The Man Who Fell to Earth

1

In autumn the mountains around the lake became red and yellow and orange and brown. The water, under a colder sky, was bluer; it reflected in places the colors of the trees on the mountains. When the wind blew, pushing ripples before it, reds and yellows would flash on the water, and leaves would fall.

From the door of his laboratory, Bryce, often lost in thought, would sometimes stare across the water to the mountains, and to the house where T. J. Newton lived. The house was more than a mile distant from the crescent of aluminum and plywood buildings to which the laboratory was joined; at the other side of the crescent, when the sun was shining, the polished hull of the Thing—the Project, the Vehicle, whatever it was—glistened. Sometimes the sight of the silvery monolith would make Bryce feel something resembling pride; sometimes it only seemed ridiculous, like an illustration from a child’s book on space; sometimes it frightened him. It was possible for him to stand in his doorway and look directly across the lake to the uninhabited far shore and see the peculiar contrast—which he had observed early and often—between the structures at each end of the panorama; to his right the old Victorian mansion, with bay windows, white clapboarding, huge and useless pillars at its three porches, a home built in heavy-handed and tasteless pride by some unknown and long-dead tobacco or coal or lumber baron more than a century before; and to his left the most austere and futuristic of all constructions, a spaceship. A spaceship standing in a Kentucky pasture, surrounded by autumnal mountains, owned by a man who chose to live in a mansion with one drunken servant, with a French secretary, with parrots, paintings, and cats. Between the ship and the house stood the water, the mountains. Bryce himself, and the sky.

One morning in November, when the youthful seriousness of one of his lab assistants had made him feel a twinge of his old despair over scientific work and the airs of young men who practiced it, he went to the doorway and spent several minutes staring at the familiar view. Abruptly, he decided to take a walk; it had never occurred to him before to walk around the lake. There was no reason why he shouldn’t.

The air was cold, and for a moment he thought he should return to the lab for his jacket. But the sun was warm, in a mild. November morning way, and by staying along the edge of the water, out of the shade, he was able to keep comfortable enough. He walked in the direction of the big house, away from the construction site and the ship. He was wearing a faded wool plaid shirt, a ten-year-old gift from his dead wife; after a mile of walking he was forced to roll up the sleeves to his elbows, for they had begun prickling with the warmth of his body. His forearms, thin, white, and hairy, seemed shockingly pale in the sunlight—the arms of a very old man. Underfoot was gravel, and occasionally scrubgrass. He saw several squirrels, and a rabbit. Once, out in the lake, a fish jumped. He passed a few buildings and some kind of metalworking shop; some men waved at him. One of them spoke to him by name, but he did not recognize the man. He smiled back, and waved. He settled to a slow walk, and let his mind wander aimlessly. Once he stopped and tried to skip a few flat rocks on the lake and succeeded in forcing one of them to make a single leap. The others, hitting wrong, all sank the minute they touched the water. He shook his head at them, feeling foolish. High overhead a dozen birds flew soundlessly across the sky. He went on walking.

Before noon he passed the house, which seemed closed and silent, sitting a few hundred feet back from the water’s edge. He stared for a moment at the upstairs bay window, but could see nothing save the reflection of the sky on the glass. By the time the sun was as nearly overhead as it would be at that time of year, he was walking along the uninhabited shore at the far edge of the lake. The scrubgrass and weeds were thicker now; there were bushes and goldenrod and a few rotten logs. He thought momentarily of snakes, which he disliked, but dismissed the thought. He saw a lizard, sitting immobile on a stone, its eyes like glass. He began to be hungry, and wondered idly what he would do about it. Tiring, he sat on a log at the water’s edge, loosened his shirt buttons, wiped the back of his neck with his handkerchief, and stared at the water. He felt momentarily like Henry Thoreau, and smiled at himself for the feeling. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. He looked back toward the house, partly obscured now by trees. Someone, still quite distant, was walking toward him. He blinked in the strong light, stared for a few moments, and became gradually aware that it was T. J. Newton. He leaned his elbows on his knees, and waited. He began to feel nervous.

Newton was carrying a small basket on his arm. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and light gray slacks. He walked slowly, his tall body erect, but with a light gracefulness to the movement. There was an indefinable strangeness about his way of walking, a quality that reminded Bryce of the first homosexual he had ever seen, back when he had been too young to know what a homosexual was. Newton did not walk like that; but then he walked like no one else; light and heavy at the same time.

When Newton was close enough to be heard he said, “I brought some cheese and wine.” He was wearing dark glasses.

“Fine.” Bryce stood up. “Did you see me when I passed the house?”

“Yes.” The log was fairly long and semicircular in shape. Newton sat at the other end of it, placing the basket at his feet. He withdrew a wine bottle and a corkscrew and held them out toward Bryce. “Would you open it?”

“I’ll try.” He took the bottle, noticing as he did so that Newton’s arms were as thin and pale as his own, but hairless. The fingers were very long and slender, with the smallest knuckles he had ever seen. The hands trembled slightly, as Newton handed him the bottle.

The wine was a Beaujolais. Bryce held the bottle, cold and wet, between his knees and began working the corkscrew. This was one operation he was fairly dexterous at, unlike skipping flat rocks on the water. He got the cork out, with a neat and satisfying pop, on the first try. Newton walked over with two glasses—not wineglasses, but tumblers—and held them for him while he poured. “Be generous,” Newton said, smiling down at him; and he poured the tumblers nearly full. Newton’s voice was pleasant; the faint accent seemed quite natural.

The wine was excellent, cool and fragrant in his dry throat. It warmed his stomach instantly with a tinge of the fine old double pleasure of alcohol—physical and spiritual—the pleasure that kept a great many men going, had kept him going for years. The cheese was strong cheddar, old and flaky. They ate and drank silently for several minutes. They were in the shade, and Bryce rolled his sleeves down. Now that he was no longer walking, he was cool again. He wondered why Newton, in his light clothes, did not seem cold. He looked the sort of man who would sit by a fire, wrapped in a shawl—the person whom George Arliss had played in old movies: thin, pale, cold-blooded. But who could say what kind of person he was? He might be a vaguely foreign count in an English comedy, or an aging Hamlet; or the mad scientist, planning discreetly to blow up the world; or an unostentatious Cortés, quietly building his citadel with local labor. The Cortés notion reminded him of his old idea, never completely forgotten, that Newton might be an extraterrestrial. At this moment almost anything seemed possible; it was not so ridiculous that he, Nathan Bryce, might be drinking wine and eating cheese with a man from Mars. Why not? Cortés had conquered Mexico with about four hundred men; could a single man from Mars do it alone? It seemed possible, as he sat with the wine in his stomach and the sun on his face. Newton sat beside him, chewing delicately, then sipping, his back erect. There was an Ichabod Crane look to him in profile. How could he, Bryce, be sure that if Newton were from Mars he would be the only one from there? Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Why not four hundred Martians, or four thousand? He looked at him again, and Newton caught his eye and smiled gravely. From Mars? He was probably a Lithuanian, or from Massachusetts.

Feeling a little drunk—how long had it been since he had been drunk at midday?—he peered inquisitively at Newton and said, “Are you a Lithuanian?”

“No.” Newton was looking at the lake and did not turn at Bryce’s question. Then he said, abruptly, “This entire lake belongs to me. I bought it.”

“That’s nice.” He finished his glass of wine. It was the last of the bottle.

“A great deal of water,” Newton said. Then, turning to him, “How much, do you suppose?”

“How much water?”

“Yes.” Newton absently broke off a piece of cheese, and bit into it.

“God. I don’t know. Five million gallons? Ten?” He laughed. “I can hardly estimate the amount of sulphuric acid in a beaker.” He looked at the lake. “Twenty million gallons? Hell, I don’t have to know. I’m a specialist.” Then, remembering Newton’s reputation. “But you aren’t. You know every science that is. Maybe some that aren’t.”

“Nonsense. I’m only an… inventor. If that.” He finished his cheese. “I imagine I’m more of a specialist than yourself.”

“At what?”

Newton did not answer for a while. Then he said, “That would be hard to say.” He smiled again, cryptically. “Do you like straight gin?”

“Not exactly. Maybe.”

“I have a bottle in here.” Newton reached down to the basket at his feet and took out a bottle. Bryce laughed abruptly. He could not help it—Ichabod Crane with a fifth of gin in his lunch basket. Newton poured him a generous glassful, and then one for himself. Suddenly he said, still holding the bottle, “I drink too much.”

“Everybody drinks too much.” Bryce tasted the gin. He did not like it; gin had always tasted like perfume to him. But he drank it. How often does a man have a chance to get drunk with the boss? And how many bosses are Ichabod Crane—Hamlet—Cortés, fresh off the boat from Mars and about to conquer the world by spaceship in the fall of the year? Bryce’s back was tired and he let himself slip to the grass and lean against the log, his feet pointing out to the water of the lake. Thirty million gallons? He took another drink of gin and then fished a flattened pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Newton. Newton was still sitting on the log, and from Bryce’s low vantage point he looked even taller, more distant than ever.

“I smoked once, about a year ago,” Newton said. “It made me very sick.”

“Oh?” He took a cigarette from the package. “Would you rather I didn’t smoke?”

“Yes.” Newton looked down at him. “Do you think there’ll be a war?”

He held the cigarette speculatively, then flipped it into the lake. It floated. “Aren’t there three wars going now? Or four?”

“Three. I mean a war with big weapons. There are nine nations with hydrogen weapons; at least twelve with bacteriological ones. Do you think they’ll be used?”

Bryce took a larger sip of gin. “Probably. Sure. I don’t know why it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t know why we haven’t drunk ourselves to death yet. Or loved ourselves to death.” The Vehicle was across the lake from them, but could not be seen for the trees. Bryce waved his glass in its direction and said, “Is that going to be a weapon? If it is, who needs it?”

“It’s not a weapon. Not really.” Newton must be drunk. “I won’t tell you what it is.” And then, “After how long?”

“After how long what?” He felt high, too. Fine. It was a lovely afternoon to be high. It had been a long time.

“Until the big war begins? The one that will ruin everything.”

“Why not ruin everything?” He tossed off his drink, reached over to the basket for the bottle. “Everything may need ruining.” As he took the bottle he looked up at Newton, but could not see his face because the sun was behind him. “Are you from Mars?”

“No. Would you say ten years? I was taught it would be ten years at least.”

“Who teaches things like that?” He poured himself a glassful. “I’d say five years.”

“That’s not long enough.”

“Long enough for what?” The gin did not taste so bad now, even though it was warm in the glass.

“It’s not long enough.” Newton looked down at him, sadly. “But you’re probably wrong.”

“All right, three years. Are you from Venus? Jupiter? Philadelphia?”

“No.” Then he shrugged. “My name is Rumplestiltskin.”

“Rumplestiltskin what?”

Newton reached down, took the bottle from him, poured himself another glass of gin. “Do you think it might not happen at all?”

“Maybe. What would keep it from happening, Rumplestiltskin? Man’s higher instincts? Elves live in caves; do you live in a cave, when you’re not visiting?”

“Trolls live in caves. Elves live everywhere. Elves have the power of adapting themselves to extraordinarily difficult environments, such as this one.” He waved a shaky hand out toward the lake, spilling gin on his shirt. “I am an elf, Doctor Bryce, and I live alone everywhere. Altogether everywhere alone.” He stared at the water.

A large group of ducks had settled on the lake about a half mile from them, probably tired migrants on their way to the far South. They seemed to float like tiny balloons on the surface of the water, drifting, as if incapable of locomotion. “If you were from Mars, you would be alone, all right.” Bryce said, watching the ducks. If he were, he would be like a lone duck on the lake—a tired migrant.

“It’s not necessary.”

“What isn’t necessary?”

“To be from Mars. I imagine you have felt alone often enough, Doctor Bryce. Have felt alienated. Are you from Mars?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Philadelphia?”

Bryce laughed. “Portsmouth, Ohio. That’s farther from here than Mars.” With no apparent warning, the ducks on the lake began quacking confusedly. Suddenly they took off in flight, beginning in disarray, but then coordinating themselves into something loosely resembling a formation. Bryce watched them disappear over the mountains, still gaining in altitude. He thought fuzzily of the migration of birds, of birds and insects and small furry animals, moving, following old, old pathways to ancient homes and new deaths. And then the flock of ducks reminded him bitterly of a squadron of missiles he had seen pictured on a magazine cover years before, and this made him think again of the thing he was helping this strange man beside him to build, that sleek, missilelike ship that was supposed to explore or experiment or take pictures or something and that somehow, now, feeling very light and drunk in the mid-afternoon sun, he did not trust, did not trust at all.

Newton stood up, unsteadily, and said, “We can walk to the house. I’ll have Brinnarde drive you home from there, if you’d like.”

“I’d like.” He stood up, brushing leaves from his clothes, and then finished his gin. “I’m too drunk and too old to walk home.”

They walked, staggering slightly, in silence. But when they were near the house Newton said, “I hope it will be ten years.”

“Why ten years?” Bryce said. “If it’s that long the weapons will be even better. They’ll blow up everything. The whole business. Maybe even the Lithuanians’ll do it. Or the Philadelphians.”

Newton looked down at him strangely, and Bryce for a moment felt uneasy. “If we have ten years,” Newton said, “it may not happen at all. It may not be able to happen.”

“And what’s going to stop it then? Human virtue? The Second Coming?” Somehow he could not look Newton in the eye.

For the first time Newton laughed, softly and pleasantly. “Maybe it will be the Second Coming indeed. Maybe it will be Jesus Christ himself. In ten years.”

“If he comes,” Bryce said, “he’d better watch his step.”

“I imagine he’ll remember what happened to him the last time,” Newton said.

Brinnarde came from the house to meet them. Bryce was relieved: he had begun to feel dizzy in the sunshine.

He had Brinnarde take him directly home, and did not stop by the laboratory. During the drive Brinnarde asked what seemed to be a great many questions, to all of which Bryce gave vague answers. It was five o’clock when he arrived home. He went into the kitchen, which was, as always, a thorough mess. On the wall hung The Fall of Icarus, brought from Iowa, and in the sink were his breakfast dishes. He got a cold chicken leg from the refrigerator in the wall, and, chewing on it, staggered tiredly to bed, where he fell quickly asleep, the half-eaten leg beside him on the night-stand. He had a great many dreams, all of them confused, and many of them involving the flight of birds in straggling formation across a cold blue sky….

He awoke at four o’clock in the morning, coming wide awake in the darkness with his mouth tasting foul, his head aching and his neck sweating from the heavy woolen collar. His feet felt swollen from walking; he was very thirsty. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the luminous dial of the clock for several minutes, and then gingerly he turned on the bedside lamp, closing his eyes before the click. He stood up, blinked his way across the floor to the bathroom, filled the basin with cold water, and drank two glassfuls from his toothbrush glass while it was filling. He cut off the tap, turned the light on, began unbuttoning the oppressive plaid shirt. In the mirror he saw a patch of his white chest beneath the U of his undershirt, and looked away. He dipped his hands in the water and held them there, letting the coldness stimulate circulation in his wrists. Then he cupped his hands and put water on the back of his neck and on his face. He dried himself hard with a coarse towel, and then brushed his teeth, getting the foul taste from his mouth. He combed his hair, went to the bedroom for a clean shirt—a blue dress shirt this time, but without the frilled front that most men wore.

All the time that he was doing this an old phrase was running through his head: You pays your money and you takes your choice.

He fixed himself breakfast in the kitchen, dissolving a coffee pill in hot water and frying himself an omelette, which he doused liberally with sliced mushrooms from a can. He folded the omelette expertly with a spatula, took it out while it was still moist in the center, set it with the coffee on the plastic table, sat, and ate slowly, letting his gin-burdened stomach enclose the squashy thing as gently as he could. It stayed down well enough; and he felt momentarily pleased with himself for not being sick—after having had nothing since yesterday’s breakfast but wine, cheese, and straight gin. He shuddered. He could at least have eaten a few of those PA pills that people ate when they didn’t want the trouble of an honest dinner. PA was protein algae—a nasty thought, eating pond scum instead of liver and onions. But maybe he should use them, considering the population and the Asian dust bowls that had put the Fascists back in in China—and thus in the “free world” of dictators, demagogues, and hedonists once more—and was making liver and onions or beef and potatoes harder and harder to find. We’ll all be eating pond scum and fish oil and Erlenmeyer flask carbohydrate in another twenty years, he thought, finishing the omelette. When there’s no more room for the chickens they’ll keep the eggs in museums. Maybe the Smithsonian will have a preserved omelette, in plastic. He drank his coffee, itself partly synthetic, and thought of the old biologists’ maxim that a chicken is an egg’s way of reproducing itself. This made him think, grimly, that some hotshot young biologist with a crew cut and frilly trousers would probably find a way more efficient than the egg’s natural one, eliminating the chicken altogether. But, then, it wouldn’t be a young hotshot; T. J. Newton would be the man likely to come out with a navel egg—like a navel orange—all wrapped in gay plastic and marketed by World Enterprises Corporation. A self-reproducing egg; you plant it in pond water and it grows like a plastic bead necklace, popping forth a new egg daily. But it would not cackle with satisfaction afterward, nor could it ever produce a gorgeously prideful bantam rooster, a gamecock, or a stupid hen for a child to chase. Or a fried chicken dinner.

Then, finishing the coffee, he looked up and saw The Fall of Icarus and, knowing now what the picture was coming to mean to him, he set the cup down and said aloud, “Quit playing intellectual games, Bryce. You pays your money and you takes your choice: Mars or Massachusetts?” And, still looking at the leg and arm of the sky-fallen boy in the ocean in the serene picture on the wall, he thought. Friend or foe? He kept staring at the picture. Destroyer or preserver? Newton’s words were in his head. “It may be the Second Coming indeed.” But Icarus had failed, had burned and drowned, while Daedalus, who had not gone so high, had escaped from his lonely island. Not to save the world, however. Maybe even to destroy it, for he had invented flights; and destruction, when it came, would come from the air. Brightness falls from the air, he thought; I grow sick: I must die; Lord have mercy on us. He shook his head, trying to keep his mind from wandering. The problem now was Mars or Massachusetts; everything else was secondary. And what did he know now? There was Newton’s accent, his appearance, his way of walking. There were the productions of his mind, implying a technology more alien than the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. There were those fantastic logarithms, there was his being slightly drunk the two times Bryce had seen him, which could imply the ungodly loneliness that an extraterrestrial might feel, or an inability to withstand the bruises of the culture he had fallen into. But being drunk was so damnably human and that canceled out the other argument. Wouldn’t it be unlikely that an extraterrestrial would be affected by alcohol as a man is? But Newton must be a man—or something like a man. He would have a man’s blood chemistry; he should be able to get drunk. But that would still be more plausible if he were from Massachusetts. Or Lithuania. But why not a drunken Martian? Christ himself drank wine, and he came down from heaven—a wine-bibber, the Pharisees said. A wine-bibber from outer space. Why did his mind keep wandering from the point? Cortés had been given tequila, probably; and he was another Second Comer: the blue-eyed god, Quetzalcoatl, come to save the peons from the Aztecs. In ten years? Logarithms to the base twelve. And what else? And what else?

2

Sometimes he felt as if he must be going insane in the way that humans did; and yet it was theoretically impossible that an Anthean could be insane. He did not understand what was happening to him, or what had happened. They had prepared him for the extraordinary difficulty of his work, and he had been selected for it because of his physical strength and his ability to adapt. He had known from the outset that there were many ways in which he might fail, that the entire thing was an enormous risk, an extravagant plan by a people who could find nowhere else to turn; and he was prepared for failure. But he had not been prepared for what had, in fact, happened. The plan itself was going so well—the great amounts of money made, the construction of the ship begun with almost no difficulty, the failure of anyone (although, he believed, many had suspected and were suspecting) to recognize him for what he was—and the possibility of success was now so close. And he, the Anthean, a superior being from a superior race, was losing control, becoming a degenerate, a drunkard, a lost and foolish creature, a renegade and, possibly, a traitor to his own.

Sometimes he blamed Betty Jo for it, for his own weakness in the face of this world. How human he had become, to rationalize that way! He blamed her for his going native and becoming obsessed with vague guilts and vaguer doubts. She had taught him to drink gin; and she had shown him an aspect of strong and comfortable and hedonistic and unthinking humanity that his fifteen years of studying television had left him unaware of. She had shown him a drowsy, drunken vitality that Antheans might never, in their godawful timelessness and wisdom, have known of or dreamed of. He felt like a man who had been surrounded by reasonably amiable, silly, and fairly intelligent animals, and has gradually discovered that their concepts and relationships are more complex than his training could have led him to suspect. Such a man might discover that, in one or more of the many aspects of weighing and judging that are available to a high intelligence, the animals who surround him and who foul their own lairs and eat their own filth might be happier and wiser than he.

Or was it merely that a man surrounded by animals long enough became more of an animal than he should? But the analogy was unfair, was not right. He shared with the humans an ancestry that was closer than the common kinship in the family of mammals and furry creatures in general. Both he and the humans were articulate, fairly rational creatures, capable of insight, prediction, and emotions loosely named love, pity, and reverence. And, he found, capable of drunkenness.

Antheans had some familiarity with alcohol, although sugars and fats played a very minor part in the ecology of that world. There was a sweet berry from which a kind of light wine was sometimes made; pure alcohol could, of course, be synthesized easily enough, and very occasionally an Anthean might become drunk. But steady drinking did not exist; there was no such thing as an alcoholic Anthean. He had never in his life heard of anyone on Anthea drinking as he, on Earth, drank—daily now, and steadily.

He did not become drunk in quite the same way that the humans did; or at least he thought he did not. He never wished to become unconscious, or riotously happy, or godlike; he only wanted relief, and he was not certain from what. He did not have hangovers, no matter how much he drank. He was alone most of the time. It might have been difficult for him not to drink.

After he left Bryce to be driven home by Brinnarde, he walked into the never used living room of his house and stood silently for a minute, enjoying the coolness of the room and its quiet dimness. One of the cats got up lazily from a couch, stretched itself, came over to him, and began rubbing itself against his leg, purring. He looked at it fondly; he had grown to like cats very much. They had a quality that reminded him of Anthea, even though there was no animal resembling them there. But they hardly seemed to belong to this world either.

Betty Jo came in from the kitchen, wearing an apron. She looked at him silently for a moment, her eyes gentle, and then she said. “Tommy?”

“Yes?”

“Tommy, Mr. Farnsworth called you from New York. Twice.”

He shrugged. “He calls almost every day now, doesn’t he?”

“Yes he does, Tommy.” She smiled softly. “Anyhow he said it was important and you should call him back right away.”

He knew well enough that Farnsworth was having problems, but they would have to wait for a while. He did not feel up to dealing with them just yet. He looked at his watch. Almost five o’clock. “Tell Brinnarde to put a call through at eight,” he said. “If Oliver calls again tell him I’m busy and that I’ll talk to him at eight.”

“All right.” She hesitated a moment and then said, “Do you want me to come sit with you? And talk maybe?”

He saw the look on her face, the hopeful look that he knew meant she was as dependent upon him as he was on her for companionship. What strange companions they had become! Yet, though he knew her to be as lonely as himself and to share his sense of alienation, he felt unable even now to grant her the right to sit with him in silence. He smiled as pleasantly as he could. “I’m sorry, Betty Jo. I have to be alone for a while.” How difficult that practiced smile was becoming for him!

“Sure, Tommy.” she said. She turned, too quickly. “I have to get back to the kitchen.” At the door she turned back to him. “You let me know when you want supper, hear? I’ll bring it up.”

“Fine.” He walked to the staircase and decided to ride the little escalator chair, which he had not used for weeks. He was beginning to feel very tired. As he sat down, one of the cats sprang into his lap, and with an unaccustomed shudder, he flung it off. It hit the floor soundlessly, shook itself, and walked off unperturbed, not deigning to look back at him. He thought, looking at the cat, if only you were the intelligent species on this world. And then, smiling wryly, maybe you are.

One time, more than a year before, he had mentioned to Farnsworth that he was becoming interested in music. This had been only partly true, since the melodies and tonal system of human music had always been mildly unpleasant to him. He had, however, become interested in music historically, since he had an historian’s interest in almost all aspects of human folklore and art—an interest built up by the years of studying television, and continued through long nights of reading, here on Earth. Farnsworth, shortly after that casual mention of the fact, had presented him with a brilliantly accurate, octaphonic speaker system—several components of which were based on W. E. Corporation patents—and the necessary amplifiers, sound sources, and the like. Three men with MS degrees in electrical engineering had built the components into the study for him. It was a bother, but he had not wanted to hurt Farnsworth’s feelings. They had arranged all of the controls on one brass panel—he would have preferred something less scientific than flat brass—perhaps delicately painted china or porcelain—at one end of a bookcase. Farnsworth had also given him an automatic magazine of five hundred recordings, all done on the little steel balls that W. E. Corporation held the patents on and with which the corporation had earned at least twenty million dollars. You pressed a button, and a ball the size of a pea fell into place in the cartridge. Its molecular structure was then followed by a tiny, slow-moving scanner, and the patterns were converted into the sounds of orchestras or bands or guitarists or voices. Newton almost never played music. He had tried some symphonies and quartets on Farnsworth’s insistence, but they meant almost nothing to him. It was odd that their meaning was so obscure to him. Some of the other arts, although misinterpreted and patronized by Sunday television (the most dull and pretentious television of all), had been able to move him greatly—especially sculpture and painting. Perhaps he saw as the humans saw, but could not hear as they heard.

When he came to his room, musing about cats and men, he decided, on an impulse, to play some music. He pressed the button for a Haydn symphony that Farnsworth had told him he should hear. After a moment the sounds came on, militant and precise and, to him, of no logical or aesthetic consequence. He was like an American listening to Chinese music. He fixed himself a drink from the gin bottle on the shelf and drank it straight, trying to follow the sounds. He was preparing to seat himself on the sofa when there came a sudden knocking on the door. Startled, he dropped his glass. It broke at his feet. For the first time in his life he shouted, “What the hell is it?” How human had he become?

Betty Jo’s voice, sounding frightened, said from behind the door, “It’s Mr. Farnsworth again, Tommy. He insisted. He said I had to get you….”

His voice was softer now, but still angry. “Tell him no. Tell him I’m not seeing anyone before tomorrow: I’m not talking to anyone.”

For a minute there was silence. He stared at the broken glass at his feet, then kicked the larger pieces under the couch. Then Betty Jo’s voice: “All right, Tommy. I’ll tell him.” She paused. “You rest now, Tommy. Hear?”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll rest.”

He heard her footsteps receding from the door. He went to the bookcase. There was no other glass. He started to shout for Betty Jo, instead picked up the nearly full bottle, twisted the cap off, and began to drink from it. He switched off the Haydn—who could expect him to understand music like that?—and then switched on a collection of folk music, old Negro songs, Gullah music. There was, at least, something in the words of those songs that he could understand.

A rich and weary voice came from the speakers:

He smiled thoughtfully; the words of the song seemed to reach something in him. He settled himself on the couch with the bottle. He began to think about Nathan Bryce and about the conversation they had had together that afternoon.

He had imagined from their first meeting that Bryce suspected him; the very fact that the chemist had insisted on the interview was itself a kind of giveaway. He had made himself certain, through expensive investigation, that Bryce represented no one other than himself—that he did not work for the FBI, as did at least two of the construction workers at the missile site, nor for any other government agency. But then, if Bryce had somehow come to suspect him and his purposes—as, certainly, Farnsworth and probably several others had—why had he, Newton, gone out of his way to cultivate an afternoon’s intimacy with the man? And why had he been dropping hints about himself, talking about the war and the Second Coming, calling himself Rumplestiltskin—that evil little dwarf who came from nowhere to weave straw into gold and to save the princess’s life with his unheard-of knowledge, the stranger whose final purpose was to steal the princess’s child? The only way to defeat Rumplestiltskin was to uncover his identity, to name him.

And why, he thought abruptly, had Rumplestiltskin given the princess a chance to escape the bargain? Why had he given her that three-day respite in which to discover his name? Was it simply over-confidence—for who would ever imagine or guess at a name like that one?—or did he want to be found out, caught, deprived of the object of his deceit and magic? And for himself, Thomas Jerome Newton, whose magic and whose deceptions were greater than those of any enchanter or elf in any fairy tale—and he had read them all—did he now want to be found out, caught?

Why, thought Newton, his bottle in his hand, would I want to be found out? He stared at the label on the bottle, feeling very strange, dizzy. Abruptly, the recording ended. There was a pause, while another ball rolled into place. He took a long, shocking drink. Then, from the speakers, an orchestra boomed, assaulting his ears.

He stood up wearily, and blinked. He felt very weak—it seemed as if he had not been so weak since that day, now so many years ago, when, frightened and alone, he had been sick in a barren field, in November. He walked to the panel, turned off the music. Then he walked to the television controls and turned them on—maybe a Western…

The large picture of the heron on the far wall began to fade. When it was gone it was replaced by the head of a handsome man with the falsely serious stare in his eyes that is cultivated by politicians, faith healers, and evangelists. The lips moved soundlessly, while the eyes stared.

Newton turned up the volume. The head gained a voice, saying,”… of the United States as a free and independent nation, we must gird up our loins like men, with the free world behind us, and face the challenges, the hopes and fears of the world. We must remember that the United States, regardless of what the uninformed may say, is not a second-rate power. We must remember that freedom will conquer, we must…”

Suddenly Newton realized that the man speaking was the President of the United States, and he was speaking the bombast of the hopeless. He turned a switch. A bedroom scene appeared on the screen. Some tired suggestive jokes were made by the man and woman, both of them in pyjamas. He turned the switch again, hoping for a Western. He liked Westerns. But what appeared on the screen was a propaganda piece, paid for by the government, about the American virtues and strengths. There were pictures of white New England churches, field hands—always one smiling black person in each group—and maple trees. These films seemed more and more common lately; and, like so many popular magazines, more and more wildly chauvinistic—more committed than ever to the fantastic lie that America was a nation of God-fearing small towns, efficient cities, healthy farmers, kindly doctors, bemused housewives, philanthropic millionaires.

“My God,” he said aloud. “My God, you frightened, self-pitying hedonists. Liars! Chauvinists! Fools!”

He turned the switch again and a nightclub scene appeared on the screen, with soft music as background. He let it stay, watching the movement of bodies on the dance floor, the men and women dressed like peacocks, embracing one another while the music played.

And what am I, he thought, if not a frightened, self-pitying hedonist? He finished the bottle of gin, and then looked at his hands holding the bottle, staring now at the artificial fingernails, shining like translucent coins in the flickering light from the television screen. He looked at them for several minutes, as though he were seeing them for the first time.

Then he stood up and walked shakily to a closet. From a shelf he took a box that was about the size of a shoebox. On the inside of the closet door hung a full-length mirror. He looked at himself, at his tall, skinny frame, for a moment. Then he went back to the couch and set the box on the marble-topped coffee table in front of him. From it he took a small plastic bottle. On the table sat an empty bowl-shaped ashtray, of Chinese porcelain; Farnsworth had given it to him. He poured the liquid from the bottle into the ashtray, set the bottle down, and then dipped the fingertips of both his hands into the tray, as if it were a finger bowl. He held them there for a minute, and then took them out and slapped his hands together, hard. The fingernails fell on to the marble table with small, tinkling sounds. The fingers were smooth at the ends now, the tips flexible but somewhat sore.

From the television came the sound of jazz, with a loud, insistent rhythm.

He stood up, walked to the door of the room, locked it. Then he went back to the box on the table, and took from it a ball of something resembling cotton, and dipped the ball into the liquid for a moment. His hands, he noticed, were trembling. He knew, too, that he was drunker than he had ever been. But that, apparently, was not drunk enough.

Then he went to the mirror and held the damp ball against each of his ears until the synthetic earlobes fell off. Unbuttoning his shirt, he removed false nipples and hair from his chest in the same manner. The hair and nipples were attached to a thin, porous sheet, and they came off together. He took these things and laid them on the coffee table. Walking back to the mirror he began speaking in his own language, first softly and then loudly, to drown out the jazz from the television set, quoting a poem that he himself had written in his youth. The sounds did not come well from his tongue. He was too drunk; or he was losing the ability to speak in the Anthean sibilants. Then, breathing heavily, he took a small, tweezerlike instrument from the box and stood in front of the mirror and carefully removed the thin, colored plastic membrane from each of his eyes. Still struggling to speak his poem, he blinked at himself with the eyes whose irises opened vertically, like a cat’s.

He stared at himself a long time, and then he began to cry. He did not sob, but tears came from his eyes—tears exactly like a human’s tears—and slid down his narrow cheeks. He was crying in despair.

Then he spoke aloud, to himself, in English. “Who are you?” he said. “And where do you belong?”

His own body stared back at him; but he could not recognize it as his own. It was alien, and frightening.

He got himself another bottle. The music had stopped. An announcer was saying, “…ballroom of the Seelbach Hotel in downtown Louisville, brought to you live by Worldcolor—films and developers for all that’s best in photography….”

Newton did not look at the screen; he was opening the bottle. A woman’s voice began to speak: “To store up memories of the holidays ahead, of the children, the traditional family feast at Thanksgiving and Christmas, there is nothing more lovely than Worldcolor prints, filled with glowing life…”

And on the couch, Thomas Jerome Newton now lay drinking, his gin bottle open, his nailless fingers trembling, his catlike eyes glazed and staring at the ceiling in anguish….

3

On a Sunday morning five days after his drunken conversation with Newton, Bryce was at home, trying to read a detective novel. He was seated by the electric heater in his small, prefabricated living room, was dressed only in his green flannelette pyjamas, and was drinking his third cup of black coffee. He felt better this morning than he had lately; his concern with Newton’s identity did not plague him so much as it had for the past several days. The question was still the paramount one in his mind; but he had decided on a sort of policy—if watchful waiting could be called a policy—and had managed to dismiss the problem, if not from his thoughts, at least from his continual scrutiny. The detective novel was pleasantly dull enough; the weather outside had turned bitterly cold. He was comfortable by the would-be fireplace, and he felt no sense of urgency about anything. On the wall to his left hung The Fall of Icarus. He had moved it there from the kitchen two days before.

He was about halfway through the book when a faint knock came at his front door. He got up with some irritation, wondering who in hell would call on him on a Sunday morning. There was social life enough among the staff; but he rigorously avoided it, and he had few friends. He had no friend close enough to come calling on a Sunday morning before lunch. He got his bathrobe from the bedroom and then opened the front door.

Outside in the gray morning, shivering in a light nylon jacket, was Newton’s housekeeper.

She smiled at him and said, “Doctor Bryce?”

“Yes?” He could not remember her name, although Newton had mentioned it in his presence once. There were a good many rumors about Newton and this woman. “Come in and get warm.” he said.

“Thanks.” She came in quickly, but apologetically, closing the door behind her. “Mr. Newton sent me.”

“Oh?” He led her to the electric fire. “You need a heavier coat.”

She seemed to blush—or perhaps it was only the redness of her cheeks from the cold. “I don’t get out much.”

After he had helped her off with her jacket, she bent over the heater and began warming her hands. Bryce seated himself and watched her thoughtfully, waiting for her to bring up the reason for her call. She was not an unattractive woman—full-mouthed, black-haired, heavy-bodied beneath her plain blue dress. She must be about his own age, and like himself she dressed in old-fashioned clothes. She wore no makeup, but, with the reddening of her complexion from the cold, she did not need any. Her breasts were heavy, like those of peasant women in Russian propaganda films; and she would have had the perfect, monumental “earth mother” look if it had not been for her shy, self-effacing eyes and her hillbilly manner and voice. Beneath the half-sleeves of her dress there was a light growth of black hair on her arms, soft and pleasant looking. He liked that, as he liked the way that she did not pluck her eyebrows.

Abruptly she straightened up, smiled at him more comfortably now, and spoke. “It isn’t like a wood fire.”

For a moment he didn’t understand what she meant. Then, nodding at the red-glowing heater, he said, “No, it certainly isn’t.” And then, “Why don’t you sit down?”

She took the chair across from him, leaned back, and put her feet up on the ottoman. “Doesn’t smell like a wood fire either.” She looked thoughtful. “I lived on a farm and I can still remember wood fires in the morning when I was hopping around trying to get dressed. I’d lay my clothes on the hearth to warm them up and I’d stand and keep my backside warm by the fire. I can remember how the fire smelt. But I haven’t smelt a wood fire in—God knows—twenty years.”

“I haven’t either,” he said.

“Nothing smells as good as it used to,” she said. “Not even coffee, the way they make it. Most things don’t smell at all any more.”

“Do you want a cup? Of coffee?”

“Sure,” she said. “You want me to get it?”

“I’ll get it,” he stood up, finishing off his cup. “I was ready for another one anyway.”

He went to the kitchen and fixed two cups, using the coffee pills that were practically all you could buy these days, ever since the country had broken relations with Brazil. He brought them in on a tray and she smiled up at him pleasantly as she took hers. She looked very comfortable, like an old, good-tempered dog—with neither pride nor philosophy to hinder its comfort.

He sat down, sipping. “You’re right.” he said, “nothing much smells as it used to. Or maybe we’re too old to remember exactly.”

She continued smiling. Then she said, “He wants to know if you’ll go to Chicago with him. Next month.”

“Mr. Newton?”

“Um hmm. There’s a meeting. He said you’d probably know about it.”

“A meeting?” He drank his coffee speculatively for a moment. “Oh. The Institute of Chemical Engineers. Why does he want to go to that?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “He told me if you wanted to go with him he’d come by this afternoon and talk about it. You won’t be working?”

“No.” he said. “No. I don’t work on Sundays.” He had not changed his casual tone of voice, but his mind was beginning to race. There was an opportunity here, being dropped in his lap. There was a plan he had half formed two days before; and if Newton were definitely coming by the house… “I’ll be glad to talk to him about it.” And then, “Did he say when he would come?”

“No, he didn’t.” She finished her coffee, set the cup on the floor beside her chair. She certainly makes herself at home, he thought, but he did not mind the way that she did it. It was genuine informality, and not the affected kind that men like Professor Canutti, and all his crew-cut peers back at Iowa, practiced.

“He hasn’t been saying much lately at all.” There was a hint of strain in her voice when she said this. “In fact I hardly ever see him anymore.” There was something grim in her voice, too, and Bryce wondered what there could possibly be between these two. And then it occurred to him that her being here was an opportunity, too—one that he might never have again.

“Has he been sick?” If he could start her talking…

“Not that I know of. He’s funny. He takes moods.” She was staring at the glowing heat element in front of her, not looking at him. “Sometimes he talks to that Frenchman, Brinnarde his name is, and other times he talks to me. Sometimes he just sits in his room. For days. Or he’ll drink; but you can hardly tell it.”

“What does Brinnarde do? What’s his job?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at him fleetingly and then back to the fire. “I think he’s a bodyguard.” She turned again to him, her face worried, anxious. “You know, Mister Bryce, he carries a gun with him. And you watch the way he moves. He’s quick.” She shook her head, as a mother might. “I don’t trust him and I don’t think Mr. Newton should either.”

“A lot of wealthy men have bodyguards. Besides, Brinnarde’s a kind of secretary too, isn’t he?”

She laughed, a short, wry laugh. “Mr. Newton don’t write letters.”

“No. I suppose not.”

Then, still staring at the heater, she said, meekly, “Could I have a little drink, please?”

“Sure.” He stood up almost too quickly. “Gin?”

She looked up at him. “Yes please, gin.” There was something plaintive about her and Bryce realized, abruptly, that she must be very lonely, must have practically no one to talk to. He felt pity for her—a lost, anachronistic hillbilly—and at the same time excitement at the realization that she was dead ripe to be pumped for information. He could oil her with a little gin, let her stare at the fire for a while, and wait for her to talk. He smiled at himself, feeling Machiavellian.

When he was in the kitchen, getting the gin bottle down from the shelf over the sink, she said, from the living room, “Would you put some sugar in it, please?”

“Sugar?” That was pretty far out.

“Yes. About three spoons.”

“Okay,” he said, shaking his head. And then, “I’ve forgotten your name.”

Her voice was still strained—as if she were trying to keep from trembling, or from crying. “My name’s Betty Jo, Mr. Bryce. Betty Jo Mosher.”

There was a kind of soft dignity about the way she answered him that made him feel ashamed for not having remembered her name. He put sugar in a glass, began filling it with gin, and felt further ashamed for what he was about to do—for using her. “Are you from Kentucky?” he said, as politely as he could. He filled the glass almost full, and stirred it.

“Yes. I’m from Irvine. About seven miles out of Irvine. That’s north of here.”

He carried it in to her and she took it gratefully, but with an attempt at reserve that was both touching and ridiculous. He was beginning to like this woman. “Are your parents living?” He remembered that he was supposed to be pumping her about Newton, not herself. Why did his mind always wander from the point, the real point?

“Mother’s dead.” She took a sip of the gin, rolled it around in her mouth speculatively, swallowed it, blinked. “I sure like gin,” she said. “Daddy sold the farm to the government for a… a hydro…”

“Hydroponics station?”

“That’s right. Where they make that nasty food out of tanks. Anyway, Daddy’s on relief now—up in Chicago in a development—just like I was, in Louisville, until I met Tommy.”

“Tommy?”

She smiled wryly. “Mr. Newton. I call him Tommy sometimes. I used to think he liked it.”

He took a breath, looking away from her, and said, “When did you meet him?”

She took another drink of her gin, savored it, swallowed. Then she laughed softly. “In an elevator. I was going up in this elevator in Louisville, to get my county welfare check, and Tommy was in it. Lord, was he peculiar looking! I could see right off. And then he broke his leg in the elevator.”

“Broke his leg?”

“That’s right. Sounds funny as hell, but that’s what he did. The elevator must’ve been too much for him. If you knew how light he was…”

“How light?”

“Lord yes, he’s light. You could pick him up with one hand. His bones must have no more strength than a bird’s. I tell you he’s a peculiar man. Lord, he’s a nice man; and he’s so smart and rich, and so patient. But, Mr. Bryce…”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Bryce, I think he’s sick, I think he’s sick bad. I think he’s sick in his body—My God, you ought to see the pills he takes!—and I think he has… troubles in his mind. I want to help, but I never know where to begin. And he wouldn’t ever let a doctor come near him.” She finished her glass of gin, and leaned forward, as if to gossip. But there was grief on her face—grief too genuine to be faked as an excuse for gossip. “Mr. Bryce, I don’t think he ever sleeps. I been with him now for almost a year, and I’ve never seen him asleep. He’s just not human.”

Bryce’s mind was opening like a lens. A chill was spreading from the nape of his neck, across his shoulders, down his backbone.

“Do you want more gin?” he asked. And then, feeling something that was half laugh, half sob, he said, “I’ll join you….”

She had two more drinks before she left. She did not tell him very much more about Mr. Newton—probably because he did not want to ask her any more, did not feel as though he had to. But when she left—not staggering at all, for she could hold her liquor like a sailor—she said, as she put on her coat, “Mr. Bryce, I’m a silly, ignorant woman, but I really appreciated talking to you.”

“It was a pleasure for me,” he said. “Feel free to come back whenever you like.”

She blinked at him. “Can I?”

He hadn’t meant it literally, but he said now, and meant it, “I want you to come back.” And then, “I don’t have many people to talk to, either.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then, as she went out into the winter noon, “That makes three of us, doesn’t it…?”

He did not know how many hours he would have before Newton arrived; but he knew he would have to act quickly if he were going to be ready in time. He felt terribly excited and nervous, and while he was dressing he kept muttering, “It can’t be Massachusetts, it has to be Mars. It has to be Mars….” Did he want it to be Mars?

When he was dressed he put on his overcoat and left the house for the laboratory—a five-minute walk. It was snowing outside now, and the coldness took his attention, for a moment, off the ideas whirling in his mind, the riddle that he was about to solve once and for all, if he could set up the apparatus properly, and set it up in time.

Three of his assistants were in the lab, and he spoke to them gruffly, refusing to answer their comments on the weather. He could feel their curiosity when he began dismantling the small apparatus in the metals lab—the device they used for X-ray stress and analysis—but he pretended not to notice the raised eyebrows. It did not take long; he merely had to remove the bolts that held the camera and the lightweight cathode ray generator to their frames. He was able to carry them easily enough by himself. He made certain the camera was loaded—loaded with W. E. Corporation high speed X-ray film—and then he left, carrying the camera in one hand, the cathode ray outfit in the other. Before closing the door he said to the other men, “Look, why don’t you three take the afternoon off? Okay?”

They looked a bit dazed, but one of them said, “Okay, sure, Doctor Bryce,” and looked at the others.

“Fine.” He shut the door and left.

Next to the imitation fireplace in Bryce’s living room was an air-conditioning vent, now unused. After twenty minutes of work, and some swearing, he managed to install the camera behind its grill-work, with the shutter wide open. Fortunately the W.E. film was, like so many of Newton’s patents, a vast technical improvement over its predecessors; it was totally unaffected by visible light. Only the X-rays could expose it.

The tube in the generator was also a W. E. Corporation device; it worked like a strobe light, giving one instant, concentrated flash of X-rays—extremely useful for high-speed vibration studies. It was even more useful, perhaps, for what Bryce now had in mind. He installed it in the bread drawer in his kitchen, aiming it, through the wall, toward the open-lensed camera. Then he brought the electric cord from the front of the drawer and plugged it into the appliance socket over the sink. He left the drawer partly open so that he could reach his hand in and flip the switch on the side of the little transformer that supplied power to the tube.

He went back into the living room and carefully placed his most comfortable chair directly between the camera and the cathode ray tube. Then he sat down, in another chair, to wait for Thomas Jerome Newton.

4

The wait was a long one. Bryce became hungry; he tried to eat a sandwich, but could not finish it. He paced the floor, picked up his detective novel again, could not concentrate on the reading. Every few minutes he would go into the kitchen and check the position of the cathode ray tube in the bread drawer. Once, deciding on impulse to make certain the instrument was working properly, he flicked the switch to “on,” waited for it to heat up, and then pressed the button that made the invisible flash—the flash that would go through the wall, through the chair, through the camera lens, and expose the film in its holder at the back of the camera. And, right after pressing the button, he cursed himself silently and viciously; by fooling around stupidly, he had exposed the film.

It took him twenty minutes to remove the grate from the air duct again and to get the camera out. Then he had to remove the film—it had the brownish color now that meant it had been exposed properly—and replaced it with another sheet from the camera’s magazine. Then, in a sweat for fear that Newton might knock on the door at any moment, he re-installed the camera in the duct, checked the lens, shakily but carefully pointed the camera toward the chair, and replaced the grill. He made sure the lens was lined up with a hole in the grill-work, so that no metal would interfere.

He had his sleeves rolled up and was washing his hands when the knock came at the front door. He forced himself to walk slowly to it, still carrying a towel in his hands, and opened the door.

Standing in the snow was T. J. Newton, wearing sunglasses and a light jacket. He was smiling slightly, almost ironically it seemed, and, unlike Betty Jo, he did not appear to be at all cold. Mars, Bryce thought, letting him in, Mars is a cold planet.

“Good afternoon,” Newton said. “I hope I’m not interrupting you.”

Bryce tried to keep his voice steady, and was surprised at himself for being able to do so. “Not at all. I wasn’t doing anything. Won’t you sit down?” He made a gesture toward the chair by the air duct. He thought, as he did this, of Damocles, of the throne beneath the sword.

“No.” Newton said. “No, thank you. I’ve been sitting all morning.” He removed his jacket and placed it on the back of the chair. He was wearing, as always a short-sleeved shirt. The way the sleeves stood out at the sides made his arms look like pipestems.

“Let me fix you a drink.” If he had a drink he might sit down.

“No thank you. I’m… on the wagon right now.” Newton walked over to the side wall and examined Bryce’s picture. He stood for a moment, silently, while Bryce seated himself. Then he said, “A fine painting, Doctor Bryce. It’s a Brueghel, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Of course it was a Brueghel. Anybody would know it was a Brueghel. Why didn’t Newton sit down? Bryce began cracking his knuckles, and then stopped. Newton absently brushed some drops of melted snow from his hair. Had he been any taller the gesture would have scraped his knuckles on the ceiling.

“What is it called?” Newton said. “The painting.”

Newton should know that; the picture was famous enough.

“It’s called The Fall of Icarus. That’s Icarus in the water.”

Newton continued looking at it. “It’s very fine,” he said. “And the landscape is much like ours is. The mountains, snow, and the water.” He turned, looking now at Bryce. “But of course, in the picture, someone is ploughing a field and the sun is lower. It must be later in the day…”

Annoyed, still nervous, Bryce’s voice was snappish. “Why not earlier?” he said.

Newton’s smile was very strange. His eyes seemed focused on something distant. “It couldn’t very well have been in the morning, could it?”

Bryce did not answer. But Newton was right, of course. The sun was at noon when Icarus fell. He must have fallen a long way. In the picture, the sun was halfway below the horizon, and Icarus, leg and knee flailing above the water—the water in which he was about to drown, unnoticed, for his foolhardiness—was shown at the moment after impact. He must have been falling since noon.

Newton interrupted this speculation. “Betty Jo told me that you’re willing to go to Chicago with me.”

“Yes. But tell me, why are you going to Chicago?”

Newton made a gesture that seemed very strange for him—he shrugged his shoulders and held his palms outward. He must have picked that up from Brinnarde. Then he said, “Oh, I need more chemists. I thought it would be a good way to hire them.”

“And me?”

“You’re a chemist. Or a chemical engineer, rather.”

Bryce hesitated before he spoke. What he was going to say would be rude, but Newton seemed not to mind candor. “You have a lot of personnel men, Mr. Newton,” he said. Then he forced a laugh. “I had to fight my way through an army of them before I was able to meet you.”

“Yes,” Newton said. He turned and glanced again at the picture momentarily, and then he said, “Perhaps what I really want is a… vacation. A visit to a new place.”

“You’ve never been to Chicago before?”

“No, I’m afraid I’m something of a recluse in this world.”

Bryce almost blushed at the remark. He turned toward the artificial fire and said, “Chicago at Christmas time is not the best place in the world for a vacation.”

“I don’t really object to the cold weather,” Newton said. “Do you?”

Bryce laughed nervously. “I’m not as immune to it as you seem to be. But I can stand it.”

“Good.” He went over to the chair, picked up his jacket and began putting it on. “I’m glad you’ll be going with me.”

Seeing the other man—or was he a man?—preparing to leave, Bryce became panicky. He might never have another chance. “Just a minute,” he said lamely, “I’m going to… to fix myself a drink.”

Newton said nothing. Bryce left the room and walked into the kitchen. Going through the door he turned to see if Newton might still be standing behind the chair. His heart sank: Newton had walked back over to the picture, was standing in front of it again, gazing gravely. He was half bent over, since his head was at least a foot higher than the picture itself.

Bryce poured himself a double Scotch and filled the glass with tap water. He did not like ice in his drinks. He tossed off a swallow of it, standing by the sink, silently cursing the bad luck that had made Newton decide to stand.

Then, when he walked back into the living room, he saw that Newton was seated.

His head was turned, so that he could look at Bryce. “I suppose I’d better stay,” he said. “We should discuss our plans.”

“Sure,” Bryce said. “I guess we should.” He stood as if frozen for a moment and then he said, hastily, “I… I forgot to get ice. For my drink. Excuse me.” He went back into the kitchen.

His hand shook as he reached inside the bread drawer and turned on the switch. While the thing was warming up he went to the refrigerator and took ice from the basket. For one of the few times in his life he was grateful for improved technology; thank God it was no longer necessary to fight with ice jammed into stuck trays. He put two cubes in his drink, splashing some of it on his shirt front. Then he went back to the bread drawer, took a deep breath, and pressed the button.

There was an almost imperceptible, momentary hum, and then silence.

He turned the switch off and went back into the living room. Newton was still in the chair, staring now at the fire. For a while Bryce could not take his eyes from the air duct, behind which the camera was sitting, its film now exposed.

He shook his head, trying to get the feeling of anxiety out of it. It would be ridiculous to betray himself now that the thing was done. And, he realized, he felt like a traitor—a man who has just betrayed a friend.

Newton said, “I suppose we’ll fly.”

He couldn’t help it. “Like Icarus?” he said, wryly.

Newton laughed. “More like Daedalus, I hope. I wouldn’t relish drowning.”

It was Bryce’s turn now to stand. He did not want to sit and be forced to face Newton. “In your plane?” he said.

“Yes. I thought we would go Christmas morning. That is, if Brinnarde can arrange for space at the airport in Chicago then. I suspect there’ll be a rush.”

Bryce was finishing his drink—far more quickly than usual, for him. “Not necessarily on Christmas itself,” he said. “It’s sort of in between the rushed times.” Then he said, not knowing exactly why he should ask it, “Will Betty Jo be going along?”

Newton hesitated. “No,” he said. “Only the two of us.”

He felt a little irrational—as he had felt that other day when the two of them had drunk gin and talked, by the lake. “Won’t she miss you?” he asked. It was, of course, none of his business.

“Probably.” Newton did not seem offended by the question. “I imagine I’ll miss her as well, Doctor Bryce. But she’s not going.” He looked at the fire a moment longer, in silence. “Can you be ready to leave on Christmas morning at eight o’clock? I’ll have Brinnarde pick you up—at the house, if you’d like.”

“Fine.” Head back, he tossed off the rest of the Scotch. “How long will we be staying?”

“At least two or three days.” Newton stood up, began putting on his jacket again. Bryce felt a wave of relief; he had begun to feel as if he could not contain himself anymore. The film…

“I suppose you’ll need a few clean shirts,” Newton was saying. “I’ll take care of the expenses.”

“Why not?” Bryce laughed a little nervously. “You’re a millionaire.”

“Exactly.” Newton said, zipping up his jacket. Bryce was still seated and, looking up, he saw how Newton, suntanned and skinny, towered over him like a statue. “Exactly. I’m a millionaire.”

Then he left, stooping under the door frame, and walked lightly out into the snow….

His fingers shaking with excitement, and his mind ashamed of the fingers for being so excited, Bryce got the air-duct grill off, took out the camera, set it on the couch, and unloaded it. Then he put on his overcoat, put the film carefully in his pocket, and headed through the snow, which was now quite thick on the ground, for the lab. It was all he could do to keep from running.

The lab was empty—thank God he had chased his assistants out earlier! He headed straight for the developing and projection room. He did not stop to turn on the heaters, although the lab had become very cold. He left his overcoat on.

When he took the negative from the gaseous development bin his hands were shaking so much that it was almost impossible for him to get the film into the machine. But he managed it.

Then, when he turned the switch on the projector, and looked at the screen on the far wall, his hands stopped trembling and the breath caught in his throat. He stared at it for a full minute. Then, abruptly, he turned and walked from the projection room into the lab itself—the huge, long room empty now, and very cold. He was whistling through his teeth, and for some reason the tune was, If you knew Susie, like I know Susie…

Then, alone in the lab, he began laughing aloud, but softly. “Yes,” he said, and the word bounced back at him from the distant wall at the end of the room, bounced back somewhat hollowly, over the test tube racks and Bunsen burners, glassware and crucibles and kilns and testing machines. “Yes,” he said, “Yes sir, Rumplestiltskin.”

Before he withdrew the film from the projector he stared again at the image on the wall—the image, framed by the faint outline of an armchair, of an impossible bone structure in an impossible body—no sternum, no coccyx, no floating ribs, cartilaginous cervical vertebrae, tiny, pointed scapulae, fused second and third ribs. My God, he thought, my God. Venus. Uranus, Jupiter, Neptune, or Mars. My God!

And he saw, down in the corner of the film, the small, hardly noticeable image of the words, W. E. Corp. And their meaning, known to him since he had first inquired about the source of that color film, more than a year before, came back to him with a frightening series of implications: World Enterprises Corporation.

5

They talked very little on the plane. Bryce attempted to read some pamphlets on metallurgical research, but he would find himself fidgeting, his mind wandering. Every now and then he would glance across the narrow lounge to where Newton was sitting, serene, a glass of water in one hand, a book in the other. The book was The Collected Poetry of Wallace Stevens. Newton’s face was placid; he seemed absorbed. The walls of the lounge were decorated with large colored photographs of water birds—cranes, flamingoes, herons, ducks. The other time he had been aboard the plane, on his first trip to the project site, Bryce had admired the pictures for the taste that had put them there; now they made him feel uncomfortable, seemed almost sinister. Newton sipped his water, turned pages, smiled once or twice toward Bryce, but said nothing. Through a small window behind Newton, Bryce could see a rectangle of dirty gray sky.

It took them a little less than an hour to arrive at Chicago, and another ten minutes to land the plane. They stepped out into the confusion of gray, ambiguous trucks, crowds of determined-looking people, and glassy snow, ridged, refrozen and dirty. The wind struck his face like a sackful of small needles. He pulled his chin down into his scarf, turned his overcoat collar up, pulled his hat on tighter. As he did this he looked over at Newton. Even Newton seemed affected by the cold wind, for he put his hands in his pockets and winced. Bryce was wearing a heavy overcoat; Newton had on a wool tweed jacket and wool pants. It was strange to see him dressed that way. I wonder what he would look like in a hat, Bryce thought. Maybe a man from Mars should wear a derby.

A snub-nosed truck towed the plane from the field. The graceful little jet seemed to follow the truck sullenly, as if bitter at the ignominy of being on the ground. Someone shouted, “Merry Christmas!” at someone else, and Bryce realized with a start that the day was, indeed, Christmas. Newton passed him, preoccupied, and he began to follow, walking slowly and with care over the plateaux and craters of ice, like dirty gray stone beneath his feet, with a surface like the surface of the moon.

The terminal building was hot, sweaty, noisy, crowded. In the center of the waiting room, stood a gigantic, revolving Christmas tree, made of plastic, covered with plastic snow, plastic icicles, and evil, winking lights. White Christmas, sung by an invisible, saccharine choir, with bells and electronic organ, rose, at intervals, above the din of the crowd: “I’m dream–ing of a white Chrisss–mass…” That fine old yuletide song. From hidden ducts somewhere was wafted the scent of pine—or of pine oil, like the kind used in public washrooms. Shrill women in furs stood in groups; men walked purposely through the room, carrying briefcases, packages, cameras. A drunk was slumped in an imitation leather armchair, his face blotchy. A child, near Bryce, said to another child, with great intensity, “And you’re one, too.” Bryce did not catch the reply. “May your day be merry and bright, and may all your Chrisss–massss–esss be whiiite!”

“Our car should be in front of the building,” Newton said. Something that suggested pain was in his voice.

Bryce nodded. They walked silently through the crowd and then out the doors. The cold air was a relief.

The car was waiting for them, with a uniformed chauffeur. When they were inside and comfortable, Bryce said, “How do you like Chicago?” Newton looked at him for a moment and said, “I had forgotten about all the people.” And then, with a tight smile, he quoted Dante, “‘I had not thought death had undone so many.’” Bryce thought, If you’re Dante, among the damned—and you probably are—then I’m Virgil.

After lunch in their hotel room they took the elevator to the lobby, where the delegates were milling about, trying to look happy and important and at ease. The lobby was filled with aluminum and mahogany furniture in the Japanese modern style that was the current substitute for elegance. They spent several hours talking to people whom Bryce was fairly acquainted with—and most of whom he did not like—and found three who seemed interested in coming to work for Newton. They made appointments. Newton himself said little. He would nod and smile when introduced, and occasionally make a remark. He attracted some attention—once the word got around who he was—but he seemed not to notice. Bryce got the distinct impression that he was under a considerable strain, yet his face remained as placid as ever.

They were invited to a cocktail party in one of the suites, a tax-deductible affair being given by an engineering firm, and Newton accepted for them. The weasel-faced man who invited them seemed delighted by the acceptance, and said, looking up at Newton, who was a head taller than he, “It’ll be a real honor, Mr. Newton. A real honor to have a chance to talk with you.”

“Thank you,” Newton said, smiling his unvarying smile. Then, when the man was gone, he said to Bryce, “I’d like to take a walk outside now. Would you come along?”

Bryce nodded, relieved. “I’ll get my coat.”

On his way toward the elevator he passed a group of three men, all well dressed in business suits, talking importantly and loudly. One of them said, as Bryce walked by, “…not just in Washington. Why, you can’t tell me there’s no future in chemical warfare. It’s a field that needs new men.

Even though it was Christmas there were stores open. The streets were crowded with people. Most of them had their eyes fixed directly in front of them, their features set. Newton seemed nervous now. He appeared to respond to the presence of people as though they were a wave, or a palpable energy field like that of a thousand electromagnets, about to engulf him. It appeared to require an effort for him to keep moving.

They went into several stores and were assaulted by bright overhead lights and sticky heat. “I think I should buy a gift for Betty Jo,” Newton said. Finally, in a jewelry store, he bought her a delicate little clock made of white marble and gold. Bryce carried it back to the hotel for him, in a brightly wrapped box.

“Do you think she’ll like it?” Newton said.

Bryce shrugged. “Of course she’ll like it.”

It was beginning to snow….

There were a great number of meetings during the afternoon and evening, but Newton made no mention of them, and Bryce was relieved that he did not have to go to any. He had never had any use for that kind of silliness—discussions of “challenges and “practicable concepts.” They spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing the three men who had shown interest in working for World Enterprises. Two of them accepted jobs to begin in the spring—as well they might, considering the salaries that Newton was paying. One of them would work with coolants for the vehicle’s engines; the other, a very bright, affable young man, would work under Bryce. He was a specialist in corrosion. Newton seemed pleased enough to get the two men, but it was also evident that he did not really care. Throughout the interviews he was distracted, vague, and Bryce was forced to do most of the talking. When it was all over Newton seemed relieved. But it was very hard to tell precisely how he felt about anything. It would be interesting to know what went on in that strange, alien mind, and what that automatic smile—that slight, wise, wistful smile—concealed.

The cocktail party was in the penthouse. They entered from the short hallway into a broad, blue-carpeted room, filled with soft-spoken people, mostly men. One wall of the room was made entirely of glass, and lights from the city were spread across its surface as if painted there in some sort of elaborate molecular diagram. The furniture was entirely Louis Quinze, which Bryce liked. The pictures on the wall were good. A baroque fugue, soft but clear, came from a speaker somewhere; Bryce did not know the piece, but he liked it. Bach? Vivaldi? He liked the room and felt more willing to weather the party for the sake of being in it. Still, there was something incongruous about that glass wall, with Chicago flickering on its surface.

A man detached himself from a group and came to greet them, smiling engagingly. With a start Bryce realized that he was the chemical warfare man from the lobby. He was wearing an excellently tailored black suit, and seemed pleasantly high. “Welcome to our refuge from suburbia,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Fred Benedict. The bar’s in there.” He nodded conspiratorially toward a doorway.

Bryce took his hand, somewhat annoyed by the calculated firm grip, and introduced himself and Newton.

Benedict was visibly impressed. “Thomas Newton!” he said. “My God. I was hoping you’d come up. You know you’ve quite a reputation as a…” he seemed momentarily embarrassed, “a hermit.” He laughed. Newton looked down at him with the same placid smile. Benedict went on, his discomfiture now gone. “Thomas J. Newton—you know it’s hard to believe you really exist? My outfit leases seven processes from you—or from World, that is—and the only mental image I’ve ever had of you has been of some kind of computer.”

“Maybe I am a computing machine,” Newton said. And then, “What is your outfit, Mr. Benedict?”

Benedict looked for a moment as if he were afraid he was being mocked. Which, Bryce thought, he probably was.

“I’m with Futures Unlimited. Chemical warfare mostly, although we do some work with plastics—containers and such.” He bowed slightly from the waist, in an attempt to be amusing. “Your hosts.”

Newton said, “Thank you.” He took a step toward the doorway to the bar. “You have a lovely place here.”

“We think so. And all deductible.” As Newton started to break away, he said, “Let me get your drinks, Mr. Newton. I’d like you to meet some of our guests.” He looked as though he wasn’t certain what to do with this tall and peculiar man, but was afraid to let him get away.

“Don’t bother. Mr. Benedict,” Newton said. “We’ll rejoin you after a while.”

Benedict did not seem pleased, but he made no protest.

Entering the bar room. Bryce said. “I didn’t know you were so famous. When I tried to find you, a year ago, no one had ever heard of you.”

“You can’t keep a secret forever.” Newton said, not smiling now.

The room was smaller than the other, but just as elegant. Over the polished bar hung Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe. The bartender was white-haired, elderly, and even more distinguished-looking than the scientists and businessmen in the other room. Sitting at the bar Bryce became aware of the shabbiness of his own gray suit, bought at a department store four years before. His shirt, too, he knew, was frayed at the collar, and the sleeves were too long.

He ordered a martini, and Newton ordered plain water with no ice. While the bartender was fixing the drinks, Bryce looked around the room and said, “You know, sometimes I think I should have taken a job with a firm like theirs when I got my doctorate.” He laughed dryly. “I could be making eighty thousand a year now and be living like this.” He waved his hand out toward the room, letting his eye dwell, for a moment, on a gorgeously dressed, middle-aged woman, with a calculatedly preserved figure and a face that suggested money and pleasure. Green eye shadow, and a mouth for sex. “I could have developed a new kind of plastic for kewpie dolls, or lubricants for outboard motors….”

“Or poison gas?” Newton had got his water, and was opening a little silver box, taking out a pill.

“Why not?” He picked up his martini, careful not to spill it. “Somebody has to make the poison gas.” He sipped. The drink was so dry it burned his throat and tongue and pushed his voice up a full octave. “Don’t they say we need things like poison gas to prevent wars? It’s been proved.”

“Has it?” Newton said. “Didn’t you work somehow with the hydrogen bomb—before you went into teaching?”

“Yes I did. How did you know about that?”

Newton smiled at him—not the automatic smile, but a genuine one of amusement. “I had you investigated.”

He took a bigger sip of the drink. “What for? My loyalty?”

“Oh… curiosity.” He paused for a second, and asked, “Why did you work on the bomb?”

Bryce thought for a minute. Then he laughed at his situation: using a Martian, in a bar, for a confessor. But perhaps it was appropriate. “I didn’t know it was going to be a bomb at first,” he said. “And in those days I believed in pure science. Reaching for the stars. Secrets of the atom. Our only hope in a chaotic world.” He finished the martini.

“And you don’t believe those things anymore?”

“No.”

The music from the other room had changed to a madrigal which he vaguely recognized. It moved delicately, intricately, with the false implication of naiveté that old polyphonic music seemed to have for him. Or was it false? Weren’t there naive arts and sophisticated arts? And corrupt arts as well? And might that not be true of the sciences, too? Could chemistry be more corrupt than botany? But that wasn’t so. It was the uses, the ends….

“I don’t suppose I do, either,” Newton said.

“I think I’ll have another martini.” Bryce said. A nice, unquestionably corrupt martini. From his mind somewhere came the words, O ye of little faith. He laughed to himself, and looked at Newton. Newton sat straight, erect, drinking his water.

The second martini did not burn his throat so much. He ordered a third. After all, the chemical warfare man was paying. Or was it the taxpayers? It depended on how you looked at it. He shrugged. Everybody would pay for all of it anyway—Massachusetts and Mars; everybody everywhere would pay.

“Let’s go back in the other room,” he said, taking the new martini in his hand, and sipping it cautiously so that it wouldn’t spill. His shirt cuff, he noticed, was entirely out from the end of the coat sleeve, like a wide and shabby wristband.

As they came through the doorway into the big room their way was blocked by a small, stubby man, talking in slightly drunken agitation. Bryce turned away quickly, hoping the man would not recognize him. He was Walter Canutti from Pendley University, in Pendley, Iowa.

“Bryce!” Canutti said. “Well I’ll be damned! Nathan Bryce!”

“Hello, Professor Canutti.” He shifted the martini glass to his left hand, awkwardly, and they shook hands. Canutti’s face was flushed; he was obviously quite drunk. He was wearing a green silk jacket and a tan shirt, with small, discreet ruffles at the collar. The outfit was much too youthful for him. He looked, except for the pink, soft face, like a mannequin on the cover of a men’s fashion magazine. Bryce tried to keep the revulsion from showing in his voice. “Nice to see you again!”

Canutti was looking questioningly at Newton, and there was nothing to do but introduce them. Bryce stumbled through the names, enraged at himself for being awkward.

Canutti, was, if anything, more impressed with Newton’s name than the other man, Benedict, had been. He pumped Newton’s hand with both of his, saying, “Yes. Yes, of course. World Enterprises. Biggest thing since General Dynamics.” He was laying it on as if he were hoping for a fat research contract for Pendley. It always horrified Bryce to see professors fawn on businessmen—the very men they ridiculed in their private conversations—whenever a research contract might be in the offing.

Newton murmured and smiled, and finally Canutti released his hand, made an attempt at a boyish grin, and said, “Well!” And then, throwing his arm over Bryce’s shoulder, “Well, it’s a lot of water under the bridge, Nate.” Abruptly, a thought seemed to strike him, and Bryce winced inwardly in apprehension. Canutti looked at both of them, Bryce and Newton, and said, “Why, are you working for World Enterprises, Nate?”

He didn’t answer, knowing what would be coming next.

Then Newton said, “Doctor Bryce has been with us for over a year.”

“Well I’ll be…” Canutti’s face was reddening, above the frilled collar. “Well I’ll be damned. Working for World Enterprises!” A look of uncontrollable mirth spread across his chubby face, and Bryce, drinking off his martini at a gulp, felt that he could readily plant a heel into that face. The grin became a belching chuckle, and then Canutti turned to Newton and said, “This is priceless. I’ve got to tell you this, Mr. Newton.” He chuckled again. “I’m sure Nate won’t mind, because it’s all over now. But do you know. Mr. Newton, when Nate left us out at Pendley he was worrying his head off about some of the very things that he’s probably helping you make, over at World?”

“Really?” Newton said, filling the pause.

“But the clincher is this.” Canutti reached a fumbling hand out and laid it on Bryce’s shoulder. Bryce felt as though he could have bitten it off, but he listened, fascinated, at what he knew was coming.

“The clincher is that old Nate here thought you were producing all that stuff you make by some kind of voodoo. Right, Nate?”

“That’s right,” Bryce said. “Voodoo.”

Canutti laughed. “Nate’s one of the top men in the field, as I’m sure you know, Mr. Newton. But maybe it was going to his head. He thought your color films were invented on Mars.”

“Oh?” Newton said.

“That’s right. Mars or somewhere. ‘Extraterrestrial’ is what he said.” Canutti squeezed Bryce’s shoulder, to show he meant no harm. “I bet when he saw you he expected somebody with three heads. Or tentacles.”

Newton smiled cordially. “That’s very amusing.” Then he looked at Bryce. “I’m sorry I disappointed you.” he said.

Bryce looked away. “No disappointment at all.” he said. His hands were trembling, and he set his glass on a table, forced his hands into his jacket pockets.

Canutti was talking again, this time about some magazine article he’d read, something about World Enterprises and its contributions to the gross national product. Abruptly, Bryce interrupted. “Excuse me.” he said. “I think I’ll get another drink.” Then he turned and went quickly back into the room with the bar, not looking at either of the other two as he did so.

But when he got his drink he did not want it. The bar had become oppressive to him; the bartender no longer looked distinguished but seemed merely a pretentious flunky. The music from the other room—now a motet—was nervous and shrill. There were too many people in the bar, and their voices were too loud. He looked around him, as if in desperation; the men were all sleek, smug; the women were like harpies. To hell with it, he thought, to hell with it all. He pushed himself from the bar, leaving his untouched drink, and walked purposely back into the main room.

Newton was waiting for him, alone.

Bryce looked him directly in the eyes, trying not to flinch. “Where’s Canutti?” he said.

“I told him we were leaving.” He shrugged his shoulders, in the implausible French gesture that Bryce had seen him use before. “He’s an offensive man, isn’t he?”

Bryce kept looking up at him for a moment, at his untranslatable eyes. Then he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

They left in silence and walked side by side, saying nothing, down the long, heavily carpeted hallway to their room. Bryce unlocked the door with his key, and after he had closed it behind them he said, quietly now, his voice steady, “Well, are you?”

Newton sat on the edge of the bed, smiled wearily at him, and said, “Of course I am.”

There was nothing to say. Bryce found himself muttering, “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.” He seated himself in an armchair, and stared at his feet. “Jesus Christ.”

He sat there for what seemed like a long time, staring at his feet. He had known it, but the shock of hearing it said was another thing.

Then Newton spoke. “Do you want something to drink?”

He looked up and, suddenly, laughed. “God, yes.”

Newton reached for the bedside phone and called room service. He asked for two bottles of gin, vermouth, and ice. Then, hanging up the receiver, he said, “Let’s get drunk. Doctor Bryce. It’s an occasion.”

They did not talk until the bellboy came, bringing a cart with the liquor and ice and a martini pitcher. On the tray was a dish of cocktail onions, lemon peel, and green olives. Another dish had nuts in it. When the boy had left, Newton said, “Would you mind fixing the drinks? I’d like plain gin.” He was still sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Sure.” Bryce got up, feeling lightheaded. “Is it Mars?”

Newton’s voice seemed peculiar. Or was it only that he, Bryce, was drunk? “Does it make any difference?”

“I’m sure it does. Are you from this… solar system?”

“Yes. As far as I know, there aren’t any others.”

“No other solar systems?”

Newton took the glass of gin that Bryce offered him, and held it speculatively. “Only suns,” he said, “no planets. Or none that I know of.”

Bryce was stirring a martini. His hands were perfectly steady now; he had passed over some kind of hump. He felt as though nothing further could touch him, could shake him. “How long have you been here?” he said, stirring, listening to the ice clink against the side of the pitcher.

“Haven’t you mixed that drink long enough?” Newton said. “You’d better drink it.” He took a swallow from his own. “I’ve been on your Earth five years.”

Bryce stopped stirring the drink, poured it into a glass. Then, feeling expansive, he dropped in three olives. Some of the martini splashed out on to the white linen cover of the cart, making wet spots. “Do you intend to stay?” he said. It sounded as though he were in a Paris café, asking the question of another tourist. Newton should be wearing a camera around his neck.

“Yes, I intend to stay.”

Seated now, Bryce found his vision wandering around the room. It was a pleasant room, with pale green walls and innocuous pictures hung on them.

He refocused his gaze on Newton. Thomas Jerome Newton, from Mars. Mars or somewhere. “Are you human?” he said.

Newton’s drink was half empty. “A matter of definition,” he said. “I’m human enough, however.”

He started to ask, Human enough for what? but did not. He might as well get down to the second big question, since he had already asked the first. “What are you here for?” he said. “What are you up to?”

Newton stood up, poured some more gin in his glass, walked to an armchair, sat down. He looked at Bryce, holding the glass delicately in his slender hand. “I’m not certain that I know what I’m up to,” he said.

“Not certain that you know?” Bryce said.

Newton set his glass on the table by the bed and began taking off his shoes. “I thought I knew what I was here for, at first. But then, for the first two years I was busy, very busy. I’ve had more time to think, this past year. Possibly too much time.” He set his shoes neatly, side by side, under the bed. Then he stretched his long legs out on the bedspread and leaned against the pillow.

He certainly looked human enough, in that pose. “What is the ship being built for? It is a ship, isn’t it, and not just an exploratory device?”

“It’s a ship. Or, more precisely, a ferry boat.”

For some time, ever since the talk with Canutti, Bryce had felt stunned; everything had seemed unreal. But now he was beginning to regain his grasp of things, and the scientist in him was beginning to assert itself. He set his glass down, deciding not to drink any more just now. It was important to keep a clear head. But his hand, as it put down the glass, was shaking.

“Then you’re planning to bring more of your… people here? On the ferry?”

“Yes.”

“Are there any more of you here?”

“I’m the only one.”

“But why build your ship here? Certainly you must have them where you came from. You got here yourself.”

“Yes, I got here. But in a one-man craft. The problem, you see, is fuel. There was only enough to send one of us, and only on one crossing.”

“Atomic fuel? Uranium or something?”

“Yes. Of course. But we have almost none left. Nor do we have petroleum, or coal, or hydroelectric power.” He smiled. “There are probably hundreds of ships, much superior to the one we are building in Kentucky; but there was no way to get them here. None of them has been used for over five hundred of your years. The one I came on was not even intended as an interplanetary vessel. It was originally designed as an emergency craft—a lifeboat. I destroyed the engines and the controls after landing, and left the hull in a field. I’ve read in the newspapers that there’s a farmer who charges people fifty cents to see it. He has it in a tent, and sells soft drinks. I wish him well.

“Isn’t there some danger in that?”

“Of my being found out by the FBI or someone? I don’t think so. The worst to happen was some Sunday supplement nonsense about possible invaders from outer space. But there have been more surprising curiosities for Sunday paper readers than spaceship hulls found in Kentucky fields. I don’t think anyone of importance has taken it seriously.”

Bryce looked at him closely. “Is ‘invaders from outer space’ only nonsense?”

Newton unbuttoned his shirt collar. “I think so.”

“Then what are your people coming here for? As tourists?”

Newton laughed. “Not exactly. We might be able to help you.”

“How?” Somehow he did not like the way Newton had said it. “How help us?”

“We might be able to save you from destroying yourselves, if we are quick enough about it.” Then, when Bryce started to speak, he said, “Let me talk for a while. I don’t think you know what a pleasure it gives me to talk about it—to talk at length.” He had not picked his glass up again, after getting in bed. He folded his hands over his stomach, and, looking gently at Bryce, went on. “We’ve had our own wars, you see. A great many more than you have had, and we have only barely survived them. That’s where most of our radioactive materials went, into bombs. We used to be a very powerful people, very powerful; but that has been over for a long time. Now we barely survive.” He looked down at his hands, as if in speculation. “It’s a strange thing that most of your imaginative literature about life on the other planets always assumes that each planet would have only one intelligent race, one type of society, one language, one government. On Anthea—our name is Anthea, although, of course, that is not the name in your astronomy books—we had, at one time, three intelligent species and seven major governments. Now there is only one species left of any consequence, and that is my own. We are the survivors, after five wars fought with radioactive weapons. And there are not very many of us. But we know a great deal about warfare. And we have a great deal of technical knowledge.” Newton’s eyes were still fixed on his hands; his voice had assumed a monotone, as if he were reciting a prepared speech. “I have been here for five years, and I own property worth more than three hundred million dollars. In five more years it will be double that. And that is only a beginning. If the plan is carried out there will eventually be the equivalent of World Enterprises in every major country of this world. Then we will go into politics. And the military. We know about weapons and defenses. Yours are still crude. We can, for instance, render radar impotent—a thing quite necessary when I landed my craft here and more necessary when the ferry boat returns. We can also generate an energy system that will prevent the detonation of any of your nuclear weapons within a five-mile radius.”

“Is that enough?”

“I don’t know. But my superiors aren’t stupid, and they seem to think it can be done. As long as we keep our devices and our knowledge under our own control, building up the economy of one small country here, buying a critical food surplus there, starting an industry somewhere else, giving one nation a weapon, and another a defense against it….”

“But, damn it, you’re not gods.”

“No. But have your gods ever saved you before?”

“I don’t know. No, of course not.” Bryce lit a cigarette. It took three tries; his hands refused to hold steady. He inhaled deeply, trying to calm himself. He felt somehow like a college sophomore, arguing human destiny. But this was not exactly abstract philosophizing. “Doesn’t mankind have a right to choose its own form of destruction?” he said.

Newton waited a moment before he spoke. “Do you really believe that mankind does have such a right?”

Bryce ground his cigarette, only partly smoked, into the ashtray beside him. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Isn’t there such a thing as human destiny? The right to fulfill ourselves, to live out our own lives and take our own consequences?” Saying this it suddenly struck him that Newton was the only link with—what was it?—Anthea. If Newton were destroyed there could be no carrying out of that plan; it would all be over. And Newton was frail, very frail. The thought held him fascinated for a minute; he, Bryce, was potentially the hero of all heroes—the man who could, with a heavy blow from his fist, probably save the world. This could have been very amusing; but it was not.

“There may be such a thing as human destiny,” Newton said, “but I rather imagine it resembles passenger-pigeon destiny. Or the destiny of those large creatures with small brains—I think they were called dinosaurs.”

That seemed a little supercilious. “We won’t necessarily become extinct. Disarmament is being negotiated. Not all of us are insane.”

“But most of you are. Enough of you are—it only requires a few insane ones, in the right places. Suppose your man Hitler had been in possession of fusion bombs and intercontinental missiles? Wouldn’t he have used them, regardless of the consequences? He had nothing to lose toward the end.”

“How do I know that your Antheans won’t be Hitlers?”

Newton looked away. “It’s possible, but unlikely.”

“Do you come from a democratic society?”

“We have nothing resembling a democratic society on Anthea. Nor do we have democratic social institutions. But we have no intention of ruling you, even if we could.”

“Then what do you call it,” Bryce said, “if you plan to have a bunch of Antheans manipulating men and governments all over the Earth?”

“We could call it what you just called it—manipulation, or guidance. And it might not work. It might not work at all. You might blow your world apart first, or you might find us out and begin a witch hunt—we are vulnerable, you know. Or, even if we do get a large measure of power, we cannot control every accident. But we can reduce the probability of Hitlers, and we can protect your major cities from destruction. And that.” he shrugged, “is more than you can do.”

“And you want to do this just to help us?” Bryce heard the sarcasm in his voice, and hoped that Newton did not notice.

If Newton had noticed he gave no sign of it. “Of course not. We are coming here to save ourselves. But,” he smiled, “we do not want the Indians burning up our reservation after we have settled on it.”

“What are you saving yourselves from?”

“Extinction. We have almost no water, no fuel, no natural resources. We have feeble solar power—feeble because we are so far from the sun—and we still have large stores of food. But they are dwindling. There are less than three hundred Antheans alive.”

“Less than three hundred? My God, you did almost wipe yourselves out!”

“We did indeed. As, I imagine, you will do before long, if we don’t come.

“Maybe you should come,” he said. “Maybe you should.” Bryce felt a tenseness in his throat. “But if something should… happen to you, before the ship is complete? Wouldn’t that be the end of it?”

“Yes. That would end it.”

“No fuel for another ship?”

“No fuel.”

“Then.” Bryce said, feeling himself tense, “what is to prevent me from stopping this—this invasion, or manipulation? Shouldn’t I kill you? You’re very weak, I know. I imagine your bones are like a bird’s, from what Betty Jo told me.”

Newton’s face was completely undisturbed. “Do you want to stop it? You’re quite right; you could snap my neck like a chicken’s. Do you want to? Now that you know my name is Rumplestiltskin do you want to drive me from the palace?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at the floor.

Newton’s voice was soft. “Rumplestiltskin did weave straw into gold.”

Bryce looked up, suddenly angry. “Yes. And he tried to steal the princess’s child.”

“Of course he did,” Newton said. “But if he hadn’t woven the straw into gold the princess would have died. And there would not have been any child at all.”

“All right,” Bryce said. “I won’t wring your neck to save the world.”

“Do you know?” said Newton, “I almost wish, now, that you could. It would make things much simpler for me.” He paused. “But you can’t.”

“Why can’t I?”

“I didn’t come to your world unprepared for discovery. Although I did not expect to be telling anyone what I have told you. But there was a great deal I did not expect.” He looked down at his hands again, seeming to examine the nails. “In any event, I am carrying a weapon. I always carry it.”

“An Anthean weapon?”

“Yes. A very effective one. You would never have made it across the floor to my bed.”

Bryce inhaled rapidly. “How does it work?”

Newton grinned. “Does Macy’s tell Gimbel’s?” he said. “I may have to use it on you yet.”

A quality in the way that Newton had just spoken—not the ironic or pseudo-sinister quality of the statement itself, but some minor strangeness in the manner—reminded Bryce that he was, after all, talking to someone not human. The practiced veneer of humanness that Newton assumed might be merely that; a very thin veneer. Whatever was beneath the veneer, the essential part of Newton, his specifically Anthean nature, might very well be inaccessible to him, Bryce, or for that matter to anyone on Earth. The way that Newton actually felt or thought might be beyond his comprehension, totally unavailable to him.

“Whatever your weapon is,” he spoke more carefully now, “I hope you won’t have to use it.” And then he looked around him again, at the big hotel room, the almost untouched tray of liquor, and back at Newton, reclining in bed. “My God,” he said. “It’s hard to believe. To sit in this room and believe that I’m talking to a man from another planet.”

“Yes,” Newton said, “I’ve thought that myself. I’m talking to a man from another planet too, you know.”

Bryce stood up and stretched. Then he walked to the window, parted the draperies, looked down at the street. Car headlights were everywhere, hardly moving. A huge, illuminated billboard directly across from the hotel showed Santa Claus drinking a Coca-Cola. Clusters of flickering bulbs made Santa’s eyes twinkle, made the soft drink sparkle. Somewhere, faintly, Bryce could hear chimes playing Adeste Fideles.

He turned back to Newton, who had not moved. “Why have you told me? You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to tell you.” He smiled. “I haven’t been at all sure of my motives for the past year; I’m not certain why I wanted to tell you. Antheans don’t necessarily know everything. Anyway, you already knew about me.”

“Are you talking about what Canutti said? That might have been only a stab in the dark on my part. It might have been nothing.”

“I wasn’t thinking of what Professor Canutti said. Although I found your reaction to it amusing; I thought you might have a stroke of apoplexy when he said ‘Mars.’ But his saying that forced your hand, not mine.”

“Why not yours?”

“Well, Doctor Bryce, there are a great many differences between you and me of which you could hardly be aware. One of them is that my vision is much more acute than yours, and its effective range of frequencies is considerably higher. This means that I cannot see the color that you call red. But I can see X-rays.”

Bryce opened his mouth to speak, but then said nothing.

“Once I had seen the flash,” Newton said, “it wasn’t difficult to determine what you were doing.” He looked at Bryce inquisitively. “How was the picture?”

Bryce felt foolish, like a trapped schoolboy. “The picture was… remarkable.”

Newton nodded. “I can imagine. If you could see my internal organs you would have some surprises too. I went to a natural history museum once, in New York. A very interesting place for a… for a tourist. It occurred to me there that I myself was the only truly unique biological specimen in the building. I could picture myself pickled, in a jar, with the label, Extraterrestrial humanoid. I left rather quickly.”

Bryce could not help laughing. And, Newton, now that he had, as it were, made his confession, seemed expansive, seemed paradoxically even more “human,” now that he had made it clear that he was, in fact, no such thing. His face was more expressive, his manner more relaxed, than Bryce had ever seen them. But there was still that hint of another Newton, a thoroughly Anthean Newton, unapproachable and alien. “Do you plan to go back to your planet?” Bryce said. “On the ship?”

“No. It won’t be necessary. The ship will be guided from Anthea itself. I’m afraid I’m a permanent exile here.”

“Do you miss your… your own people?”

“I miss them.”

Bryce walked back to his chair and seated himself again. “But you will be seeing them before long?”

Newton hesitated. “Possibly.”

“Why possibly? Something might go wrong?”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.” And then, “I told you earlier that I was not at all certain what I was up to.”

Bryce looked at him, puzzled. “I don’t understand what you me an.”

“Well,” Newton smiled faintly, “for some time now I have been considering not completing the plan, not sending the ship anywhere—not even finishing the construction. It would only require a single order.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“Oh, the plan was an intelligent one, although desperate. But what else could we do?” Newton was looking at him, but did not seem to be seeing him. “However, I have developed some doubts about its final worth. There are things about your culture here, your society, that we did not know about on Anthea. Do you know, Doctor Bryce,” he shifted his position on the bed, leaning over closer to Bryce, “that I sometimes think that I will be insane in a few more years? I’m not certain that my people will be able to stand your world. We’ve been in an ivory tower for a long time.

“But you could isolate yourselves from the world. You have money; you could stay with your own, build your own society.” What was he doing—defending the Anthean… invasion? After he had just been frightened and stunned by it? “You could make your own city, in Kentucky.”

“And wait for the bombs to fall? We would be better off on Anthea. There at least we can live for another fifty years. If we are to live here, it won’t be as an isolated colony of freaks. We’ll have to disperse ourselves over your entire world, place ourselves in positions of influence. Otherwise it would be foolish for us to come.”

“Whatever you do you’ll be taking a great risk. Can’t you gamble on our solving our own problems, if you are afraid of close contact with us?” He smiled wryly. “Be our guests.”

“Doctor Bryce,” Newton said, his face now unsmiling, “we are a great deal wiser than you are. Believe me, we are much wiser than you may imagine. And we are certain beyond all reasonable doubt that your world will be an atomic rubble heap in no more than thirty years, if you are left to yourselves.” He continued grimly, “To tell you the truth, it dismays us greatly to see what you are about to do with such a beautiful, fertile world. We destroyed ours a long time ago, but we had so much less to begin with than you have here.” His voice now seemed agitated, his manner more intense. “Do you realize that you will not only wreck your civilization, such as it is, and kill most of your people; but that you will also poison the fish in your rivers, the squirrels in your trees, the flocks of birds, the soil, the water? There are times when you seem, to us, like apes loose in a museum, carrying knives, slashing the canvases, breaking the statuary with hammers.”

For a moment Bryce did not speak. Then he said, “But it was human beings who painted the pictures, made the statues.”

“Only a few human beings,” Newton said. “Only a few.” Abruptly, he stood up and said, “I think I’ve had quite enough of Chicago. Would you like to go home?”

“Now?” Bryce looked at his watch. My God, two-thirty in the morning. Christmas was over.

“Do you think you’ll sleep tonight anyway?” Newton said.

He shrugged, “I guess not.” And then, remembering what Betty Jo had said, “You don’t sleep at all, do you?”

“Sometimes I sleep,” Newton said, “but not often.” He sat down beside the telephone, “I’ll have to have our pilot wakened. And we’ll need a car to take us to the airport….”

Getting a car was difficult; they did not arrive at the airport until four o’clock. By that time Bryce was beginning to feel dizzy, and there was a faint buzzing in his ears. Newton showed no signs of fatigue. His face, as usual, gave no indication of what he might be thinking.

There were confusions and several delays in getting take-off clearance, and by the time they were able to leave, flying out over Lake Michigan, a pink and gentle dawn was beginning to form.

It was daylight when they arrived at Kentucky, the beginning of a clear winter day. Coming in for the landing the first thing they saw was the brilliantly shining hull of the ship—Newton’s ferry boat—looking like a polished monument in the morning sun. And then, when they came over the airfield they saw a surprising thing. Perched elegantly at the far end of the runway, at the side of Newton’s hangar, was a beautifully streamlined, white plane, twice the size of the one they were in. On its wings were the markings of the United States Air Force. “Well,” Newton said, “I wonder who has come to visit us.”

They had to walk by the white plane on their way to the monorail, and, passing it, Bryce could not help being impressed with its beauty—its fine proportions and the grace of its lines. “If we only made everything that beautifully,” he said.

Newton was looking at the plane, too. “But you don’t,” he said.

They rode the monorail car in silence. Bryce’s arms and legs ached with the need for sleep; but his mind was full of sharp, quick images, ideas, half-formed thoughts.

He should have gone to his own house; but when Newton invited him in for breakfast, he accepted. It would be easier than finding his own food.

Betty Jo was up, wearing an orange kimono, her hair in a silk babushka; her face was worried, and her eyes were red, puffy underneath. Opening the door she said, “There’s some men here, Mr. Newton. I don’t know…” Her voice trailed off. They went past her into the living room. Seated in chairs were five men; they rose quickly when Newton and Bryce entered.

Brinnarde was in the center of the group. There were three other men in business suits, and the fourth, wearing a blue uniform, was obviously the pilot of the Air Force plane. Brinnarde introduced them, his manner efficient, noncommittal. When this was done, Newton, still standing, said, “Have you been waiting long?”

“No,” Brinnarde said, “no. In fact we had you delayed at the Chicago airport until we could get here. The timing was very good. I hope you weren’t inconvenienced too much—by the hold-up at Chicago?”

Newton showed no emotion. “How did you manage to do that?”

“Well, Mr. Newton,” Brinnarde said, “I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These men are my colleagues.”

Newton’s voice hesitated slightly. “That’s very interesting. I suppose it makes you a… a spy?”

“I suppose it does. In any event, Mr. Newton, I’ve been told to place you under arrest, and to take you with me.”

Newton took in a slow, deep, very human breath. “What are you arresting me for?”

Brinnarde smiled politely. “You’re charged with illegal entry. We believe you’re an alien, Mr. Newton.”

Newton stood silent for a long moment. Then he said, “May I have breakfast first, please?”

Brinnarde hesitated, then he smiled in a way that was surprisingly genial. “I don’t see why not, Mr. Newton,” he said. “I think we could use some food ourselves. They got up at four this morning, in Louisville, to make this arrest.”

Betty Jo fixed them scrambled eggs and coffee. While they were eating, Newton asked casually if he could call his lawyer.

“I’m afraid not,” Brinnarde said.

“Isn’t there a constitutional right about that?”

“Yes.” Brinnarde set down his coffee cup. “But you don’t have any constitutional rights. As I said, we believe you are not an American citizen.”

6

Newton put down his book. The doctor would be coming in a few minutes, and he did not feel like reading anyway. In the two weeks of his confinement he had done very little but read. That was when he wasn’t being questioned, or examined by the doctors—physicians, anthropologists, psychiatrists—or by the men in conservative suits who must have been government officials, although they would never tell him who they were when he asked. He had re-read Spinoza, Hegel, Spengler, Keats, the New Testament, and was currently reading some new books on linguistics. They brought him whatever he asked for, with considerable speed and politeness. He also had a record player, which he seldom used, a library of motion picture films, a World Enterprises television set, and a bar, but no windows to look through to see Washington. They had told him he was some-place near that city, although they were not specific about how near he was. He watched the television set in the evenings, partly from a kind of nostalgia, sometimes from curiosity. At times his name would be mentioned on news programs—for it was impossible that a man of his wealth could have been placed under arrest by the government without some publicity. But the references were always vague, coming from unnamed official sources and making use of phrases like “a cloud of suspicion.” The word was that he was an “unregistered alien”; but no government source had made it plain where he was—or where they thought he was—from. One television commentator, noted for his dry wit, had said waspishly, “For all that Washington will say, it must be assumed that Mr. Newton, now under surveillance and in custody, is a visitor either from Outer Mongolia or from outer space.”

He realized, too, that these broadcasts would be monitored by his superiors on Anthea, and he was mildly amused by the thought of their consternation at learning of his position, their curiosity to find out what was really happening.

Well, he did not know himself what was really happening. Apparently the government was highly suspicious of him—as well they might be, with the information that Brinnarde must have given them during the year and a half that he had been working as his secretary. And Brinnarde, who had been his right-hand man on the project, must certainly have placed a good many spies in all aspects of the organization, so that the government should have in hand a great deal of information about his activities and about the project itself. But there had been things he had kept from Brinnarde, things they were highly unlikely to know about. Still, it was impossible to determine what they were up to. Sometimes he wondered what would happen if he told his questioners, “As a matter of fact I am from outer space, and I intend to conquer the world.” It might produce interesting reactions. But belief would hardly be one of them.

Sometimes he wondered what was happening to World Enterprises, now that he was entirely cut off from communication with it. Would Farnsworth be running it? Newton received no mail, no phone calls. There was a telephone in his living room, but it never rang, and he was not permitted to make outside calls on it. The phone was pale blue, and it sat on a mahogany table. He had tried it a few times, but always a voice—apparently a recorded voice—would say, when he picked it up, “We are sorry, but this telephone is restricted.” The voice was pleasant, feminine, artificial. It never said what the telephone was restricted to. Sometimes, when lonely, or a little bit drunk—he did not drink so much as before, now that some of the pressure was removed from him—he would pick up the receiver just to hear the voice say, “We are sorry, but this telephone is restricted.” The voice was very smooth; it suggested infinite politeness and some dim kind of electronics.

The doctor was punctual as ever; the guard let him in at exactly eleven o’clock. He carried his bag and was accompanied by a nurse with a deliberately impassive face—the sort of face that seemed to say, “I don’t care what you die of, I intend to be efficient about my part of it.” She was a blonde, and by human standards, pretty. The doctor’s name was Martinez; he was a physiologist.

“Good morning, Doctor,” Newton said, “What can I do for you?”

The doctor smiled with practiced casualness. “Another test, Mr. Newton. Another small test.” He had a faint Spanish accent. Newton rather liked him; he was less formal than most of the people he had to deal with.

“I should think you’d know all you wish to about me by now,” Newton said. “You’ve X-rayed me, sampled my blood and lymph, recorded my brain waves, measured me, and taken direct samples from my bone, liver, and kidneys. I hardly think I’d have any more surprises for you.”

The doctor shook his head and granted Newton a perfunctory laugh. “God knows we’ve found you… interesting. You have a rather far-fetched set of organs.”

“I’m a freak, Doctor.”

The doctor laughed again; but his laugh was strained. “I don’t know what we’d do if you developed appendicitis or something. We’d hardly know where to look.”

Newton smiled at him. “You wouldn’t have to bother. I don’t have an appendix.” He leaned back in his chair. “But I imagine you’d operate anyway. You would probably be delighted to open me up and see what new curiosities you could find.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the doctor said. “As a matter of fact, one of the first things we learned about you—after counting your toes, that is—was that you have no vermiform appendix. In fact there are many things you don’t have. We’ve been using rather advanced equipment, you know.” Then, abruptly, he turned to the nurse. “Will you give Mr. Newton the Nembucaine, Miss Griggs?”

Newton winced. “Doctor,” he said, “I’ve told you before that anesthetics have no effect on my nervous system, except to give me a headache. If you are going to do something painful to me there is no point in making it more painful.”

The nurse, ignoring him completely, began preparing a hypodermic. Martinez gave the patronizing smile evidently reserved for patients’ fumbling efforts to understand the rites of medicine. “Maybe you’re unaware of how much these things would hurt if we didn’t use anesthetics.”

Newton was beginning to feel exasperated. His sense of being an intelligent human besieged by curious and pompous monkeys had become very acute during the past weeks. Except, of course, that it was he in the cage, while the monkeys came and went, examining him and attempting to appear wise. “Doctor,” he said, “haven’t you seen the results of the intelligence tests given me?”

The doctor had opened his briefcase on the desk and was removing some forms. Each sheet was clearly stamped, Top Secret. “Intelligence tests aren’t my bailiwick, Mr. Newton. And as you probably know, all of that information is highly confidential.”

“Yes. But you do know.”

The doctor cleared his throat. He was beginning to fill in one of the forms. Date; type of test. “Well, there have been some rumors.”

Newton was angry now. “I imagine there have been. I also imagine that you are aware that my intelligence is about twice yours. Can’t you credit me with knowing whether or not local anesthetic is effective for me?”

“We’ve studied the arrangement of your nervous system exhaustively. There seems to be no reason why Nembucaine wouldn’t work as well for you as for… as for anybody.”

“Maybe you don’t know as much about nervous systems as you think you do.”

“That may be.” The doctor had finished with the form, and set his pencil on it for a paperweight. An unnecessary paperweight, since there were no windows and no breeze. “That may be. But again, it’s not my bailiwick.”

Newton glanced at the nurse, who had the needle ready. She seemed to be making an effort to appear unaware of their conversation. He wondered, briefly, how they would go about keeping such people silent about their curious prisoner, keeping them away from reporters—or, for that matter, away from bridge games with friends. Maybe the government kept everyone who worked on him in isolation. But that would be difficult and awkward. Still, they were obviously taking great pains with him. He found it almost amusing that he must be the occasion of some wild speculation among the few people who knew of his peculiarities.

“What is your bailiwick, Doctor?” he said.

The doctor shrugged. “Bones and muscles, mostly.”

“That sounds pleasant.” The doctor took the needle from the nurse and Newton, resigning himself, began rolling up his shirtsleeve.

“You might as well take the shirt off.” the doctor said. “We’ll be working on your back, this time.”

He did not protest, but began unbuttoning the shirt. When he had it halfway off he heard the nurse catch her breath softly. He looked up at her. Obviously they hadn’t told her much, since what she was carefully trying not to stare at was his chest, bare of hair and nipples. They had, of course, found out his disguises early, and he wore them no longer. He wondered what the nurse’s reaction would be when she got close enough to him to notice the pupils of his eyes.

When he had the shirt off the nurse injected him in the muscles on each side of his spine. She attempted to be gentle, but the pain was, for him, considerable. After that part of it was over he said, “Now what are you going to do?”

The doctor noted the time of the injection on his form sheet. Then he said, “First, I’m going to wait twenty minutes while the Nembucaine… takes effect. Then I’m going to draw samples of the marrow of your spinal vertebrae.”

Newton looked at him a moment, silently. Then he said, “Haven’t you learned yet? There is no marrow in my bones. They are hollow.”

The doctor blinked. “Come now.” he said, “there must be bone marrow. The red corpuscles of the blood—”

Newton was not accustomed to interrupting people; but he interrupted this time. “I don’t know about the red corpuscles and the marrow. I probably know as much about physiology as you do. But there is no marrow in my bones. And I can’t say that I will enjoy submitting to some painful probing on your part so that you—or whoever your superiors may be—can satisfy yourselves as to my… peculiarities. I’ve told you a dozen times that I’m a mutant—a freak. Can’t you take my word for anything?”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. He looked as though he were sorry.

Newton stared past the doctor’s head for a moment, at a bad reproduction of Van Gogh’s Woman of Aries. What could the United States Government have to do with a woman of Aries? “Someday I’d like to meet your superiors,” he said. “And while we’re waiting for your ineffective Nembucaine to take effect, I’d like to try an anesthetic of my own.”

The doctor’s face was blank.

“Gin,” Newton said. “Gin and water. Would you like to join me?”

The doctor smiled automatically. All good doctors smile at the witticisms of their patients—even research physiologists of well-checked loyalty are supposed to smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m on duty now.”

Newton was surprised at his own exasperation. And he had thought he liked Dr. Martinez. “Come now, Doctor. I’m certain you’re a very expensive practitioner of your… of your bailiwick, with a mahogany-veneered bar in your office. And I can assure you, I wouldn’t give you enough alcohol to cause your hand to tremble while you’re probing my spine.”

“I don’t have an office,” the doctor said. “I work in a laboratory. We don’t normally drink on the job.”

Newton, for some unaccountable reason, stared at him. “No, I don’t suppose you do.” He looked at the nurse, but when she, now visibly rattled, opened her mouth to speak, he said, “No, I suppose not. Regulations.” Then he stood up and smiled down at them. “I’ll drink alone.” It was nice to be taller than they were. He walked to the bar in the corner and poured himself a tumbler full of gin. He decided to omit the water, since, while he had been talking, the nurse had been laying a set of instruments on a sheet that she had spread over the table. There were several needles, a small knife, and some kind of clamps, all made of stainless steel. They glittered prettily…

After the doctor and nurse had gone he lay face down on his bed for over an hour. He did not put his shirt on again, and his back, except for the bandages, was still bare. He felt faintly cold—an unusual sensation for him—but made no move to cover himself. The pain had been very intense for several minutes, and, although it was over now, he was exhausted by it and by the fear that had preceded it. He had always been frightened by the anticipation of pain, ever since his childhood.

It had occurred to him that they might know the pain they were causing him, that they might be torturing him in some ill-conceived form of brainwashing, in the hope of breaking his mind. The thought was especially frightening, for if that were so they would only just have begun. But it was very unlikely. Despite the excuse of the perpetual cold war, and despite the very real tyranny that was tolerated in a democracy at such times—it would be too difficult for them to get away with it. And the year was an election year. Already there had been campaign speeches alluding to the high-handedness of the party in power. In one such speech his name had been mentioned. The word “cover-up” was used several times.

The only logical reason for submitting him to the painful tests must be some form of bureaucratic curiosity. Probably the justification was their desire to prove conclusively that he was non-human, to prove that he was indeed what they must have suspected he was—suspected, but could not admit to, because of its absurdity. If that was the way their thinking went, and very likely it was, they were in very obvious error from the outset. For, no matter what non-human attributes they might find, it would always be more plausible that he was a human physical deviate, a mutation, sport, freak, than that he was from some other planet. Still, they did not seem to see this difficulty. What could they hope to find out in detail that they didn’t already know, in general? And what could they prove? And, finally, if proved beyond doubt, what then could they do?

But he did not care very much—did not care what they found out about him, did not even care very much what happened to that old, old plan, conceived twenty years before in another part of the solar system. He supposed, without thinking about it very much, that it was all over anyway, and he felt little more than relief. What he cared most about was that they would get their infernal experiments and tests and questions done with, and leave him alone. Being imprisoned as he was, was no problem for him—in many ways it was more native to his way of life, and more satisfying, than freedom.

7

The FBI was polite and gentle enough, but after two days of nonsensical questions, Bryce was profoundly weary, unable even to feel anger at the contempt he could sense behind their politeness. Had they not released him on the third day, he felt that he might have gone to pieces. Yet they hadn’t put him under any noticeable strain; in fact they hardly seemed to consider him important.

On the third morning the man came, as usual, to pick him up at the YMCA and to drive him the four blocks to the Federal Building in downtown Cincinnati. The YMCA had been a contributing factor to his weariness. Had he credited the FBI with enough imagination he would have blamed his stay at the Y upon a deliberate wish to depress him with the tattered cheeriness that filled the public rooms along with the grimy oak furniture and the countless unread Christian tracts.

The man took him to a new room in the Federal Building this time, a room like a dentist’s office where a technician put hypodermics in him, measured his heartbeat and blood pressure, and even took X-ray photographs of his skull. These things were done, as someone explained, for “routine identification procedure.” Bryce could not imagine what his heartbeat rate would have to do with identifying him; but he knew better than to ask. Then, abruptly, they finished, and the man who had brought him there told him that, as far as the FBI was concerned, he was free to go. Bryce looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty in the morning.

As he left the room and went down the corridor to the main entrance-way, he had another shock. Being led by a matron to the room he had just left, was Betty Jo. She smiled at him, but said nothing, and the matron hustled her past him and into the room.

He was astonished at his own reaction. Despite his weariness he felt a stomach-borne excitement, a kind of delight, at seeing her—even more so at seeing her frank-faced, chubby person in this absurd, ponderously severe corridor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Outside the building he sat on the steps in the cold December sunlight and waited for her to come out. It was almost noon when she came and sat, heavily and shyly, beside him. With the cold air her perfume seemed warm—strong and sweet. A brisk young man with an attaché case came striding up the steps, and pretended not to see them sitting there. Bryce turned to Betty Jo and was surprised to see that her eyes were puffy, as though she had been recently crying. He glanced at her nervously. “Where’ve they been keeping you?”

“At the YWCA.” She shuddered. “I didn’t care for it much.”

It was logical that they would have had her there, but he hadn’t thought about it. “I’ve been at the other one,” he said. “At the YM. How did they treat you? The FBI, I mean.” It seemed foolish to use all of those initials—YMCA, FBI.

“All right, I guess.” She shook her head and then moistened her lips. Bryce liked the gesture; she had full lips, without lipstick, red now from the cold air. “But they sure asked a lot of questions. About Tommy.”

Somehow the reference to Newton embarrassed him. He did not want to talk about the Anthean just then.

She seemed to sense his embarrassment—or shared it. After a pause she said, “Do you want to go eat lunch?”

“That’s a good idea.” He stood up and pulled his overcoat around him. Then he leaned down and helped her to her feet, taking both her hands in his.

By luck they found a good, quiet restaurant and they both ate a large lunch. It was all natural food, with no synthetics, and there was even real coffee to drink afterward, although it was thirty-five cents a cup. But they both had plenty of money.

They talked little during the meal, and they did not mention Newton. He asked her what her plans were and found that she had none. When they had finished eating he said, “What do we do now?”

She looked better now, more composed and cheerful. “Why don’t we go to the zoo?” she said.

“Why not?” It seemed like a good idea. “We can take a taxi.”

Possibly because it was the Christmas holiday season, there were very few people at the zoo, which suited Bryce perfectly. The animals were all indoors, and the two of them wandered from building to building, talking pleasantly. He liked the big, insolent cats, especially the panthers, and she liked the birds, the bright-colored ones. He was thankful and pleased that she cared for the monkeys no more than he did—he found them obscene little creatures—for it would have dismayed him had she, like so many women, found them cute and funny. He had never seen anything funny about monkeys.

He was also pleased to find that he could buy beer from a stand at, of all places, the entrance to the aquarium. They took their beers inside with them—although a sign told them plainly not to—and seated themselves in the dusky light before a large tank which contained an enormous catfish. The catfish was a fine, solid, placid-looking creature, with Mandarin mustaches and gray, pachydermous skin. It watched them dolefully while they drank their beer.

After they had sat in silence for a while, watching the catfish, Betty Jo said, “What do you think they’ll do with Tommy?”

He realized that he had been waiting for her to bring up the subject. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll hurt him or anything.”

Betty Jo sipped from her cup. “They said he wasn’t… wasn’t an American.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know if he is, Doctor Bryce?”

He started to tell her to call him Nathan, but it didn’t seem right to do that, just then. “I imagine they’re right,” he said, wondering how in the name of heaven they could deport him if they had found out.

“Do you think they’ll keep him long?”

He remembered that X-ray of Newton’s skeleton and the thoroughness of the FBI in testing him in the little dentist’s office and abruptly he understood why they had tested him. They wanted to make sure that he was not an Anthean, too. “Yes,” he said. “I think they’ll probably keep him for a long time. As long as they can.”

She didn’t reply and he looked over at her. She was holding her paper cup in her lap, with both hands, and staring down into it as if into a well. The flat, diffused light from the catfish’s tank made no shadows on her face, and the unlined simplicity of her features and her poised, solid position on the bench made her appear like a fine and solid statue. He looked at her silently for what seemed a long time.

Then she looked over at him and it became obvious why she had been crying before. “You’ll miss him, I suppose,” he said. Then he finished his beer.

Her expression did not change. Her voice was soft. “I sure will miss him,” she said. “Let’s go look at the rest of the fish.”

They looked at the rest of them, but there was none he liked so well as the old catfish.

When the time came to take a taxi back into town he realized that he had no address to give, that there was no particular place for him to go. He looked at Betty Jo, standing beside him now in the sunshine, “where are you going to stay?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have any people around Cincinnati.”

“You could go back to your family in… what was it?”

“In Irvine. It’s not too far.” She looked at him wistfully. “But I don’t think I want to. We never got along.”

He said, hardly thinking what it meant. “Do you want to stay with me? Maybe at a hotel? And then, if you wanted to, we could find an apartment.”

She seemed stunned for a moment, and he was afraid he had insulted her. But then she took a step closer to him and said, “My God, yes. I think we ought to stay together, Doctor Bryce.”

8

He began drinking heavily again, during the second month of his confinement, and he was not altogether sure why. It was not loneliness, since now he had confessed himself, as it were, to Bryce, he felt little wish for companionship. Nor did he feel that sense of intense strain he had labored with for years, now that the issues were simpler and the responsibilities almost nonexistent. He had only one major problem that might have served as an excuse for drinking; the problem of whether or not to continue the plan, should he ever be permitted by the government to do so. Yet he did not often trouble himself with that—drunk or sober—since the possibility of his having any further choice in the matter seemed remote.

He still read a great deal, and had taken up a new interest in avant-garde literature, especially in the difficult, rigidly formal poetry of the little magazines—sestinas, villanelles, ballades, which, though somewhat weak on ideas and insight, were often linguistically fascinating. He even attempted a poem himself, an Italian sonnet in Alexandrines, but found himself alarmingly ungifted at it before he had struggled his way through the octave. He thought he might attempt it some time in Anthean.

He also read a good deal in the sciences and in history. His jailers were as liberal about supplying him with books as with gin; he never received so much as a raised eyebrow or a day’s delay about anything he requested of the steward who was in charge of feeding him and cleaning his apartment. They seemed admirably skilled at serving him. Once, to see what would happen, he asked for the Arabic translation of Gone With The Wind, and the steward, unconcerned, had it for him in five hours. Since he could not read Arabic, and cared little for novels anyway, he used it as a bookend on one of his shelves; it was monumentally heavy.

The only serious objections he had to his confinement were that he sometimes missed being out of doors, and there were times that he would have liked to see Betty Jo, or Nathan Bryce, the only two people on the planet he could have claimed as friends. He had some feeling as well about Anthea—he had a wife on Anthea, and children—but the feeling was vague. He no longer thought very often about his home. He had gone native.

By the end of two months they seemed to have finished their physical tests, leaving him with a few unpleasant memories and a mild, recurring backache. Their interrogations by that time had become boringly repetitious; apparently they had run out of things to ask him. And yet no one had put to him the most obvious of questions; no one had asked him if he were from another planet. He was certain by that time that they suspected it, but it was never directly asked. Were they afraid of being laughed at, or was this a part of some elaborate psychological technique? At times he almost decided to tell them the entire truth, which they would probably disbelieve anyway. Or he could claim to be from Mars or Venus and insist on it until they were convinced he was a crackpot. But they could hardly be that foolish.

And then one afternoon they abruptly changed their technique with him. It came as a considerable surprise, and, finally, as a relief.

The questioning began in the usual fashion; his interrogator, a Mr. Bowen, had questioned him at least once a week from the beginning. Although none of the various officials had identified their positions to him, Bowen had always struck Newton as being a more important personage than the others. His secretary seemed a shade more efficient, his clothes a shade more expensive, the circles beneath his eyes a shade darker. Perhaps he was an under-secretary, or someone of consequence in the CIA. He was also obviously a man of considerable intelligence.

When he came in he greeted Newton cordially, seated himself in an armchair, and lit a cigarette. Newton did not like the smell of cigarettes, but he had long since given up protesting against them. Besides, the room was air-conditioned. The secretary seated himself at Newton’s desk. Fortunately, the secretary did not smoke. Newton greeted them both affably enough; however, he did not offer to rise from the couch when they entered the room. There was, he recognized, a kind of petty cat-and-mouse game in all that; but he was not loath to play the game.

Bowen usually got to the point in a hurry. “I’ll have to confess, Mr. Newton,” he said, “that you have us as mystified as ever. We still don’t know who you are or where you are from.”

Newton looked straight at him. “I’m Thomas Jerome Newton, from Idle Creek, Kentucky. I’m a physical freak. You’ve seen my birth record in the Bassett County courthouse. I was born there in 1918.”

“That would make you seventy years old. You look forty.”

Newton shrugged his shoulders. “As I say, I’m a freak. A mutant. Possibly a new species. I don’t think that’s illegal, is it?” All of this had been said before; but he did not much mind saying it all again.

“It’s not illegal. But we believe your birth record is forged. And that’s illegal.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Probably not. What you do you do pretty well, Mr. Newton. If you could invent Worldcolor films I imagine you could have a record forged easily enough. Naturally, a 1918 record would be a hard one to check on. Nobody still alive, and all. But there’s still that matter of our not being able to locate any childhood acquaintances. And the even more odd matter that we can’t find anyone who knew you prior to five years ago.” Bowen stubbed out his cigarette, and then scratched his ear, as if his mind were somewhere else. “Would you tell me again why that is so, Mr. Newton?” Newton wondered idly if interrogators went to special schools to learn their techniques, like scratching the ear, or if they picked them up from the movies.

He gave the same answer he had given before. “Because I was such a freak, Mr. Bowen. My mother let hardly anyone see me. As you may have noticed I’m not the sort who chafes at confinement. Nor was confining a child very difficult to do in those days. Especially not in that part of Kentucky.”

“You never went to school?”

“Never.”

“Yet you’re one of the best educated persons I’ve ever met.” And then, before he could reply, “Yes. I know, you have a freak mind as well.” Bowen stifled a yawn. He seemed thoroughly bored.

“That’s right.”

“And you hid out in some obscure Kentucky ivory tower until you were sixty-five years old, and nobody ever saw you or heard of you?” Bowen smiled wearily at him.

The conception of that was, of course, absurd, but there was nothing he could do about it. Obviously nobody but a fool would believe it, but he had to have a story of some kind or other. He could have taken more pains to create some documents and to bribe some officials to make a more convincing past for himself; but that had been decided against long before he’d left Anthea as being more risky than it would have been worth. Even getting an expert to forge the birth document had been a difficult and perilous business.

“That’s right,” he smiled. “Nobody ever heard of me, except a few long-dead relatives, until I was sixty-five.”

Abruptly Bowen said something that was new. “And then you decided to start selling rings, from town to town?” His voice had become harsh. “You had made for yourself—out of local materials, I suppose—about a hundred gold rings, all exactly alike. And you suddenly decided, at the age of sixty-five, to start peddling them?”

That came as a surprise; they had not mentioned the rings before, although he had assumed that they must know about them. Newton smiled at the thought of the absurd explanation he was going to have to give for that one. “That’s right,” he said.

“And I suppose you dug up the gold in your back yard, and then made the gems with your Chem-Craft set, and did the engraving yourself with the point of a safety pin? All this so you could sell the rings for less than the gems alone were worth, to small jewelry stores.”

Newton could not help being amused. “I’m an eccentric, too, Mr. Bowen.”

“You’re not that eccentric,” Bowen said. “Nobody’s that eccentric.”

“Well, how would you explain it then?”

Bowen paused to light another cigarette. For all his show of irritation, his hand was perfectly steady. Then he said, “I think you brought the rings with you on a spaceship.” He raised his eyebrows slightly. “How’s that for a guess?”

Newton could not help being shocked, but he kept himself from showing it. “It’s interesting,” he said.

“Yes, it is. Even more interesting when you consider that we found the remains of a peculiar craft about five miles from the town where you sold your first ring. You may not know this, Mr. Newton, but that hull you left there was still radioactive in the right frequencies. It had been through the Van Allen belts.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Newton said. It was feeble, but there was nothing else for him to say. The FBI had turned out to be more thorough than he had expected. There was a lengthy pause. Then Newton said. “If I were an arrival by spaceship, wouldn’t I have a better way of getting money than by selling rings?” Although he had thought for some time that he did not particularly care whether they found out the truth about him or not, Newton was surprised to find himself feeling ill-at-ease from these new questions, and from their directness.

“What would you do,” Bowen said, “if you were from, say, Venus, and needed money?”

Newton found himself, for one of the first times in his life, having difficulty keeping his voice steady. “If Venusians could build spaceships, I suppose they could counterfeit money.”

“And where would you find, on Venus, a ten-dollar bill to copy?”

Newton did not answer, and Bowen reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a small object, laid it on the table beside him. The secretary looked up momentarily, waiting for someone to say something, apparently so that he could write it down. Newton blinked. The thing on the table was an aspirin box.

“Counterfeit money brings us to something else, Mr. Newton.”

He knew now what Bowen was gong to talk about, and there was really nothing much he could do about it. “Wherever did you get that?” he said.

“One of our men ran across it while he was searching your hotel room in Louisville. That was two years ago—just after you broke your leg in the elevator.”

“For how long have you been searching my rooms?”

“For a long time, Mr. Newton.”

“Then you must have had reason to arrest me long before this. Why didn’t you do it?”

“Well,” Bowen said, “naturally we wanted to find out what you were up to first. With that ship you’re making in Kentucky. And, you must be aware, the whole thing is pretty tricky. You’ve become a very rich man, Mr. Newton, and we can’t go around arresting very rich men with impunity—especially if we are running what is supposed to be a sane government and our only charge against the rich man is that he’s from someplace like Venus.” He leaned forward, his voice softer. “Is it Venus, Mr. Newton?”

Newton smiled back. Actually the new information hadn’t really changed things very much. “I never said it was anywhere but Idle Creek, Kentucky.”

Bowen looked down at the aspirin box thoughtfully. He picked it up, weighed it in the palm of his hand. Then he said, “As I’m sure you already know, this box is made of platinum, which you’ll admit is striking. It is also striking that, considering the—the quality of the materials and workmanship, as the phrase goes, it is a very inept imitation of a Bayer Aspirin box. For example, it’s a good fourth of an inch too large, and the colors are way off. Nor is the hinge made the way the Bayer people make them.” He looked at Newton. “Not that it’s a better hinge—just different.” He smiled again. “But probably the most striking thing about it is that there’s no fine print on the box, Mr. Newton—just vague lines that look like print.”

Newton was feeling uncomfortable, and angry with himself for not having remembered to destroy the box. “And what have you concluded from all that?” he said, knowing full well what they would have concluded.

“We concluded that someone had counterfeited the box as well as he could from a picture on a television commercial.” He laughed briefly. “From television in an extreme fringe area.”

“Idle Creek.” Newton said, “is an extreme fringe area.”

“So is Venus. And they sell Bayer Aspirin boxes, complete with aspirin, in the Idle Creek drugstore, for a dollar. There’s no need at all to make you own, in Idle Creek.”

“Not even if you happen to be a freakish eccentric, with very odd obsessions?”

Bowen still seemed amused—possibly with himself. “Not very likely,” he said. “As a matter of fact I might as well end all of this fencing.” He looked at Newton carefully. “One of the fascinating things about it is that a… a person of your intelligence could make so many blunders. Why do you suppose we happened to decide to pick you up when you were in Chicago? You’ve had two months to think about it.”

“I don’t know.” Newton said.

“That’s what I mean. Apparently you—Antheans, isn’t it?—aren’t altogether accustomed to thinking as we do. I believe any ordinary, human, detective magazine reader would have realized that we were bound to have had a microphone in your room in Chicago, when you were explaining yourself to Doctor Bryce.”

He remained silent for a full minute, stunned. Then, finally, he said, “No, Mr. Bowen, apparently Antheans don’t think as you people do. But then we wouldn’t lock a person up for two months so that we could ask him questions, the answers to which we already knew.”

Bowen shrugged his shoulders. “Modern governments move in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform. However, it wasn’t my idea to arrest you; it was the FBI’s. Somebody high up panicked. They were afraid you were going to blow the world up with that ferry boat of yours. In fact that has been their theory about you from the very beginning. Their operatives filed reports about the project and the assistant directors would try to decide when you were going to launch it against Washington or New York.” He shook his head in mock sadness. “Ever since Edgar Hoover, that’s been a damn apocalyptic outfit.”

Newton got up abruptly and went to make himself a drink. Bowen asked him to fix three. Then he stood up himself and, hands in pockets, stared for a while at his shoes while Newton was making the drinks.

Handing the glasses to Bowen and the secretary—the secretary avoided his eyes as he took the drink—Newton thought of something. “But once the FBI heard your recording—I suppose you made a recording—they must have changed their minds about my purposes.”

Bowen sipped his drink. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Newton, we’ve never let the FBI know about the recording. We merely gave them the order to make the arrest for us. The tape has never left my office.”

That was another surprise. But surprises had been coming so rapidly that he was getting used to them. “How can you keep them from demanding the tape?”

“Well,” Bowen said, “you might as well know that I have the good fortune to be director of the CIA. In a way, I outrank the FBI.”

“Then you must be—what’s his name, Van Brugh? I’ve heard of you.”

“We’re an elusive bunch in the CIA,” Bowen—or Van Brugh—said. “Anyway, once we had the tape, we knew what we wanted to know about you. And we also determined from the fact of your confession, that if the FBI did pick you up—which as I told you they were on the verge of doing—you might well spill out the whole story to them. We didn’t want that to happen, because we don’t trust the FBI. These are perilous times, Mr. Newton; they might have solved the problem that we’ve been wrestling with by killing you.”

“And you don’t intend to kill me?”

“It’s certainly occurred to us. I’ve never been for it mainly because—however dangerous you could be—doing away with you might be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

Newton finished his drink, then refilled the glass. “How do you mean that?” he said.

“Right now we already have, over at Defense, a good many projected weapons based on data we pilfered from your private file over three years ago. These are, as I say, perilous times; there are a lot of ways in which we could use you. I imagine you Antheans know a great deal about weapons.”

Newton paused a minute, staring at his drink. Then he said, calmly, “If you heard me talking to Bryce you know what we Antheans did to ourselves with our weapons. I have no intention of trying to make the United States of America omnipotent. Nor, as a matter of fact, could I if I wished to. I’m not a scientist. I was picked for the trip because of my physical stamina, not my knowledge. I know very little about weapons—less than you do, I suspect.”

“You must have seen, or heard about, weapons on Anthea.”

Newton was regaining his composure now, possibly because of the drinks. He no longer felt defensive. “You’ve seen automobiles, Mr. Van Brugh. Could you explain, off-hand, to an African savage how to make one? With only locally available materials?”

“No. But I could explain internal combustion to a savage. If I could find a savage in modern Africa. And, if he were a smart savage he might be able to do something with that.”

“Probably kill himself,” Newton said. “In any event, I do not intend to tell you anything along that line, for whatever it might be worth to you.” He finished another drink. “I suppose you cold try torturing me.”

“A waste of time, I’m afraid,” Van Brugh said. “You see the reason we’ve been asking foolish questions of you for two months has been to conduct a kind of psychoanalysis. We’ve had cameras in here, recording eye-blink rates and things like that. We’ve already concluded that torture wouldn’t work on you. You’d go insane too easily under pain; and we just can’t learn enough about your psychology—guilt and anxieties and things like that—to do any kind of brainwashing on you. We’ve also loaded you with drugs—hypnotics, narcotics—and they don’t work.”

“Then what are you going to do? Shoot me?”

“No. I’m afraid we can’t even do that. Not without the President’s permission, and he won’t give it.” Then he smiled sadly. “You see, Mr. Newton, after all of the cosmic factors to be considered, the final one turns out to be a matter of practical, human politics.”

“Politics?”

“It just happens that this is 1988. And 1988 is an election year. The President is already campaigning for a second term, and he has it on good authority—did you know that Watergate changed nothing—nothing—the President uses us, in the CIA, to spy on the other party?—that the Republicans are going to turn this whole business into something like the Dreyfus case if we don’t either bring adequate charges against you or turn you loose with profuse apologies all around.”

Abruptly, Newton laughed. “And if you shoot me, the President might lose the election?”

“The Republicans have your brother industrialists in the NAM already worked up into a later. And those gentlemen, as you probably know, wield a lot of influence. They also protect their own.”

Newton was beginning to laugh even harder. It was the first time in his life that he had actually laughed aloud. He did not merely chuckle, or snicker, or snort; he laughed loudly and deeply. Finally, he said, “Then you’ll have to let me go?”

Van Brugh smiled grimly. “Tomorrow. We’re letting you go tomorrow.”

9

For more than a year it had become increasingly difficult for him to know how he felt about many things. This was not a difficulty characteristic of his people, but he had acquired it somehow. During those fifteen years that he had learned to speak English, learned to fasten buttons, to tie a tie, learned batting averages, the brand names of automobiles, and countless other bits and pieces of information, so much of which had turned out to be unnecessary, during all that time he had never suffered from self-doubt, had never questioned that plan he had been chosen to carry out. And now, after five years of actually living with human beings, he was unable to tell how he felt about such a clear-cut matter as being released from prison. As for the plan itself, he did not know what to think, and as a consequence he hardly thought about it at all. He had become very human.

In the morning he was given his disguises again. It seemed odd to put them on once more, before going back into the world, and it was silly as well, for from whom was he concealing himself now? Yet he was glad to have the contact lenses on again, the lenses that gave his eyes a more human appearance. Their light filters relieved his eyes from the strain of brightness that even the dark glasses he had been wearing continuously could not altogether protect him from. And when he put them on and looked in the mirror at himself, he was relieved to look human again.

A man he had not seen before took him from the room and down a hallway that was lighted by luminous panels—panels made under W. E. Corporation patents—and guarded by soldiers who carried guns. They entered an elevator.

The lights in the elevator were oppressively bright. He put on his dark glasses. “What have you told the newspapers about all this?” he asked, although he did not really care.

The man, though silent up to now, turned out to be quite affable. He was a short, stocky, bad-complexioned man. “That’s not my department,” he said pleasantly, “but I think they’ve said you were held in protective custody because of security reasons. Your work was vital to the national defense. Things like that.”

“Will there be reporters waiting? When I get out?”

I don’t think so.” The elevator stopped. The door opened into another guarded hallway. “We’re going to sneak you out the back door, so to speak.”

“Right away?”

“In about two hours. There are some routine things to do first. We have to process you out of this place. That’s what I’m here for.” They continued down the hallway, which was very long and, like the rest of the building, too brightly lighted. “Tell me,” the man said, “what were you being held for anyway?”

“You don’t know?”

“Those things are kept pretty quiet around here.”

“Doesn’t Mr. Van Brugh inform you of things like that?”

The man smiled. “Van Brugh doesn’t tell anybody anything, except maybe the President, and he tells him only what he feels like telling.”

At the end of the hallway—or tunnel, he was not certain which it was—was a door that led them into what appeared to be an oversized dentist’s office. It was startlingly clean, with pale yellow tiles. There was a chair of the sort that dentists use, flanked by several uncomfortably new-looking machines. Two women and a man stood waiting, smiling politely, wearing pale yellow smocks that matched the tiles. He had expected to see Van Brugh—he wasn’t certain why—but Van Brugh was not in the room. The man who had accompanied him here conducted him to the chair. He grinned. “I know it looks awful, but they won’t do anything that hurts. Some routine tests, mostly for identification.”

“My God,” Newton said, “haven’t you tested me enough?”

“Not us, Mr. Newton. I’m sorry if there’s any duplication of what the CIA’s been doing. But we’re FBI, and we have to get this stuff for our files. You know, blood type, fingerprints, EEG, things like that.”

“All right.” He sat resignedly in the chair. Van Brugh had said that governments moved in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform. Anyway it shouldn’t take too long.

For a while they prodded and inspected him with needles, photographic equipment, and various metallic devices. They put clamps on his head to measure his brain waves, clamps on his wrists to measure his heartbeat. Some of their results he knew must be surprising them, but they showed no surprise. It was all, as the FBI man had said, a matter of routine.

And then, after about an hour, they wheeled a machine up in front of him, putting it very close, and asked him to remove his glasses. The machine had two lenses, spaced like eyes, which seemed to regard him quizzically. There was a black rubber cup, like an eyecup, around each lens.

He was immediately frightened. If they did not know about the peculiarities of his eyes… “What are you going to do with that?”

The yellow-frocked technician took a small ruler from his shirt pocket and held it across the bridge of Newton’s nose, measuring. His voice was flat. “We’re just going to make some photographs of you,” he said. “Won’t hurt.”

One of the women, smiling professionally, reached out for his dark glasses. “Here, sir, we’ll just take these off now…”

He jerked his head away from her, putting up a hand to defend his face. “Just a minute. What kind of photographs?”

The man at the machine hesitated a moment. Then he glanced at the FBI man, now seated near the wall. The FBI man nodded affably. The man in the yellow smock said, “Actually, two kinds of pictures, sir, both at once. One’s a routine I.D. photo of your retinas, to get the blood vessel pattern. Best identification you can make. Then the other picture is X-ray. We want the ridges at the inside of your occiput—the back of your skull.”

Newton tried to get out of the chair. “No!” he said. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Faster than he would have believed possible, the affable FBI man was behind him, pulling him back into the chair. He was unable to move. Probably the FBI man was not aware of it, but a woman could have held him easily. “I’m sorry, sir,” the man behind him was saying, “but we have to have those pictures.”

He tried to calm himself. “Haven’t you been informed about me? Haven’t you been told about my eyes? Certainly they know about my eyes.”

“What about your eyes?” the man in the yellow gown said. He seemed impatient.

“They are sensitive to X-rays. That device…”

“Nobody’s eyes can see X-rays.” The man pursed his lips, obviously in irritation. “Nobody sees at those frequencies.” He nodded to the woman and, smiling uncomfortably, she took his glasses off. The light in the room made him blink.

“I do,” he said, squinting. “I see altogether differently from the way you do.” Then, “Let me show you the way my eyes are made. If you’ll release me I’ll remove my… my contact lenses.”

The FBI man did not release him. “Contact lenses?” the technician said. He leaned over closely, staring for a long moment into Newton’s eyes. Then he drew back. “You’re not wearing contact lenses.”

He was feeling a sensation he had not felt for a long time—panic. The brightness of the room had become oppressive; it seemed to pulsate around him with the regularity of his heartbeat. His speech felt thick, drunken. “They’re a… new kind of lens. A membrane, not plastic. If you’ll release me for a moment I’ll show you.”

The technician was still pursing his lips. “There’s no such thing,” he said. “I’ve had experience for twenty years with contact lenses and…”

Behind him the FBI man said something beautiful. “Let him try, Arthur,” he said, abruptly releasing his arms. “After all, he’s a taxpayer.”

Newton let out a sigh. Then he said, “I’ll need a mirror.” He began fumbling in his pockets and, suddenly, panicked again. He did not have the special little tweezers with him, the ones designed for removing the membranes…. “I’m sorry,” he said, talking to none of them in particular. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to have an instrument. Maybe back in my room…”

The FBI man smiled patiently. “Now come on,” he said. “We don’t have all day. And I couldn’t get in that room if I wanted to.”

“All right,” Newton said. “Then do you have a pair of small tweezers? Maybe I can do it with them.”

The technician grimaced. “Just a minute.” He mumbled something else, then went to a drawer. In a minute he had assembled a formidable set of shining instruments—tweezers, quasi-tweezers, and tweezerlike tools of unknown function. He laid them out on the table beside the dentist’s chair.

One of the women had already handed Newton a circular mirror. He picked a blunt-ended small tweezer from the table. It was not very much like the one made for the job, but it might work. He clicked it experimentally a few times. Maybe a little too large, but it would have to do.

Then he found that he could not hold the mirror steady. He asked the woman who had given it to him to hold it. She stepped closer and took the mirror, holding it too near his face. He told her to back off a bit, then had to make her readjust its angle so that he could see properly. He was still squinting. The man in the yellow gown was beginning to tap his foot on the floor. The tapping seemed to keep time with the pulsation of the lights in the room.

When he brought his hand, carrying the tweezer, toward his eyes, the fingers began to tremble uncontrollably. He drew the hand back quickly. He tried again, but could not get the thing near his eye. His hand shook violently this time. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Just a minute more…” His hand drew back involuntarily from his eye, from fear of the instrument and of the damnably shaking, trembling, uncontrolled fingers. The tweezers fell from his hand, into his lap. He fumbled for them, then, sighing, looked at the FBI man, whose face was noncommittal. He cleared his throat, still squinting. Why did the lights have to be so bright? “Do you suppose,” he said, “that I could have a drink? Of gin?”

Abruptly the man laughed. But this time the laugh did not seem affable. It sounded sharp, cold, brutal. And it rang in the tiled room.

“Now come on,” the man said, smiling indulgently. “Now come on.”

Desperately now, he grasped the tweezers. If he could get only one of the membranes partly off, even if he damaged the eye, they could tell… Why didn’t Van Brugh come and tell them? It would be better for him to ruin one of his eyes than to submit them both to that machine, to those lenses that wanted to stare into his skull, to count, for some reason of idiots, the ridges on the back of his skull from the inside, counting them through his eyes, his sensitive eyes.

Abruptly, the FBI man’s hands had clamped over his wrists again and his arms—those arms with so little strength in them when pitted against the strength of a human being—were drawn once again behind his back and held. And then someone put a clamp around his head, tightening it at the temples. “No!” he said, softly, trembling. “No!” He could not move his head.

“I’m sorry,” the technician said. “I’m sorry, but we have to hold your head still for this.” He did not sound at all sorry. He pushed the machine directly up to Newton’s face. Then he turned a knob that brought the lenses and rubber cups up to Newton’s eyes, like binoculars.

And Newton, for the second time in two days, did something new to him, and very human. He screamed. He screamed wordlessly at first and then he found himself forming words: “Don’t you know I’m not human? I’m not a human being!” The cups had blocked off all light. He could see nothing, no one. “I’m not a human being at all!”

“Now come on,” the FBI man said, behind him.

And then there was a flash of silver light that was brighter, to Newton, than the midday sun of deep summer is to a man who has come from a dark room and has forced himself to stare up at it, open-eyed, until his eyes had gone dark. Then he felt the pressure leave his face, and knew that they had wheeled the machine away.

It was only after he had fallen twice that they tested his eyes and discovered that he was blind.

10

He was kept incommunicado in a government hospital for six weeks, where the government doctors were able to do nothing whatever for him. The light-sensitive cells of his retinas had been almost completely seared; they were no more capable of visual distinctions than is a greatly overexposed photographic plate. He could, after a few weeks, faintly make out light and dark, and could tell, when a large dark object was placed in front of him, that it was, indeed, a large, dark object. But that was all—no color was apparent, no form.

It was during this period that he began to think again of Anthea. At first his mind found itself recalling old and scattered memories, mostly of his childhood. He remembered a certain chesslike game that he had loved as a child—a game played with transparent cubes on a circular board—and he found himself recalling the complex rules whereby the pale green cubes took precedence over the gray ones when their configurations formed polygons. He remembered the musical instruments he had studied, the books he had read, especially the history books, and the automatic ending of his childhood at the age of thirty-two Anthean years—or forty-five, as the human beings counted time—by marriage. He had not chosen his wife himself, although that was sometimes done, but had permitted his family to make the choice. The marriage had been an effective one, and pleasant enough. There had been no passion, but Antheans were not a passionate race. Now blind, in a United States hospital, he found himself thinking of his wife more fondly than he ever had before. He missed her, and wished she were with him. Sometimes he wept.

Not being able to watch television, he would listen at times to the radio. The government, he learned, had not been able to keep his blindness a secret. The Republicans were making considerable use of him in their campaign. What had happened to him they called an example of administrative high-handedness and irresponsibility.

After the first week he felt no rancor toward them. How could he be angry with children? Van Brugh offered embarrassed apologies; it had all been a mistake; he had not known the FBI hadn’t been informed of Newton’s peculiarities. He was aware that Van Brugh did not actually care, that he was only worried about what he, Newton, might eventually say to the press, what names he would name. Newton assured him, wearily, that he would say nothing except that it was all an unavoidable accident. No one’s fault—an accident.

Then one day Van Brugh told him that he had destroyed the tape. He had known from the beginning, he said, that no one would believe it anyway. They would believe it to be a fake, or that Newton was insane, or anything except that it was true.

Newton asked him if he believed it was true.

“Of course I believe it,” Van Brugh said quietly. “At least six people know about it and believe it. The President is one of them, and so is the Secretary of State. But we’re destroying the records.”

“Why?”

“Well,” Van Brugh laughed coldly, “among other things we don’t want to go down in history as the greatest assembly of crackpots ever to govern this country.”

Newton set down the book with which he had been practicing Braille. “Then I can resume my work? In Kentucky?”

“Possibly. I don’t know. We’ll be watching you every minute for the rest of your life. But if the Republicans get in I’ll be replaced. I don’t know.”

Newton picked up the book again. For a moment he had been interested, for the first time in weeks, in what was going on around him. But the interest had gone as quickly as it had come, leaving no trace. He laughed gently. “That’s interesting,” he said.

When he left the hospital, led by a nurse, there was a crowd waiting outside the building. In the bright sunlight he could see their silhouettes, and he could hear their voices. A passage in the crowd was kept open for him, probably by policemen, and the nurse led him through this to his car. He heard faint applause. Twice he stumbled, but did not fall. The nurse led him expertly; she would stay with him for months or years, as long as he needed her. Her name was Shirley, and as well as he could tell she was fat.

Suddenly his hand was taken and he felt it being gripped softly. A large person was in front of him. “Good to have you back, Mr. Newton.” Farnsworth’s voice.

“Thank you, Oliver.” He felt very tired. “We have some business to discuss.”

“Yes. You’re on television, you know, Mr. Newton.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.” He looked around, trying unsuccessfully to find the shape of a camera. “Where’s the camera?”

“On your right.” Farnsworth said, sotto voce.

“Turn me toward it, please. Did someone want to ask me something?”

A voice, evidently that of a television commentator, spoke at his elbow. “Mr. Newton, I’m Duane Whitely of CBS television. Can you tell me how it feels to be out again?”

“No,” Newton said. “Not yet.”

The announcer did not seem taken aback. “What,” he said, “are your plans for the future? After the experience you’ve just been through?”

Newton had finally been able pick out the camera, and he faced it now, almost totally unconscious of his human audience, both here in Washington and behind sets all over the country. He was thinking of another audience. He smiled faintly. At the Anthean scientists? At his wife? “I was, as you know,” he said, “working toward a space exploration project. My company was engaged in a rather large undertaking, to send a craft out into the solar system, to measure the radiations that have so far made interplanetary travel impossible.” He paused for breath, and realized that his head and shoulders were aching. Perhaps it was the gravity again, after so long a time in bed. “During my confinement—which was in no way unpleasant—I have had a chance to think.”

“Yes?” the announcer said, filling the pause.

“Yes.” He smiled gently, meaningfully, even happily toward the camera, toward his home. “I’ve decided that the project was over-ambitious. I am going to abandon it.”