wanted to retire in a place where everything is different. An
old man needs to have things different. Young people don't want
to talk to him, other old people bore hell out of him. So
I thought the best thing for me is a place so different that
all you got to do is open your eyes and you're entertained. I
got this gas station. If business picks up too much, I'll move
on back to some other old highway that's not so busy, where I
can earn just enough to live on and still have time to feel
the _different_ things here."
"You got the right idea, Pop," said Tomбs, his brown hands
idly on the wheel. He was feeling good. He had been working in
one of the new colonies for ten days straight and now he had
two days off and was on his way to a party.
"I'm not surprised at anything any more," said the old
man. "I'm just looking. I'm just experiencing. If you can't
take Mars for what she is, you might as well go back to
Earth. Everything's crazy up here, the soil, the air, the
canals, the natives (I never saw any yet, but I hear they're
around), the clocks. Even my clock acts funny. Even _time_ is
crazy up here. Sometimes I feel I'm here all by myself, no one
else on the whole damn planet. I'd take bets on it. Sometimes
I feel about eight years old, my body squeezed up and
everything else tall. Jesus, it's just the place for an old
man. Keeps me alert and keeps me happy. You know what Mars is?
It's like a thing I got for Christmas seventy years ago--don't
know if you ever had one--they called them kaleidoscopes, bits
of crystal and cloth and beads and pretty junk. You held it up
to the sunlight and looked in through at it, and it took your
breath away. All the patterns! Well, that's Mars. Enjoy it.
Don't ask it to be nothing else but what it is. Jesus, you know
that highway right there, built by the Martians, is over
sixteen centuries old and still in good condition? That's one
dollar and fifty cents, thanks and good night."
Tomбs drove off down the ancient highway, laughing
quietly.
It was a long road going into darkness and hills and he
held to the wheel, now and again reaching into his lunch bucket
and taking out a piece of candy. He had been driving steadily
for an hour, with no other car on the road, no light, just the
road going under, the hum, the roar, and Mars out there, so
quiet. Mars was always quiet, but quieter tonight than any
other. The deserts and empty seas swung by him, and the
mountains against the stars.
There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled
and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did
Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if
you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water
running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down
upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did
Time _look_ like? Time looked like snow dropping silently into
a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient
theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New
Year balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time
smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight--Tomбs shoved a
hand into the wind outside the truck--tonight you could almost
_touch_ Time.
He drove the truck between hills of Time. His neck
prickled and he sat up, watching ahead.
He pulled into a little dead Martian town, stopped the
engine, and let the silence come in around him. He sat,
not breathing, looking out at the white buildings in the
moonlight. Uninhabited for centuries. Perfect, faultless, in
ruins, yes, but perfect, nevertheless.
He started the engine and drove on another mile or more
before stopping again, climbing out, carrying his lunch bucket,
and walking to a little promontory where he could look back at
that dusty city. He opened his thermos and poured himself a cup
of coffee. A night bird flew by. He felt very good, very much
at peace.
Perhaps five minutes later there was a sound. Off in the
hills, where the ancient highway curved, there was a motion, a
dim light, and then a murmur.
Tomбs turned slowly with the coffee cup in his hand.
And out of the hills came a strange thing.
It was a machine like a jade-green insect, a praying
mantis, delicately rushing through the cold air, indistinct,
countless green diamonds winking over its body, and red jewels
that glittered with multifaceted eyes. Its six legs fell upon
the ancient highway with the sounds of a sparse rain which
dwindled away, and from the back of the machine a Martian with
melted gold for eyes looked down at Tomбs as if he were looking
into a well.
Tomбs raised his hand and thought Hello! automatically but
did not move his lips, for this _was_ a Martian. But Tomбs had
swum in blue rivers on Earth, with strangers passing on the
road, and eaten in strange houses with strange people, and
his weapon had always been his smile. He did not carry a gun.
And he did not feel the need of one now, even with the little
fear that gathered about his heart at this moment
The Martian's hands were empty too. For a moment they
looked across the cool air at each other.
It was Tomis who moved first.
"Hello!" he called.
"Hello!" called the Martian in his own language.
They did not understand each other.
"Did you say hello?" they both asked.
"What did you say?" they said, each in a different tongue.
They scowled.
"Who are you?" said Tomбs in English.
"What are you doing here?" In Martian; the stranger's
lips moved.
"Where are you going?" they said, and looked bewildered.
"I'm Tomбs Gomez."
"I'm Muhe Ca."
Neither understood, but they tapped their chests with the
words and then it became clear.
And then the Martian laughed. "Wait!" Tomбs felt his
head touched, but no hand had touched him. "There!" said the
Martian in English. "That is better!"
"You learned my language, so quick!"
"Nothing at all!"
They looked, embarrassed with a new silence, at the
steaming coffee he had in one hand.
"Something different?" said the Martian, eying him and
the coffee, referring to them both, perhaps.
"May I offer you a drink?" said Tomбs.
"Please."
The Martian slid down from his machine.
A second cup was produced and filled, steaming. Tomбs held
it out.
Their hands met and--like mist--fell through each other.
"Jesus Christ!" cried Tomбs, and dropped the cup.
"Name of the gods!" said the Martian in his own tongue.
"Did you see what happened?" they both whispered.
They were very cold and terrified.
The Martian bent to touch the cup but could not touch it.
"Jesus!" said Tomбs.
"Indeed." The Martian tried again and again to get hold of
the cup, but could not. He stood up and thought for a moment,
then took a knife from his belt. "Hey!" cried Tomбs.
"You misunderstand, catch!" said the Martian, and tossed it.
Tomбs cupped his hands. The knife fell through his flesh. It
hit the ground. Tomбs bent to pick it up but could not touch
it, and he recoiled, shivering.
Now he looked at the Martian against the sky.
"The stars!" he said.
"The stars!" said the Martian, looking, in turn, at Tomбs.
The stars were white and sharp beyond the flesh of the
Martian, and they were sewn into his flesh like scintillas
swallowed into the thin, phosphorescent membrane of a
gelatinous sea fish. You could see stars flickering like violet
eyes in the Martian's stomach and chest, and through his
wrists, like jewelry.
"I can see through you!" said Tomбs.
"And I through you!" said the Martian, stepping back.
Tomбs felt of his own body and, feeling the warmth,
was reassured. _I_ am real, he thought
The Martian touched his own nose and lips. "_I_ have
flesh," he said, half aloud. "_I_ am alive."
Tomбs stared at the stranger. "And if _I_ am real, then
_you_ must be dead."
"No, you!"
"A ghost!"
"A phantom!"
They pointed at each other, with starlight burning in
their limbs like daggers and icicles and fireflies, and then
fell to judging their limbs again, each finding himself intact,
hot, excited, stunned, awed, and the other, ah yes, that other
over there, unreal, a ghostly prism flashing the accumulated