Laura wept. ‘We’re stranded on Mars, for ever and ever!’
For a long time there was only the sound of the wind in the late afternoon.
Alone, thought Bittering. Only a thousand of us here. No way back. No way. No way. Sweat poured from his face and his hands and his body; he was drenched in the hotness of his fear. He wanted to strike Laura, cry, ‘No, you’re lying! The rockets will come back!’ Instead, he stroked Laura’s head against him and said, ‘The rockets will get through, some day.’
‘In five years maybe. It takes that long to build one. Father, Father, what will we do?’
‘Go about our business, of course. Raise crops and children. Wait. Keep things going until the war ends and the rockets come again.’
The two boys stepped out on to the porch.
‘Children,’ he said, sitting there, looking beyond them, ‘I’ve something to tell you.’
‘We know,’ they said.
Bittering wandered into the garden to stand alone in his fear. As long as the rockets had spun a silver web across space, he had been able to accept Mars. For he had always told himself: Tomorrow, if I want, I can buy a ticket and go back to Earth.
But now: the web gone, the rockets lying in jigsaw heaps of molten girder and unsnaked wire. Earth people left to the strangeness of Mars, the cinnamon dusts and wine airs, to be baked like gingerbread shapes in Martian summers, put into harvested storage by Martian winters. What would happen to him, the others? This was the moment Mars had waited for. Now it would eat them.
He got down on his knees in the flower bed, a spade in his nervous hands. Work, he thought, work and forget.
He glanced up from the garden to the Martian mountains. He thought of the proud old Martian names that had once been on those peaks. Earthmen, dropping from the sky, had gazed upon hills, rivers, Martian seas left nameless in spite of names. Once Martians had built cities, named cities; climbed mountains, named mountains; sailed seas, named seas. Mountains melted, seas drained, cities tumbled. In spite of this, the Earth-men had felt a silent guilt at putting new names to these ancient hills and valleys.
Nevertheless, man lives by symbol and label. The names were given.
Mr Bittering felt very alone in his garden under the Martian sun, bent here, planting Earth flowers in a wild soil.
Think. Keep thinking. Different things. Keep your mind free of Earth, the atom war, the lost rockets.
He perspired. He glanced about. No one watching. He removed his tie. Pretty bold, he thought. First your coat off, now your tie. He hung it neatly on a peach tree he had imported as a sapling from Massachusetts.
He returned to his philosophy of names and mountains. The Earthmen had changed names. Now there were Hormel Valleys, Roosevelt Seas, Ford Hills, Vanderbilt Plateaus, Rockefeller Rivers, on Mars. It wasn’t right. The American settlers had shown wisdom, using old Indian prairie names: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Ohio, Utah, Milwaukee, Waukegan, Osseo. The old names, the old meanings.
Staring at the mountains wildly he thought: Are you up there? All the dead ones, you Martians? Well, here we are, alone, cut off! Come down, move us out! We’re helpless!
The wind blew a shower of peach blossoms.
He put out his sun-browned hand, gave a small cry. He touched the blossoms, picked them up. He turned them, he touched them again and again. Then he shouted for his wife.
‘Cora!’
She appeared at a window. He ran to her.
‘Cora, these blossoms!’
She handled them.
‘Do you see? They’re different. They’ve changed! They’re not peach blossoms any more!’
‘Look all right to me,’ she said.
‘They’re not. They’re wrong ! I can’t tell how. An extra petal, a leaf, something, the colour, the smell!’
The children ran out in time to see their father hurrying about the garden, pulling up radishes, onions, and carrots from their beds.
‘Cora, come look!’
They handled the onions, the radishes, the carrots among them.
‘Do they look like carrots?’
‘Yes … No.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’
‘They’re changed.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You know they have! Onions but not onions, carrots but not carrots. Taste: the same but different. Smell: not like it used to be.’ He felt his heart pounding, and he was afraid. He dug his fingers into the earth. ‘Cora, what’s happening? What is it? We’ve got to get away from this.’ He ran across the garden. Each tree felt his touch. ‘The roses. The roses. They’re turning green!’
And they stood looking at the green roses.
And two days later, Tim came running. ‘Come see the cow. I was milking her and I saw it. Come on!’
They stood in the shed and looked at their one cow.
It was growing a third horn.
And the lawn in front of their house very quietly and slowly was colouring itself, like spring violets. Seed from Earth but growing up a soft purple.
‘We must get away,’ said Bittering. ‘We’ll eat this stuff and then we’ll change – who knows to what. I can’t let it happen. There’s only one thing to do. Burn this food!’
‘It’s not poisoned.’
‘But it is. Subtly, very subtly. A little bit. A very little bit. We mustn’t touch it.’
He looked with dismay at their house. ‘Even the house. The wind’s done something to it. The air’s burned it. The fog at night. The boards, all warped out of shape. It’s not an Earthman’s house any more.’
‘Oh, your imagination!’
He put on his coat and tie. ‘I’m going into town. We’ve got to do something now. I’ll be back.’
‘Wait, Harry!’ his wife cried.
But he was gone.
In town, on the shadowy step of the grocery store, the men sat with their hands on their knees, conversing with great leisure and ease.
Mr Bittering wanted to fire a pistol in the air.
What are you doing, you fools! he thought. Sitting here! You’ve heard the news – we’re stranded on this planet. Well, move! Aren’t you frightened? Aren’t you afraid? What are you going to do?
‘Hello, Harry,’ said everyone.
‘Look,’ he said to them. ‘You did hear the news, the other day, didn’t you?’
They nodded and laughed. ‘Sure. Sure, Harry.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Do, Harry, do? What can we do?’
‘Build a rocket, that’s what!’
‘A rocket, Harry? To go back to all that trouble? Oh, Harry!’
‘But you must want to go back. Have you noticed the peach blossoms, the onions, the grass?’
‘Why, yes, Harry, seems we did,’ said one of the men.
‘Doesn’t it scare you?’
‘Can’t recall that it did, much, Harry.’
‘Idiots!’
‘Now, Harry.’
Bittering wanted to cry. ‘You’ve got to work with me. If we stay here, we’ll all change. The air. Don’t you smell it? Something in the air. A Martian, virus, maybe; some seed, or a pollen. Listen to me!’
They stared at him.
‘Sam,’ he said to one of them.
‘Yes, Harry?’
‘Will you help me build a rocket?’
‘Harry, I got a whole load of metal and some blueprints. You want to work in my metal shop, on a rocket, you’re welcome. I’ll sell you that metal for five hundred dollars. You should be able to construct a right pretty rocket if you work alone, in about thirty years.’
Everyone laughed.
‘Don’t laugh.’
Sam looked at him with quiet good humour.
‘Sam,’ Bittering said. ‘Your eyes –’
‘What about them, Harry?’
‘Didn’t they used to be grey?’
‘Well, now, I don’t remember.’
‘They were, weren’t they?’
‘Why do you a
sk, Harry?’
‘Because now they’re kind of yellow-coloured.’
‘Is that so, Harry?’ Sam said, casually.
‘And you’re taller and thinner –’
‘You might be right, Harry.’
‘Sam, you shouldn’t have yellow eyes.’
‘Harry, what colour eyes have you got?’ Sam said.
‘My eyes? They’re blue, of course.’
‘Here you are, Harry.’ Sam handed him a pocket mirror. ‘Take a look at yourself.’
Mr Bittering hesitated, and then raised the mirror to his face.
There were little, very dim flecks of new gold captured in the blue of his eyes.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said Sam, a moment later. ‘You’ve broken my mirror.’
Harry Bittering moved into the metal shop and began to build the rocket. Men stood in the open door and talked and joked without raising their voices. Once in a while they gave him a hand on lifting something. But mostly they just idled and watched him with their yellowing eyes.
‘It’s supper-time, Harry,’ they said.
His wife appeared with his supper in a wicker basket.
‘I won’t touch it,’ he said. ‘I’ll eat only food from our deepfreeze. Food that came from Earth. Nothing from our garden.’
His wife stood watching him. ‘You can’t build a rocket.’
‘I worked in a shop once, when I was twenty. I know metal. Once I get it started, the others will help,’ he said, not looking at her, laying out the blueprints.
‘Harry, Harry,’ she said, helplessly.
‘We’ve got to get away, Cora. We’ve got to!’
The nights were full of wind that blew down the empty moonlit sea-meadows past the little white chess cities lying for their twelve-thousandth year in the shallows. In the Earthmen’s settlement, the Bittering house shook with a feeling of change.
Lying abed, Mr Bittering felt his bones shifted, shaped, melted like gold. His wife, lying beside him, was dark from many sunny afternoons. Dark she was, and golden, burnt almost black by the sun, sleeping, and the children metallic in their beds, and the wind roaring forlorn and changing through the old peach trees, the violet grass, shaking out green rose petals.
The fear would not be stopped. It had his throat and heart. It dripped in a wetness of the arm and the temple and the trembling palm.
A green star rose in the east.
A strange word emerged from Mr Bittering’s lips.
‘Iorrt. Iorrt.’ He repeated it.
It was a Martian word. He knew no Martian.
In the middle of the night he arose and dialled a call through to Simpson, the archaeologist.
‘Simpson, what does the word “Iorrt” mean?’
‘Why that’s the old Martian word for our planet Earth. Why?’
‘No special reason.’
The telephone slipped from his hand.
‘Hello, hello, hello, hello,’ it kept saying while he sat gazing out at the green star. ‘Bittering? Harry, are you there?’
The days were full of metal sound. He laid the frame of the rocket with the reluctant help of three indifferent men. He grew very tired in an hour or so and had to sit down.
‘The altitude,’ laughed a man.
‘Are you eating, Harry?’ asked another.
‘I’m eating,’ he said, angrily.
‘From your deep-freeze?’
‘Yes!’
‘You’re getting thinner, Harry.’
‘I’m not!’
‘And taller.’
‘Liar!’
His wife took him aside a few days later. ‘Harry, I’ve used up all the food in the deep-freeze. There’s nothing left. I’ll have to make sandwiches using food grown on Mars.’
He sat down heavily.
‘You must eat,’ she said. ‘You’re weak.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
He took a sandwich, opened it, looked at it, and began to nibble at it.
‘And take the rest of the day off,’ she said. ‘It’s hot. The children want to swim in the canals and hike. Please come along.’
‘I can’t waste time. This is a crisis!’
‘Just for an hour,’ she urged. ‘A swim’ll do you good.’
He rose, sweating. ‘All right, all right. Leave me alone. I’ll come.’
‘Good for you, Harry.’
The sun was hot, the day quiet. There was only an immense staring burn upon the land. They moved along the canal, the father, the mother, the racing children in their swimsuits. They stopped and ate meat sandwiches. He saw their skin baking brown. And he saw the yellow eyes of his wife and his children, their yes that were never yellow before. A few tremblings shook him, but were carried off in waves of pleasant heat as he lay in the sun. He was too tired to be afraid.
‘Cora, how long have your eyes been yellow?’
She was bewildered. ‘Always, I guess.’
‘They didn’t change from brown in the last three months?’
She bit her lips. ‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘Never mind.’
They sat there.
‘The children’s eyes,’ he said. ‘They’re yellow, too.’
‘Sometimes growing children’s eyes change colour.’
‘Maybe we’re children, too. At least to Mars. That’s a thought.’ He laughed. ‘Think I’ll swim.’
They leaped into the canal water, and he let himself sink down and down to the bottom like a golden statue and lie there in green silence. All was water, quiet and deep, all was peace. He felt the steady, slow current drift him easily.
If I lie here long enough, he thought, the water will work and eat away my flesh until the bones show like coral. Just my skeleton left. And then the water can build on that skeleton – green things, deep-water things, red things, yellow things. Change. Change. Slow, deep, silent change. And isn’t that what it is up there?
He saw the sky submerged above him, the sun made Martian by atmosphere and time and space.
Up there, a big river, he thought, a Martian river, all of us lying deeep in it, in our pebble houses, in our sunken boulder houses, like crayfish hidden, and the water washing away our old bodies and lengthening the bones and –
He let himself drift up through the soft light.
Tim sat on the edge of the canal, regarding his father seriously.
‘Utha,’ he said.
‘What?’ asked his father.
The boy smiled. ‘You know. Utha’s the Martian word for “father”.’
‘Where did you learn it?’
‘I don’t know. Around. Utha!’
‘What do you want?’
The boy hesitated. ‘I – I want to change my name.’
‘Change it?’
‘Yes.’
His mother swam over. ‘What’s wrong with Tim for a name?’
Tim fidgeted. ‘The other day you called Tim, Tim, Tim. I didn’t even hear. I said to myself, That’s not my name. I’ve a new name I want to use.’
Mr Bittering held to the side of the canal, his body cold and his heart pounding slowly. ‘What is this new name?’
‘Linnl. Isn’t that a good name? Can I use it? Can I, please?’
Mr Bittering put his hand to his head. He thought of the rocket, himself working alone, himself alone even among his family, so alone.
He heard his wife say, ‘Why not?’
He heard himself say, ‘Yes, you can use it.’
‘Yaaa!’ screamed the boy. ‘I’m Linnl, Linnl!’
Racing down the meadowlands, he danced and shouted.
Mr Bittering looked at his wife. ‘Why did we do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It just seemed like a good idea.’
They walked into the hills. They strolled on old mosaic paths, beside still-pumping fountains. The paths were covered with a thin film of cool water all summer long. You kept your bare feet cool all the day, splashing as in a creek, wading.
They came to
a small deserted Martian villa with a good view of the valley. It was on top of a hill. Blue-marble halls, large murals, a swimming-pool. It was refreshing in this hot summertime. The Martians hadn’t believed in large cities.
‘How nice,’ said Mrs Bittering, ‘if you could move up here to this villa for the summer.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re going back to town. There’s work to be done on the rocket.’
But as he worked that night, the thought of the cool blue-marble villa entered his mind. As the hours passed, the rocket seemed less important.
In the flow of days and weeks, the rocket receded and dwindled. The old fever was gone. It frightened him to think he had let it slip this way. But somehow the heat, the air, the working conditions –
He heard the men murmuring on the porch of his metal shop.
‘Everyone’s going. You heard?’
‘All right. That’s right.’
Bittering came out. ‘Going where?’ He saw a couple of trucks, loaded with children and furniture, drive down the dusty street.
‘Up to the villa,’ said the man.
‘Yeah, Harry. I’m going. So is Sam. Aren’t you, Sam?’
‘That’s right, Harry. What about you?’
‘I’ve got work to do here.’
‘Work! You can finish that rocket in the autumn, when it’s cooler.’
He took a breath. ‘I got the frame all set up.’
‘In the autumn is better.’ Their voices were lazy in the heat.
‘Got to work,’ he said.
‘Autumn,’ they reasoned. And they sounded so sensible, so right.
‘Autumn would be best,’ he thought. ‘Plenty of time, then.’
No! cried part of himself, deep down, put away, locked tight, suffocating. No! No!
‘In the autumn,’ he said.
‘Come on, Harry,’ they all said.
‘Yes,’ he said, feeling his flesh melt in the hot liquid air. ‘Yes, in the autumn. I’ll begin work again then.’
‘I got a villa near the Tirra Canal,’ said someone.
‘You mean the Roosevelt Canal, don’t you?’
‘Tirra. The old Martian name.’
‘But on the map –’
‘Forget the map. It’s Tirra now. Now I found a place in the Pillan mountains –’
‘You mean the Rockefeller range,’ said Bittering.
‘I mean the Pillan mountains,’ said Sam.