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he quoted in part: "Does the whole structure cause an 'iciness,
a sickening of the heart, a dreariness of thought'? The House,
the lake, the land, Mr. Stendahl?"
"Mr. Bigelow, it's worth every penny! My God, it's
beautiful!"
"Thank you. I had to work in total ignorance. Thank the
Lord you had your own private rockets or we'd never have been
allowed to bring most of the equipment through. You notice,
it's always twilight here, this land, always October, barren,
sterile, dead. It took a bit of doing. We killed everything.
Ten thousand tons of DDT. Not a snake, frog, or Martian fly
left! Twilight always, Mr. Stendahl; I'm proud of that. There
are machines, hidden, which blot out the sun. It's always
properly 'dreary.'"
Stendahl drank it in, the dreariness, the oppression, the
fetid vapors, the whole "atmosphere," so delicately contrived
and fitted. And that House! That crumbling horror, that evil
lake, the fungi, the extensive decay! Plastic or otherwise,
who could guess?
He looked at the autumn sky. Somewhere above, beyond, far
off, was the sun. Somewhere it was the month of April on the
planet Mars, a yellow month with a blue sky. Somewhere above,
the rockets burned down to civilize a beautifully dead planet.
The sound of their screaming passage was muffled by this
dim, soundproofed world, this ancient autumn world.
"Now that my job's done," said Mr. Bigelow uneasily, "I
feel free to ask what you're going to do with all this."
"With Usher? Haven't you guessed?"
"No."
"Does the name Usher mean nothing to you?"
"Nothing."
"Well, what about _this_ name: Edgar Allan Poe?"
Mr. Bigelow shook his head.
"Of course." Stendahl snorted delicately, a combination
of dismay and contempt. "How could I expect you to know blessed
Mr. Poe? He died a long while ago, before Lincoln. All of his
books were burned in the Great Fire. That's thirty years
ago--1975."
"Ah," said Mr. Bigelow wisely. "One of _those!_"
"Yes, one of those, Bigelow. He and Lovecraft and
Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce and all the tales of terror and
fantasy and horror and, for that matter, tales of the future
were burned. Heartlessly. They passed a law. Oh, it started
very small. In 1950 and '60 it was a grain of sand. They began
by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and,
of course, films, one way or another, one group or another,
political bias, religions prejudice, union pressures; there
was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority
afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past,
afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows
of themselves."
"I see."
"Afraid of the word 'politics' (which eventually became
a synonym for Communism among the more reactionary elements, so
I hear, and it was worth your life to use the word!), and with
a screw tightened here, a bolt fastened there, a push, a pull,
a yank, art and literature were soon like a great twine of
taffy strung about, being twisted in braids and tied in knots
and thrown in all directions, until there was no more
resiliency and no more savor to it. Then the film cameras
chopped short and the theaters turned dark. and the print
presses trickled down from a great Niagara of reading matter to
a mere innocuous dripping of 'pure' material. Oh, the word
'escape' was radical, too, I tell you!"
"Was it?"
"It was! Every man, they said, must face reality. Must
face the Here and Now! Everything that was _not_ so must go.
All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be
shot in mid-air. So they lined them up against a library wall
one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 1975; they lined them
up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White
and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing!--and
shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy
frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after
(for of course it was a fact that _nobody_ lived happily
ever after!), and Once Upon A Time became No More! And they
spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the
Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma
and shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served
Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball!
The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty
awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal
puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something
from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no
longer cry 'Curiouser and curiouser,' and they gave the Looking
Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster
away!"
He clenched his fists. Lord, how immediate it was! His
face was red and he was gasping for breath.
As for Mr. Bigelow, he was astounded at this long
explosion. He blinked and at last said, "Sorry. Don't know
what you're talking about. Just names to me. From what I hear,
the Burning was a good thing."
"Get out!" screamed Stendahl. "You've done your job, now
let me alone, you idiot!"
Mr. Bigelow summoned his carpenters and went away.
Mr. Stendahl stood alone before his House.
"Listen here," he said to the unseen rockets. "I came to
Mars to get away from you Clean-Minded people, but you're
flocking in thicker every day, like flies to offal. So I'm
going to show you. I'm going to teach you a fine lesson for
what you did to Mr. Poe on Earth. As of this day, beware. The
House of Usher is open for business!"
He pushed a fist at the sky.
The rocket landed. A man stepped out jauntily. He glanced
at the House, and his gray eyes were displeased and vexed.
He strode across the moat to confront the small man there.
"Your name Stendahl?"
"Yes."
"I'm Garrett, Investigator of Moral Climates."
"So you finally got to Mars, you Moral Climate people?
I wondered when you'd appear."
"We arrived last week. We'll soon have things as neat and
tidy as Earth." The man waved an identification card irritably
toward the House. "Suppose you tell me about that place,
Stendahl?"
"It's a haunted castle, if you like."
"I don't like. Stendahl, I _don't_ like. The sound of that
word 'haunted.'"
"Simple enough. In this year of our Lord 2005 I have built
a mechanical sanctuary. In it copper bats fly on electronic
beams, brass rats scuttle in plastic cellars, robot skeletons
dance; robot vampires, harlequins, wolves, and white phantoms,
compounded of chemical and ingenuity, live here."
"That's what I was afraid of," said Garrett, smiling
quietly. "I'm afraid we're going to have to tear your place
down."
"I knew you'd come out as soon as you discovered what went
on."
"I'd have come sooner, but we at Moral Climates wanted to
be sure of your intentions before we moved in. We can have
the Dismantlers and Burning Crew here by supper. By midnight
your place will be razed to the cellar. Mr. Stendahl, I
consider you somewhat of a fool, sir. Spending hard-earned
money on a folly. Why, it must have cost you three million
dollars--"
"Four million! But, Mr. Garrett, I inherited twenty-five
million when very young. I can afford to throw it about. Seems
a dreadful shame, though, to have the House finished only an
hour and have you race out with your Dismantlers. Couldn't
you possibly let me play with my Toy for just, well,
twenty-four hours?"
"You know the law. Strict to the letter. No books, no
houses, nothing to be produced which in any way suggests
ghosts, vampires, fairies, or any creature of the imagination."
"You'll be burning Babbitts next!"
"You've caused us a lot of trouble, Mr. Stendahl. It's in
the record. Twenty years ago. On Earth. You and your library."
"Yes, me and my library. And a few others like me. Oh,
Poe's been forgotten for many years now, and Oz and the
other creatures. But I had my little cache. We had our
libraries, a few private citizens, until you sent your men
around with torches and incinerators and tore my fifty thousand
books up and burned them. Just as you put a stake through the
heart of Halloween and told your film producers that if they
made anything at all they would have to make and remake
Earnest Hemingway. My God, how many times have I seen _For Whom
the Bell Tolls_ done! Thirty different versions. All realistic.
Oh, realism! Oh, here, oh, now, oh hell!"
"It doesn't pay to be bitter!"
"Mr. Garrett, you must turn in a full report, mustn't
you?"
"Yes."
"Then, for curiosity's sake, you'd better come in and
look around. It'll take only a minute."
"All right. Lead the way. And no tricks. I've a gun with
me."
The door to the House of Usher creaked wide. A moist wind
issued forth. There was an immense sighing and moaning, like
a subterranean bellows breathing in the lost catacombs.
A rat pranced across the floor stones. Garrett, crying
out, gave it a kick. It fell over, the rat did, and from its
nylon fur streamed an incredible horde of metal fleas.
"Amazing!" Garrett bent to see.
An old witch sat in a niche, quivering her wax hands over
some orange-and-blue tarot cards. She jerked her head and
hissed through her toothless mouth at Garrett, tapping her
greasy cards.
"Death!" she cried.
"Now _that's_ the sort of thing I mean," said Garrett.
"Deplorable!"
"I'll let you burn her personally."
"Will you, really?" Garrett was pleased. Then he frowned.
"I must say you're taking this all so well."
"It was enough just to be able to create this place. To
be able to say I did it. To say I nurtured a medieval
atmosphere in a modern, incredulous world."
"I've a somewhat reluctant admiration for your genius
myself, sir." Garrett watched a mist drift by, whispering
and whispering, shaped like a beautiful and nebulous woman.
Down a moist corridor a machine whirled. Like the stuff from
a cotton-candy centrifuge, mists sprang up and floated,
murmuring, in the silent halls.
An ape appeared out of nowhere.
"Hold on!" cried Garrett.
"Don't be afraid," Stendahl tapped the animal's black
chest. "A robot. Copper skeleton and all, like the witch. See?"
He stroked the fur, and under it metal tubing came to light.
"Yes." Garrett put out a timid hand to pet the thing. "But
why, Mr. Stendahl, why all _this?_ What obsessed you?"
"Bureaucracy, Mr. Garrett. But I haven't time to explain.
The government will discover soon enough." He nodded to the
ape. "All right. _Now_."
The ape killed Mr. Garrett.
"Are we almost ready, Pikes?"
Pikes looked up from the table. "Yes, sir."
"You've done a splendid job."
"Well, I'm paid for it, Mr. Stendahl," said Pikes softly
as he lifted the plastic eyelid of the robot and inserted the
glass eyeball to fasten the rubberoid muscles neatly. "There."
"The spitting image of Mr. Garrett."
"What do we do with him, sir?" Pikes nodded at the slab
where the real Mr. Garrett lay dead.
"Better burn him, Pikes. We wouldn't want two Mr.
Gasretts, would we?"
Pikes wheeled Mr. Garrett to the brick incinerator.
"Goodby." He pushed Mr. Garrett in and slammed the door.
Stendahl confronted the robot Garrett. "You have your
orders, Garrett?"
"Yes, sir." The robot sat up. "I'm to return to Moral
Climates. I'll file a complementary report. Delay action for
at least forty-eight hours. Say I'm investigating more fully."
"Right, Garrett. Good-by."
The robot hurried out to Garrett's rocket, got in, and
flew away.
Stendahl turned. "Now, Pikes, we send the remainder of
the invitations for tonight. I think we'll have a jolly time,
don't you?"
"Considering we waited twenty years, quite jolly!"
They winked at each other.
Seven o'clock. Stendahl studied his watch. Almost time.
He twirled the sherry glass in his hand. He sat quietly. Above
him, among the oaken beams, the bats, their delicate copper
bodies hidden under rubber flesh, blinked at him and shrieked.
He raised his glass to them. "To our success." Then he leaned
back, closed his eyes, and considered the entire affair. How
he would savor this in his old age. This paying back of
the antiseptic government for its literary terrors
and conflagrations. Oh, how the anger and hatred had grown in
him through the years. Oh, how the plan had taken a slow shape
in his numbed mind, until that day three years ago when he had
met Pikes.
Ah yes, Pikes. Pikes with the bitterness in him as deep as
a black, charred well of green acid. Who was Pikes? Only
the greatest of them all! Pikes, the man of ten thousand faces,
a fury, a smoke, a blue fog, a white rain, a bat, a gargoyle,
a monster, that was Pikes! Better than Lon Chaney, the father?
Stendabi ruminated. Night after night he had watched Chaney in
the old, old films. Yes, better than Chaney. Better than that
other ancient mummer? What was his name? Karloff? Far better!
Lugosi? The comparison was odious! No, there was only one
Pikes, and he was a man stripped of his fantasies now, no place
on Earth to go, no one to show off to. Forbidden even to
perform for himself before a mirror!
Poor impossible, defeated Pikes! How must it have felt,
Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked
from the camera, out of your guts, dutching them in coils and
wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad
as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no
recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with
the senseless anger. So what more natural than they would one
day talk over endless coffeepots into innumerable midnights,
and out of all the talk and the bitter brewings would come--
the House of Usher.
A great church bell rang. The guests were arriving.
Smiling he went to greet them.
Full grown without memory, the robots waited. In green
silks the color of forest pools, in silks the color of frog
and fern, they waited. In yellow hair the color of the sun and
sand, the robots waited. Oiled, with tube bones cut from bronze
and sunk in gelatin, the robots lay. In coffins for the not
dead and not alive, in planked boxes, the metronomes waited to
be set in motion. There was a smell of lubrication and lathed
brass. There was a silence of the tomb yard. Sexed but sexless,
the robots. Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans
everything but humanity, the robots stared at the nailed lids
of their labeled F.O.B. boxes, in a death that was not even
a death, for there had never been a life. And now there was a
vast screaming of yanked nails. Now there was a lifting of
lids. Now there were shadows on the boxes and the pressure of
a hand squirting oil from a can. Now one clock was set in
motion, a faint ticking. Now another and another, until this
was an immense clock shop, purring. The marble eyes rolled wide
their rubber lids. The nostrils winked. The robots, clothed in
hair of ape and white of rabbit, arose: Tweedledum following
Tweedledee, Mock-Turtle, Dormouse, drowned bodies from the
sea compounded of salt and whiteweed, swaying; hanging
blue-throated men with turned-up, clam-flesh eyes, and
creatures of ice and burning tinsel, loam-dwarfs and
pepper-elves, Tik-tok, Ruggedo, St. Nicholas with a self-made
snow flurry blowing on before him, Bluebeard with whiskers
like acetylene flame, and sulphur clouds from which green fire
snouts protruded, and, in scaly and gigantic serpentine, a
dragon with a furnace in its belly reeled out the door with
a scream, a tick, a bellow, a silence, a rush, a wind. Ten
thousand lids fell back. The clock shop moved out into Usher.
The night was enchanted.
A warm breeze came over the land. The guest rockets,
burning the sky and turning the weather from autumn to spring
arrived.
The men stepped out in evening clothes and the women
stepped out after them, their hair coiffed up in elaborate
detail.
"So _that's_ Usher!"
"But where's the door?"
At this moment Stendahl appeared. The women laughed
and chattered. Mr. Stendahl raised a hand to quiet them.
Turning, he looked up to a high castle window and called:
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."
And from above, a beautiful maiden leaned out upon the
night wind and let down her golden hair. And the hair twined
and blew and became a ladder upon which the guests might
ascend, laughing, into the House.
What eminent sociologists! What clever psychologists!
What tremendously important politicians, bacteriologists,
and neurologists! There they stood, within the dank walls.
"Welcome, all of you!"
Mr. Tryon, Mr. Owen, Mr. Dunne, Mr. Lang, Mr. Steffens,
Mr. Fletcher, and a double-dozen more.
"Come in, come in!"
Miss Gibbs, Miss Pope, Miss Churchil, Miss Blunt, Miss
Drummond, and a score of other women, glittering.
Eminent, eminent people, one and all, members of the
Society for the Prevention of Fantasy, advocators of the
banishment of Halloween and Guy Fawkes, killers of bats,
burners of books, bearers of torches; good clean citizens,
every one, who had waited until the rough men had come up and
buried the Martians and cleansed the cities and built the towns
and repaired the highways and made everything safe. And then,
with everything well on its way to Safety, the Spoil-Funs,
the people with mercurochrome for blood and iodine-colored
eyes, came now to set up their Moral Climates and dole out
goodness to everyone. And they were his friends! Yes,
carefully, carefully, he had met and befriended each of them
on Earth in the last year!
"Welcome to the vasty halls of Death!" he cried.
"Hello, Stendahl, what _is_ all this?"
"You'll see. Everyone off with their clothes. You'll find
booths to one side there. Change into costumes you find there.
Men on this side, women on that."
The people stood uneasily about.
"I don't know if we should stay," said Miss Pope. "I don't
like the looks of this. It verges on--blasphemy."
"Nonsense, a _costume_ ball!"
"Seems quite illegal." Mr. Steffens sniffed about.
"Come off it." Stendahl laughed. "Enjoy yourselves.
Tomorrow it'll be a ruin. Get in the booths!"
The House blazed with life and color; harlequins rang by
with belled caps and white mice danced miniature quadrilles to
the music of dwarfs who tickled tiny fiddles with tiny bows,
and flags rippled from scorched beams while bats flew in clouds
about gargoyle mouths which spouted down wine, cool, wild,
and foaming. A creek wandered through the seven rooms of the
masked ball. Guests sipped and found it to be sherry. Guests
poured from the booths, transformed from one age into another,
their faces covered with dominoes, the very act of putting on
a mask revoking all their licenses to pick a quarrel with
fantasy and horror. The women swept about in red gowns,
laughing. The men danced them attendance. And on the walls
were shadows with no people to throw them, and here or there
were mirrors in which no image showed. "All of us vampires!"
laughed Mr. Fletcher. "Dead!"
There were seven rooms, each a different color, one blue,
one purple, one green, one orange, another white, the sixth
violet, and the seventh shrouded in black velvet. And in the
black room was an ebony clock which struck the hour loud.
And through these rooms the guests ran, drunk at last, among
the robot fantasies, amid the Dormice and Mad Hatters, the
Trolls and Giants, the Black Cats and White Queens, and under
their dancing feet the floor gave off the massive pumping beat
of a hidden and telltale heart.
"Mr. Stendahl!"
A whisper.
"Mr. Stendahl!"
A monster with the face of Death stood at his elbow. It
was Pikes. "I must see you alone."
"What is it?"
"Here." Pikes held out a skeleton hand. In it were a
few half-melted, charred wheels, nuts, cogs, bolts.
Stendahl looked at them for a long moment. Then he drew
Pikes into a corridor. "Garrett?" he whispered.
Pikes nodded. "He sent a robot in his place. Cleaning out
the incinerator a moment ago, I found these."
They both stared at the fateful cogs for a time.
"This means the police will be here any minute," said
Pikes. "Our plan will be ruined."
"I don't know." Stendahl glanced in at the whirling yellow
and blue and orange people. The music swept through the misting
halls. "I should have guessed Garrett wouldn't be fool enough
to come in person. But wait!"
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. There's nothing the matter. Garrett sent a robot
to us. Well, we sent one back. Unless he checks closely, he
won't notice the switch."
"Of course!"
"Next time he'll come _himself_. Now that he thinks it's
safe. Why, he might be at the door any minute, in _person!_
More wine, Pikes!"
The great bell rang.
"There he is now, I'll bet you. Go let Mr. Garrett in."
Rapunzel let down her golden hair.
"Mr. Stendahl?"
"Mr. Garrett. The _real_ Mr. Garrett?"
"The same." Garrett eyed the dank walls and the whirling
people. "I thought I'd better come see for myself. You can't
depend on robots. Other people's robots, especially. I also
took the precaution of summoning the Dismantlers. They'll be
here in one hour to knock the props out from under this
horrible place."
Stendahl bowed. "Thanks for telling me." He waved his
hand. "In the meantime, you might as well enjoy this. A little
wine?"
"No, thank you. What's going on? How low can a man sink?"
"See for yourself, Mr. Garrett."
"Murder," said Garrett.
"Murder most foul," said Stendahl.
A woman screamed. Miss Pope ran up, her face the color of
a cheese. "The most horrid thing just happened! I saw Miss
Blunt strangled by an ape and stuffed up a chimney!"
They looked and saw the long yellow hair trailing down
from the flue. Garrett cried out.
"Horrid!" sobbed Miss Pope, and then ceased crying. She
blinked and turned. "Miss Blunt!"
"Yes," said Miss Blunt, standing there.
"But I just saw you crammed up the flue!"
"No," laughed Miss Blunt. "A robot of myself. A clever
facsimile!"
"But, but . . ."
"Don't cry darling. I'm quite all right. Let me look
at myself. Well, so there I _am!_ Up the chimney. Like you
said. Isn't that funny?"
Miss Blunt walked away, laughing.
"Have a drink, Garrett?"
"I believe I will. That unnerved me. My God, what a place.
This _does_ deserve tearing down. For a moment there . . ."
Garrett drank.
Another scream. Mr. Steffens, borne upon the shoulders of
four white rabbits, was carried down a flight of stairs
which magically appeared in the floor. Into a pit went Mr.
Steffens, where, bound and tied, he was left to face the
advancing razor steel of a great pendulum which now whirled
down, down, closer and closer to his outraged body.
"Is that me down there?" said Mr. Steffens, appearing
at Garrett's elbow. He bent over the pit. "How strange, how
odd, to see yourself die."
The pendulum made a final stroke.
"How realistic," said Mr. Steffens, turning away.
"Another drink, Mr. Garrett?"
"Yes, please."
"It won't be long. The Dismantlers will be here."
"Thank God!"
And for a third time, a scream.
"What now?" said Garrett apprehensively.
"It's my turn," said Miss Drummond. "Look."
And a second Miss Druxnmond, shrieking, was nailed into
a coffin and thrust into the raw earth under the floor.
"Why, I remember _that_," gasped the Investigator of
Moral Climates. "From the old forbidden books. The Premature
Burial. And the others. The Pit, the Pendulum, and the ape,
the chimney, the Murders in the Rue Morgue. In a book I burned,
yes!"
"Another drink, Garrett. Here, hold your glass steady."
"My lord, you _have_ an imagination, haven't you?"
They stood and watched five others die, one in the mouth
of a dragon, the others thrown off into the black tarn, sinking
and vanishing.
"Would you like to see what we have planned for you?"
asked Stendahl.
"Certainly," said Garrett. "What's the difference? We'll
blow the whole damn thing up, anyway. You're nasty."
"Come along then. This way."
And he led Garrett down into the floor, through numerous
passages and down again upon spiral stairs into the earth, into
the catacombs.
"What do you want to show me down here?" said Garrett.
"Yourself killed."
"A duplicate?"
"Yes. And also something else."
"What?"
"The Amontillado," said Stendahl, going ahead with a
blazing lantern which he held high. Skeletons froze half out
of coffin lids. Garrett held his hand to his nose, his
face disgusted.
"The what?"
"Haven't you ever heard of the Amontillado?"
"No!"
"Don't you recognize this?" Stendahl pointed to a cell.
"Should I?"
"Or this?" Stendahl produced a trowel from under his
cape smiling.
"What's that thing?"
"Come," said Stendahl.
They stepped into the cell. In the dark, Stendahl affixed
the chains to the half-drunken man.
"For God's sake, what are you doing?" shouted Garrett,
rattling about.
"I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of
being ironic, it's not polite. There!"
"You've locked me in chains!"
"So I have."
"What are you going to do?"
"Leave you here."
"You're joking."
"A very good joke."
"Where's my duplicate? Don't we see him killed?"
"There's no duplicate."
"But the _others!_"
"The others are dead. The ones you saw killed were the
real people. The duplicates, the robots, stood by and watched."
Garrett said nothing.
"Now you're supposed to say, 'For the love of God,
Montresor!'" said Stendahl. "And I will reply, 'Yes, for the
love of God.' Won't you say it? Come on. Say it."
"You fool."
"Must I coax you? Say it. Say 'For the love of God,
Montresor!'"
"I won't, you idiot. Get me out of here." He was sober
now.
"Here. Put this on." Stendahl tossed in something that
belled and rang.
"What is it?"
"A cap and bells. Put it on and I might let you out."
"Stendahl!"
"Put it on, I said!"
Garrett obeyed. The bells tinkled.
"Don't you have a feeling that this has all happened
before?" inquired Stendahl, setting to work with trowel and
mortar and brick now.
"What're you doing?"
"Walling you in. Here's one row. Here's another."
"You're insane!"
"I won't argue that point."
"You'll be prosecuted for this!"
He tapped a brick and placed it on the wet mortar,
humming.
Now there was a thrashing and pounding and a crying out
from within the darkening place. The bricks rose higher.
"More thrashing, please," said Stendahl. "Let's make it a good
show."
"Let me out, let me out!"
There was one last brick to shove into place. The
screaming was continuous.
"Garrett?" called Stendahl softly. Garrett silenced
himself. "Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done
this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really
reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed
burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do
to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal,
Mr. Garrett."
Garrett was silent.
"I want this to be perfect," said Stendahl, holding his
lantern up so its light penetrated in upon the slumped figure.
"Jingle your bells softly." The bells rustled. "Now, if you'll
please say, 'For the love of God, Monstresor,' I might let
you free."
The man's face came up in the light. There was a
hesitation. Then grotesquely the man said, "For the love of
God, Montresor."
"Ah," said Stendahl, eyes closed. He shoved the last brick
into place and mortared it tight. "_Requiescat in pace_,
dear friend."
He hastened from the catacomb.
In the seven rooms the sound of a midnight clock brought
everything to a halt.
The Red Death appeared.
Stendahl turned for a moment at the door to watch. And
then he ran out of the great House, across the moat, to where
a helicopter waited.
"Ready, Pikes?"
"Ready."
"There it goes!"
They looked at the great House, smiling. It began to crack
down the middle, as with an earthquake, and as Stendahl watched
the magnificent sight he heard Pikes reading behind him in a
low, cadenced voice:
"'. . . my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls
rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound
like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn
at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of
the House of Usher.'"
The helicopter rose over the steaming lake and flew into
the west.
August 2005: THE OLD ONES
And what more natural than that, at last, the old people
come to Mars, following in the trail left by the loud
frontiersmen, the aromatic sophisticates, and the professional
travelers and romantic lecturers in search of new grist.
And so the dry and crackling people, the people who spent
their time listening to their hearts and feeling their pulses
and spooning syrups into their wry mouths, these people who
once had taken chair cars to California in November and
third-class steamers to Italy in April, the dried-apricot
people, the mummy people, came at last to Mars. . . .
September 2005: THE MARTIAN
The blue mountains lifted into the rain and the rain fell
down into the long canals and old LaFarge and his wife came out
of their house to watch.
"First rain this season," LaFarge pointed out.
"It's good," said his wife.
"Very welcome."
They shut the door. Inside, they warmed their hands at
a fire. They shivered. In the distance, through the window,
they saw rain gleaming on the sides of the rocket which had
brought them from Earth.
"There's only one thing," said LaFarge, looking at his
hands.
"What's that?" asked his wife.
"I wish we could have brought Tom with us."
"Oh, now, Lafe!"
"I won't start again; I'm sorry."
"We came here to enjoy our old age in peace, not to think
of Tom. He's been dead so long now, we should try to forget him
and everything on Earth."
"You're right," he said, and turned his hands again to
the heat. He gazed into the fire. "I won't speak of it any
more. It's just I miss driving out to Green Lawn Park every
Sunday to put flowers on his marker. It used to be our
only excursion."
The blue rain fell gently upon the house.
At nine o'clock they went to bed and lay quietly, hand
in hand, he fifty-five, she sixty, in the raining darkness.
"Anna?" he called softly.
"Yes?" she replied.
"Did you hear something?"
They both listened to the rain and the wind.
"Nothing," she said.
"Someone whistling," he said.
"No, I didn't hear it."
"I'm going to get up to see anyhow."
He put on his robe and walked through the house to the
front door. Hesitating, he pulled the door wide, and rain fell
cold upon his face. The wind blew.
In the dooryard stood a small figure.
Lightning cracked the sky, and a wash of white color
illumined the face looking in at old LaFarge there in the
doorway.
"Who's there?" called LaFarge, trembling.
No answer.
"Who is it? What do you want!"
Still not a word.
He felt very weak and tired and numb. "Who are you?" he
cried.
His wife entered behind him and took his arm. "Why are
you shouting?"
"A small boy's standing in the yard and won't answer me,"
said the old man, trembling. "He looks like Tom!"
"Come to bed, you're dreaming."
"But he's there; see for yourself."
He pulled the door wider to let her see. The cold wind
blew and the thin rain fell upon the soil and the figure stood
looking at them with distant eyes. The old woman held to
the doorway.
"Go away!" she said, waving one hand. "Go away!"
"Doesn't it look like Tom?" asked the old man.
The figure did not move.
"I'm afraid," said the old woman. "Lock the door and come
to bed. I won't have anything to do with it."
She vanished, moaning to herself, into the bedroom.
The old man stood with the wind raining coldness on his
hands.
"Tom," he called softly. "Tom, if that's you, if by some
chance it is you, Tom, I'll leave the door unlatched. And if
you're cold and want to come in to warm yourself, just come
in later and lie by the hearth; there's some fur rugs there."
He shut but did not lock the door.
His wife felt him return to bed, and shuddered. "It's
a terrible night. I feel so old," she said, sobbing.
"Hush, hush," he gentled her, and held her in his arms.
"Go to sleep."
After a long while she slept.
And then, very quietly, as he listened, he heard the front
door open, the rain and wind come in, the door shut. He heard
soft footsteps on the hearth and a gentle breathing. "Tom," he
said to himself,
Lightning struck in the sky and broke the blackness apart.
In the morning the sun was very hot.
Mr. LaFarge opened the door into the living room and
glanced all about, quickly.
The hearthrugs were empty.
LaFarge sighed. "I'm getting old," he said.
He went out to walk to the canal to fetch a bucket of
clear water to wash in. At the front door he almost knocked
young Tom down carrying in a bucket already filled to the brim.
"Good morning, Father!"
"Morning Tom." The old man fell aside. The young
boy, barefooted, hurried across the room, set the bucket down,
and turned, smiling. "It's a fine day!"
"Yes, it is," said the old man incredulously. The boy
acted as if nothing was unusual. He began to wash his face with
the water.
The old man moved forward. "Tom, how did you get here?
You're alive?"
"Shouldn't I be?" The boy glanced up.
"But, Tom, Green Lawn Park, every Sunday, the flowers and
. . ." LaFarge had to sit down. The boy came and stood before
him and took his hand. The old man felt of the fingers, warm
and firm. "You're really here, it's not a dream?"
"You _do_ want me to be here, don't you?" The boy seemed
worried.
"Yes, yes, Tom!"
"Then why ask questions? Accept me!"
"But your mother; the shock . . ."
"Don't worry about her. During the night I sang to both
of you, and you'll accept me more because of it, especially
her. I know what the shock is. Wait till she comes, you'll
see." He laughed, shaking his head of coppery, curled hair. His
eyes were very blue and clear.
"Good morning, Lafe, Tom." Mother came from the bedroom,
putting her hair up into a bun. "Isn't it a fine day?"
Tom turned to laugh in his father's face. "You see?"
They ate a very good lunch, all three of them, in the
shade behind the house. Mrs. LaFarge had found an old bottle
of sunflower wine she had put away, and they all had a drink
of that. Mr. LaFarge had never seen his wife's face so bright.
If there was any doubt in her mind about Tom, she didn't voice
it. It was completely natural thing to her. And it was also
becoming natural to LaFarge himself.
While Mother cleared the dishes LaFarge leaned toward his
son and said confidentially, "How old are you now, Son?"
"Don't you know, Father? Fourteen, of course."
"Who are you, _really?_ You can't be Tom, but you
are _someone_. Who?"
"Don't." Startled, the boy put his hands to his face.
"You can tell me," said the old man. "I'll understand.
You're a Martian, aren't you? I've heard tales of the Martians;
nothing definite. Stories about how rare Martians are and when
they come among us they come as Earth Men. There's something
about you--you're Tom and yet you're not."
"Why can't you accept me and stop talking?" cried the boy.
His hands completely shielded his face. "Don't doubt, please
don't doubt me!" He turned and ran from the table.
"Tom, come back!"
But the boy ran off along the canal toward the distant
town.
"Where's Tom going?" asked Anna, returning for more
dishes. She looked at her husband's face. "Did you say
something to bother him?"
"Anna," he said, taking her hand. "Anna, do you remember
anything about Green Lawn Park, a market, and Tom having
pneumonia?"
"What _are_ you talking about?" She laughed.
"Never mind," he said quietly.
In the distance the dust drifted down after Tom had run
along the canal rim.
At five in the afternoon, with the sunset, Tom returned.
He looked doubtfully at his father. "Are you going to ask
me anything?" he wanted to know.
"No questions," said LaFarge.
The boy smiled his white smile. "Swell."
"Where've you been?"
"Near the town. I almost didn't come back. I was almost"--
the boy sought for a word--"trapped."
"How do you mean, 'trapped'?"
"I passed a small tin house by the canal and I was almost
made so I couldn't come back here ever again to see you. I
don't know how to explain it to you, there's no way, I can't
tell you, even _I_ don't know; it's strange, I don't want to
talk about it."
"We won't then. Better wash up, boy. Suppertime."
The boy ran.
Perhaps ten minutes later a boat floated down the serene
surface of the canal, a tall lank man with black hair poling
it along with leisurely drives of his arms. "Evening, Brother
LaFarge," he said, pausing at his task.
"Evening Saul, what's the word?"
"All kinds of words tonight. You know that fellow named
Nomland who lives down the canal in the tin hut?"
LaFarge stiffened. "Yes?"
"You know what sort of rascal he was?"
"Rumor had it he left Earth because he killed a man."
Saul leaned on his wet pole, gazing at LaFarge. "Remember
the name of the man he killed?"
"Gillings, wasn't it?"
"Right. Gillings. Well, about two hours ago Mr. Nomland
came running to town crying about how he had seen Gillings,
alive, here on Mars, today, this afternoon! He tried to get the
jail to lock him up safe. The jail wouldn't. So Nomland went
home, and twenty minutes ago, as I get the story, blew his
brains out with a gun. I just came from there."
"Well, well," said LaFarge.
"The darnedest things happen," said Saul. "Well, good
night, LaFarge."
"Good night."
The boat drifted on down the serene canal waters.
"Supper's hot," called the old woman.
Mr. LaFarge sat down to his supper and, knife in hand,
looked over at Tom. "Tom," he said, "what did you do this
afternoon?"
"Nothing," said Tom, his mouth full. "Why?"
"Just wanted to know." The old man tucked his napkin in.
At seven that night the old woman wanted to go to town.
"Haven't been there in months," she said. But Tom desisted.
"I'm afraid of the town," he said. "The people. I don't want to
go there."
"Such talk for a grown boy," said Anna. "I won't listen to
it. You'll come along. _I_ say so."
"Anna, if the boy doesn't want to . . ." started the old
man.
But there was no arguing. She hustled them into the
canalboat and they floated up the canal under the evening
stars, Tom lying on his back, his eyes closed; asleep or not,
there was no telling. The old man looked at him steadily,
wondering. Who is this, he thought, in need of love as much as
we? Who is he and what is he that, out of loneliness, he comes
into the alien camp and assumes the voice and face of memory
and stands among us, accepted and happy at last? From what
mountain, what cave, what small last race of people remaining
on this world when the rockets came from Earth? The old man
shook his head. There was no way to know. This, to all
purposes, was Tom.
The old man looked at the town ahead and did not like it,
but then he returned to thoughts of Tom and Anna again and
he thought to himself: Perhaps this is wrong to keep Tom but
a little while, when nothing can come of it but trouble and
sorrow, but how are we to give up the very thing we've wanted,
no matter if it stays only a day and is gone, making the
emptiness emptier, the dark nights darker, the rainy nights
wetter? You might as well force the food from our mouths as
take this one from us.
And he looked at the boy slumbering so peacefully at the
bottom of the boat. The boy whimpered with some dream. "The
people," he murmured in his sleep. "Changing and changing.
The trap."
"There, there, boy." LaFarge stroked the boy's soft curls
and Tom ceased.
LaFarge helped wife and son from the boat.
"Here we are!" Anna smiled at all the lights, listening to
the music from the drinking houses, the pianos, the
phonographs, watching people, arm in arm, striding by in the
crowded streets.
"I wish I was home," said Tom.
"You never talked that way before," said the mother. "You
always liked Saturday nights in town."
"Stay close to me," whispered Tom. "I don't want to
get trapped."
Anna overheard. "Stop talking that way; come along!"
LaFarge noticed that the boy held his hand. LaFarge
squeezed it. "I'll stick with you, Tommy-boy." He looked at
the throngs coming and going and it worried him also. "We won't
stay long."
"Nonsense, we'll spend the evening," said Anna.
They crossed a street, and three drunken men careened into
them. There was much confusion, a separation, a wheeling about,
and then LaFarge stood stunned.
Tom was gone.
"Where is he?" asked Anna irritably. "Him always running
off alone any chance he gets. Tom!" she called.
Mr. LaFarge hurried through the crowd, but Tom was gone.
"He'll come back; he'll be at the boat when we leave,"
said Anna certainly, steering her husband back toward
the motion-picture theater. There was a sudden commotion in
the crowd, and a man and woman rushed by LaFarge. He recognized
them. Joe Spaulding and his wife. They were gone before he
could speak to them.
Looking back anxiously, he purchased the tickets for
the theater and allowed his wife to draw him into the unwelcome
darkness.
Tom was not at the landing at eleven o'clock. Mrs. LaFarge
turned very pale.
"Now, Mother," said LaFarge, "don't worry. I'll find him.
Wait here."
"Hurry back." Her voice faded into the ripple of the
water.
He walked through the night streets, hands in pockets.
All about, lights were going out one by one. A few people were
still leaning out their windows, for the night was warm, even
though the sky still held storm clouds from time to time among
a sickening of the heart, a dreariness of thought'? The House,
the lake, the land, Mr. Stendahl?"
"Mr. Bigelow, it's worth every penny! My God, it's
beautiful!"
"Thank you. I had to work in total ignorance. Thank the
Lord you had your own private rockets or we'd never have been
allowed to bring most of the equipment through. You notice,
it's always twilight here, this land, always October, barren,
sterile, dead. It took a bit of doing. We killed everything.
Ten thousand tons of DDT. Not a snake, frog, or Martian fly
left! Twilight always, Mr. Stendahl; I'm proud of that. There
are machines, hidden, which blot out the sun. It's always
properly 'dreary.'"
Stendahl drank it in, the dreariness, the oppression, the
fetid vapors, the whole "atmosphere," so delicately contrived
and fitted. And that House! That crumbling horror, that evil
lake, the fungi, the extensive decay! Plastic or otherwise,
who could guess?
He looked at the autumn sky. Somewhere above, beyond, far
off, was the sun. Somewhere it was the month of April on the
planet Mars, a yellow month with a blue sky. Somewhere above,
the rockets burned down to civilize a beautifully dead planet.
The sound of their screaming passage was muffled by this
dim, soundproofed world, this ancient autumn world.
"Now that my job's done," said Mr. Bigelow uneasily, "I
feel free to ask what you're going to do with all this."
"With Usher? Haven't you guessed?"
"No."
"Does the name Usher mean nothing to you?"
"Nothing."
"Well, what about _this_ name: Edgar Allan Poe?"
Mr. Bigelow shook his head.
"Of course." Stendahl snorted delicately, a combination
of dismay and contempt. "How could I expect you to know blessed
Mr. Poe? He died a long while ago, before Lincoln. All of his
books were burned in the Great Fire. That's thirty years
ago--1975."
"Ah," said Mr. Bigelow wisely. "One of _those!_"
"Yes, one of those, Bigelow. He and Lovecraft and
Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce and all the tales of terror and
fantasy and horror and, for that matter, tales of the future
were burned. Heartlessly. They passed a law. Oh, it started
very small. In 1950 and '60 it was a grain of sand. They began
by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and,
of course, films, one way or another, one group or another,
political bias, religions prejudice, union pressures; there
was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority
afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past,
afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows
of themselves."
"I see."
"Afraid of the word 'politics' (which eventually became
a synonym for Communism among the more reactionary elements, so
I hear, and it was worth your life to use the word!), and with
a screw tightened here, a bolt fastened there, a push, a pull,
a yank, art and literature were soon like a great twine of
taffy strung about, being twisted in braids and tied in knots
and thrown in all directions, until there was no more
resiliency and no more savor to it. Then the film cameras
chopped short and the theaters turned dark. and the print
presses trickled down from a great Niagara of reading matter to
a mere innocuous dripping of 'pure' material. Oh, the word
'escape' was radical, too, I tell you!"
"Was it?"
"It was! Every man, they said, must face reality. Must
face the Here and Now! Everything that was _not_ so must go.
All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be
shot in mid-air. So they lined them up against a library wall
one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 1975; they lined them
up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White
and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing!--and
shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy
frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after
(for of course it was a fact that _nobody_ lived happily
ever after!), and Once Upon A Time became No More! And they
spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the
Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma
and shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served
Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball!
The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty
awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal
puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something
from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no
longer cry 'Curiouser and curiouser,' and they gave the Looking
Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster
away!"
He clenched his fists. Lord, how immediate it was! His
face was red and he was gasping for breath.
As for Mr. Bigelow, he was astounded at this long
explosion. He blinked and at last said, "Sorry. Don't know
what you're talking about. Just names to me. From what I hear,
the Burning was a good thing."
"Get out!" screamed Stendahl. "You've done your job, now
let me alone, you idiot!"
Mr. Bigelow summoned his carpenters and went away.
Mr. Stendahl stood alone before his House.
"Listen here," he said to the unseen rockets. "I came to
Mars to get away from you Clean-Minded people, but you're
flocking in thicker every day, like flies to offal. So I'm
going to show you. I'm going to teach you a fine lesson for
what you did to Mr. Poe on Earth. As of this day, beware. The
House of Usher is open for business!"
He pushed a fist at the sky.
The rocket landed. A man stepped out jauntily. He glanced
at the House, and his gray eyes were displeased and vexed.
He strode across the moat to confront the small man there.
"Your name Stendahl?"
"Yes."
"I'm Garrett, Investigator of Moral Climates."
"So you finally got to Mars, you Moral Climate people?
I wondered when you'd appear."
"We arrived last week. We'll soon have things as neat and
tidy as Earth." The man waved an identification card irritably
toward the House. "Suppose you tell me about that place,
Stendahl?"
"It's a haunted castle, if you like."
"I don't like. Stendahl, I _don't_ like. The sound of that
word 'haunted.'"
"Simple enough. In this year of our Lord 2005 I have built
a mechanical sanctuary. In it copper bats fly on electronic
beams, brass rats scuttle in plastic cellars, robot skeletons
dance; robot vampires, harlequins, wolves, and white phantoms,
compounded of chemical and ingenuity, live here."
"That's what I was afraid of," said Garrett, smiling
quietly. "I'm afraid we're going to have to tear your place
down."
"I knew you'd come out as soon as you discovered what went
on."
"I'd have come sooner, but we at Moral Climates wanted to
be sure of your intentions before we moved in. We can have
the Dismantlers and Burning Crew here by supper. By midnight
your place will be razed to the cellar. Mr. Stendahl, I
consider you somewhat of a fool, sir. Spending hard-earned
money on a folly. Why, it must have cost you three million
dollars--"
"Four million! But, Mr. Garrett, I inherited twenty-five
million when very young. I can afford to throw it about. Seems
a dreadful shame, though, to have the House finished only an
hour and have you race out with your Dismantlers. Couldn't
you possibly let me play with my Toy for just, well,
twenty-four hours?"
"You know the law. Strict to the letter. No books, no
houses, nothing to be produced which in any way suggests
ghosts, vampires, fairies, or any creature of the imagination."
"You'll be burning Babbitts next!"
"You've caused us a lot of trouble, Mr. Stendahl. It's in
the record. Twenty years ago. On Earth. You and your library."
"Yes, me and my library. And a few others like me. Oh,
Poe's been forgotten for many years now, and Oz and the
other creatures. But I had my little cache. We had our
libraries, a few private citizens, until you sent your men
around with torches and incinerators and tore my fifty thousand
books up and burned them. Just as you put a stake through the
heart of Halloween and told your film producers that if they
made anything at all they would have to make and remake
Earnest Hemingway. My God, how many times have I seen _For Whom
the Bell Tolls_ done! Thirty different versions. All realistic.
Oh, realism! Oh, here, oh, now, oh hell!"
"It doesn't pay to be bitter!"
"Mr. Garrett, you must turn in a full report, mustn't
you?"
"Yes."
"Then, for curiosity's sake, you'd better come in and
look around. It'll take only a minute."
"All right. Lead the way. And no tricks. I've a gun with
me."
The door to the House of Usher creaked wide. A moist wind
issued forth. There was an immense sighing and moaning, like
a subterranean bellows breathing in the lost catacombs.
A rat pranced across the floor stones. Garrett, crying
out, gave it a kick. It fell over, the rat did, and from its
nylon fur streamed an incredible horde of metal fleas.
"Amazing!" Garrett bent to see.
An old witch sat in a niche, quivering her wax hands over
some orange-and-blue tarot cards. She jerked her head and
hissed through her toothless mouth at Garrett, tapping her
greasy cards.
"Death!" she cried.
"Now _that's_ the sort of thing I mean," said Garrett.
"Deplorable!"
"I'll let you burn her personally."
"Will you, really?" Garrett was pleased. Then he frowned.
"I must say you're taking this all so well."
"It was enough just to be able to create this place. To
be able to say I did it. To say I nurtured a medieval
atmosphere in a modern, incredulous world."
"I've a somewhat reluctant admiration for your genius
myself, sir." Garrett watched a mist drift by, whispering
and whispering, shaped like a beautiful and nebulous woman.
Down a moist corridor a machine whirled. Like the stuff from
a cotton-candy centrifuge, mists sprang up and floated,
murmuring, in the silent halls.
An ape appeared out of nowhere.
"Hold on!" cried Garrett.
"Don't be afraid," Stendahl tapped the animal's black
chest. "A robot. Copper skeleton and all, like the witch. See?"
He stroked the fur, and under it metal tubing came to light.
"Yes." Garrett put out a timid hand to pet the thing. "But
why, Mr. Stendahl, why all _this?_ What obsessed you?"
"Bureaucracy, Mr. Garrett. But I haven't time to explain.
The government will discover soon enough." He nodded to the
ape. "All right. _Now_."
The ape killed Mr. Garrett.
"Are we almost ready, Pikes?"
Pikes looked up from the table. "Yes, sir."
"You've done a splendid job."
"Well, I'm paid for it, Mr. Stendahl," said Pikes softly
as he lifted the plastic eyelid of the robot and inserted the
glass eyeball to fasten the rubberoid muscles neatly. "There."
"The spitting image of Mr. Garrett."
"What do we do with him, sir?" Pikes nodded at the slab
where the real Mr. Garrett lay dead.
"Better burn him, Pikes. We wouldn't want two Mr.
Gasretts, would we?"
Pikes wheeled Mr. Garrett to the brick incinerator.
"Goodby." He pushed Mr. Garrett in and slammed the door.
Stendahl confronted the robot Garrett. "You have your
orders, Garrett?"
"Yes, sir." The robot sat up. "I'm to return to Moral
Climates. I'll file a complementary report. Delay action for
at least forty-eight hours. Say I'm investigating more fully."
"Right, Garrett. Good-by."
The robot hurried out to Garrett's rocket, got in, and
flew away.
Stendahl turned. "Now, Pikes, we send the remainder of
the invitations for tonight. I think we'll have a jolly time,
don't you?"
"Considering we waited twenty years, quite jolly!"
They winked at each other.
Seven o'clock. Stendahl studied his watch. Almost time.
He twirled the sherry glass in his hand. He sat quietly. Above
him, among the oaken beams, the bats, their delicate copper
bodies hidden under rubber flesh, blinked at him and shrieked.
He raised his glass to them. "To our success." Then he leaned
back, closed his eyes, and considered the entire affair. How
he would savor this in his old age. This paying back of
the antiseptic government for its literary terrors
and conflagrations. Oh, how the anger and hatred had grown in
him through the years. Oh, how the plan had taken a slow shape
in his numbed mind, until that day three years ago when he had
met Pikes.
Ah yes, Pikes. Pikes with the bitterness in him as deep as
a black, charred well of green acid. Who was Pikes? Only
the greatest of them all! Pikes, the man of ten thousand faces,
a fury, a smoke, a blue fog, a white rain, a bat, a gargoyle,
a monster, that was Pikes! Better than Lon Chaney, the father?
Stendabi ruminated. Night after night he had watched Chaney in
the old, old films. Yes, better than Chaney. Better than that
other ancient mummer? What was his name? Karloff? Far better!
Lugosi? The comparison was odious! No, there was only one
Pikes, and he was a man stripped of his fantasies now, no place
on Earth to go, no one to show off to. Forbidden even to
perform for himself before a mirror!
Poor impossible, defeated Pikes! How must it have felt,
Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked
from the camera, out of your guts, dutching them in coils and
wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad
as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no
recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with
the senseless anger. So what more natural than they would one
day talk over endless coffeepots into innumerable midnights,
and out of all the talk and the bitter brewings would come--
the House of Usher.
A great church bell rang. The guests were arriving.
Smiling he went to greet them.
Full grown without memory, the robots waited. In green
silks the color of forest pools, in silks the color of frog
and fern, they waited. In yellow hair the color of the sun and
sand, the robots waited. Oiled, with tube bones cut from bronze
and sunk in gelatin, the robots lay. In coffins for the not
dead and not alive, in planked boxes, the metronomes waited to
be set in motion. There was a smell of lubrication and lathed
brass. There was a silence of the tomb yard. Sexed but sexless,
the robots. Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans
everything but humanity, the robots stared at the nailed lids
of their labeled F.O.B. boxes, in a death that was not even
a death, for there had never been a life. And now there was a
vast screaming of yanked nails. Now there was a lifting of
lids. Now there were shadows on the boxes and the pressure of
a hand squirting oil from a can. Now one clock was set in
motion, a faint ticking. Now another and another, until this
was an immense clock shop, purring. The marble eyes rolled wide
their rubber lids. The nostrils winked. The robots, clothed in
hair of ape and white of rabbit, arose: Tweedledum following
Tweedledee, Mock-Turtle, Dormouse, drowned bodies from the
sea compounded of salt and whiteweed, swaying; hanging
blue-throated men with turned-up, clam-flesh eyes, and
creatures of ice and burning tinsel, loam-dwarfs and
pepper-elves, Tik-tok, Ruggedo, St. Nicholas with a self-made
snow flurry blowing on before him, Bluebeard with whiskers
like acetylene flame, and sulphur clouds from which green fire
snouts protruded, and, in scaly and gigantic serpentine, a
dragon with a furnace in its belly reeled out the door with
a scream, a tick, a bellow, a silence, a rush, a wind. Ten
thousand lids fell back. The clock shop moved out into Usher.
The night was enchanted.
A warm breeze came over the land. The guest rockets,
burning the sky and turning the weather from autumn to spring
arrived.
The men stepped out in evening clothes and the women
stepped out after them, their hair coiffed up in elaborate
detail.
"So _that's_ Usher!"
"But where's the door?"
At this moment Stendahl appeared. The women laughed
and chattered. Mr. Stendahl raised a hand to quiet them.
Turning, he looked up to a high castle window and called:
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."
And from above, a beautiful maiden leaned out upon the
night wind and let down her golden hair. And the hair twined
and blew and became a ladder upon which the guests might
ascend, laughing, into the House.
What eminent sociologists! What clever psychologists!
What tremendously important politicians, bacteriologists,
and neurologists! There they stood, within the dank walls.
"Welcome, all of you!"
Mr. Tryon, Mr. Owen, Mr. Dunne, Mr. Lang, Mr. Steffens,
Mr. Fletcher, and a double-dozen more.
"Come in, come in!"
Miss Gibbs, Miss Pope, Miss Churchil, Miss Blunt, Miss
Drummond, and a score of other women, glittering.
Eminent, eminent people, one and all, members of the
Society for the Prevention of Fantasy, advocators of the
banishment of Halloween and Guy Fawkes, killers of bats,
burners of books, bearers of torches; good clean citizens,
every one, who had waited until the rough men had come up and
buried the Martians and cleansed the cities and built the towns
and repaired the highways and made everything safe. And then,
with everything well on its way to Safety, the Spoil-Funs,
the people with mercurochrome for blood and iodine-colored
eyes, came now to set up their Moral Climates and dole out
goodness to everyone. And they were his friends! Yes,
carefully, carefully, he had met and befriended each of them
on Earth in the last year!
"Welcome to the vasty halls of Death!" he cried.
"Hello, Stendahl, what _is_ all this?"
"You'll see. Everyone off with their clothes. You'll find
booths to one side there. Change into costumes you find there.
Men on this side, women on that."
The people stood uneasily about.
"I don't know if we should stay," said Miss Pope. "I don't
like the looks of this. It verges on--blasphemy."
"Nonsense, a _costume_ ball!"
"Seems quite illegal." Mr. Steffens sniffed about.
"Come off it." Stendahl laughed. "Enjoy yourselves.
Tomorrow it'll be a ruin. Get in the booths!"
The House blazed with life and color; harlequins rang by
with belled caps and white mice danced miniature quadrilles to
the music of dwarfs who tickled tiny fiddles with tiny bows,
and flags rippled from scorched beams while bats flew in clouds
about gargoyle mouths which spouted down wine, cool, wild,
and foaming. A creek wandered through the seven rooms of the
masked ball. Guests sipped and found it to be sherry. Guests
poured from the booths, transformed from one age into another,
their faces covered with dominoes, the very act of putting on
a mask revoking all their licenses to pick a quarrel with
fantasy and horror. The women swept about in red gowns,
laughing. The men danced them attendance. And on the walls
were shadows with no people to throw them, and here or there
were mirrors in which no image showed. "All of us vampires!"
laughed Mr. Fletcher. "Dead!"
There were seven rooms, each a different color, one blue,
one purple, one green, one orange, another white, the sixth
violet, and the seventh shrouded in black velvet. And in the
black room was an ebony clock which struck the hour loud.
And through these rooms the guests ran, drunk at last, among
the robot fantasies, amid the Dormice and Mad Hatters, the
Trolls and Giants, the Black Cats and White Queens, and under
their dancing feet the floor gave off the massive pumping beat
of a hidden and telltale heart.
"Mr. Stendahl!"
A whisper.
"Mr. Stendahl!"
A monster with the face of Death stood at his elbow. It
was Pikes. "I must see you alone."
"What is it?"
"Here." Pikes held out a skeleton hand. In it were a
few half-melted, charred wheels, nuts, cogs, bolts.
Stendahl looked at them for a long moment. Then he drew
Pikes into a corridor. "Garrett?" he whispered.
Pikes nodded. "He sent a robot in his place. Cleaning out
the incinerator a moment ago, I found these."
They both stared at the fateful cogs for a time.
"This means the police will be here any minute," said
Pikes. "Our plan will be ruined."
"I don't know." Stendahl glanced in at the whirling yellow
and blue and orange people. The music swept through the misting
halls. "I should have guessed Garrett wouldn't be fool enough
to come in person. But wait!"
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. There's nothing the matter. Garrett sent a robot
to us. Well, we sent one back. Unless he checks closely, he
won't notice the switch."
"Of course!"
"Next time he'll come _himself_. Now that he thinks it's
safe. Why, he might be at the door any minute, in _person!_
More wine, Pikes!"
The great bell rang.
"There he is now, I'll bet you. Go let Mr. Garrett in."
Rapunzel let down her golden hair.
"Mr. Stendahl?"
"Mr. Garrett. The _real_ Mr. Garrett?"
"The same." Garrett eyed the dank walls and the whirling
people. "I thought I'd better come see for myself. You can't
depend on robots. Other people's robots, especially. I also
took the precaution of summoning the Dismantlers. They'll be
here in one hour to knock the props out from under this
horrible place."
Stendahl bowed. "Thanks for telling me." He waved his
hand. "In the meantime, you might as well enjoy this. A little
wine?"
"No, thank you. What's going on? How low can a man sink?"
"See for yourself, Mr. Garrett."
"Murder," said Garrett.
"Murder most foul," said Stendahl.
A woman screamed. Miss Pope ran up, her face the color of
a cheese. "The most horrid thing just happened! I saw Miss
Blunt strangled by an ape and stuffed up a chimney!"
They looked and saw the long yellow hair trailing down
from the flue. Garrett cried out.
"Horrid!" sobbed Miss Pope, and then ceased crying. She
blinked and turned. "Miss Blunt!"
"Yes," said Miss Blunt, standing there.
"But I just saw you crammed up the flue!"
"No," laughed Miss Blunt. "A robot of myself. A clever
facsimile!"
"But, but . . ."
"Don't cry darling. I'm quite all right. Let me look
at myself. Well, so there I _am!_ Up the chimney. Like you
said. Isn't that funny?"
Miss Blunt walked away, laughing.
"Have a drink, Garrett?"
"I believe I will. That unnerved me. My God, what a place.
This _does_ deserve tearing down. For a moment there . . ."
Garrett drank.
Another scream. Mr. Steffens, borne upon the shoulders of
four white rabbits, was carried down a flight of stairs
which magically appeared in the floor. Into a pit went Mr.
Steffens, where, bound and tied, he was left to face the
advancing razor steel of a great pendulum which now whirled
down, down, closer and closer to his outraged body.
"Is that me down there?" said Mr. Steffens, appearing
at Garrett's elbow. He bent over the pit. "How strange, how
odd, to see yourself die."
The pendulum made a final stroke.
"How realistic," said Mr. Steffens, turning away.
"Another drink, Mr. Garrett?"
"Yes, please."
"It won't be long. The Dismantlers will be here."
"Thank God!"
And for a third time, a scream.
"What now?" said Garrett apprehensively.
"It's my turn," said Miss Drummond. "Look."
And a second Miss Druxnmond, shrieking, was nailed into
a coffin and thrust into the raw earth under the floor.
"Why, I remember _that_," gasped the Investigator of
Moral Climates. "From the old forbidden books. The Premature
Burial. And the others. The Pit, the Pendulum, and the ape,
the chimney, the Murders in the Rue Morgue. In a book I burned,
yes!"
"Another drink, Garrett. Here, hold your glass steady."
"My lord, you _have_ an imagination, haven't you?"
They stood and watched five others die, one in the mouth
of a dragon, the others thrown off into the black tarn, sinking
and vanishing.
"Would you like to see what we have planned for you?"
asked Stendahl.
"Certainly," said Garrett. "What's the difference? We'll
blow the whole damn thing up, anyway. You're nasty."
"Come along then. This way."
And he led Garrett down into the floor, through numerous
passages and down again upon spiral stairs into the earth, into
the catacombs.
"What do you want to show me down here?" said Garrett.
"Yourself killed."
"A duplicate?"
"Yes. And also something else."
"What?"
"The Amontillado," said Stendahl, going ahead with a
blazing lantern which he held high. Skeletons froze half out
of coffin lids. Garrett held his hand to his nose, his
face disgusted.
"The what?"
"Haven't you ever heard of the Amontillado?"
"No!"
"Don't you recognize this?" Stendahl pointed to a cell.
"Should I?"
"Or this?" Stendahl produced a trowel from under his
cape smiling.
"What's that thing?"
"Come," said Stendahl.
They stepped into the cell. In the dark, Stendahl affixed
the chains to the half-drunken man.
"For God's sake, what are you doing?" shouted Garrett,
rattling about.
"I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of
being ironic, it's not polite. There!"
"You've locked me in chains!"
"So I have."
"What are you going to do?"
"Leave you here."
"You're joking."
"A very good joke."
"Where's my duplicate? Don't we see him killed?"
"There's no duplicate."
"But the _others!_"
"The others are dead. The ones you saw killed were the
real people. The duplicates, the robots, stood by and watched."
Garrett said nothing.
"Now you're supposed to say, 'For the love of God,
Montresor!'" said Stendahl. "And I will reply, 'Yes, for the
love of God.' Won't you say it? Come on. Say it."
"You fool."
"Must I coax you? Say it. Say 'For the love of God,
Montresor!'"
"I won't, you idiot. Get me out of here." He was sober
now.
"Here. Put this on." Stendahl tossed in something that
belled and rang.
"What is it?"
"A cap and bells. Put it on and I might let you out."
"Stendahl!"
"Put it on, I said!"
Garrett obeyed. The bells tinkled.
"Don't you have a feeling that this has all happened
before?" inquired Stendahl, setting to work with trowel and
mortar and brick now.
"What're you doing?"
"Walling you in. Here's one row. Here's another."
"You're insane!"
"I won't argue that point."
"You'll be prosecuted for this!"
He tapped a brick and placed it on the wet mortar,
humming.
Now there was a thrashing and pounding and a crying out
from within the darkening place. The bricks rose higher.
"More thrashing, please," said Stendahl. "Let's make it a good
show."
"Let me out, let me out!"
There was one last brick to shove into place. The
screaming was continuous.
"Garrett?" called Stendahl softly. Garrett silenced
himself. "Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done
this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really
reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed
burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do
to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal,
Mr. Garrett."
Garrett was silent.
"I want this to be perfect," said Stendahl, holding his
lantern up so its light penetrated in upon the slumped figure.
"Jingle your bells softly." The bells rustled. "Now, if you'll
please say, 'For the love of God, Monstresor,' I might let
you free."
The man's face came up in the light. There was a
hesitation. Then grotesquely the man said, "For the love of
God, Montresor."
"Ah," said Stendahl, eyes closed. He shoved the last brick
into place and mortared it tight. "_Requiescat in pace_,
dear friend."
He hastened from the catacomb.
In the seven rooms the sound of a midnight clock brought
everything to a halt.
The Red Death appeared.
Stendahl turned for a moment at the door to watch. And
then he ran out of the great House, across the moat, to where
a helicopter waited.
"Ready, Pikes?"
"Ready."
"There it goes!"
They looked at the great House, smiling. It began to crack
down the middle, as with an earthquake, and as Stendahl watched
the magnificent sight he heard Pikes reading behind him in a
low, cadenced voice:
"'. . . my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls
rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound
like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn
at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of
the House of Usher.'"
The helicopter rose over the steaming lake and flew into
the west.
August 2005: THE OLD ONES
And what more natural than that, at last, the old people
come to Mars, following in the trail left by the loud
frontiersmen, the aromatic sophisticates, and the professional
travelers and romantic lecturers in search of new grist.
And so the dry and crackling people, the people who spent
their time listening to their hearts and feeling their pulses
and spooning syrups into their wry mouths, these people who
once had taken chair cars to California in November and
third-class steamers to Italy in April, the dried-apricot
people, the mummy people, came at last to Mars. . . .
September 2005: THE MARTIAN
The blue mountains lifted into the rain and the rain fell
down into the long canals and old LaFarge and his wife came out
of their house to watch.
"First rain this season," LaFarge pointed out.
"It's good," said his wife.
"Very welcome."
They shut the door. Inside, they warmed their hands at
a fire. They shivered. In the distance, through the window,
they saw rain gleaming on the sides of the rocket which had
brought them from Earth.
"There's only one thing," said LaFarge, looking at his
hands.
"What's that?" asked his wife.
"I wish we could have brought Tom with us."
"Oh, now, Lafe!"
"I won't start again; I'm sorry."
"We came here to enjoy our old age in peace, not to think
of Tom. He's been dead so long now, we should try to forget him
and everything on Earth."
"You're right," he said, and turned his hands again to
the heat. He gazed into the fire. "I won't speak of it any
more. It's just I miss driving out to Green Lawn Park every
Sunday to put flowers on his marker. It used to be our
only excursion."
The blue rain fell gently upon the house.
At nine o'clock they went to bed and lay quietly, hand
in hand, he fifty-five, she sixty, in the raining darkness.
"Anna?" he called softly.
"Yes?" she replied.
"Did you hear something?"
They both listened to the rain and the wind.
"Nothing," she said.
"Someone whistling," he said.
"No, I didn't hear it."
"I'm going to get up to see anyhow."
He put on his robe and walked through the house to the
front door. Hesitating, he pulled the door wide, and rain fell
cold upon his face. The wind blew.
In the dooryard stood a small figure.
Lightning cracked the sky, and a wash of white color
illumined the face looking in at old LaFarge there in the
doorway.
"Who's there?" called LaFarge, trembling.
No answer.
"Who is it? What do you want!"
Still not a word.
He felt very weak and tired and numb. "Who are you?" he
cried.
His wife entered behind him and took his arm. "Why are
you shouting?"
"A small boy's standing in the yard and won't answer me,"
said the old man, trembling. "He looks like Tom!"
"Come to bed, you're dreaming."
"But he's there; see for yourself."
He pulled the door wider to let her see. The cold wind
blew and the thin rain fell upon the soil and the figure stood
looking at them with distant eyes. The old woman held to
the doorway.
"Go away!" she said, waving one hand. "Go away!"
"Doesn't it look like Tom?" asked the old man.
The figure did not move.
"I'm afraid," said the old woman. "Lock the door and come
to bed. I won't have anything to do with it."
She vanished, moaning to herself, into the bedroom.
The old man stood with the wind raining coldness on his
hands.
"Tom," he called softly. "Tom, if that's you, if by some
chance it is you, Tom, I'll leave the door unlatched. And if
you're cold and want to come in to warm yourself, just come
in later and lie by the hearth; there's some fur rugs there."
He shut but did not lock the door.
His wife felt him return to bed, and shuddered. "It's
a terrible night. I feel so old," she said, sobbing.
"Hush, hush," he gentled her, and held her in his arms.
"Go to sleep."
After a long while she slept.
And then, very quietly, as he listened, he heard the front
door open, the rain and wind come in, the door shut. He heard
soft footsteps on the hearth and a gentle breathing. "Tom," he
said to himself,
Lightning struck in the sky and broke the blackness apart.
In the morning the sun was very hot.
Mr. LaFarge opened the door into the living room and
glanced all about, quickly.
The hearthrugs were empty.
LaFarge sighed. "I'm getting old," he said.
He went out to walk to the canal to fetch a bucket of
clear water to wash in. At the front door he almost knocked
young Tom down carrying in a bucket already filled to the brim.
"Good morning, Father!"
"Morning Tom." The old man fell aside. The young
boy, barefooted, hurried across the room, set the bucket down,
and turned, smiling. "It's a fine day!"
"Yes, it is," said the old man incredulously. The boy
acted as if nothing was unusual. He began to wash his face with
the water.
The old man moved forward. "Tom, how did you get here?
You're alive?"
"Shouldn't I be?" The boy glanced up.
"But, Tom, Green Lawn Park, every Sunday, the flowers and
. . ." LaFarge had to sit down. The boy came and stood before
him and took his hand. The old man felt of the fingers, warm
and firm. "You're really here, it's not a dream?"
"You _do_ want me to be here, don't you?" The boy seemed
worried.
"Yes, yes, Tom!"
"Then why ask questions? Accept me!"
"But your mother; the shock . . ."
"Don't worry about her. During the night I sang to both
of you, and you'll accept me more because of it, especially
her. I know what the shock is. Wait till she comes, you'll
see." He laughed, shaking his head of coppery, curled hair. His
eyes were very blue and clear.
"Good morning, Lafe, Tom." Mother came from the bedroom,
putting her hair up into a bun. "Isn't it a fine day?"
Tom turned to laugh in his father's face. "You see?"
They ate a very good lunch, all three of them, in the
shade behind the house. Mrs. LaFarge had found an old bottle
of sunflower wine she had put away, and they all had a drink
of that. Mr. LaFarge had never seen his wife's face so bright.
If there was any doubt in her mind about Tom, she didn't voice
it. It was completely natural thing to her. And it was also
becoming natural to LaFarge himself.
While Mother cleared the dishes LaFarge leaned toward his
son and said confidentially, "How old are you now, Son?"
"Don't you know, Father? Fourteen, of course."
"Who are you, _really?_ You can't be Tom, but you
are _someone_. Who?"
"Don't." Startled, the boy put his hands to his face.
"You can tell me," said the old man. "I'll understand.
You're a Martian, aren't you? I've heard tales of the Martians;
nothing definite. Stories about how rare Martians are and when
they come among us they come as Earth Men. There's something
about you--you're Tom and yet you're not."
"Why can't you accept me and stop talking?" cried the boy.
His hands completely shielded his face. "Don't doubt, please
don't doubt me!" He turned and ran from the table.
"Tom, come back!"
But the boy ran off along the canal toward the distant
town.
"Where's Tom going?" asked Anna, returning for more
dishes. She looked at her husband's face. "Did you say
something to bother him?"
"Anna," he said, taking her hand. "Anna, do you remember
anything about Green Lawn Park, a market, and Tom having
pneumonia?"
"What _are_ you talking about?" She laughed.
"Never mind," he said quietly.
In the distance the dust drifted down after Tom had run
along the canal rim.
At five in the afternoon, with the sunset, Tom returned.
He looked doubtfully at his father. "Are you going to ask
me anything?" he wanted to know.
"No questions," said LaFarge.
The boy smiled his white smile. "Swell."
"Where've you been?"
"Near the town. I almost didn't come back. I was almost"--
the boy sought for a word--"trapped."
"How do you mean, 'trapped'?"
"I passed a small tin house by the canal and I was almost
made so I couldn't come back here ever again to see you. I
don't know how to explain it to you, there's no way, I can't
tell you, even _I_ don't know; it's strange, I don't want to
talk about it."
"We won't then. Better wash up, boy. Suppertime."
The boy ran.
Perhaps ten minutes later a boat floated down the serene
surface of the canal, a tall lank man with black hair poling
it along with leisurely drives of his arms. "Evening, Brother
LaFarge," he said, pausing at his task.
"Evening Saul, what's the word?"
"All kinds of words tonight. You know that fellow named
Nomland who lives down the canal in the tin hut?"
LaFarge stiffened. "Yes?"
"You know what sort of rascal he was?"
"Rumor had it he left Earth because he killed a man."
Saul leaned on his wet pole, gazing at LaFarge. "Remember
the name of the man he killed?"
"Gillings, wasn't it?"
"Right. Gillings. Well, about two hours ago Mr. Nomland
came running to town crying about how he had seen Gillings,
alive, here on Mars, today, this afternoon! He tried to get the
jail to lock him up safe. The jail wouldn't. So Nomland went
home, and twenty minutes ago, as I get the story, blew his
brains out with a gun. I just came from there."
"Well, well," said LaFarge.
"The darnedest things happen," said Saul. "Well, good
night, LaFarge."
"Good night."
The boat drifted on down the serene canal waters.
"Supper's hot," called the old woman.
Mr. LaFarge sat down to his supper and, knife in hand,
looked over at Tom. "Tom," he said, "what did you do this
afternoon?"
"Nothing," said Tom, his mouth full. "Why?"
"Just wanted to know." The old man tucked his napkin in.
At seven that night the old woman wanted to go to town.
"Haven't been there in months," she said. But Tom desisted.
"I'm afraid of the town," he said. "The people. I don't want to
go there."
"Such talk for a grown boy," said Anna. "I won't listen to
it. You'll come along. _I_ say so."
"Anna, if the boy doesn't want to . . ." started the old
man.
But there was no arguing. She hustled them into the
canalboat and they floated up the canal under the evening
stars, Tom lying on his back, his eyes closed; asleep or not,
there was no telling. The old man looked at him steadily,
wondering. Who is this, he thought, in need of love as much as
we? Who is he and what is he that, out of loneliness, he comes
into the alien camp and assumes the voice and face of memory
and stands among us, accepted and happy at last? From what
mountain, what cave, what small last race of people remaining
on this world when the rockets came from Earth? The old man
shook his head. There was no way to know. This, to all
purposes, was Tom.
The old man looked at the town ahead and did not like it,
but then he returned to thoughts of Tom and Anna again and
he thought to himself: Perhaps this is wrong to keep Tom but
a little while, when nothing can come of it but trouble and
sorrow, but how are we to give up the very thing we've wanted,
no matter if it stays only a day and is gone, making the
emptiness emptier, the dark nights darker, the rainy nights
wetter? You might as well force the food from our mouths as
take this one from us.
And he looked at the boy slumbering so peacefully at the
bottom of the boat. The boy whimpered with some dream. "The
people," he murmured in his sleep. "Changing and changing.
The trap."
"There, there, boy." LaFarge stroked the boy's soft curls
and Tom ceased.
LaFarge helped wife and son from the boat.
"Here we are!" Anna smiled at all the lights, listening to
the music from the drinking houses, the pianos, the
phonographs, watching people, arm in arm, striding by in the
crowded streets.
"I wish I was home," said Tom.
"You never talked that way before," said the mother. "You
always liked Saturday nights in town."
"Stay close to me," whispered Tom. "I don't want to
get trapped."
Anna overheard. "Stop talking that way; come along!"
LaFarge noticed that the boy held his hand. LaFarge
squeezed it. "I'll stick with you, Tommy-boy." He looked at
the throngs coming and going and it worried him also. "We won't
stay long."
"Nonsense, we'll spend the evening," said Anna.
They crossed a street, and three drunken men careened into
them. There was much confusion, a separation, a wheeling about,
and then LaFarge stood stunned.
Tom was gone.
"Where is he?" asked Anna irritably. "Him always running
off alone any chance he gets. Tom!" she called.
Mr. LaFarge hurried through the crowd, but Tom was gone.
"He'll come back; he'll be at the boat when we leave,"
said Anna certainly, steering her husband back toward
the motion-picture theater. There was a sudden commotion in
the crowd, and a man and woman rushed by LaFarge. He recognized
them. Joe Spaulding and his wife. They were gone before he
could speak to them.
Looking back anxiously, he purchased the tickets for
the theater and allowed his wife to draw him into the unwelcome
darkness.
Tom was not at the landing at eleven o'clock. Mrs. LaFarge
turned very pale.
"Now, Mother," said LaFarge, "don't worry. I'll find him.
Wait here."
"Hurry back." Her voice faded into the ripple of the
water.
He walked through the night streets, hands in pockets.
All about, lights were going out one by one. A few people were
still leaning out their windows, for the night was warm, even
though the sky still held storm clouds from time to time among