Origin: Рэй Брэдбери.ru. http://www.raybradbury.ru
For my wife MARGUERITE with all my love
"It is good to renew one's wonder," said the philosopher.
"Space travel has again made children of us all."
January 1999: ROCKET SUMMER
One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows
locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every
roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like
great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.
And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town.
A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left
a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and
bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt.
The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked
off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear
disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer's ancient
green lawns.
_Rocket summer_. The words passed among the people in the
open, airing houses. _Rocket summer_. The warm desert air
changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art
work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling
from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before
it touched the ground.
_Rocket summer_. People leaned from their dripping porches
and watched the reddening sky.
The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink
clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold
wintar morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty
exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief
moment upon the land. . . .
February 1999: YLLA
They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by
the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs.
K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls,
or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which,
taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons,
when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees
stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone
town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you
could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book
with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one
might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked,
a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when
the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried
clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.
Mr. and Mrs. K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years,
and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned
and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.
Mr. and Mrs. K were not old. They had the fair, brownish
skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft
musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with
chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the
wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the
dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking
room.
They were not happy now.
This morning Mrs. K stood between the pillars, listening
to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly
run on the horizon.
Something was going to happen.
She waited.
She watched the blue sky of Mars as if it might at any
moment grip in on itself, contract, and expel a shining miracle
down upon the sand.
Nothing happened.
Tired of waiting, she walked through the misting pillars.
A gentle rain sprang from the fluted pillar tops, cooling
the scorched air, falling gently on her. On hot days it was
like walking in a creek. The floors of the house glittered with
cool streams. In the distance she heard her husband playing his
book steadily, his fingers never tired of the old songs.
Quietly she wished he might one day again spend as much time
holding and touching her like a little harp as he did his
incredible books.
But no. She shook her head, an imperceptible, forgiving
shrug. Her eyelids closed softly down upon her golden eyes.
Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.
She lay back in a chair that moved to take her shape even
as she moved. She closed her eyes tightly and nervously.
The dream occurred.
Her brown fingers trembled, came up, grasped at the air.
A moment later she sat up, startled, gasping.
She glanced about swiftly, as if expecting someone there
before her. She seemed disappointed; the space between the
pillars was empty.
Her husband appeared in a triangular door. "Did you call?"
he asked irritably.
"No!" she cried.
"I thought I heard you cry out."
"Did I? I was almost asleep and had a dream!"
"In the daytime? You don't often do that."
She sat as if struck in the face by the dream. "How
strange, how very strange," she murmured. "The dream."
"Oh?" He evidently wished to return to his book.
"I dreamed about a man."
"A man?"
"A tall man, six feet one inch tall."
"How absurd; a giant, a misshapen giant."
"Somehow"--she tried the words-- "he looked all right.
In spite of being tall. And he had--oh, I know you'll think
it silly--he had _blue_ eyes!"
"Blue eyes! Gods!" cried Mr. K. "What'll you dream next?
I suppose he had _black_ hair?"
"How did you _guess?_" She was excited.
"I picked the most unlikely color," he replied coldly.
"Well, black it was!" she cried. "And he had a very white
skin; oh, he was _most_ unusual! He was dressed in a strange
uniform and he came down out of the sky and spoke pleasantly
to me." She smiled.
"Out of the sky; what nonsense!"
"He came in a metal thing that glittered in the sun,"
she remembered. She closed her eyes to shape it again. "I
dreamed there was the sky and something sparkled like a coin
thrown into the air, and suddenly it grew large and fell down
softly to land, a long silver craft, round and alien. And a
door opened in the side of the silver object and this tall
man stepped out."
"If you worked harder you wouldn't have these silly
dreams."
"I rather enjoyed it," she replied, lying back. "I
never suspected myself of such an imagination. Black hair, blue
eyes, and white skin! What a strange man, and yet--quite
handsome."
"Wishful thinking."
"You're unkind. I didn't think him up on purpose; he just
came in my mind while I drowsed. It wasn't like a dream. It was
so unexpected and different. He looked at me and he said, 'I've
come from the third planet in my ship. My name is Nathaniel
York--'"
"A stupid name; it's no name at all," objected the
husband.
"Of course it's stupid, because it's a dream," she
explained softly. "And he said, 'This is the first trip across
space. There are only two of us in our ship, myself and my
friend Bert.'"
"_Another_ stupid name."
"And he said, 'We're from a city on _Earth_; that's the
name of our planet,'" continued Mrs. K. "That's what he said.
'Earth' was the name he spoke. And he used another language.
Somehow I understood him. With my mind. Telepathy, I suppose."
Mr. K turned away. She stopped him with a word. "Yll?"
she called quietly. "Do you ever wonder if--well, if there
_are_ people living on the third planet?"
"The third planet is incapable of supporting life," stated
the husband patiently. "Our scientists have said there's far
too much oxygen in their atmosphere."
"But wouldn't it be fascinating if there _were_ people?
And they traveled through space in some sort of ship?"
"Really, Ylla, you know how I hate this emotional wailing.
Let's get on with our work."
It was late in the day when she began singing the song as
she moved among the whispering pillars of rain. She sang it
over and over again.
"What's that song?" snapped her husband at last, walking
in to sit at the fire table.
"I don't know." She looked up, surprised at herself. She
put her hand to her mouth, unbelieving. The sun was setting.
The house was closing itself in, like a giant flower, with
the passing of light. A wind blew among the pillars; the fire
table bubbled its fierce pool of silver lava. The wind stirred
her russet hair, crooning softly in her ears. She stood
silently looking out into the great sallow distances of sea
bottom, as if recalling something, her yellow eyes soft and
moist, "Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge
with mine," she sang, softly, quietly, slowly. "Or leave a
kiss within the cup, and I'll not ask for wine." She hummed
now, moving her hands in the wind ever so lightly, her eyes
shut. She finished the song.
It was very beautiful.
"Never heard that song before. Did you compose it?"
he inquired, his eyes sharp.
"No, Yes. No, I don't know, really!" She hesitated wildly.
"I don't even know what the words are; they're another
language!"
"What language?"
She dropped portions of meat numbly into the simmering
lava. "I don't know." She drew the meat forth a moment later,
cooked, served on a plate for him. "It's just a crazy thing I
made up, I guess. I don't know why."
He said nothing. He watched her drown meats in the hissing
fire pool. The sun was gone. Slowly, slowly the night came in
to fill the room, swallowing the pillars and both of them, like
a dark wine poured to the ceiling. Only the silver lava's glow
lit their faces.
She hummed the strange song again.
Instantly he leaped from his chair and stalked angrily
from the room.
Later, in isolation, he finished supper.
When he arose he stretched, glanced at her, and suggested,
yawning, "Let's take the flame birds to town tonight to see
an entertainment."
"You don't _mean_ it?" she said. "Are you feeling well?"
"What's so strange about that?"
"But we haven't gone for an entertainment in six months!"
"I think it's a good idea."
"Suddenly you're so solicitous," she said.
"Don't talk that way," he replied peevishly. "Do you or do
you not want to go?"
She looked out at the pale desert. The twin white moons
were rising. Cool water ran softly about her toes. She began
to tremble just the least bit. She wanted very much to sit
quietly here, soundless, not moving until this thing occurred,
this thing expected all day, this thing that could not occur
but might. A drift of song brushed through her mind.
"I----"
"Do you good," he urged. "Come along now."
"I'm tired," she said. "Some other night."
"Here's your scarf." He handed her a phial. "We haven't
gone anywhere in months."
"Except you, twice a week to Xi City." She wouldn't look
at him.
"Business," he said.
"Oh?" She whispered to herself.
From the phial a liquid poured, turned to blue mist,
settled about her neck, quivering.
The flame birds waited, like a bed of coals, glowing on
the cool smooth sands. The white canopy ballooned on the night
wind, flapping softly, tied by a thousand green ribbons to
the birds.
Ylla laid herself back in the canopy and, at a word from
her husband, the birds leaped, burning, toward the dark sky,
The ribbons tautened, the canopy lifted. The sand slid whining
under; the blue hills drifted by, drifted by, leaving their
home behind, the raining pillars, the caged flowers, the
singing books, the whispering floor creeks. She did not look at
her husband. She heard him crying out to the birds as they
rose higher, like ten thousand hot sparkles, so many red-yellow
fireworks in the heavens, tugging the canopy like a flower
petal, burning through the wind.
She didn't watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide
under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past
dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon,
like a torch burning.
She watched only the sky.
The husband spoke.
She watched the sky.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"What?"
He exhaled. "You might pay attention."
"I was thinking."
"I never thought you were a nature lover, but you're
certainly interested in the sky tonight," he said.
"It's very beautiful."
"I was figuring," said the husband slowly. "I thought I'd
call Hulle tonight. I'd like to talk to him about us spending
some time, oh, only a week or so, in the Blue Mountains. It's
just an idea--"
"The Blue Mountains!" She held to the canopy rim with one
hand, turning swiftly toward him.
"Oh, it's just a suggestion."
"When do you want to go?" she asked, trembling.
"I thought we might leave tomorrow morning. You know, an
early start and all that," he said very casually.
"But we _never_ go this early in the year!"
"Just this once, I thought--" He smiled. "Do us good to
get away. Some peace and quiet. You know. You haven't anything
_else_ planned? We'll go, won't we?"
She took a breath, waited, and then replied, "No."
"What?" His cry startled the birds. The canopy jerked.
"No," she said firmly. "It's settled. I won't go."
He looked at her. They did not speak after that. She
turned away.
The birds flew on, ten thousand flrebrands down the wind.
In the dawn the sun, through the crystal pillars, melted
the fog that supported Ylla as she slept. All night she had
hung above the floor, buoyed by the soft carpeting of mist
that poured from the walls when she lay down to rest. All night
she had slept on this silent river, like a boat upon a
soundless tide. Now the fog burned away, the mist level lowered
until she was deposited upon the shore of wakening.
She opened her eyes.
Her husband stood over her. He looked as if he had stood
there for hours, watching. She did not know why, but she could
not look him in the face.
"You've been dreaming again!" he said. "You spoke out and
kept me awake. I _really_ think you should see a doctor."
"I'll be all right."
"You talked a lot in your sleep!"
"Did I?" She started up.
Dawn was cold in the room. A gray light filled her as she
lay there.
"What was your dream?"
She had to think a moment to remember. "The ship. It came
from the sky again, landed, and the tall man stepped out and
talked to me, telling me little jokes, laughing, and it
was pleasant."
Mr. K touched a pillar. Founts of warm water leaped
up, steaming; the chill vanished from the room. Mr. K's face
was impassive.
"And then," she said, "this man, who said his strange name
was Nathaniel York, told me I was beautiful and--and kissed
me."
"Ha!" cried the husband, turning violently away, his
jaw working.
"It's only a dream." She was amused.
"Keep your silly, feminine dreams to yourself!"
"You're acting like a child." She lapsed back upon the
few remaining remnants of chemical mist. After a moment she
laughed softly. "I thought of some _more_ of the dream,"
she confessed.
"Well, what is it, what _is_ it?" he shouted.
"Yll, you're so bad-tempered."
"Tell me!" he demanded. "You can't keep secrets from me!"
His face was dark and rigid as he stood over her.
"I've never seen you this way," she replied, half shocked,
half entertained. "All that happened was this Nathaniel York
person told me--well, he told me that he'd take me away into
his ship, into the sky with him, and take me back to his planet
with him. It's really quite ridiculous."
"Ridiculous, is it!" he almost screamed. "You should have
heard yourself, fawning on him, talking to him, singing with
him, oh gods, all night; you should have _heard_ yourself!"
"Yll!"
"When's he landing? Where's he coming down with his damned
ship?"
"Yll, lower your voice.'
"Voice be damned!" He bent stiffly over her. "And _in_
this dream"--he seized her wrist--"didn't the ship land over
in Green Valley, _didn't_ it? Answer me!"
"Why, yes--"
"And it landed this afternoon, didn't it?" he kept at her.
"Yes, yes, I think so, yes, but only in a dream!"
"Well"--he flung her hand away stiffly--"it's good
you're truthful! I heard every word you said in your sleep.
You mentioned the valley and the time." Breathing hard, he
walked between the pillars like a man blinded by a lightning
bolt. Slowly his breath returned. She watched him as if he were
quite insane. She arose finally and went to him. "Yll,"
she whispered.
"I'm all right."
"You're sick."
"No." He forced a tired smile. "Just childish. Forgive
me, darling." He gave her a rough pat. "Too much work lately.
I'm sorry. I think I'll lie down awhile--"
"You were so excited."
"I'm all right now. Fine." He exhaled. "Let's forget it.
Say, I heard a joke about Uel yesterday, I meant to tell you.
What do you say you fix breakfast, I'll tell the joke, and
let's not talk about all this."
"It was only a dream."
"Of course," He kissed her cheek mechanically. "Only
a dream."
At noon the sun was high and hot and the hills shimmered
in the light.
"Aren't you going to town?" asked Ylla.
"Town?" he raised his brows faintly.
"This is the day you _always_ go." She adjusted a flower
cage on its pedestal. The flowers stirred, opening their hungry
yellow mouths.
He closed his book. "No. It's too hot, and it's late."
"Oh." She finished her task and moved toward the door.
"Well, I'll be back soon."
"Wait a minute! Where are you going?"
She was in the door swiftly. "Over to Pao's. She invited
me!"
"Today?"
"I haven't seen her in a long time. It's only a little
way."
"Over in Green Valley, isn't it?"
"Yes, just a walk, not far, I thought I'd--" She hurried.
"I'm sorry, really sorry," he said, running to fetch her
back, looking very concerned about his forgetfulness. "It
slipped my mind. I invited Dr. Nlle out this afternoon."
"Dr. Nile!" She edged toward the door.
He caught her elbow and drew her steadily in. "Yes."
"But Pao--"
"Pan can wait, Ylla. We must entertain Nile."
"Just for a few minutes--"
"No, Ylla."
"No?"
He shook his head. "No. Besides, it's a terribly long walk
to Pao's. All the way over through Green Valley and then past
the big canal and down, isn't it? And it'll be very, very hot,
and Dr. Nile would be delighted to see you. Well?"
She did not answer. She wanted to break and run. She
wanted to cry out. But she only sat in the chair, turning
her fingers over slowly, staring at them expressionlessly,
trapped.
"Ylla?" he murmured. "You _will_ be here, won't you?"
"Yes," she said after a long time. "I'll be here."
"All afternoon?"
Her voice was dull. "All afternoon."
Late in the day Dr. Nile had not put in an appearance.
Ylla's husband did not seem overly surprised. When it was quite
late he murmured something, went to a closet, and drew forth
an evil weapon, a long yellowish tube ending in a bellows and
a trigger. He turned, and upon his face was a mask, hammered
from silver metal, expressionless, the mask that he always wore
when he wished to hide his feelings, the mask which curved
and hollowed so exquisitely to his thin cheeks and chin and
brow. The mask glinted, and he held the evil weapon in his
hands, considering it. It hummed constantly, an insect hum.
From it hordes of golden bees could be flung out with a high
shriek. Golden, horrid bees that stung, poisoned, and fell
lifeless, like seeds on the sand.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"What?" He listened to the bellows, to the evil hum. "If
Dr. Nile is late, I'll be damned if I'll wait. I'm going out
to hunt a bit. I'll be back. You be sure to stay right here
now, won't you?" The silver mask glimmered.
"Yes."
"And tell Dr. Nile I'll return. Just hunting."
The triangular door closed. His footsteps faded down the
hill.
She watched him walking through the sunlight until he was
gone. Then she resumed her tasks with the magnetic dusts and
the new fruits to be plucked from the crystal walls. She worked
with energy and dispatch, but on occasion a numbness took hold
of her and she caught herself singing that odd and memorable
song and looking out beyond the crystal pillars at the sky.
She held her breath and stood very still, waiting.
It was coming nearer.
At any moment it might happen.
It was like those days when you heard a thunderstorm
coming and there was the waiting silence and then the faintest
pressure of the atmosphere as the climate blew over the land
in shifts and shadows and vapors. And the change pressed at
your ears and you were suspended in the waiting time of the
coming storm. You began to tremble. The sky was stained
and coloured; the clouds were thickened; the mountains took on
an iron taint. The caged flowers blew with faint sighs of
warning. You felt your hair stir softly. Somewhere in the house
the voice-clock sang, "Time, time, time, time . . ." ever
so gently, no more than water tapping on velvet.
And then the storm. The electric illumination, the
engulfments of dark wash and sounding black fell down, shutting
in, forever.
That's how it was. A storm gathered, yet the sky was
clear. Lightning was expected, yet there was no cloud.
Ylla moved through the breathless summer house. Lightning
would strike from the sky any instant; there would be
a thunderclap, a boil of smoke, a silence, footsteps on the
path, a rap on the crystalline door, and her _running_ to
answer. . . .
Crazy Ylla! she scoffed. Why think these wild things with
your idle mind?
And then it happened.
There was a warmth as of a great fire passing in the air.
A whirling, rushing sound. A gleam in the sky, of metal.
Ylla cried out.
Running through the pillars, she flung wide a door. She
faced the hills. But by this time there was nothing.
She was about to race down the hill when she stopped
herself, She was supposed to stay here, go nowhere, The doctor
was coming to visit, and her husband would be angry if she ran
off.
She waited in the door, breathing rapidly, her hand out.
She strained to see over toward Green Valley, but saw
nothing.
Silly woman. She went inside. You and your imagination,
she thought. That was nothing but a bird, a leaf, the wind, or
a fish in the canal. Sit down. Rest.
She sat down.
A shot sounded.
Very clearly, sharply, the sound of the evil insect
weapon.
Her body jerked with it.
It came from a long way off, One shot. The swift humming
distant bees. One shot. And then a second shot, precise and
cold, and far away.
Her body winced again and for some reason she started
up, screaming, and screaming, and never wanting to stop
screaming. She ran violently through the house and once more
threw wide the door.
The echoes were dying away, away.
Gone.
She waited in the yard, her face pale, for five minutes.
Finally, with slow steps, her head down, she wandered
about the pillared rooms, laying her hand to things, her
lips quivering, until finally she sat alone in the darkening
wine room, waiting. She began to wipe an amber glass with the
hem of her scarf.
And then, from far off, the sound of footsteps crunching
on the thin, small rocks.
She rose up to stand in the center of the quiet room. The
glass fell from her fingers, smashing to bits.
The footsteps hesitated outside the door.
Should she speak? Should she cry out, "Come in, oh, come
in"?
She went forward a few paces.
The footsteps walked up the ramp. A hand twisted the door
latch.
She smiled at the door.
The door opened. She stopped smiling.
It was her husband. His silver mask glowed dully.
He entered the room and looked at her for only a moment.
Then he snapped the weapon bellows open, cracked out two dead
bees, heard them spat on the floor as they fell, stepped on
them, and placed the empty bellows gun in the corner of the
room as Ylla bent down and tried, over and over, with no
success, to pick up the pieces of the shattered glass. "What
were you doing?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said with his back turned. He removed the
mask.
"But the gun--I heard you fire it. Twice."
"Just hunting. Once in a while you like to hunt. Did Dr.
Nile arrive?"
"No."
"Wait a minute." He snapped his fingers disgustedly. "Why,
I remember _now_. He was supposed to visit us _tomorrow_
afternoon. How stupid of me."
They sat down to eat. She looked at her food and did not
move her hands. "What's wrong?" he asked, not looking up from
dipping his meat in the bubbling lava.
"I don't know. I'm not hungry," she said.
"Why not?"
"I don't know; I'm just not."
The wind was rising across the sky; the sun was going
down. The room was small and suddenly cold.
"I've been trying to remember," she said in the silent
room, across from her cold, erect, golden-eyed husband.
"Remember what?" He sipped his wine.
"That song. That fine and beautiful song." She closed her
eyes and hummed, but it was not the song. "I've forgotten it.
And, somehow, I don't want to forget it. It's something I want
always to remember." She moved her hands as if the rhythm might
help her to remember all of it. Then she lay back in her chair.
"I can't remember." She began to cry.
"Why are you crying?" he asked.
"I don't know, I don't know, but I can't help it. I'm sad
and I don't know why, I cry and I don't know why, but I'm
crying."
Her head was in her hands; her shoulders moved again and
again.
"You'll be all right tomorrow," he said.
She did not look up at him; she looked only at the empty
desert and the very bright stars coming out now on the black
sky, and far away there was a sound of wind rising and canal
waters stirring cold in the long canals. She shut her eyes,
trembling.
"Yes," she said. "I'll be all right tomorrow."
August 1999: THE SUMMER NIGHT
In the stone galleries the people were gathered in
clusters and groups filtering up into shadows among the blue
hills. A soft evening light shone over them from the stars and
the luminous double moons of Mars. Beyond the marble
amphitheater, in darkness and distances, lay little towns
and villas; pools of silver water stood motionless and canals
glittered from horizon to horizon. It was an evening in summer
upon the placid and temperate planet Mars. Up and down green
wine canals, boats as delicate as bronze flowers drifted. In
the long and endless dwellings that curved like tranquil snakes
across the hills, lovers lay idly whispering in cool night
beds. The last children ran in torchlit alleys, gold spiders
in their hands throwing out films of web. Here or there a late
supper was prepared in tables where lava bubbled silvery and
hushed. In the amphitheaters of a hundred towns on the night
side of Mars the brown Martian people with gold coin eyes
were leisurely met to fix their attention upon stages where
musicians made a serene music flow up like blossom scent on
the still air.
Upon one stage a woman sang.
The audience stirred.
She stopped singing. She put her hand to her throat. She
nodded to the musicians and they began again.
The musicians played and she sang, and this time the
audience sighed and sat forward, a few of the men stood up
in surprise, and a winter chill moved through the amphitheater.
For it was an odd and a frightening and a strange song this
woman sang. She tried to stop the words from coming out of her
lips, but the words were these:
"_She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes_ . . ."
The singer dasped her hands to her mouth. She stood,
bewildered.
"What words are those?" asked the musicians.
"What song is that?"
"What _language_ is that!"
And when they blew again upon their golden horns the
strange music came forth and passed slowly over the audience,
which now talked aloud and stood up.
"What's wrong with you?" the musicians asked each other.
"What tune is that you played?"
"What tune did _you_ play?"
The woman wept and ran from the stage, And the audience
moved out of the amphitheater. And all around the nervous towns
of Mars a similar thing had happened. A coldness had come, like
white snow falling on the air.
In the black alleys, under the torches, the children sang:
"--_and when she got there, the cupboard was bare,
And so her poor dog had none!_"
"Children!" voices cried. "What was that rhyme? Where did
you learn it?"
"We just _thought_ of it, all of a sudden. It's just words
we don't understand."
Doors slammed. The streets were deserted. Above the blue
hills a green star rose.
All over the night side of Mars lovers awoke to listen
to their loved ones who lay humming in the darkness.
"What is that tune?"
And in a thousand villas, in the middle of the night,
women awoke, screaming. They had to be soothed while the tears
ran down their faces, "There, there. Sleep. What's wrong?
A dream?"
"Something terrible will happen in the morning."
"Nothing can happen, all is well with us."
A hysterical sobbing. "It is coming nearer and nearer
and _nearer!_"
"Nothing can happen to us. What could? Sleep now. Sleep."
It was quiet in the deep morning of Mars, as quiet as a
cool and black well, with stars shining in the canal waters,
and, breathing in every room, the children curled with their
spiders in closed hands, the lovers arm in arm, the moons gone,
the torches cold, the stone amphitheaters deserted.
The only sound, just before dawn, was a night watchman,
far away down a lonely street, walking along in the darkness,
humming a very strange song. . . .
August 1999: THE EARTH MEN
Whoever was knocking at the door didn't want to stop. Mrs.
Ttt threw the door open. "Well?"
"You speak _English!_" The man standing there was
astounded.
"I speak what I speak," she said.
"It's wonderful _English!_" The man was in uniform. There
were three men with him, in a great hurry, all smiling, all
dirty.
"What do you want?" demanded Mrs. Ttt.
"You are a _Martian!_" The man smiled. "The word is
not familiar to you, certainly. It's an Earth expression."
He nodded at his then. "We are from Earth. I'm Captain
Williams. We've landed on Mars within the hour. Here we are,
the _Second_ Expedition! There was a First Expedition, but we
don't know what happened to it. But here we are, anyway. And
you are the first Martian we've met!"
"Martian?" Her eyebrows went up.
"What I mean to say is, you live on the fourth planet from
the sun. Correct?"
"Elementary," she snapped, eyeing them.
"And we"--he pressed his chubby pink hand to his chest--
"we are from Earth. Right, men?"
"Right, sir!" A chorus.
"This is the planet Tyrr," she said, "if you want to use
the proper name."
"Tyrr, Tyrr." The captain laughed exhaustedly. "What a
_fine_ name! But, my good woman, how is it you speak such
perfect English?"
"I'm not speaking, I'm thinking," she said. "Telepathy!
Good day!" And she slammed the door.
A moment later there was that dreadful man knocking again.
She whipped the door open. "What now?" she wondered.
The man was still there, trying to smile, looking
bewildered. He put out his hands. "I don't think you
_understand_--"
"What?" she snapped.
The man gazed at her in surprise. "We're from _Earth!_"
"I haven't time," she said. "I've a lot of cooking today
and there's cleaning and sewing and all. You evidently wish to
see Mr. Ttt; he's upstairs in his study."
"Yes," said the Earth Man confusedly, blinking. "By all
means, let us see Mr. Ttt."
"He's busy." She slammed the door again.
This time the knock on the door was most impertinently
loud.
"See here!" cried the man when the door was thrust open
again. He jumped in as if to surprise her. "This is no way to
treat visitors!"
"All over my clean floor!" she cried. "Mud! Get out! If
you come in my house, wash your boots first."
The man looked in dismay at his muddy boots, "This," he
said, "is no time for trivialities. I think," he said, "we
should be celebrating." He looked at her for a long time, as
if looking might make her understand.
"If you've made my crystal buns fall in the oven,"
she exclaimed, "I'll hit you with a piece of wood!" She peered
into a little hot oven. She came back, red, steamy-faced. Her
eyes were sharp yellow, her skin was soft brown, she was thin
and quick as an insect. Her voice was metallic and sharp. "Wait
here. I'll see if I can let you have a moment with Mr. Ttt.
What was your business?"
The man swore luridly, as if she'd hit his hand with
a hammer. "Tell him we're from Earth and it's never been
done before!"
"What hasn't?" She put her brown hand up. "Never mind.
I'll be back."
The sound of her feet fluttered through the stone house.
Outside, the immense blue Martian sky was hot and still as
a warm deep sea water. The Martian desert lay broiling like
a prehistoric mud pot, waves of heat rising and shimmering.
There was a small rocket ship reclining upon a hilltop nearby.
Large footprints came from the rocket to the door of this stone
house.
Now there was a sound of quarreling voices upstairs. The
men within the door stared at one another, shifting on their
boots, twiddling their fingers, and holding onto their hip
belts. A man's voice shouted upstairs. The woman's voice
replied. After fifteen minutes the Earth men began walking in
and out the kitchen door, with nothing to do.
"Cigarette?" said one of the men.
Somebody got out a pack and they lit up. They puffed
slow streams of pale white smoke. They adjusted their uniforms,
fixed their collars. The voices upstairs continued to mutter
and chant. The leader of the men looked at his watch.
"Twenty-five minutes," he said. "I wonder what they're up
to up there." He went to a window and looked out.
"Hot day," said one of the men.
"Yeah," said someone else in the slow warm time of
early afternoon. The voices had faded to a murmur and were
now silent. There was not a sound in the house. All the men
could hear was their own breathing.
An hour of silence passed. "I hope we didn't cause
any trouble," said the captain. He went and peered into the
living room.
Mrs. Ttt was there, watering some flowers that grew in
the center of the room.
"I knew I had forgotten something," she said when she saw
the captain. She walked out to the kitchen. "I'm sorry." She
handed him a slip of paper. "Mr. Ttt is much too busy." She
turned to her cooking. "Anyway, it's not Mr. Ttt you want to
see; it's Mr. Aaa. Take that paper over to the next farm, by
the blue canal, and Mr. Aaa'll advise you about whatever it is
you want to know."
"We don't want to know anything," objected the captain,
pouting out his thick lips. "We already _know_ it."
"You have the paper, what more do you want?" she asked
him straight off. And she would say no more.
"Well," said the captain, reluctant to go. He stood as
if waiting for something. He looked like a child staring at
an empty Christmas tree. "Well," he said again. "Come on, men."
The four men stepped out into the hot silent day.
Half an hour. later, Mr. Aaa, seated in his library
sipping a bit of electric fire from a metal cup, heard the
voices outside in the stone causeway. He leaned over the window
sill and gazed at the four uniformed men who squinted up at
him.
"Are you Mr. Aaa?" they called.
"I am."
"Mr. Ttt sent us to see you!" shouted the captain.
"Why did he do that?" asked Mr. Aaa.
"He was busy!"
"Well, that's a shame," said Mr. Ass sarcastically. "Does
he think I have nothing else to do but entertain people he's
too busy to bother with?"
"That's not the important thing, sir," shouted the
captain.
"Well, it is to me. I have much reading to do. Mr. Ttt
is inconsiderate. This is not the first time he has been
this thoughtless of me. Stop waving your hands, sir, until
I finish. And pay attention. People usually listen to me when
I talk. And you'll listen courteously or I won't talk at all."
Uneasily the four men in the court shifted and opened
their mouths, and once the captain, the veins on his face
bulging, showed a few little tears in his eyes.
"Now," lectured Mr. Aaa, "do you think it fair of Mr. Ttt
to be so ill-mannered?"
The four men gazed up through the heat. The captain said,
"We're from Earth!"
"I think it very ungentlemanly of him," brooded Mr. Aaa.
"A _rocket_ ship. We came in it. Over there!"
"Not the first time Ttt's been unreasonable, you know."
"All the way from Earth."
"Why, for half a mind, I'd call him up and tell him off."
"Just the four of us; myself and these three men, my
crew."
"I'll call him up, yes, that's what I'll do!"
"Earth. Rocket. Men. Trip. Space."
"Call him and give him a good lashing!" cried Mr. Aaa.
He vanished like a puppet from a stage. For a minute there were
angry voices back and forth over some weird mechanism or other.
Below, the captain and his crew glanced longingly back at their
pretty rocket ship lying on the hillside, so sweet and lovely
and fine.
Mr. Aaa jerked up in the window, wildly triumphant
"Challenged him to a duel, by the gods! A duel!"
"Mr. Aaa--" the captain started all over again, quietly.
"I'll shoot him dead, do you hear!"
"Mr. Aaa, I'd like to _tell_ you. We came sixty million
miles."
Mr. Aaa regarded the captain for the first time. "Where'd
you say you were from?"
The captain flashed a white smile. Aside to his men
he withpered, "_Now_ we're getting someplace!" To Mr. Aaa
he called, "We traveled sixty million miles. From Earth!"
Mr. Aaa yawned. "That's only _fifty_ million miles this
time of year." He picked up a frightful-looking weapon. "Well,
I have to go now. Just take that silly note, though I don't
know what good it'll do you, and go over that hill into the
little town of Iopr and tell Mr. Iii all about it. _He's_ the
man you want to see. Not Mr. Ttt, he's an idiot; I'm going to
kill him. Not me, because you're not in my line of work."
"Line of work, line of work!" bleated the captain. "Do you
have to be in a certain line of work to welcome Earth men!"
"Don't be silly, everyone knows _that!_" Mr. Aaa
rushed downstairs. "Good-by!" And down the causeway he raced,
like a pair of wild calipers.
The four travelers stood shocked. Finally the captain
said, "We'll find someone yet who'll listen to us."
"Maybe we could go out and come in again," said one of the
men in a dreary voice. "Maybe we should take off and land
again. Give them time to organize a party."
"That might be a good idea," murmured the tired captain.
The little town was full of people drifting in and out
of doors, saying hello to one another, wearing golden masks and
blue masks and crimson masks for pleasant variety, masks with
silver lips and bronze eyebrows, masks that smiled or masks
that frowned, according to the owners' dispositions.
The four men, wet from their long walk, paused and asked
a little girl where Mr. Iii's house was.
"There." The child nodded her head.
The captain got eagerly, carefully down on one knee,
looking into her sweet young face. "Little girl, I want to talk
to you."
He seated her on his knee and folded her small brown hands
neatly in his own big ones, as if ready for a bed-time story
which he was shaping in his mind slowly and with a great
patient happiness in details.
"Well, here's how it is, little girl. Six months ago
another rocket came to Mars. There was a man named York in it,
and his assistant. Whatever happened to them, we don't know.
Maybe they crashed. They came in a rocket. So did we. You
should see it! A _big_ rocket! So we're the _Second_
Expedition, following up the First! And we came all the way
from Earth. . . ."
The little girl disengaged one hand without thinking about
it, and clapped an expressionless golden mask over her face,
Then she pulled forth a golden spider toy and dropped it to
the ground while the captain talked on. The toy spider climbed
back up to her knee obediently, while she speculated upon it
coolly through the slits of her emotionless mask and the
captain shook her gently and urged his story upon her.
"We're Earth Men," he said. "Do you believe me?"
"Yes." The little girl peeped at the way she was wiggling
her toes in the dust.
"Fine." The captain pinched her arm, a little bit
with joviality, a little bit with meanness to get her to look
at him. "We built our own rocket ship. Do you believe _that?_"
The little girl dug in her nose with a finger. "Yes."
"And--take your finger out of your nose, little girl--_I_
am the captain, and--"
"Never before in history has anybody come across space in
a big rocket ship," recited the little creature, eyes shut.
"Wonderful! How did you know?"
"Oh, telepathy." She wiped a casual finger on her knee.
"Well, aren't you just _ever_ so excited?" cried the
captain. "Aren't you glad?"
"You just better go see Mr. Iii right away." She dropped
her toy to the ground. "Mr. Iii will like talking to you." She
ran off, with the toy spider scuttling obediently after her.
The captain squatted there looking after her with his hand
out. His eyes were watery in his head. He looked at his empty
hands. His mouth hung open: The other three men stood with
their shadows under them. They spat on the stone street. . . .
Mr. Iii answered his door. He was on his way to a lecture,
but he had a minute, if they would hurry inside and tell him
what they desired. . . .
"A little attention," said the captain, red-eyed and
tired. "We're from Earth, we have a rocket, there are four of
us, crew and captain, we're exhausted, we're hungry, we'd like
a place to sleep. We'd like someone to give us the key to the
city or something like that, and we'd like somebody to shake
our hands and say 'Hooray' and say 'Congratulations, old man!'
That about sums it up."
Mr. Iii was a tall, vaporous, thin man with thick blind
blue crystals over his yellowish eyes. He bent over his desk
and brooded upon some papers, glancing now and again with
extreme penetration at his guests.
For my wife MARGUERITE with all my love
"It is good to renew one's wonder," said the philosopher.
"Space travel has again made children of us all."
January 1999: ROCKET SUMMER
One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows
locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every
roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like
great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.
And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town.
A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left
a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and
bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt.
The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked
off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear
disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer's ancient
green lawns.
_Rocket summer_. The words passed among the people in the
open, airing houses. _Rocket summer_. The warm desert air
changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art
work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling
from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before
it touched the ground.
_Rocket summer_. People leaned from their dripping porches
and watched the reddening sky.
The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink
clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold
wintar morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty
exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief
moment upon the land. . . .
February 1999: YLLA
They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by
the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs.
K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls,
or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which,
taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons,
when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees
stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone
town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you
could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book
with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one
might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked,
a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when
the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried
clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.
Mr. and Mrs. K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years,
and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned
and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.
Mr. and Mrs. K were not old. They had the fair, brownish
skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft
musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with
chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the
wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the
dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking
room.
They were not happy now.
This morning Mrs. K stood between the pillars, listening
to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly
run on the horizon.
Something was going to happen.
She waited.
She watched the blue sky of Mars as if it might at any
moment grip in on itself, contract, and expel a shining miracle
down upon the sand.
Nothing happened.
Tired of waiting, she walked through the misting pillars.
A gentle rain sprang from the fluted pillar tops, cooling
the scorched air, falling gently on her. On hot days it was
like walking in a creek. The floors of the house glittered with
cool streams. In the distance she heard her husband playing his
book steadily, his fingers never tired of the old songs.
Quietly she wished he might one day again spend as much time
holding and touching her like a little harp as he did his
incredible books.
But no. She shook her head, an imperceptible, forgiving
shrug. Her eyelids closed softly down upon her golden eyes.
Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.
She lay back in a chair that moved to take her shape even
as she moved. She closed her eyes tightly and nervously.
The dream occurred.
Her brown fingers trembled, came up, grasped at the air.
A moment later she sat up, startled, gasping.
She glanced about swiftly, as if expecting someone there
before her. She seemed disappointed; the space between the
pillars was empty.
Her husband appeared in a triangular door. "Did you call?"
he asked irritably.
"No!" she cried.
"I thought I heard you cry out."
"Did I? I was almost asleep and had a dream!"
"In the daytime? You don't often do that."
She sat as if struck in the face by the dream. "How
strange, how very strange," she murmured. "The dream."
"Oh?" He evidently wished to return to his book.
"I dreamed about a man."
"A man?"
"A tall man, six feet one inch tall."
"How absurd; a giant, a misshapen giant."
"Somehow"--she tried the words-- "he looked all right.
In spite of being tall. And he had--oh, I know you'll think
it silly--he had _blue_ eyes!"
"Blue eyes! Gods!" cried Mr. K. "What'll you dream next?
I suppose he had _black_ hair?"
"How did you _guess?_" She was excited.
"I picked the most unlikely color," he replied coldly.
"Well, black it was!" she cried. "And he had a very white
skin; oh, he was _most_ unusual! He was dressed in a strange
uniform and he came down out of the sky and spoke pleasantly
to me." She smiled.
"Out of the sky; what nonsense!"
"He came in a metal thing that glittered in the sun,"
she remembered. She closed her eyes to shape it again. "I
dreamed there was the sky and something sparkled like a coin
thrown into the air, and suddenly it grew large and fell down
softly to land, a long silver craft, round and alien. And a
door opened in the side of the silver object and this tall
man stepped out."
"If you worked harder you wouldn't have these silly
dreams."
"I rather enjoyed it," she replied, lying back. "I
never suspected myself of such an imagination. Black hair, blue
eyes, and white skin! What a strange man, and yet--quite
handsome."
"Wishful thinking."
"You're unkind. I didn't think him up on purpose; he just
came in my mind while I drowsed. It wasn't like a dream. It was
so unexpected and different. He looked at me and he said, 'I've
come from the third planet in my ship. My name is Nathaniel
York--'"
"A stupid name; it's no name at all," objected the
husband.
"Of course it's stupid, because it's a dream," she
explained softly. "And he said, 'This is the first trip across
space. There are only two of us in our ship, myself and my
friend Bert.'"
"_Another_ stupid name."
"And he said, 'We're from a city on _Earth_; that's the
name of our planet,'" continued Mrs. K. "That's what he said.
'Earth' was the name he spoke. And he used another language.
Somehow I understood him. With my mind. Telepathy, I suppose."
Mr. K turned away. She stopped him with a word. "Yll?"
she called quietly. "Do you ever wonder if--well, if there
_are_ people living on the third planet?"
"The third planet is incapable of supporting life," stated
the husband patiently. "Our scientists have said there's far
too much oxygen in their atmosphere."
"But wouldn't it be fascinating if there _were_ people?
And they traveled through space in some sort of ship?"
"Really, Ylla, you know how I hate this emotional wailing.
Let's get on with our work."
It was late in the day when she began singing the song as
she moved among the whispering pillars of rain. She sang it
over and over again.
"What's that song?" snapped her husband at last, walking
in to sit at the fire table.
"I don't know." She looked up, surprised at herself. She
put her hand to her mouth, unbelieving. The sun was setting.
The house was closing itself in, like a giant flower, with
the passing of light. A wind blew among the pillars; the fire
table bubbled its fierce pool of silver lava. The wind stirred
her russet hair, crooning softly in her ears. She stood
silently looking out into the great sallow distances of sea
bottom, as if recalling something, her yellow eyes soft and
moist, "Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge
with mine," she sang, softly, quietly, slowly. "Or leave a
kiss within the cup, and I'll not ask for wine." She hummed
now, moving her hands in the wind ever so lightly, her eyes
shut. She finished the song.
It was very beautiful.
"Never heard that song before. Did you compose it?"
he inquired, his eyes sharp.
"No, Yes. No, I don't know, really!" She hesitated wildly.
"I don't even know what the words are; they're another
language!"
"What language?"
She dropped portions of meat numbly into the simmering
lava. "I don't know." She drew the meat forth a moment later,
cooked, served on a plate for him. "It's just a crazy thing I
made up, I guess. I don't know why."
He said nothing. He watched her drown meats in the hissing
fire pool. The sun was gone. Slowly, slowly the night came in
to fill the room, swallowing the pillars and both of them, like
a dark wine poured to the ceiling. Only the silver lava's glow
lit their faces.
She hummed the strange song again.
Instantly he leaped from his chair and stalked angrily
from the room.
Later, in isolation, he finished supper.
When he arose he stretched, glanced at her, and suggested,
yawning, "Let's take the flame birds to town tonight to see
an entertainment."
"You don't _mean_ it?" she said. "Are you feeling well?"
"What's so strange about that?"
"But we haven't gone for an entertainment in six months!"
"I think it's a good idea."
"Suddenly you're so solicitous," she said.
"Don't talk that way," he replied peevishly. "Do you or do
you not want to go?"
She looked out at the pale desert. The twin white moons
were rising. Cool water ran softly about her toes. She began
to tremble just the least bit. She wanted very much to sit
quietly here, soundless, not moving until this thing occurred,
this thing expected all day, this thing that could not occur
but might. A drift of song brushed through her mind.
"I----"
"Do you good," he urged. "Come along now."
"I'm tired," she said. "Some other night."
"Here's your scarf." He handed her a phial. "We haven't
gone anywhere in months."
"Except you, twice a week to Xi City." She wouldn't look
at him.
"Business," he said.
"Oh?" She whispered to herself.
From the phial a liquid poured, turned to blue mist,
settled about her neck, quivering.
The flame birds waited, like a bed of coals, glowing on
the cool smooth sands. The white canopy ballooned on the night
wind, flapping softly, tied by a thousand green ribbons to
the birds.
Ylla laid herself back in the canopy and, at a word from
her husband, the birds leaped, burning, toward the dark sky,
The ribbons tautened, the canopy lifted. The sand slid whining
under; the blue hills drifted by, drifted by, leaving their
home behind, the raining pillars, the caged flowers, the
singing books, the whispering floor creeks. She did not look at
her husband. She heard him crying out to the birds as they
rose higher, like ten thousand hot sparkles, so many red-yellow
fireworks in the heavens, tugging the canopy like a flower
petal, burning through the wind.
She didn't watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide
under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past
dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon,
like a torch burning.
She watched only the sky.
The husband spoke.
She watched the sky.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"What?"
He exhaled. "You might pay attention."
"I was thinking."
"I never thought you were a nature lover, but you're
certainly interested in the sky tonight," he said.
"It's very beautiful."
"I was figuring," said the husband slowly. "I thought I'd
call Hulle tonight. I'd like to talk to him about us spending
some time, oh, only a week or so, in the Blue Mountains. It's
just an idea--"
"The Blue Mountains!" She held to the canopy rim with one
hand, turning swiftly toward him.
"Oh, it's just a suggestion."
"When do you want to go?" she asked, trembling.
"I thought we might leave tomorrow morning. You know, an
early start and all that," he said very casually.
"But we _never_ go this early in the year!"
"Just this once, I thought--" He smiled. "Do us good to
get away. Some peace and quiet. You know. You haven't anything
_else_ planned? We'll go, won't we?"
She took a breath, waited, and then replied, "No."
"What?" His cry startled the birds. The canopy jerked.
"No," she said firmly. "It's settled. I won't go."
He looked at her. They did not speak after that. She
turned away.
The birds flew on, ten thousand flrebrands down the wind.
In the dawn the sun, through the crystal pillars, melted
the fog that supported Ylla as she slept. All night she had
hung above the floor, buoyed by the soft carpeting of mist
that poured from the walls when she lay down to rest. All night
she had slept on this silent river, like a boat upon a
soundless tide. Now the fog burned away, the mist level lowered
until she was deposited upon the shore of wakening.
She opened her eyes.
Her husband stood over her. He looked as if he had stood
there for hours, watching. She did not know why, but she could
not look him in the face.
"You've been dreaming again!" he said. "You spoke out and
kept me awake. I _really_ think you should see a doctor."
"I'll be all right."
"You talked a lot in your sleep!"
"Did I?" She started up.
Dawn was cold in the room. A gray light filled her as she
lay there.
"What was your dream?"
She had to think a moment to remember. "The ship. It came
from the sky again, landed, and the tall man stepped out and
talked to me, telling me little jokes, laughing, and it
was pleasant."
Mr. K touched a pillar. Founts of warm water leaped
up, steaming; the chill vanished from the room. Mr. K's face
was impassive.
"And then," she said, "this man, who said his strange name
was Nathaniel York, told me I was beautiful and--and kissed
me."
"Ha!" cried the husband, turning violently away, his
jaw working.
"It's only a dream." She was amused.
"Keep your silly, feminine dreams to yourself!"
"You're acting like a child." She lapsed back upon the
few remaining remnants of chemical mist. After a moment she
laughed softly. "I thought of some _more_ of the dream,"
she confessed.
"Well, what is it, what _is_ it?" he shouted.
"Yll, you're so bad-tempered."
"Tell me!" he demanded. "You can't keep secrets from me!"
His face was dark and rigid as he stood over her.
"I've never seen you this way," she replied, half shocked,
half entertained. "All that happened was this Nathaniel York
person told me--well, he told me that he'd take me away into
his ship, into the sky with him, and take me back to his planet
with him. It's really quite ridiculous."
"Ridiculous, is it!" he almost screamed. "You should have
heard yourself, fawning on him, talking to him, singing with
him, oh gods, all night; you should have _heard_ yourself!"
"Yll!"
"When's he landing? Where's he coming down with his damned
ship?"
"Yll, lower your voice.'
"Voice be damned!" He bent stiffly over her. "And _in_
this dream"--he seized her wrist--"didn't the ship land over
in Green Valley, _didn't_ it? Answer me!"
"Why, yes--"
"And it landed this afternoon, didn't it?" he kept at her.
"Yes, yes, I think so, yes, but only in a dream!"
"Well"--he flung her hand away stiffly--"it's good
you're truthful! I heard every word you said in your sleep.
You mentioned the valley and the time." Breathing hard, he
walked between the pillars like a man blinded by a lightning
bolt. Slowly his breath returned. She watched him as if he were
quite insane. She arose finally and went to him. "Yll,"
she whispered.
"I'm all right."
"You're sick."
"No." He forced a tired smile. "Just childish. Forgive
me, darling." He gave her a rough pat. "Too much work lately.
I'm sorry. I think I'll lie down awhile--"
"You were so excited."
"I'm all right now. Fine." He exhaled. "Let's forget it.
Say, I heard a joke about Uel yesterday, I meant to tell you.
What do you say you fix breakfast, I'll tell the joke, and
let's not talk about all this."
"It was only a dream."
"Of course," He kissed her cheek mechanically. "Only
a dream."
At noon the sun was high and hot and the hills shimmered
in the light.
"Aren't you going to town?" asked Ylla.
"Town?" he raised his brows faintly.
"This is the day you _always_ go." She adjusted a flower
cage on its pedestal. The flowers stirred, opening their hungry
yellow mouths.
He closed his book. "No. It's too hot, and it's late."
"Oh." She finished her task and moved toward the door.
"Well, I'll be back soon."
"Wait a minute! Where are you going?"
She was in the door swiftly. "Over to Pao's. She invited
me!"
"Today?"
"I haven't seen her in a long time. It's only a little
way."
"Over in Green Valley, isn't it?"
"Yes, just a walk, not far, I thought I'd--" She hurried.
"I'm sorry, really sorry," he said, running to fetch her
back, looking very concerned about his forgetfulness. "It
slipped my mind. I invited Dr. Nlle out this afternoon."
"Dr. Nile!" She edged toward the door.
He caught her elbow and drew her steadily in. "Yes."
"But Pao--"
"Pan can wait, Ylla. We must entertain Nile."
"Just for a few minutes--"
"No, Ylla."
"No?"
He shook his head. "No. Besides, it's a terribly long walk
to Pao's. All the way over through Green Valley and then past
the big canal and down, isn't it? And it'll be very, very hot,
and Dr. Nile would be delighted to see you. Well?"
She did not answer. She wanted to break and run. She
wanted to cry out. But she only sat in the chair, turning
her fingers over slowly, staring at them expressionlessly,
trapped.
"Ylla?" he murmured. "You _will_ be here, won't you?"
"Yes," she said after a long time. "I'll be here."
"All afternoon?"
Her voice was dull. "All afternoon."
Late in the day Dr. Nile had not put in an appearance.
Ylla's husband did not seem overly surprised. When it was quite
late he murmured something, went to a closet, and drew forth
an evil weapon, a long yellowish tube ending in a bellows and
a trigger. He turned, and upon his face was a mask, hammered
from silver metal, expressionless, the mask that he always wore
when he wished to hide his feelings, the mask which curved
and hollowed so exquisitely to his thin cheeks and chin and
brow. The mask glinted, and he held the evil weapon in his
hands, considering it. It hummed constantly, an insect hum.
From it hordes of golden bees could be flung out with a high
shriek. Golden, horrid bees that stung, poisoned, and fell
lifeless, like seeds on the sand.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"What?" He listened to the bellows, to the evil hum. "If
Dr. Nile is late, I'll be damned if I'll wait. I'm going out
to hunt a bit. I'll be back. You be sure to stay right here
now, won't you?" The silver mask glimmered.
"Yes."
"And tell Dr. Nile I'll return. Just hunting."
The triangular door closed. His footsteps faded down the
hill.
She watched him walking through the sunlight until he was
gone. Then she resumed her tasks with the magnetic dusts and
the new fruits to be plucked from the crystal walls. She worked
with energy and dispatch, but on occasion a numbness took hold
of her and she caught herself singing that odd and memorable
song and looking out beyond the crystal pillars at the sky.
She held her breath and stood very still, waiting.
It was coming nearer.
At any moment it might happen.
It was like those days when you heard a thunderstorm
coming and there was the waiting silence and then the faintest
pressure of the atmosphere as the climate blew over the land
in shifts and shadows and vapors. And the change pressed at
your ears and you were suspended in the waiting time of the
coming storm. You began to tremble. The sky was stained
and coloured; the clouds were thickened; the mountains took on
an iron taint. The caged flowers blew with faint sighs of
warning. You felt your hair stir softly. Somewhere in the house
the voice-clock sang, "Time, time, time, time . . ." ever
so gently, no more than water tapping on velvet.
And then the storm. The electric illumination, the
engulfments of dark wash and sounding black fell down, shutting
in, forever.
That's how it was. A storm gathered, yet the sky was
clear. Lightning was expected, yet there was no cloud.
Ylla moved through the breathless summer house. Lightning
would strike from the sky any instant; there would be
a thunderclap, a boil of smoke, a silence, footsteps on the
path, a rap on the crystalline door, and her _running_ to
answer. . . .
Crazy Ylla! she scoffed. Why think these wild things with
your idle mind?
And then it happened.
There was a warmth as of a great fire passing in the air.
A whirling, rushing sound. A gleam in the sky, of metal.
Ylla cried out.
Running through the pillars, she flung wide a door. She
faced the hills. But by this time there was nothing.
She was about to race down the hill when she stopped
herself, She was supposed to stay here, go nowhere, The doctor
was coming to visit, and her husband would be angry if she ran
off.
She waited in the door, breathing rapidly, her hand out.
She strained to see over toward Green Valley, but saw
nothing.
Silly woman. She went inside. You and your imagination,
she thought. That was nothing but a bird, a leaf, the wind, or
a fish in the canal. Sit down. Rest.
She sat down.
A shot sounded.
Very clearly, sharply, the sound of the evil insect
weapon.
Her body jerked with it.
It came from a long way off, One shot. The swift humming
distant bees. One shot. And then a second shot, precise and
cold, and far away.
Her body winced again and for some reason she started
up, screaming, and screaming, and never wanting to stop
screaming. She ran violently through the house and once more
threw wide the door.
The echoes were dying away, away.
Gone.
She waited in the yard, her face pale, for five minutes.
Finally, with slow steps, her head down, she wandered
about the pillared rooms, laying her hand to things, her
lips quivering, until finally she sat alone in the darkening
wine room, waiting. She began to wipe an amber glass with the
hem of her scarf.
And then, from far off, the sound of footsteps crunching
on the thin, small rocks.
She rose up to stand in the center of the quiet room. The
glass fell from her fingers, smashing to bits.
The footsteps hesitated outside the door.
Should she speak? Should she cry out, "Come in, oh, come
in"?
She went forward a few paces.
The footsteps walked up the ramp. A hand twisted the door
latch.
She smiled at the door.
The door opened. She stopped smiling.
It was her husband. His silver mask glowed dully.
He entered the room and looked at her for only a moment.
Then he snapped the weapon bellows open, cracked out two dead
bees, heard them spat on the floor as they fell, stepped on
them, and placed the empty bellows gun in the corner of the
room as Ylla bent down and tried, over and over, with no
success, to pick up the pieces of the shattered glass. "What
were you doing?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said with his back turned. He removed the
mask.
"But the gun--I heard you fire it. Twice."
"Just hunting. Once in a while you like to hunt. Did Dr.
Nile arrive?"
"No."
"Wait a minute." He snapped his fingers disgustedly. "Why,
I remember _now_. He was supposed to visit us _tomorrow_
afternoon. How stupid of me."
They sat down to eat. She looked at her food and did not
move her hands. "What's wrong?" he asked, not looking up from
dipping his meat in the bubbling lava.
"I don't know. I'm not hungry," she said.
"Why not?"
"I don't know; I'm just not."
The wind was rising across the sky; the sun was going
down. The room was small and suddenly cold.
"I've been trying to remember," she said in the silent
room, across from her cold, erect, golden-eyed husband.
"Remember what?" He sipped his wine.
"That song. That fine and beautiful song." She closed her
eyes and hummed, but it was not the song. "I've forgotten it.
And, somehow, I don't want to forget it. It's something I want
always to remember." She moved her hands as if the rhythm might
help her to remember all of it. Then she lay back in her chair.
"I can't remember." She began to cry.
"Why are you crying?" he asked.
"I don't know, I don't know, but I can't help it. I'm sad
and I don't know why, I cry and I don't know why, but I'm
crying."
Her head was in her hands; her shoulders moved again and
again.
"You'll be all right tomorrow," he said.
She did not look up at him; she looked only at the empty
desert and the very bright stars coming out now on the black
sky, and far away there was a sound of wind rising and canal
waters stirring cold in the long canals. She shut her eyes,
trembling.
"Yes," she said. "I'll be all right tomorrow."
August 1999: THE SUMMER NIGHT
In the stone galleries the people were gathered in
clusters and groups filtering up into shadows among the blue
hills. A soft evening light shone over them from the stars and
the luminous double moons of Mars. Beyond the marble
amphitheater, in darkness and distances, lay little towns
and villas; pools of silver water stood motionless and canals
glittered from horizon to horizon. It was an evening in summer
upon the placid and temperate planet Mars. Up and down green
wine canals, boats as delicate as bronze flowers drifted. In
the long and endless dwellings that curved like tranquil snakes
across the hills, lovers lay idly whispering in cool night
beds. The last children ran in torchlit alleys, gold spiders
in their hands throwing out films of web. Here or there a late
supper was prepared in tables where lava bubbled silvery and
hushed. In the amphitheaters of a hundred towns on the night
side of Mars the brown Martian people with gold coin eyes
were leisurely met to fix their attention upon stages where
musicians made a serene music flow up like blossom scent on
the still air.
Upon one stage a woman sang.
The audience stirred.
She stopped singing. She put her hand to her throat. She
nodded to the musicians and they began again.
The musicians played and she sang, and this time the
audience sighed and sat forward, a few of the men stood up
in surprise, and a winter chill moved through the amphitheater.
For it was an odd and a frightening and a strange song this
woman sang. She tried to stop the words from coming out of her
lips, but the words were these:
"_She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes_ . . ."
The singer dasped her hands to her mouth. She stood,
bewildered.
"What words are those?" asked the musicians.
"What song is that?"
"What _language_ is that!"
And when they blew again upon their golden horns the
strange music came forth and passed slowly over the audience,
which now talked aloud and stood up.
"What's wrong with you?" the musicians asked each other.
"What tune is that you played?"
"What tune did _you_ play?"
The woman wept and ran from the stage, And the audience
moved out of the amphitheater. And all around the nervous towns
of Mars a similar thing had happened. A coldness had come, like
white snow falling on the air.
In the black alleys, under the torches, the children sang:
"--_and when she got there, the cupboard was bare,
And so her poor dog had none!_"
"Children!" voices cried. "What was that rhyme? Where did
you learn it?"
"We just _thought_ of it, all of a sudden. It's just words
we don't understand."
Doors slammed. The streets were deserted. Above the blue
hills a green star rose.
All over the night side of Mars lovers awoke to listen
to their loved ones who lay humming in the darkness.
"What is that tune?"
And in a thousand villas, in the middle of the night,
women awoke, screaming. They had to be soothed while the tears
ran down their faces, "There, there. Sleep. What's wrong?
A dream?"
"Something terrible will happen in the morning."
"Nothing can happen, all is well with us."
A hysterical sobbing. "It is coming nearer and nearer
and _nearer!_"
"Nothing can happen to us. What could? Sleep now. Sleep."
It was quiet in the deep morning of Mars, as quiet as a
cool and black well, with stars shining in the canal waters,
and, breathing in every room, the children curled with their
spiders in closed hands, the lovers arm in arm, the moons gone,
the torches cold, the stone amphitheaters deserted.
The only sound, just before dawn, was a night watchman,
far away down a lonely street, walking along in the darkness,
humming a very strange song. . . .
August 1999: THE EARTH MEN
Whoever was knocking at the door didn't want to stop. Mrs.
Ttt threw the door open. "Well?"
"You speak _English!_" The man standing there was
astounded.
"I speak what I speak," she said.
"It's wonderful _English!_" The man was in uniform. There
were three men with him, in a great hurry, all smiling, all
dirty.
"What do you want?" demanded Mrs. Ttt.
"You are a _Martian!_" The man smiled. "The word is
not familiar to you, certainly. It's an Earth expression."
He nodded at his then. "We are from Earth. I'm Captain
Williams. We've landed on Mars within the hour. Here we are,
the _Second_ Expedition! There was a First Expedition, but we
don't know what happened to it. But here we are, anyway. And
you are the first Martian we've met!"
"Martian?" Her eyebrows went up.
"What I mean to say is, you live on the fourth planet from
the sun. Correct?"
"Elementary," she snapped, eyeing them.
"And we"--he pressed his chubby pink hand to his chest--
"we are from Earth. Right, men?"
"Right, sir!" A chorus.
"This is the planet Tyrr," she said, "if you want to use
the proper name."
"Tyrr, Tyrr." The captain laughed exhaustedly. "What a
_fine_ name! But, my good woman, how is it you speak such
perfect English?"
"I'm not speaking, I'm thinking," she said. "Telepathy!
Good day!" And she slammed the door.
A moment later there was that dreadful man knocking again.
She whipped the door open. "What now?" she wondered.
The man was still there, trying to smile, looking
bewildered. He put out his hands. "I don't think you
_understand_--"
"What?" she snapped.
The man gazed at her in surprise. "We're from _Earth!_"
"I haven't time," she said. "I've a lot of cooking today
and there's cleaning and sewing and all. You evidently wish to
see Mr. Ttt; he's upstairs in his study."
"Yes," said the Earth Man confusedly, blinking. "By all
means, let us see Mr. Ttt."
"He's busy." She slammed the door again.
This time the knock on the door was most impertinently
loud.
"See here!" cried the man when the door was thrust open
again. He jumped in as if to surprise her. "This is no way to
treat visitors!"
"All over my clean floor!" she cried. "Mud! Get out! If
you come in my house, wash your boots first."
The man looked in dismay at his muddy boots, "This," he
said, "is no time for trivialities. I think," he said, "we
should be celebrating." He looked at her for a long time, as
if looking might make her understand.
"If you've made my crystal buns fall in the oven,"
she exclaimed, "I'll hit you with a piece of wood!" She peered
into a little hot oven. She came back, red, steamy-faced. Her
eyes were sharp yellow, her skin was soft brown, she was thin
and quick as an insect. Her voice was metallic and sharp. "Wait
here. I'll see if I can let you have a moment with Mr. Ttt.
What was your business?"
The man swore luridly, as if she'd hit his hand with
a hammer. "Tell him we're from Earth and it's never been
done before!"
"What hasn't?" She put her brown hand up. "Never mind.
I'll be back."
The sound of her feet fluttered through the stone house.
Outside, the immense blue Martian sky was hot and still as
a warm deep sea water. The Martian desert lay broiling like
a prehistoric mud pot, waves of heat rising and shimmering.
There was a small rocket ship reclining upon a hilltop nearby.
Large footprints came from the rocket to the door of this stone
house.
Now there was a sound of quarreling voices upstairs. The
men within the door stared at one another, shifting on their
boots, twiddling their fingers, and holding onto their hip
belts. A man's voice shouted upstairs. The woman's voice
replied. After fifteen minutes the Earth men began walking in
and out the kitchen door, with nothing to do.
"Cigarette?" said one of the men.
Somebody got out a pack and they lit up. They puffed
slow streams of pale white smoke. They adjusted their uniforms,
fixed their collars. The voices upstairs continued to mutter
and chant. The leader of the men looked at his watch.
"Twenty-five minutes," he said. "I wonder what they're up
to up there." He went to a window and looked out.
"Hot day," said one of the men.
"Yeah," said someone else in the slow warm time of
early afternoon. The voices had faded to a murmur and were
now silent. There was not a sound in the house. All the men
could hear was their own breathing.
An hour of silence passed. "I hope we didn't cause
any trouble," said the captain. He went and peered into the
living room.
Mrs. Ttt was there, watering some flowers that grew in
the center of the room.
"I knew I had forgotten something," she said when she saw
the captain. She walked out to the kitchen. "I'm sorry." She
handed him a slip of paper. "Mr. Ttt is much too busy." She
turned to her cooking. "Anyway, it's not Mr. Ttt you want to
see; it's Mr. Aaa. Take that paper over to the next farm, by
the blue canal, and Mr. Aaa'll advise you about whatever it is
you want to know."
"We don't want to know anything," objected the captain,
pouting out his thick lips. "We already _know_ it."
"You have the paper, what more do you want?" she asked
him straight off. And she would say no more.
"Well," said the captain, reluctant to go. He stood as
if waiting for something. He looked like a child staring at
an empty Christmas tree. "Well," he said again. "Come on, men."
The four men stepped out into the hot silent day.
Half an hour. later, Mr. Aaa, seated in his library
sipping a bit of electric fire from a metal cup, heard the
voices outside in the stone causeway. He leaned over the window
sill and gazed at the four uniformed men who squinted up at
him.
"Are you Mr. Aaa?" they called.
"I am."
"Mr. Ttt sent us to see you!" shouted the captain.
"Why did he do that?" asked Mr. Aaa.
"He was busy!"
"Well, that's a shame," said Mr. Ass sarcastically. "Does
he think I have nothing else to do but entertain people he's
too busy to bother with?"
"That's not the important thing, sir," shouted the
captain.
"Well, it is to me. I have much reading to do. Mr. Ttt
is inconsiderate. This is not the first time he has been
this thoughtless of me. Stop waving your hands, sir, until
I finish. And pay attention. People usually listen to me when
I talk. And you'll listen courteously or I won't talk at all."
Uneasily the four men in the court shifted and opened
their mouths, and once the captain, the veins on his face
bulging, showed a few little tears in his eyes.
"Now," lectured Mr. Aaa, "do you think it fair of Mr. Ttt
to be so ill-mannered?"
The four men gazed up through the heat. The captain said,
"We're from Earth!"
"I think it very ungentlemanly of him," brooded Mr. Aaa.
"A _rocket_ ship. We came in it. Over there!"
"Not the first time Ttt's been unreasonable, you know."
"All the way from Earth."
"Why, for half a mind, I'd call him up and tell him off."
"Just the four of us; myself and these three men, my
crew."
"I'll call him up, yes, that's what I'll do!"
"Earth. Rocket. Men. Trip. Space."
"Call him and give him a good lashing!" cried Mr. Aaa.
He vanished like a puppet from a stage. For a minute there were
angry voices back and forth over some weird mechanism or other.
Below, the captain and his crew glanced longingly back at their
pretty rocket ship lying on the hillside, so sweet and lovely
and fine.
Mr. Aaa jerked up in the window, wildly triumphant
"Challenged him to a duel, by the gods! A duel!"
"Mr. Aaa--" the captain started all over again, quietly.
"I'll shoot him dead, do you hear!"
"Mr. Aaa, I'd like to _tell_ you. We came sixty million
miles."
Mr. Aaa regarded the captain for the first time. "Where'd
you say you were from?"
The captain flashed a white smile. Aside to his men
he withpered, "_Now_ we're getting someplace!" To Mr. Aaa
he called, "We traveled sixty million miles. From Earth!"
Mr. Aaa yawned. "That's only _fifty_ million miles this
time of year." He picked up a frightful-looking weapon. "Well,
I have to go now. Just take that silly note, though I don't
know what good it'll do you, and go over that hill into the
little town of Iopr and tell Mr. Iii all about it. _He's_ the
man you want to see. Not Mr. Ttt, he's an idiot; I'm going to
kill him. Not me, because you're not in my line of work."
"Line of work, line of work!" bleated the captain. "Do you
have to be in a certain line of work to welcome Earth men!"
"Don't be silly, everyone knows _that!_" Mr. Aaa
rushed downstairs. "Good-by!" And down the causeway he raced,
like a pair of wild calipers.
The four travelers stood shocked. Finally the captain
said, "We'll find someone yet who'll listen to us."
"Maybe we could go out and come in again," said one of the
men in a dreary voice. "Maybe we should take off and land
again. Give them time to organize a party."
"That might be a good idea," murmured the tired captain.
The little town was full of people drifting in and out
of doors, saying hello to one another, wearing golden masks and
blue masks and crimson masks for pleasant variety, masks with
silver lips and bronze eyebrows, masks that smiled or masks
that frowned, according to the owners' dispositions.
The four men, wet from their long walk, paused and asked
a little girl where Mr. Iii's house was.
"There." The child nodded her head.
The captain got eagerly, carefully down on one knee,
looking into her sweet young face. "Little girl, I want to talk
to you."
He seated her on his knee and folded her small brown hands
neatly in his own big ones, as if ready for a bed-time story
which he was shaping in his mind slowly and with a great
patient happiness in details.
"Well, here's how it is, little girl. Six months ago
another rocket came to Mars. There was a man named York in it,
and his assistant. Whatever happened to them, we don't know.
Maybe they crashed. They came in a rocket. So did we. You
should see it! A _big_ rocket! So we're the _Second_
Expedition, following up the First! And we came all the way
from Earth. . . ."
The little girl disengaged one hand without thinking about
it, and clapped an expressionless golden mask over her face,
Then she pulled forth a golden spider toy and dropped it to
the ground while the captain talked on. The toy spider climbed
back up to her knee obediently, while she speculated upon it
coolly through the slits of her emotionless mask and the
captain shook her gently and urged his story upon her.
"We're Earth Men," he said. "Do you believe me?"
"Yes." The little girl peeped at the way she was wiggling
her toes in the dust.
"Fine." The captain pinched her arm, a little bit
with joviality, a little bit with meanness to get her to look
at him. "We built our own rocket ship. Do you believe _that?_"
The little girl dug in her nose with a finger. "Yes."
"And--take your finger out of your nose, little girl--_I_
am the captain, and--"
"Never before in history has anybody come across space in
a big rocket ship," recited the little creature, eyes shut.
"Wonderful! How did you know?"
"Oh, telepathy." She wiped a casual finger on her knee.
"Well, aren't you just _ever_ so excited?" cried the
captain. "Aren't you glad?"
"You just better go see Mr. Iii right away." She dropped
her toy to the ground. "Mr. Iii will like talking to you." She
ran off, with the toy spider scuttling obediently after her.
The captain squatted there looking after her with his hand
out. His eyes were watery in his head. He looked at his empty
hands. His mouth hung open: The other three men stood with
their shadows under them. They spat on the stone street. . . .
Mr. Iii answered his door. He was on his way to a lecture,
but he had a minute, if they would hurry inside and tell him
what they desired. . . .
"A little attention," said the captain, red-eyed and
tired. "We're from Earth, we have a rocket, there are four of
us, crew and captain, we're exhausted, we're hungry, we'd like
a place to sleep. We'd like someone to give us the key to the
city or something like that, and we'd like somebody to shake
our hands and say 'Hooray' and say 'Congratulations, old man!'
That about sums it up."
Mr. Iii was a tall, vaporous, thin man with thick blind
blue crystals over his yellowish eyes. He bent over his desk
and brooded upon some papers, glancing now and again with
extreme penetration at his guests.