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a delicatessen, flung wide a case, and ordered a triple-decker
beef sandwich.
"Coming up!" he cried, a towel on his arm.
He flourished meats and bread baked the day before, dusted
a table, invited himself to sit, and ate until he had to go
find a soda fountain, where he ordered a bicarbonate. The
druggist, being one Walter Gripp, was astoundingly polite and
fizzed one right up for him!
He stuffed his jeans with money, all he could find. He
loaded a boy's wagon with ten-dollar bills and ran
lickety-split through town. Reaching the suburbs, he suddenly
realized how shamefully silly he was. He didn't need money. He
rode the ten-dollar bills back to where he'd found them,
counted a dollar from his own wallet to pay for the sandwiches,
dropped it in the delicatessen till, and added a quarter tip.
That night he enjoyed a hot Turkish bath, a succulent
filet carpeted with delicate mushrooms, imported dry sherry,
and strawberries in wine. He fitted himself for a new blue
flannel suit, and a rich gray Homburg which balanced oddly atop
his gaunt head. He slid money into a juke box which played
"That Old Gang of Mine." He dropped nickels in twenty boxes all
over town. The lonely streets and the night were full of the
sad music of "That Old Gang of Mine" as he walked, tall and
thin and alone, his new shoes clumping softly, his cold hands
in his pockets.
But that was a week past. He slept in a good house on
Mars Avenue, rose mornings at nine, bathed, and idled to town
for ham and eggs. No morning passed that he didn't freeze a ton
of meats, vegetables, and lemon cream pies, enough to last
ten years, until the rockets came back from Earth, if they ever
came.
Now, tonight, he drifted up and down, seeing the wax women
in every colorful shop window, pink and beautiful. For the
first time he knew how dead the town was. He drew a glass of
beer and sobbed gently.
"Why," he said, "I'm all _alone_."
He entered the Elite Theater to show himself a film,
to distract his mind from his isolation. The theater was
hollow, empty, like a tomb with phantoms crawling gray and
black on the vast screen. Shivering, he hurried from the
haunted place.
Having decided to return home, he was striking down the
middle of a side street, almost running, when he heard the
phone.
He listened.
"Phone ringing in someone's house."
He proceeded briskly.
"Someone should answer that phone," he mused.
He sat on a curb to pick a rock from his shoe, idly.
"Someone!" he screamed, leaping. "Me! Good lord, what's
wrong with me!" he shrieked. He whirled. Which house? That one!
He raced over the lawn, up the steps, into the house, down
a dark hall.
He yanked up the receiver.
"Hello!" he cried.
_Buzzzzzzzzz_.
"Hello, hello!"
They had hung up.
"Hello!" he shouted, and banged the phone. "You stupid
idiot!" he cried to himself. "Sitting on that curb, you fool!
Oh, you damned and awful fool!" He squeezed the phone. "Come
on, ring again! Come _on!_"
He had never thought there might be others left on Mars.
In the entire week he had seen no one. He had figured that all
other towns were as empty as this one.
Now, staring at this terrible little black phone, he
trembled. Interlocking dial systems connected every town on
Mars. From which of thirty cities had the call come?
He didn't know.
He waited. He wandered to the strange kitchen, thawed some
iced huckleberries, ate them disconsolately.
"There wasn't anyone on the other end of that call,"
he murmured. "Maybe a pole blew down somewhere and the phone
rang by itself."
But hadn't he heard a click, which meant someone had hung
up far away?
He stood in the hall the rest of the night. "Not because
of the phone," he told himself. "I just haven't anything else
to do."
He listened to his watch tick.
"She won't phone back," he said. "She won't _ever_ call
a number that didn't answer. She's probably dialing other
houses in town right _now!_ And here I sit--Wait a minute!"
He laughed. "Why do I keep saying 'she'?"
He blinked. "It could as easily be a 'he,' couldn't it?"
His heart slowed. He felt very cold and hollow.
He wanted very much for it to be a "she."
He walked out of the house and stood in the center of
the early, dim morning street.
He listened. Not a sound. No birds. No cars. Only his
heart beating. Beat and pause and beat again. His face ached
with strain. The wind blew gently, oh so gently, flapping his
coat.
"Sh," he whispered. "_Listen_."
He swayed in a slow cirde, turning his head from one
silent house to another.
She'll phone more and more numbers, he thought. It must be
a woman. Why? Only a woman would call and call. A man wouldn't.
A man's independent. Did I phone anyone? No! Never thought of
it. It must be a woman. It _has_ to be, by God!
Listen.
Far away, under the stars, a phone rang.
He ran. He stopped to listen. The ringing, soft. He ran a
few more steps. Louder. He raced down an alley. Louder still!
He passed six houses, six more. Much louder! He chose a house
and its door was locked.
The phone rang inside.
"Damn you!" He jerked the doorknob.
The phone screamed.
He heaved a porch chair through a parlor window, leaped
in after it.
Before he even touched the phone, it was silent.
He stalked through the house then and broke mirrors, tore
down drapes, and kicked in the kitchen stove.
Finally, exhausted, he picked up the thin directory which
listed every phone on Mars. Fifty thousand names.
He started with number one.
Amelia Ames. He dialed her number in New Chicago, one
hundred miles over the dead sea.
No answer.
Number two lived in New New York, five thousand miles
across the blue mountains.
No answer.
He called three, four, five, six, seven, eight, his
fingers jerking, unable to grip the receiver.
A woman's voice answered, "Hello?"
Walter cried back at her, "Hello, oh lord, hello!"
"This is a recording," recited the woman's voice. "Miss
Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message on the
wire spool so she may call you when she returns? Hello? This is
a recording. Miss Arasumian is not home. Will you leave
a message--"
He hung up.
He sat with his mouth twitching.
On second thought he redialed that number.
"When Miss Helen Arasumian comes home," he said, "tell her
to go to hell."
He phoned Mars Junction, New Boston, Arcadia, and
Roosevelt City exchanges, theorizing that they would be logical
places for persons to dial from; after that he contacted local
city halls and other public institutions in each town. He
phoned the best hotels. Leave it to a woman to put herself up
in luxury.
Suddenly he stopped, clapped his hands sharply together,
and laughed. Of course! He checked the directory and dialed
a long-distance call through to the biggest beauty parlor in
New Texas City. If ever there was a place where a woman would
putter around, patting mud packs on her face and sitting under
a drier, it would be a velvet-soft, diamond-gem beauty parlor!
The phone rang. Someone at the other end lifted the
receiver.
A woman's voice said, "Hello?"
"If this is a recording," announced Walter Gripp, "I'll
come over and blow the place up."
"This isn't a record," said the woman's voice. "Hello!
Oh, hello, there _is_ someone alive! Where _are_ you?" She gave
a delighted scream.
Walter almost collapsed. "_You!_' He stood up jerkily,
eyes wild. "Good lord, what luck, what's your name?"
"Genevieve Selsor!" She wept into the receiver. "Oh, I'm
so glad to hear from you, whoever you are!"
"Walter Gripp!"
"Walter, hello, Walter!"
"Hello, Genevieve!"
"Walter. It's such a nice name. Walter, Walter!"
"Thank you."
"Walter, where _are_ you?"
Her voice was so kind and sweet and fine. He held the
phone tight to his ear so she could whisper sweetly into it.
He felt his feet drift off the floor. His cheeks burned.
"I'm in Marlin Village," he said. "I--"
Buzz.
"Hello?" he said.
Buzz.
He jiggled the hook. Nothing.
Somewhere a wind had blown down a pole. As quickly as she
had come, Genevieve Selsor was gone.
He dialed, but the line was dead.
"I know where she is, anyway." He ran out of the house.
The sun was rising as he backed a bettle-car from the
stranger's garage, filled its backseat with food from the
house, and set out at eighty miles an hour down the highway,
heading for New Texas City. A thousand miles, he thought.
Genevieve Selsor, sit tight, you'll hear from me!
He honked his horn on every turn out of town.
At sunset, after an impossible day of driving, he pulled
to the roadside, kicked off his tight shoes, laid himself out
in the seat, and slid the gray Homburg over his weary eyes.
His breathing became slow and regular. The wind blew and the
stars shone gently upon him in the new dusk. The Martian
mountains lay all around, millions of years old. Starlight
glittered on the spires of a little Martian town, no bigger
than a game of chess, in the blue hills.
He lay in the half-place between awakeness and dreams.
He whispered. Genevieve. _Oh, Genevieve, sweet Genevieve_, he
sang softly, _the years may come, the years may go. But
Genevieve, sweet Genevieve_. . . . . There was a warmth in him.
He heard her quiet sweet cool voice singing. _Hello, oh, hello,
Walter! This is no record. Where are you, Walter, where are
you?_
He sighed, putting up a hand to touch her in the
moonlight. Long dark hair shaking in the wind; beautiful, it
was. And her lips like red peppermints. And her cheeks like
fresh-cut wet roses. And her body like a clear vaporous mist,
while her soft cool sweet voice crooned to him once more the
words to the old sad song, _Oh, Genevieve, sweet Genevieve,
the years may come, the years may go_ . . .
He slept.
He reached New Texas City at midnight.
He halted before the Deluxe Beauty Salon, yelling.
He expected her to rush out, all perfume, all laughter.
Nothing happened.
"She's asleep." He walked to the door. "Here I am!" he
called. "Hello, Genevieve!"
The town lay in double moonlit silence. Somewhere a wind
flapped a canvas awning.
He swung the glass door wide and stepped in.
"Hey!" He laughed uneasily. "Don't hide! I know you're
here!"
He searched every booth.
He found a tiny handkerchief on the floor. It smelled so
good he almost lost his balance. "Genevieve," he said.
He drove the car through the empty streets but saw
nothing. "If this is a practical joke . . ."
He slowed the car. "Wait a minute. We were cut off. Maybe
_she_ drove to Marlin Village while I was driving here! She
probably took the old Sea Road. We missed each other during the
day. How'd she know I'd come get her? I didn't _say_ I would.
And she was so afraid when the phone died that she rushed to
Marlin Village to find me! And here I am, by God, what a fool
_I_ am!"
Giving the horn a blow, he shot out of town.
He drove all night. He thought, What if she isn't in
Marlin Village waiting, when I arrive?
He wouldn't think of that. She _must_ be there. And he
would run up and hold her and perhaps even kiss her, once, on
the lips.
_Genevieve, sweet Genevieve_, he whistled, stepping it up
to one hundred miles an hour.
Marlin Village was quiet at dawn. Yellow lights were
still burning in several stores, and a juke box that had
played steadily for one hundred hours finally, with a crackle
of electricity, ceased, making the silence complete. The sun
warmed the streets and warmed the cold and vacant sky.
Walter turned down Main Street, the car lights still
on, honking the horn a double toot, six times at one corner,
six times at another. He peered at the store names. His face
was white and tired, and his hands slid on the sweaty steering
wheel.
"Genevieve!" he called in the empty street.
The door to a beauty salon opened.
"Genevieve!" He stopped the car.
Genevieve Selsor stood in the open door of the salon as he
ran across the street. A box of cream chocolates lay open in
her arms. Her fingers, cuddling it, were plump and pallid. Her
face, as he stepped into the light, was round and thick, and
her eyes were like two immense eggs stuck into a white mess
of bread dough. Her legs were as big around as the stumps of
trees, and she moved with an ungainly shuffle. Her hair was
an indiscriminate shade of brown that had been made and remade,
it appeared, as a nest for birds. She had no lips at all
and compensated this by stenciling on a large red, greasy mouth
that now popped open in delight, now shut in sudden alarm. She
had plucked her brows to thin antenna lines.
Walter stopped. His smile dissolved. He stood looking at
her.
She dropped her candy box to the sidewalk.
"Are you--Genevieve Selsor?" His ears rang.
"Are you Walter Griff?" she asked.
"Gripp."
"Gripp," she corrected herself.
"How do you do," he said with a restrained voice.
"How do you do." She shook his hand.
Her fingers were sticky with chocolate.
"Well," said Walter Gripp.
"What?" asked Genevieve Selsor.
"I just said, 'Well,'" said Walter.
"Oh."
It was nine o'clock at night. They had spent the
day picnicking, and for supper he had prepared a filet mignon
which she didn't like because it was too rare, so he broiled
it some more and it was too much broiled or fried or something.
He laughed and said, "We'll see a movie!" She said okay and put
her chocolaty fingers on his elbow. But all she wanted to see
was a fifty-year-old film of Clark Gable. "Doesn't he just kill
you?" She giggled. "Doesn't he _kill_ you, now?" The film
ended. "Run it off again," she commanded. "Again?" he asked.
"Again," she said. And when he returned she snuggled up and put
her paws all over him. "You're not quite what I expected, but
you're nice," she admitted. "Thanks," he said, swallowing. "Oh,
that Gable," she said, and pinched his leg. "Ouch," he said.
After the film they went shopping down the silent streets.
She broke a window and put on the brightest dress she could
find. Dumping a perfume bottle on her hair, she resembled
a drowned sheep dog. "How old are you?" he inquired. "Guess."
Dripping, she led him down the street. "Oh, thirty," he said.
"Well," she announced stiffly, "I'm only twenty-seven, so
there!
"Here's another candy store!" she said. "Honest, I've led
the life of Reilly since everything exploded. I never liked
my folks, they were fools. They left for Earth two months ago.
I was supposed to follow on the last rocket, but I stayed on;
you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because everyone picked on me. So I stayed where I could
throw perfume on myself all day and drink ten thousand malts
and eat candy without people saying, 'Oh, that's full of
calories!' So here I _am!_"
"Here you are." Walter shut his eyes.
"It's getting late," she said, looking at him.
"Yes."
"I'm tired," she said.
"Funny. I'm wide awake."
"Oh," she said.
"I feel like staying up all night," he said. "Say, there's
a good record at Mike's. Come on, I'll play it for you."
"I'm tired." She glanced up at him with sly, bright eyes.
"I'm very alert," he said. "Strange."
"Come back to the beauty shop," she said. "I want to show
you something."
She took him in through the glass door and walked him over
to a large white box. "When I drove from Texas City," she said,
"I brought this with me." She untied the pink ribbon. "I
thought: Well, here I am, the only lady on Mars, and here is
the only man, and, well . . ." She lifted the lid and folded
back crisp layers of whispery pink tissue paper. She gave it
a pat. "There."
Walter Gripp stared.
"What is it?" he asked, beginning to tremble.
"Don't you know, silly? It's all lace and all white and
all fine and everything."
"No, I don't know what it is."
"It's a wedding dress, silly!"
"Is it?" His voice cracked.
He shut his eyes. Her voice was still soft and cool and
sweet, as it had been on the phone. But when he opened his eyes
and looked at her . . .
He backed up. "How nice," he said.
"Isn't it?"
"Genevieve." He glanced at the door.
"Yes?"
"Genevieve, I've something to tell you."
"Yes?" She drifted toward him, the perfume smell thick
about her round white face.
"The thing I have to say to you is . . ." he said.
"Yes?"
"Good-by!"
And he was out the door and into his car before she could
scream.
She ran and stood on the curb as he swung the car about.
"Walter Griff, come back here!" she wailed, flinging up
her arms.
"Gripp," he corrected her.
"Gripp!" she shouted.
The car whirled away down the silent street, regardless of
her stompings and shriekings. The exhaust from it fluttered
the white dress she crumpled in her plump hands, and the stars
shone bright, and the car vanished out onto the desert and away
into blackness.
He drove all night and all day for three nights and days.
Once he thought he saw a car following, and he broke into
a shivering sweat and took another highway, cutting off across
the lonely Martian world, past little dead cities, and he drove
and drove for a week and a day, until he had put ten thousand
miles between himself and Marlin Village. Then he pulled into
a small town named Holtville Springs, where there were some
tiny stores he could light up at night and restaurants to sit
in, ordering meals. And he's lived there ever since, with two
deep freezes packed with food to last him one hundred years,
and enough cigars to last ten thousand days, and a good bed
with a soft mattress.
And when once in a while over the long years the phone
rings--he doesn't answer.
April 2026: THE LONG YEARS
Whenever the wind came through the sky, he and his small
family would sit in the stone hut and warm their hands over a
wood fire. The wind would stir the canal waters and almost blow
the stars out of the sky, but Mr. Hathaway would sit contented
and talk to his wife, and his wife would reply, and he would
speak to his two daughters and his son about the old days on
Earth, and they would all answer neatly.
It was the twentieth year after the Great War. Mars was
a tomb, planet. Whether or not Earth was the same was a matter
for much silent debate for Hathaway and his family on the
long Martian nights.
This night one of the violent Martian dust storms had come
over the low Martian graveyards, blowing through ancient towns
and tearing away the plastic walls of the newer, American-built
city that was melting down into the sand, desolated.
The storm abated. Hathaway went out into the cleared
weather to see Earth burning green on the windy sky. He put his
hand up as one might reach to adjust a dimly burning globe in
the ceiling of a dark room. He looked across the long-dead
sea bottoms. Not another living thing on this entire planet,
he thought. Just myself. And _them_. He looked back within the
stone hut.
What was happening on Earth now? He had seen no visible
sign of change in Earth's aspect through his thirty-inch
telescope. Well, he thought, I'm good for another twenty years
if I'm careful. Someone might come. Either across the dead seas
or out of space in a rocket on a little thread of red flame.
He called into the hut, "I'm going to take a walk."
"All right," his wife said.
He moved quietly down through a series of ruins. "Made in
New York," he read from a piece of metal as he passed. "And
all these things from Earth will be gone long before the old
Martian towns." He looked toward the fifty-centuries-old
village that lay among the blue mountains.
He came to a solitary Martian graveyard, a series of
small hexagonal stones on a hill swept by the lonely wind.
He stood looking down at four graves with crude wooden
crosses on them, and names. Tears did not come to his eyes.
They had dried long ago.
"Do you forgive me for what I've done?" he asked of
the crosses. "I was very much alone. You do understand, don't
you?"
He returned to the stone hut and once more, just before
going in, shaded his eyes, searching the black sky.
"You keep waiting and waiting and looking," he said, "and
one night, perhaps--"
There was a tiny red flame on the sky.
He stepped away from the light of the hut.
"--and you look _again_," he whispered.
The tiny red flame was still there.
"It wasn't there last night," he whispered.
He stumbled and fell, picked himself up, ran behind the
hut, swiveled the telescope, and pointed it at the sky.
A minute later, after a long wild staring, he appeared in
the low door of the hut. The wife and the two daughters and the
son turned their heads to him. Finally he was able to speak
"I have good news," he said. "I have looked at the sky.
A rocket is coming to take us all home. It will be here in the
early morning."
He put his hands down and put his head into his hands and
began to cry gently.
He burned what was left of New New York that morning at
three.
He took a torch and moved into the plastic city and with
the flame touched the walls here or there. The city bloomed up
in great tosses of heat and light. It was a square mile
of illumination, big enough to be seen out in space. It would
beckon the rocket down to Mr. Hathaway and his family.
His heart beating rapidly with.pain, he returned to the
hut. "See?" He held up a dusty bottle into the light. "Wine
I saved, just for tonight. I knew that some day someone would
find us! We'll have a drink to celebrate!"
He poured five glasses full.
"It's been a long time," he said, gravely looking into
his drink. "Remember the day the war broke? Twenty years and
seven months ago. And all the rockets were called home from
Mars. And you and I and the children were out in the mountains,
doing archaeological work, research on the ancient surgical
methods of the Martians. We ran our horses, almost killing
them, remember? But we got here to the city a week late.
Everyone was gone. America had been destroyed; every rocket had
left without waiting for stragglers, remember, remember? And
it turned out we were the _only_ ones left? Lord, Lord, how
the years pass. I couldn't have stood it without you here, all
of you. I'd have killed myself without you. But with you, it
was worth waiting. Here's to us, then." He lifted his glass.
"And to our long wait together." He drank.
The wife and the two daughters and the son raised their
glasses to their lips.
The wine ran down over the chins of all four of them.
By morning the city was blowing in great black soft flakes
across the sea bottom. The fire was exhausted, but it had
served its purpose; the red spot on the sky grew larger.
From the stone hut came the rich brown smell of
baked gingerbread. His wife stood over the table, setting down
the hot pans of new bread as Hathaway entered. The two
daughters were gently sweeping the bare stone floor with stiff
brooms, and the son was polishing the silverware.
"We'll have a huge breakfast for them," laughed Hathaway.
"Put on your best clothes!"
He hurried across his land to the vast metal storage shed.
Inside was the cold-storage unit and power plant he had
repaired and restored with his efficient, small, nervous
fingers over the years, just as he had repaired clocks,
telephones, and spool recorders in his spare time. The shed was
full of things he had built, some senseless mechanisms the
functions of which were a mystery even to himself now as he
looked upon them.
From the deep freeze he fetched rimed cartons of beans
and strawberries, twenty years old. Lazarus come forth, he
thought, and pulled out a cool chicken.
The air was full of cooking odors when the rocket landed.
Like a boy, Hathaway raced down the hill. He stopped
once because of a sudden sick pain in his chest. He sat on a
rock to regain his breath, then ran all the rest of the way.
He stood in the hot atmosphere generated by the fiery
rocket. A port opened. A man looked down.
Hathaway shielded his eyes and at last said, "Captain
Wilder!"
"Who is it?" asked Captain Wilder, and jumped down and
stood there looking at the old man. He put his hand out. "Good
lord, it's Hathaway!"
"That's right." They looked into each other's faces.
"Hathaway, from my old crew, from the Fourth Expedition."
"It's been a long time, Captain."
"Too long. It's good to see you."
"I'm old," said Hathaway simply.
"I'm not young myself any more. I've been out to Jupiter
and Saturn and Neptune for twenty years."
"I heard they had kicked you upstairs so you wouldn't
interfere with colonial policy here on Mars." The old man
looked around. "You've been gone so long you don't know
what's happened--"
Wilder said, "I can guess. We've circled Mars twice. Found
only one other man, name of Walter Gripp, about ten thousand
miles from here, We offered to take him with us, but he said
no. The last we saw of him he was sitting in the middle of
the highway in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe, waving to us.
Mars is pretty well dead, not even a Martian alive. What about
Earth?"
"You know as much as I do. Once in a while I get the Earth
radio, very faintly. But it's always in some other language.
I'm sorry to say I only know Latin. A few words come through.
I take it most of Earth's a shambles, but the war goes on. Are
you going back, sir?"
"Yes. We're curious, of course. We had no radio contact so
far out in space. We'll want to see Earth, no matter what."
"You'll take us with you?"
The captain started. "Of course, your wife, I remember
her. Twenty-five years ago, wasn't it? When they opened First
Town and you quit the service and brought her up here. And
there were children--"
"My son and two daughters."
"Yes, I remember. They're here?"
"Up at our hut. There's a fine breakfast waiting all of
you up the hill. Will you come?"
"We would be honored, Mr. Hathaway." Captain Wilder called
to the rocket, "Abandon ship!"
They walked up the hill, Hathaway and Captain Wilder,
the twenty crew members following taking deep breaths of the
thin, cool morning air. The sun rose and it was a good day.
"Do you remember Spender, Captain?"
"I've never forgotten him."
"About once a year I walk up past his tomb. It looks like
he got his way at last. He didn't want us to come here, and
I suppose he's happy now that we've all gone away."
"What about--what was his name?--Parkhill, Sam Parkhill?"
"He opened a hot-dog stand."
"It sounds just _like_ him."
"And went back to Earth the next week for the war."
Hathaway put his hand to his chest and sat down abruptly upon
a boulder, "I'm sorry. The excitement. Seeing you again after
all these years. Have to rest." He felt his heart pound. He
counted the beats. It was very bad.
"We've a doctor," said Wilder. "Excuse me, Hathaway, I
know you are one, but we'd better check you with our own--"
The doctor was summoned.
"I'll be all right," insisted Hathaway. "The waiting,
the excitement." He could hardly breathe. His lips were blue.
"You know," he said as the doctor placed a stethoscope to him,
"it's as if I kept alive all these years just for this day, and
now you're here to take me back to Earth, I'm satisfied and I
can just lie down and quit."
"Here." The doctor handed him a yellow pellet. "We'd
better let you rest."
"Nonsense. Just let me sit a moment. It's good to see all
of you. Good to hear new voices again."
"Is the pellet working?"
"Fine. Here we go!"
They walked on up the hill.
"Alice, come see who's here!"
Hathaway frowned and bent into the hut. "Alice, did you
hear?"
His wife appeared. A moment later the two daughters, tall
and gracious, came out, followed by an even taller son.
"Alice, you remember Captain Wilder?"
She hesitated and looked at Hathaway as if for
instructions and then smiled. "Of course, Captain Wilder!"
"I remember, we had dinner together the night before I
took off for Jupiter, Mrs. Hathaway."
She shook his hand vigorously. "My daughters, Marguerite
and Susan. My son, John. You remember the captain, surely?"
Hands were shaken amid laughter and much talk.
Captain Wilder sniffed the air. "Is that _gingerbread?_"
"Will you have some?"
Everyone moved. Folding tables were hurried out while hot
foods were rushed forth and plates and fine damask napkins and
good silverware were laid. Captain Wilder stood looking first
at Mrs. Hathaway and then at her son and her two tall,
quiet-moving daughters. He looked into their faces as they
darted past and he followed every move of their youthful hands
and every expression of their wrinkleless faces. He sat upon
a chair the son brought. "How old are you, John?"
The son replied, "Twenty-three."
Wilder shifted his silverware clumsily. His face was
suddenly pale. The man next to him whispered, "Captain Wilder,
that can't be right."
The son moved away to bring more chairs.
"What's that, Williamson?"
"I'm forty-three myself, Captain. I was in school the same
time as young John Hathaway there, twenty years ago. He says
he's only twenty-three now; he only _looks_ twenty-three. But
that's wrong. He should be forty-two, at least. What's it mean,
sir?"
"I don't know."
"You look kind of sick, sir."
"I don't feel well. The daughters, too, I saw them twenty
years or so ago; they haven't changed, not a wrinkle. Will you
do me a favor? I want you to run an errand, Williamson. I'll
tell you where to go and what to check. Late in the breakfast,
slip away. It should take you only ten minutes. The place isn't
far from here. I saw it from the rocket as we landed."
"Here! What are you talking about so seriously?" Mrs.
Hathaway ladled quick spoons of soup into their bowls. "Smile
now; we're all together, the trip's over, and it's like home!"
"Yes." Captain Wilder laughed. "You certainly look very
well and young Mrs. Hathaway!"
"Isn't that like a man!"
He watched her drift away, drift with her pink face warm,
smooth as an apple, unwrinkled and colorful. She chimed her
laugh at every joke, she tossed salads neatly, never once
pausing for breath. And the bony son and curved daughters
were brilliantly witty, like their father, telling of the long
years and their secret life, while their father nodded proudly
to each.
Williamson slipped off down the hill.
"Where's _he_ going?" asked Hathaway.
"Checking the rocket," said Wilder. "But, as I was
saying, Hathaway, there's nothing on Jupiter, nothing at all
for men. That includes Saturn and Pluto." Wilder talked
mechanically, not hearing his words, thinking only of
Williamson running down the hill and climbing back to tell what
he had found.
"Thanks." Marguerite Hathaway was filling his water
glass. Impulsively he touched her arm. She did not even mind.
Her flesh was warm and soft.
Hathaway, across the table, paused several times, touched
his chest with his fingers, painfully, then went on listening
to the murmuring talk and sudden loud chattering, glancing now
and again with concern at Wilder, who did not seem to like
chewing his gingerbread.
Williamson returned. He sat picking at his food until
the captain whispered aside to him, "Well?"
"I found it, sir."
"And?"
Williamson's cheeks were white. He kept his eyes on
the laughing people. The daughters were smiling gravely and the
son was telling a joke. Williamson said, "I went into
the graveyard."
"The four crosses were there?"
"The four crosses were there, sir. The names were still
on them. I wrote them down to be sure." He read from a white
paper: "Alice, Marguerite, Susan, and John Hathaway. Died
of unknown virus. July 2007."
"Thank you, Williamson." Wilder closed his eyes.
"Nineteen years ago, sir," Williamson's hand trembled.
"Yes."
"Then who are _these!_"
"I don't know."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know that either."
"Will we tell the other men?"
"Later. Go on with your food as if nothing happened."
"I'm not very hungry now, sir."
The meal ended with wine brought from the rocket. Hathaway
arose. "A toast to all of you; it's good to be with friends
again. And to my wife and children, without whom I couldn't
have survived alone. It is only through their kindness in
caring for me that I've lived on, waiting for your arrival."
He moved his wineglass toward his family, who looked
back self-consciously, lowering their eyes at last as everyone
drank.
Hathaway drank down his wine..He did not cry out as he
fell forward onto the table and slipped to the ground. Several
men eased him to rest. The doctor bent to him and listened.
Wilder touched the doctor's shoulder. The doctor looked up and
shook his head. Wilder knelt and took the old man's hand.
"Wilder?" Hathaway's voice was barely audible. "I spoiled
the breakfast."
"Nonsense."
"Say good-by to Alice and the children for me."
"Just a moment, I'll call them."
"No, no, don't!" gasped Hathaway. "They wouldn't
understand. I wouldn't want them to understand! Don't!"
Wilder did not move.
Hathaway was dead.
Wilder waited for a long time. Then he arose and walked
away from the stunned group around Hathaway. He went to
Alice Hathaway, looked into her face, and said, "Do you know
what has just happened?"
"Something about my husband?"
"He's just passed away; his heart," said Wilder, watching
her.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"He didn't want us to feel badly. He told us it would
happen one day and he didn't want us to cry. He didn't teach
us how, you know. He didn't want us to know. He said it was
the worst thing that could happen to a man to know how to be
lonely and know how to be sad and then to cry. So we're not to
know what crying is, or being sad."
Wilder glanced at her hands, the soft warm hands and the
fine manicured nails and the tapered wrists. He saw her
slender, smooth white neck and her intelligent eyes. Finally
he said, "Mr. Hathaway did a fine job on you and your
children."
"He would have liked to hear you say that. He was so proud
of us. After a while he even forgot that he had made us. At the
end he loved and took us as his real wife and children. And, in
a way, we _are_."
"You gave him a good deal of comfort."
"Yes, for years on end we sat and talked. He so much loved
to talk. He liked the stone hut and the open fire. We could
have lived in a regular house in the town, but he liked it up
here, where he could be primitive if he liked, or modern if
he liked. He told me all about his laboratory and the things he
did in it. He wired the entire dead American town below with
sound speakers. When he pressed a button the town lit up and
made noises as if ten thousand people lived in it. There
were airplane noises and car noises and the sounds of people
talking. He would sit and light a cigar and talk to us, and
the sounds of the town would come up to us, and once in awhile
the phone would ring and a recorded voice would ask Mr.
Hathaway scientific and surgical questions and he would answer
them. With the phone ringing and us here and the sounds of the
town and his cigar, Mr. Hathaway was quite happy. There's only
one thing he couldn't make us do," she said. "And that was to
grow old. He got older every day, but we stayed the same. I
guess he didn't mind. I guess he wanted us this way."
"We'll bury him down in the yard where the other four
crosses are. I think he would like that."
She put her hand on his wrist, lightly. "I'm sure he
would."
Orders were given. The family followed the little
procession down the hill. Two men carried Hathaway on a
covered stretcher. They passed the stone hut and the storage
shed where Hathaway, many years before, had begun his work.
Wilder paused within the workshop door.
How would it be, he wondered, to live on a planet with a
wife and three children and have them die, leaving you alone
with the wind and silence? What would a person do? Bury them
with crosses in the graveyard and then come back up to the
workshop and, with all the power of mind and memory and
accuracy of finger and genius, put together, bit by bit, all
those things that were wife, son, daughter. With an entire
American city below from which to draw needed supplies,
a brilliant man might do anything.
The sound of their footsteps was muffled in the sand. At
the graveyard, as they turned in, two men were already spading
out the earth.
They returned to the rocket in the late afternoon.
Williamson nodded at the stone hut. "What are we going to
do about _them?_"
"I don't know," said the captain.
"Are you going to turn them off?"
"Off?" The captain looked faintly surprised. "It never
entered my mind."
"You're not taking them back with us?"
"No, it would be useless."
"You mean you're going to leave them here, like _that_,
as they _are!_"
The captain handed Williamson a gun. "If you can do
anything about this, you're a better man than I."
Five minutes later Williamson returned from the hut,
sweating. "Here, take your gun. I understand what you mean now.
I went in the hut with the gun. One of the daughters smiled at
me. So did the others, The wife offered me a cup of tea. Lord,
it'd be murder!"
Wilder nodded. "There'll never be anything as fine as
them again. They're built to last; ten, fifty, two hundred
years. Yes, they've as much right to--to life as you or I or
any of us." He knocked out his pipe. "Well, get aboard. We're
taking off. This city's done for, we'll not be using it."
It was late in the day. A cold wind was rising. The men
were aboard. The captain hesitated. Williamson said, "Don't
tell me you're going back to say--good-by---to them?"
The captain looked at Williamson coldly. "None of
your business."
Wilder strode up toward the hut through the darkening
wind. The men in the rocket saw his shadow lingering in
the stone-hut doorway. They saw a woman's shadow. They saw
the captain shake her hand.
Moments later he came running back to the rocket.
On nights when the wind comes over the dead sea bottoms
and through the hexagonal graveyard, over four old crosses and
one new one, there is a light burning in the low stone hut, and
in that hut, as the wind roars by and the dust whirls and the
cold stars burn, are four figures, a woman, two daughters, a
son, tending a low fire for no reason and talking and laughing.
Night after night for every year and every year, for no
reason at all, the woman comes out and looks at the sky, her
hands up, for a long moment, looking at the green burning of
Earth, not knowing why she looks, and then she goes back and
throws a stick on the fire, and the wind comes up and the dead
sea goes on being dead.
August 2026: THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS
In the living room the voice-clock sang, _Tick-tock,
seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock!_
as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay
empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds
into the emptiness. _Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!_
In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh
and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly
browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of
bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.
"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the
kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California."
It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is
Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of
Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas,
and light bills."
Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes
glided under electric eyes.
_Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school,
off to work, run, run, eight-one!_ But no doors slammed, no
carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining
outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain,
rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today . . ." And the
rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.
Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal
the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.
At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was
like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped them into the sink, where
hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested
and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes
were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.
_Nine-fifteen_, sang the clock, _time to clean_.
Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The
rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber
and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their
mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at
hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into
their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was
clean.
_Ten o'clock_. The sun came out from behind the rain. The
house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the
one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off
a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.
_Ten-fifteen_. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden
founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings
of brightness, The water pelted windowpanes, running down
the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly
free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house
was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint
of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent
to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on
wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the
air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him
a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.
The five spots of paint--the man, the woman, the children,
beef sandwich.
"Coming up!" he cried, a towel on his arm.
He flourished meats and bread baked the day before, dusted
a table, invited himself to sit, and ate until he had to go
find a soda fountain, where he ordered a bicarbonate. The
druggist, being one Walter Gripp, was astoundingly polite and
fizzed one right up for him!
He stuffed his jeans with money, all he could find. He
loaded a boy's wagon with ten-dollar bills and ran
lickety-split through town. Reaching the suburbs, he suddenly
realized how shamefully silly he was. He didn't need money. He
rode the ten-dollar bills back to where he'd found them,
counted a dollar from his own wallet to pay for the sandwiches,
dropped it in the delicatessen till, and added a quarter tip.
That night he enjoyed a hot Turkish bath, a succulent
filet carpeted with delicate mushrooms, imported dry sherry,
and strawberries in wine. He fitted himself for a new blue
flannel suit, and a rich gray Homburg which balanced oddly atop
his gaunt head. He slid money into a juke box which played
"That Old Gang of Mine." He dropped nickels in twenty boxes all
over town. The lonely streets and the night were full of the
sad music of "That Old Gang of Mine" as he walked, tall and
thin and alone, his new shoes clumping softly, his cold hands
in his pockets.
But that was a week past. He slept in a good house on
Mars Avenue, rose mornings at nine, bathed, and idled to town
for ham and eggs. No morning passed that he didn't freeze a ton
of meats, vegetables, and lemon cream pies, enough to last
ten years, until the rockets came back from Earth, if they ever
came.
Now, tonight, he drifted up and down, seeing the wax women
in every colorful shop window, pink and beautiful. For the
first time he knew how dead the town was. He drew a glass of
beer and sobbed gently.
"Why," he said, "I'm all _alone_."
He entered the Elite Theater to show himself a film,
to distract his mind from his isolation. The theater was
hollow, empty, like a tomb with phantoms crawling gray and
black on the vast screen. Shivering, he hurried from the
haunted place.
Having decided to return home, he was striking down the
middle of a side street, almost running, when he heard the
phone.
He listened.
"Phone ringing in someone's house."
He proceeded briskly.
"Someone should answer that phone," he mused.
He sat on a curb to pick a rock from his shoe, idly.
"Someone!" he screamed, leaping. "Me! Good lord, what's
wrong with me!" he shrieked. He whirled. Which house? That one!
He raced over the lawn, up the steps, into the house, down
a dark hall.
He yanked up the receiver.
"Hello!" he cried.
_Buzzzzzzzzz_.
"Hello, hello!"
They had hung up.
"Hello!" he shouted, and banged the phone. "You stupid
idiot!" he cried to himself. "Sitting on that curb, you fool!
Oh, you damned and awful fool!" He squeezed the phone. "Come
on, ring again! Come _on!_"
He had never thought there might be others left on Mars.
In the entire week he had seen no one. He had figured that all
other towns were as empty as this one.
Now, staring at this terrible little black phone, he
trembled. Interlocking dial systems connected every town on
Mars. From which of thirty cities had the call come?
He didn't know.
He waited. He wandered to the strange kitchen, thawed some
iced huckleberries, ate them disconsolately.
"There wasn't anyone on the other end of that call,"
he murmured. "Maybe a pole blew down somewhere and the phone
rang by itself."
But hadn't he heard a click, which meant someone had hung
up far away?
He stood in the hall the rest of the night. "Not because
of the phone," he told himself. "I just haven't anything else
to do."
He listened to his watch tick.
"She won't phone back," he said. "She won't _ever_ call
a number that didn't answer. She's probably dialing other
houses in town right _now!_ And here I sit--Wait a minute!"
He laughed. "Why do I keep saying 'she'?"
He blinked. "It could as easily be a 'he,' couldn't it?"
His heart slowed. He felt very cold and hollow.
He wanted very much for it to be a "she."
He walked out of the house and stood in the center of
the early, dim morning street.
He listened. Not a sound. No birds. No cars. Only his
heart beating. Beat and pause and beat again. His face ached
with strain. The wind blew gently, oh so gently, flapping his
coat.
"Sh," he whispered. "_Listen_."
He swayed in a slow cirde, turning his head from one
silent house to another.
She'll phone more and more numbers, he thought. It must be
a woman. Why? Only a woman would call and call. A man wouldn't.
A man's independent. Did I phone anyone? No! Never thought of
it. It must be a woman. It _has_ to be, by God!
Listen.
Far away, under the stars, a phone rang.
He ran. He stopped to listen. The ringing, soft. He ran a
few more steps. Louder. He raced down an alley. Louder still!
He passed six houses, six more. Much louder! He chose a house
and its door was locked.
The phone rang inside.
"Damn you!" He jerked the doorknob.
The phone screamed.
He heaved a porch chair through a parlor window, leaped
in after it.
Before he even touched the phone, it was silent.
He stalked through the house then and broke mirrors, tore
down drapes, and kicked in the kitchen stove.
Finally, exhausted, he picked up the thin directory which
listed every phone on Mars. Fifty thousand names.
He started with number one.
Amelia Ames. He dialed her number in New Chicago, one
hundred miles over the dead sea.
No answer.
Number two lived in New New York, five thousand miles
across the blue mountains.
No answer.
He called three, four, five, six, seven, eight, his
fingers jerking, unable to grip the receiver.
A woman's voice answered, "Hello?"
Walter cried back at her, "Hello, oh lord, hello!"
"This is a recording," recited the woman's voice. "Miss
Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message on the
wire spool so she may call you when she returns? Hello? This is
a recording. Miss Arasumian is not home. Will you leave
a message--"
He hung up.
He sat with his mouth twitching.
On second thought he redialed that number.
"When Miss Helen Arasumian comes home," he said, "tell her
to go to hell."
He phoned Mars Junction, New Boston, Arcadia, and
Roosevelt City exchanges, theorizing that they would be logical
places for persons to dial from; after that he contacted local
city halls and other public institutions in each town. He
phoned the best hotels. Leave it to a woman to put herself up
in luxury.
Suddenly he stopped, clapped his hands sharply together,
and laughed. Of course! He checked the directory and dialed
a long-distance call through to the biggest beauty parlor in
New Texas City. If ever there was a place where a woman would
putter around, patting mud packs on her face and sitting under
a drier, it would be a velvet-soft, diamond-gem beauty parlor!
The phone rang. Someone at the other end lifted the
receiver.
A woman's voice said, "Hello?"
"If this is a recording," announced Walter Gripp, "I'll
come over and blow the place up."
"This isn't a record," said the woman's voice. "Hello!
Oh, hello, there _is_ someone alive! Where _are_ you?" She gave
a delighted scream.
Walter almost collapsed. "_You!_' He stood up jerkily,
eyes wild. "Good lord, what luck, what's your name?"
"Genevieve Selsor!" She wept into the receiver. "Oh, I'm
so glad to hear from you, whoever you are!"
"Walter Gripp!"
"Walter, hello, Walter!"
"Hello, Genevieve!"
"Walter. It's such a nice name. Walter, Walter!"
"Thank you."
"Walter, where _are_ you?"
Her voice was so kind and sweet and fine. He held the
phone tight to his ear so she could whisper sweetly into it.
He felt his feet drift off the floor. His cheeks burned.
"I'm in Marlin Village," he said. "I--"
Buzz.
"Hello?" he said.
Buzz.
He jiggled the hook. Nothing.
Somewhere a wind had blown down a pole. As quickly as she
had come, Genevieve Selsor was gone.
He dialed, but the line was dead.
"I know where she is, anyway." He ran out of the house.
The sun was rising as he backed a bettle-car from the
stranger's garage, filled its backseat with food from the
house, and set out at eighty miles an hour down the highway,
heading for New Texas City. A thousand miles, he thought.
Genevieve Selsor, sit tight, you'll hear from me!
He honked his horn on every turn out of town.
At sunset, after an impossible day of driving, he pulled
to the roadside, kicked off his tight shoes, laid himself out
in the seat, and slid the gray Homburg over his weary eyes.
His breathing became slow and regular. The wind blew and the
stars shone gently upon him in the new dusk. The Martian
mountains lay all around, millions of years old. Starlight
glittered on the spires of a little Martian town, no bigger
than a game of chess, in the blue hills.
He lay in the half-place between awakeness and dreams.
He whispered. Genevieve. _Oh, Genevieve, sweet Genevieve_, he
sang softly, _the years may come, the years may go. But
Genevieve, sweet Genevieve_. . . . . There was a warmth in him.
He heard her quiet sweet cool voice singing. _Hello, oh, hello,
Walter! This is no record. Where are you, Walter, where are
you?_
He sighed, putting up a hand to touch her in the
moonlight. Long dark hair shaking in the wind; beautiful, it
was. And her lips like red peppermints. And her cheeks like
fresh-cut wet roses. And her body like a clear vaporous mist,
while her soft cool sweet voice crooned to him once more the
words to the old sad song, _Oh, Genevieve, sweet Genevieve,
the years may come, the years may go_ . . .
He slept.
He reached New Texas City at midnight.
He halted before the Deluxe Beauty Salon, yelling.
He expected her to rush out, all perfume, all laughter.
Nothing happened.
"She's asleep." He walked to the door. "Here I am!" he
called. "Hello, Genevieve!"
The town lay in double moonlit silence. Somewhere a wind
flapped a canvas awning.
He swung the glass door wide and stepped in.
"Hey!" He laughed uneasily. "Don't hide! I know you're
here!"
He searched every booth.
He found a tiny handkerchief on the floor. It smelled so
good he almost lost his balance. "Genevieve," he said.
He drove the car through the empty streets but saw
nothing. "If this is a practical joke . . ."
He slowed the car. "Wait a minute. We were cut off. Maybe
_she_ drove to Marlin Village while I was driving here! She
probably took the old Sea Road. We missed each other during the
day. How'd she know I'd come get her? I didn't _say_ I would.
And she was so afraid when the phone died that she rushed to
Marlin Village to find me! And here I am, by God, what a fool
_I_ am!"
Giving the horn a blow, he shot out of town.
He drove all night. He thought, What if she isn't in
Marlin Village waiting, when I arrive?
He wouldn't think of that. She _must_ be there. And he
would run up and hold her and perhaps even kiss her, once, on
the lips.
_Genevieve, sweet Genevieve_, he whistled, stepping it up
to one hundred miles an hour.
Marlin Village was quiet at dawn. Yellow lights were
still burning in several stores, and a juke box that had
played steadily for one hundred hours finally, with a crackle
of electricity, ceased, making the silence complete. The sun
warmed the streets and warmed the cold and vacant sky.
Walter turned down Main Street, the car lights still
on, honking the horn a double toot, six times at one corner,
six times at another. He peered at the store names. His face
was white and tired, and his hands slid on the sweaty steering
wheel.
"Genevieve!" he called in the empty street.
The door to a beauty salon opened.
"Genevieve!" He stopped the car.
Genevieve Selsor stood in the open door of the salon as he
ran across the street. A box of cream chocolates lay open in
her arms. Her fingers, cuddling it, were plump and pallid. Her
face, as he stepped into the light, was round and thick, and
her eyes were like two immense eggs stuck into a white mess
of bread dough. Her legs were as big around as the stumps of
trees, and she moved with an ungainly shuffle. Her hair was
an indiscriminate shade of brown that had been made and remade,
it appeared, as a nest for birds. She had no lips at all
and compensated this by stenciling on a large red, greasy mouth
that now popped open in delight, now shut in sudden alarm. She
had plucked her brows to thin antenna lines.
Walter stopped. His smile dissolved. He stood looking at
her.
She dropped her candy box to the sidewalk.
"Are you--Genevieve Selsor?" His ears rang.
"Are you Walter Griff?" she asked.
"Gripp."
"Gripp," she corrected herself.
"How do you do," he said with a restrained voice.
"How do you do." She shook his hand.
Her fingers were sticky with chocolate.
"Well," said Walter Gripp.
"What?" asked Genevieve Selsor.
"I just said, 'Well,'" said Walter.
"Oh."
It was nine o'clock at night. They had spent the
day picnicking, and for supper he had prepared a filet mignon
which she didn't like because it was too rare, so he broiled
it some more and it was too much broiled or fried or something.
He laughed and said, "We'll see a movie!" She said okay and put
her chocolaty fingers on his elbow. But all she wanted to see
was a fifty-year-old film of Clark Gable. "Doesn't he just kill
you?" She giggled. "Doesn't he _kill_ you, now?" The film
ended. "Run it off again," she commanded. "Again?" he asked.
"Again," she said. And when he returned she snuggled up and put
her paws all over him. "You're not quite what I expected, but
you're nice," she admitted. "Thanks," he said, swallowing. "Oh,
that Gable," she said, and pinched his leg. "Ouch," he said.
After the film they went shopping down the silent streets.
She broke a window and put on the brightest dress she could
find. Dumping a perfume bottle on her hair, she resembled
a drowned sheep dog. "How old are you?" he inquired. "Guess."
Dripping, she led him down the street. "Oh, thirty," he said.
"Well," she announced stiffly, "I'm only twenty-seven, so
there!
"Here's another candy store!" she said. "Honest, I've led
the life of Reilly since everything exploded. I never liked
my folks, they were fools. They left for Earth two months ago.
I was supposed to follow on the last rocket, but I stayed on;
you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because everyone picked on me. So I stayed where I could
throw perfume on myself all day and drink ten thousand malts
and eat candy without people saying, 'Oh, that's full of
calories!' So here I _am!_"
"Here you are." Walter shut his eyes.
"It's getting late," she said, looking at him.
"Yes."
"I'm tired," she said.
"Funny. I'm wide awake."
"Oh," she said.
"I feel like staying up all night," he said. "Say, there's
a good record at Mike's. Come on, I'll play it for you."
"I'm tired." She glanced up at him with sly, bright eyes.
"I'm very alert," he said. "Strange."
"Come back to the beauty shop," she said. "I want to show
you something."
She took him in through the glass door and walked him over
to a large white box. "When I drove from Texas City," she said,
"I brought this with me." She untied the pink ribbon. "I
thought: Well, here I am, the only lady on Mars, and here is
the only man, and, well . . ." She lifted the lid and folded
back crisp layers of whispery pink tissue paper. She gave it
a pat. "There."
Walter Gripp stared.
"What is it?" he asked, beginning to tremble.
"Don't you know, silly? It's all lace and all white and
all fine and everything."
"No, I don't know what it is."
"It's a wedding dress, silly!"
"Is it?" His voice cracked.
He shut his eyes. Her voice was still soft and cool and
sweet, as it had been on the phone. But when he opened his eyes
and looked at her . . .
He backed up. "How nice," he said.
"Isn't it?"
"Genevieve." He glanced at the door.
"Yes?"
"Genevieve, I've something to tell you."
"Yes?" She drifted toward him, the perfume smell thick
about her round white face.
"The thing I have to say to you is . . ." he said.
"Yes?"
"Good-by!"
And he was out the door and into his car before she could
scream.
She ran and stood on the curb as he swung the car about.
"Walter Griff, come back here!" she wailed, flinging up
her arms.
"Gripp," he corrected her.
"Gripp!" she shouted.
The car whirled away down the silent street, regardless of
her stompings and shriekings. The exhaust from it fluttered
the white dress she crumpled in her plump hands, and the stars
shone bright, and the car vanished out onto the desert and away
into blackness.
He drove all night and all day for three nights and days.
Once he thought he saw a car following, and he broke into
a shivering sweat and took another highway, cutting off across
the lonely Martian world, past little dead cities, and he drove
and drove for a week and a day, until he had put ten thousand
miles between himself and Marlin Village. Then he pulled into
a small town named Holtville Springs, where there were some
tiny stores he could light up at night and restaurants to sit
in, ordering meals. And he's lived there ever since, with two
deep freezes packed with food to last him one hundred years,
and enough cigars to last ten thousand days, and a good bed
with a soft mattress.
And when once in a while over the long years the phone
rings--he doesn't answer.
April 2026: THE LONG YEARS
Whenever the wind came through the sky, he and his small
family would sit in the stone hut and warm their hands over a
wood fire. The wind would stir the canal waters and almost blow
the stars out of the sky, but Mr. Hathaway would sit contented
and talk to his wife, and his wife would reply, and he would
speak to his two daughters and his son about the old days on
Earth, and they would all answer neatly.
It was the twentieth year after the Great War. Mars was
a tomb, planet. Whether or not Earth was the same was a matter
for much silent debate for Hathaway and his family on the
long Martian nights.
This night one of the violent Martian dust storms had come
over the low Martian graveyards, blowing through ancient towns
and tearing away the plastic walls of the newer, American-built
city that was melting down into the sand, desolated.
The storm abated. Hathaway went out into the cleared
weather to see Earth burning green on the windy sky. He put his
hand up as one might reach to adjust a dimly burning globe in
the ceiling of a dark room. He looked across the long-dead
sea bottoms. Not another living thing on this entire planet,
he thought. Just myself. And _them_. He looked back within the
stone hut.
What was happening on Earth now? He had seen no visible
sign of change in Earth's aspect through his thirty-inch
telescope. Well, he thought, I'm good for another twenty years
if I'm careful. Someone might come. Either across the dead seas
or out of space in a rocket on a little thread of red flame.
He called into the hut, "I'm going to take a walk."
"All right," his wife said.
He moved quietly down through a series of ruins. "Made in
New York," he read from a piece of metal as he passed. "And
all these things from Earth will be gone long before the old
Martian towns." He looked toward the fifty-centuries-old
village that lay among the blue mountains.
He came to a solitary Martian graveyard, a series of
small hexagonal stones on a hill swept by the lonely wind.
He stood looking down at four graves with crude wooden
crosses on them, and names. Tears did not come to his eyes.
They had dried long ago.
"Do you forgive me for what I've done?" he asked of
the crosses. "I was very much alone. You do understand, don't
you?"
He returned to the stone hut and once more, just before
going in, shaded his eyes, searching the black sky.
"You keep waiting and waiting and looking," he said, "and
one night, perhaps--"
There was a tiny red flame on the sky.
He stepped away from the light of the hut.
"--and you look _again_," he whispered.
The tiny red flame was still there.
"It wasn't there last night," he whispered.
He stumbled and fell, picked himself up, ran behind the
hut, swiveled the telescope, and pointed it at the sky.
A minute later, after a long wild staring, he appeared in
the low door of the hut. The wife and the two daughters and the
son turned their heads to him. Finally he was able to speak
"I have good news," he said. "I have looked at the sky.
A rocket is coming to take us all home. It will be here in the
early morning."
He put his hands down and put his head into his hands and
began to cry gently.
He burned what was left of New New York that morning at
three.
He took a torch and moved into the plastic city and with
the flame touched the walls here or there. The city bloomed up
in great tosses of heat and light. It was a square mile
of illumination, big enough to be seen out in space. It would
beckon the rocket down to Mr. Hathaway and his family.
His heart beating rapidly with.pain, he returned to the
hut. "See?" He held up a dusty bottle into the light. "Wine
I saved, just for tonight. I knew that some day someone would
find us! We'll have a drink to celebrate!"
He poured five glasses full.
"It's been a long time," he said, gravely looking into
his drink. "Remember the day the war broke? Twenty years and
seven months ago. And all the rockets were called home from
Mars. And you and I and the children were out in the mountains,
doing archaeological work, research on the ancient surgical
methods of the Martians. We ran our horses, almost killing
them, remember? But we got here to the city a week late.
Everyone was gone. America had been destroyed; every rocket had
left without waiting for stragglers, remember, remember? And
it turned out we were the _only_ ones left? Lord, Lord, how
the years pass. I couldn't have stood it without you here, all
of you. I'd have killed myself without you. But with you, it
was worth waiting. Here's to us, then." He lifted his glass.
"And to our long wait together." He drank.
The wife and the two daughters and the son raised their
glasses to their lips.
The wine ran down over the chins of all four of them.
By morning the city was blowing in great black soft flakes
across the sea bottom. The fire was exhausted, but it had
served its purpose; the red spot on the sky grew larger.
From the stone hut came the rich brown smell of
baked gingerbread. His wife stood over the table, setting down
the hot pans of new bread as Hathaway entered. The two
daughters were gently sweeping the bare stone floor with stiff
brooms, and the son was polishing the silverware.
"We'll have a huge breakfast for them," laughed Hathaway.
"Put on your best clothes!"
He hurried across his land to the vast metal storage shed.
Inside was the cold-storage unit and power plant he had
repaired and restored with his efficient, small, nervous
fingers over the years, just as he had repaired clocks,
telephones, and spool recorders in his spare time. The shed was
full of things he had built, some senseless mechanisms the
functions of which were a mystery even to himself now as he
looked upon them.
From the deep freeze he fetched rimed cartons of beans
and strawberries, twenty years old. Lazarus come forth, he
thought, and pulled out a cool chicken.
The air was full of cooking odors when the rocket landed.
Like a boy, Hathaway raced down the hill. He stopped
once because of a sudden sick pain in his chest. He sat on a
rock to regain his breath, then ran all the rest of the way.
He stood in the hot atmosphere generated by the fiery
rocket. A port opened. A man looked down.
Hathaway shielded his eyes and at last said, "Captain
Wilder!"
"Who is it?" asked Captain Wilder, and jumped down and
stood there looking at the old man. He put his hand out. "Good
lord, it's Hathaway!"
"That's right." They looked into each other's faces.
"Hathaway, from my old crew, from the Fourth Expedition."
"It's been a long time, Captain."
"Too long. It's good to see you."
"I'm old," said Hathaway simply.
"I'm not young myself any more. I've been out to Jupiter
and Saturn and Neptune for twenty years."
"I heard they had kicked you upstairs so you wouldn't
interfere with colonial policy here on Mars." The old man
looked around. "You've been gone so long you don't know
what's happened--"
Wilder said, "I can guess. We've circled Mars twice. Found
only one other man, name of Walter Gripp, about ten thousand
miles from here, We offered to take him with us, but he said
no. The last we saw of him he was sitting in the middle of
the highway in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe, waving to us.
Mars is pretty well dead, not even a Martian alive. What about
Earth?"
"You know as much as I do. Once in a while I get the Earth
radio, very faintly. But it's always in some other language.
I'm sorry to say I only know Latin. A few words come through.
I take it most of Earth's a shambles, but the war goes on. Are
you going back, sir?"
"Yes. We're curious, of course. We had no radio contact so
far out in space. We'll want to see Earth, no matter what."
"You'll take us with you?"
The captain started. "Of course, your wife, I remember
her. Twenty-five years ago, wasn't it? When they opened First
Town and you quit the service and brought her up here. And
there were children--"
"My son and two daughters."
"Yes, I remember. They're here?"
"Up at our hut. There's a fine breakfast waiting all of
you up the hill. Will you come?"
"We would be honored, Mr. Hathaway." Captain Wilder called
to the rocket, "Abandon ship!"
They walked up the hill, Hathaway and Captain Wilder,
the twenty crew members following taking deep breaths of the
thin, cool morning air. The sun rose and it was a good day.
"Do you remember Spender, Captain?"
"I've never forgotten him."
"About once a year I walk up past his tomb. It looks like
he got his way at last. He didn't want us to come here, and
I suppose he's happy now that we've all gone away."
"What about--what was his name?--Parkhill, Sam Parkhill?"
"He opened a hot-dog stand."
"It sounds just _like_ him."
"And went back to Earth the next week for the war."
Hathaway put his hand to his chest and sat down abruptly upon
a boulder, "I'm sorry. The excitement. Seeing you again after
all these years. Have to rest." He felt his heart pound. He
counted the beats. It was very bad.
"We've a doctor," said Wilder. "Excuse me, Hathaway, I
know you are one, but we'd better check you with our own--"
The doctor was summoned.
"I'll be all right," insisted Hathaway. "The waiting,
the excitement." He could hardly breathe. His lips were blue.
"You know," he said as the doctor placed a stethoscope to him,
"it's as if I kept alive all these years just for this day, and
now you're here to take me back to Earth, I'm satisfied and I
can just lie down and quit."
"Here." The doctor handed him a yellow pellet. "We'd
better let you rest."
"Nonsense. Just let me sit a moment. It's good to see all
of you. Good to hear new voices again."
"Is the pellet working?"
"Fine. Here we go!"
They walked on up the hill.
"Alice, come see who's here!"
Hathaway frowned and bent into the hut. "Alice, did you
hear?"
His wife appeared. A moment later the two daughters, tall
and gracious, came out, followed by an even taller son.
"Alice, you remember Captain Wilder?"
She hesitated and looked at Hathaway as if for
instructions and then smiled. "Of course, Captain Wilder!"
"I remember, we had dinner together the night before I
took off for Jupiter, Mrs. Hathaway."
She shook his hand vigorously. "My daughters, Marguerite
and Susan. My son, John. You remember the captain, surely?"
Hands were shaken amid laughter and much talk.
Captain Wilder sniffed the air. "Is that _gingerbread?_"
"Will you have some?"
Everyone moved. Folding tables were hurried out while hot
foods were rushed forth and plates and fine damask napkins and
good silverware were laid. Captain Wilder stood looking first
at Mrs. Hathaway and then at her son and her two tall,
quiet-moving daughters. He looked into their faces as they
darted past and he followed every move of their youthful hands
and every expression of their wrinkleless faces. He sat upon
a chair the son brought. "How old are you, John?"
The son replied, "Twenty-three."
Wilder shifted his silverware clumsily. His face was
suddenly pale. The man next to him whispered, "Captain Wilder,
that can't be right."
The son moved away to bring more chairs.
"What's that, Williamson?"
"I'm forty-three myself, Captain. I was in school the same
time as young John Hathaway there, twenty years ago. He says
he's only twenty-three now; he only _looks_ twenty-three. But
that's wrong. He should be forty-two, at least. What's it mean,
sir?"
"I don't know."
"You look kind of sick, sir."
"I don't feel well. The daughters, too, I saw them twenty
years or so ago; they haven't changed, not a wrinkle. Will you
do me a favor? I want you to run an errand, Williamson. I'll
tell you where to go and what to check. Late in the breakfast,
slip away. It should take you only ten minutes. The place isn't
far from here. I saw it from the rocket as we landed."
"Here! What are you talking about so seriously?" Mrs.
Hathaway ladled quick spoons of soup into their bowls. "Smile
now; we're all together, the trip's over, and it's like home!"
"Yes." Captain Wilder laughed. "You certainly look very
well and young Mrs. Hathaway!"
"Isn't that like a man!"
He watched her drift away, drift with her pink face warm,
smooth as an apple, unwrinkled and colorful. She chimed her
laugh at every joke, she tossed salads neatly, never once
pausing for breath. And the bony son and curved daughters
were brilliantly witty, like their father, telling of the long
years and their secret life, while their father nodded proudly
to each.
Williamson slipped off down the hill.
"Where's _he_ going?" asked Hathaway.
"Checking the rocket," said Wilder. "But, as I was
saying, Hathaway, there's nothing on Jupiter, nothing at all
for men. That includes Saturn and Pluto." Wilder talked
mechanically, not hearing his words, thinking only of
Williamson running down the hill and climbing back to tell what
he had found.
"Thanks." Marguerite Hathaway was filling his water
glass. Impulsively he touched her arm. She did not even mind.
Her flesh was warm and soft.
Hathaway, across the table, paused several times, touched
his chest with his fingers, painfully, then went on listening
to the murmuring talk and sudden loud chattering, glancing now
and again with concern at Wilder, who did not seem to like
chewing his gingerbread.
Williamson returned. He sat picking at his food until
the captain whispered aside to him, "Well?"
"I found it, sir."
"And?"
Williamson's cheeks were white. He kept his eyes on
the laughing people. The daughters were smiling gravely and the
son was telling a joke. Williamson said, "I went into
the graveyard."
"The four crosses were there?"
"The four crosses were there, sir. The names were still
on them. I wrote them down to be sure." He read from a white
paper: "Alice, Marguerite, Susan, and John Hathaway. Died
of unknown virus. July 2007."
"Thank you, Williamson." Wilder closed his eyes.
"Nineteen years ago, sir," Williamson's hand trembled.
"Yes."
"Then who are _these!_"
"I don't know."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know that either."
"Will we tell the other men?"
"Later. Go on with your food as if nothing happened."
"I'm not very hungry now, sir."
The meal ended with wine brought from the rocket. Hathaway
arose. "A toast to all of you; it's good to be with friends
again. And to my wife and children, without whom I couldn't
have survived alone. It is only through their kindness in
caring for me that I've lived on, waiting for your arrival."
He moved his wineglass toward his family, who looked
back self-consciously, lowering their eyes at last as everyone
drank.
Hathaway drank down his wine..He did not cry out as he
fell forward onto the table and slipped to the ground. Several
men eased him to rest. The doctor bent to him and listened.
Wilder touched the doctor's shoulder. The doctor looked up and
shook his head. Wilder knelt and took the old man's hand.
"Wilder?" Hathaway's voice was barely audible. "I spoiled
the breakfast."
"Nonsense."
"Say good-by to Alice and the children for me."
"Just a moment, I'll call them."
"No, no, don't!" gasped Hathaway. "They wouldn't
understand. I wouldn't want them to understand! Don't!"
Wilder did not move.
Hathaway was dead.
Wilder waited for a long time. Then he arose and walked
away from the stunned group around Hathaway. He went to
Alice Hathaway, looked into her face, and said, "Do you know
what has just happened?"
"Something about my husband?"
"He's just passed away; his heart," said Wilder, watching
her.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"He didn't want us to feel badly. He told us it would
happen one day and he didn't want us to cry. He didn't teach
us how, you know. He didn't want us to know. He said it was
the worst thing that could happen to a man to know how to be
lonely and know how to be sad and then to cry. So we're not to
know what crying is, or being sad."
Wilder glanced at her hands, the soft warm hands and the
fine manicured nails and the tapered wrists. He saw her
slender, smooth white neck and her intelligent eyes. Finally
he said, "Mr. Hathaway did a fine job on you and your
children."
"He would have liked to hear you say that. He was so proud
of us. After a while he even forgot that he had made us. At the
end he loved and took us as his real wife and children. And, in
a way, we _are_."
"You gave him a good deal of comfort."
"Yes, for years on end we sat and talked. He so much loved
to talk. He liked the stone hut and the open fire. We could
have lived in a regular house in the town, but he liked it up
here, where he could be primitive if he liked, or modern if
he liked. He told me all about his laboratory and the things he
did in it. He wired the entire dead American town below with
sound speakers. When he pressed a button the town lit up and
made noises as if ten thousand people lived in it. There
were airplane noises and car noises and the sounds of people
talking. He would sit and light a cigar and talk to us, and
the sounds of the town would come up to us, and once in awhile
the phone would ring and a recorded voice would ask Mr.
Hathaway scientific and surgical questions and he would answer
them. With the phone ringing and us here and the sounds of the
town and his cigar, Mr. Hathaway was quite happy. There's only
one thing he couldn't make us do," she said. "And that was to
grow old. He got older every day, but we stayed the same. I
guess he didn't mind. I guess he wanted us this way."
"We'll bury him down in the yard where the other four
crosses are. I think he would like that."
She put her hand on his wrist, lightly. "I'm sure he
would."
Orders were given. The family followed the little
procession down the hill. Two men carried Hathaway on a
covered stretcher. They passed the stone hut and the storage
shed where Hathaway, many years before, had begun his work.
Wilder paused within the workshop door.
How would it be, he wondered, to live on a planet with a
wife and three children and have them die, leaving you alone
with the wind and silence? What would a person do? Bury them
with crosses in the graveyard and then come back up to the
workshop and, with all the power of mind and memory and
accuracy of finger and genius, put together, bit by bit, all
those things that were wife, son, daughter. With an entire
American city below from which to draw needed supplies,
a brilliant man might do anything.
The sound of their footsteps was muffled in the sand. At
the graveyard, as they turned in, two men were already spading
out the earth.
They returned to the rocket in the late afternoon.
Williamson nodded at the stone hut. "What are we going to
do about _them?_"
"I don't know," said the captain.
"Are you going to turn them off?"
"Off?" The captain looked faintly surprised. "It never
entered my mind."
"You're not taking them back with us?"
"No, it would be useless."
"You mean you're going to leave them here, like _that_,
as they _are!_"
The captain handed Williamson a gun. "If you can do
anything about this, you're a better man than I."
Five minutes later Williamson returned from the hut,
sweating. "Here, take your gun. I understand what you mean now.
I went in the hut with the gun. One of the daughters smiled at
me. So did the others, The wife offered me a cup of tea. Lord,
it'd be murder!"
Wilder nodded. "There'll never be anything as fine as
them again. They're built to last; ten, fifty, two hundred
years. Yes, they've as much right to--to life as you or I or
any of us." He knocked out his pipe. "Well, get aboard. We're
taking off. This city's done for, we'll not be using it."
It was late in the day. A cold wind was rising. The men
were aboard. The captain hesitated. Williamson said, "Don't
tell me you're going back to say--good-by---to them?"
The captain looked at Williamson coldly. "None of
your business."
Wilder strode up toward the hut through the darkening
wind. The men in the rocket saw his shadow lingering in
the stone-hut doorway. They saw a woman's shadow. They saw
the captain shake her hand.
Moments later he came running back to the rocket.
On nights when the wind comes over the dead sea bottoms
and through the hexagonal graveyard, over four old crosses and
one new one, there is a light burning in the low stone hut, and
in that hut, as the wind roars by and the dust whirls and the
cold stars burn, are four figures, a woman, two daughters, a
son, tending a low fire for no reason and talking and laughing.
Night after night for every year and every year, for no
reason at all, the woman comes out and looks at the sky, her
hands up, for a long moment, looking at the green burning of
Earth, not knowing why she looks, and then she goes back and
throws a stick on the fire, and the wind comes up and the dead
sea goes on being dead.
August 2026: THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS
In the living room the voice-clock sang, _Tick-tock,
seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock!_
as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay
empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds
into the emptiness. _Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!_
In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh
and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly
browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of
bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.
"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the
kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California."
It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is
Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of
Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas,
and light bills."
Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes
glided under electric eyes.
_Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school,
off to work, run, run, eight-one!_ But no doors slammed, no
carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining
outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain,
rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today . . ." And the
rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.
Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal
the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.
At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was
like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped them into the sink, where
hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested
and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes
were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.
_Nine-fifteen_, sang the clock, _time to clean_.
Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The
rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber
and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their
mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at
hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into
their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was
clean.
_Ten o'clock_. The sun came out from behind the rain. The
house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the
one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off
a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.
_Ten-fifteen_. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden
founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings
of brightness, The water pelted windowpanes, running down
the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly
free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house
was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint
of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent
to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on
wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the
air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him
a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.
The five spots of paint--the man, the woman, the children,