Now And Forever Part 10

He said, "No, I haven't the time."

"You've only just said h.e.l.lo," they said.

"It's not easy," he said. "I've known you all for years. But, I've changed. And now I've got to go."

He looked back up and at the top of the stairs stood Laura. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she stared at his so-familiar yet oh-so-changed face.

He smiled, and turned away and walked down the street toward the railroad station.

CHAPTER 32.

The train came out of the east and without thinking of time or place, glided slowly past a spot that was marked only by dust, wind, cacti, a scatter of leaves, and a profusion of ticket-punch confetti that celebrated on the air and settled when the train was gone.

Meanwhile, a familiar suitcase skidded to a halt on the remains of a ramshackle station platform, a few surfboards on a tide of sand, followed by a man in a wrinkled summer suit who tumbled out like an acrobat, shouting with pride when he landed, swaying but intact.

"d.a.m.n, I did it!"

He picked up his flimsy suitcase and stared around at desolation, wiped his brow, and looked toward the end of the station platform where the mail catcher stood. He saw a white envelope in its steel holding arm and went to pluck it from the equipment's grasp. On the front of the envelope he saw his name. He looked around, studying thirty thousand acres of blowing dust, and no roads leading in or out of the desolation.

"Well," he whispered, "I've returned. So..."

He opened the envelope and read: "My dear James. So you've come back. You had to! A lot has happened since you went away."

He paused and regarded the empty desert where Summerton, Arizona, once had stood.

He returned to the letter: "When you read this, we will be gone. There will be nothing left but sand and a few footprints soon to be blown away by the wind. We did not wait for the arrival of the machines and their operators. We pulled up our roots and vanished. Have you heard of those orchards that once thrived near certain small California towns? As the small towns grew into big cities, the orange trees mysteriously disappeared. And yet, pa.s.sing motorists who glance off toward the mountains will see that somehow those orchards have drifted or blown to settle and take root in the foothills, green and flourishing, far from the gasoline stampede.

"Well, my dear James, that is us. We are like those orchards. We've heard, through the years, late in the night, the great boa constrictor, the terrible endless snake of concrete rushing upon us, nearly soundless, no men swearing or shouting or revving tractor and truck engines, but just a terrible oiled hiss, the sound of reptiles sidewinding the gra.s.s or sifting the sand, all by itself, no men guiding, no one riding its loops and folds, a destination to itself, mindless but drawn by body warmth, the heat of people. And so, drawn by that warmth, as reptiles are, it came seeking to disturb our sleep, evict us from our homes. All this we imagined in our dreams, long before you arrived with your awful burden of news. So do not let this weigh too heavily on your soul. We already knew this day was coming; it was only a matter of time.

"Years back, dear James, we began to prepare for the death of our town and the exodus of our people. We brought in hundreds of giant wooden wheels and a plentiful supply of heavy timbers and iron fastenings to bind them together. The wheels lay waiting on the edge of town for years along with the timbers drying in the sun.

"And then the deadfall trumpet blew, to tell it with your humor, at the picnic of the Apocalypse and you saw the faces before you pale with each new revelation. Once in mid-speech I thought you might back off, break, and run, panicked by our panic. Yet you stayed on. Finished, I thought you might fall and die so you could not witness our deaths.

"And when you looked up we were gone.

"We knew you were sick at heart, so I gave you what medicine I had, my attention and my pitiful words. And when you left on the noon train, leaping on long before it stopped, we looked at all those iron and wooden wheels beyond the city, and the platform timbers on which we imagined our houses, barns, and orchards transported so far off that no one would suspect this place had once known a life and now would know no more.

"You have seen, have you not, those solitary parades, single houses hoisted up on wooden plates and pulled like toys along the streets to empty lots to be replanted while the old sites turned to dust? Multiply that by three hundred homes and witness a parade of pachyderms, an entire town gliding toward the foothills, followed by the orchard trees.

"It is all quite impossible. Yet, in times of war, think of the preparations, the blueprints, the final accomplishments, thousands of ships, tens of thousands of tanks and guns, more tens of thousands of rifles, bullets, millions of iron helmets, tens of millions of shirts and jackets. How complicated but how necessary when war shouted and we ran. How much simpler our task to uproot a town, to run and rebirth it with wheels.

"In time, our fevers turned into a festival of triumph instead of a funeral march. We were forced on by the imagined thunder, the threatening hiss, of that new road beyond the eastern range. At night we could hear the road coming toward us full steam, rushing to catch us before we vanished.

"Well, the purveyors of concrete and movers of earth did not catch us. On the final day of our escape there remained, where you stand, the ruined station surrounded by a jungle of orange and lemon trees. These were the last to go, a beautiful excursion of softly scented orchards that drifted, four abreast, across the desert to nourish our newly hidden town.

"There you have it, dear James. We moved and left no pebble, no stone, no bas.e.m.e.nt larder, no graveyard tombstone. All, all, all of it was transported.

"And when the highway arrives, what will they find?

Was there ever a Summerton, Arizona, a courthouse, a town hall, a picnic ground, an empty school? No, never.

Look to the dust.

"I will post this letter on the station platform mail-loop in the hope that it will reach you, if you should return. Somehow I know you will come back. I can feel your touch on this envelope even as I sign and seal it.

"When you finish reading this, dear friend and lover, consign it to the weather."

And below this was her signature: Nef.

He tore the letter in quarters and then quarters of quarters, and quarters again, and loosed the confetti into the air.

Now, he thought, which way?

He squinted at the northern rim of desert where lay a length of low half-green hills. He imagined the orchards.

There, he thought.

He had taken but one step when he looked back.

Like an old brown dog, his suitcase lay on the dust-blown station platform.

No, he thought, you're another time.

The luggage lay, waiting.

"Stay," he said.

The luggage stayed.

He walked on.

CHAPTER 33.

It was twilight when he reached the first row of orange trees.

It was deepening twilight when he saw the familiar crowds of sunflowers in each yard and the sign, EGYPTIAN VIEW ARMS, swaying above the verandah.

The sun was almost gone as he walked up the last sidewalk, mounted the porch steps, stood before the screen door, and pressed the doorbell. It chimed quietly. A slender shadow appeared on the hall stair.

"Nef," he said at last, quietly.

"Nef," he said, "I'm home."

LEVIATHAN '99 "RADIO DREAM"

In 1939, when I was nineteen, I fell in love with the radio dramas of Norman Corwin.

I met him later, when I was twenty-seven, and he encouraged me to write my Martian stories, thus causing The Martian Chronicles to be born.

Along through the years my dream was to one day have Norman Corwin direct one of my radio dramas.

When I returned from my year in Ireland, after writing the screenplay for John Huston's Moby d.i.c.k, I was still deeply under the influence of Herman Melville and his leviathan whale. Simultaneously I was still under the spell of Shakespeare, who had entered my life when I was in high school.

After I'd been home from Ireland for a while, I began to consider taking the Melville mythology and placing it in outer s.p.a.ce.

NBC had recently encouraged Norman Corwin and me to collaborate on a one-hour radio drama. When I finished my first script of Leviathan '99, about s.p.a.ceships instead of sailing ships, mad astronaut captains instead of seafaring captains, and the blinding white comet replacing the great white whale, I turned in the script to Norman, who then sent it on to NBC.

At that time television was increasing in popularity, diminishing radio, and NBC responded to my script by saying, "Can you break this down into three-minute segments, which we can broadcast over a period of days?"

Stunned, Norman and I withdrew the script and I sent it to BBC Radio in London, who produced it, with Christopher Lee playing the lead of the insane captain of the s.p.a.ceship Cetus.

The radio production was excellent, but of course my dream of having something produced and directed for radio by Corwin still remained unborn. Suffering from what I now call my "delusions of Shakespeare," I dared to double the length of my Leviathan '99 script and staged it as a play at a Samuel Goldwyn studio soundstage in the spring of 1972. Unfortunately, adding an additional forty pages to the script destroyed my original intent. The essential story was lost. The critics' reviews were unanimous in their vitriol.

In the years that followed I produced Leviathan '99 here and there, gradually whittling away extraneous pages in an attempt to get it back somewhere near the original one-hour version done for radio.

Thirty years later this novella is my final effort to focus and revitalize what began as a radio dream for Norman Corwin. Whether or not it deserves to appear in this incarnation is for you to decide.

DEDICATED WITH.

GREAT ADMIRATION.

to Herman Melville.

CHAPTER 1.

Call me Ishmael.

Ishmael? In this year 2099 when strange new ships head beyond the stars instead of merely toward them? Attack the stars instead of fearing them? A name like Ishmael?

Yes.

My parents flew with the first brave ones to Mars. Turned less than brave, gone sick for Earth, they returned home. Conceived on that journey, I was born in s.p.a.ce.

My father knew his Bible and recalled another outcast who wandered dead seas long years before Christ.

And I being, at that time, the only child fleshed and delivered forth in s.p.a.ce, how better to name me than as my father did.

And he did indeed call me...Ishmael.

Some years ago I thought I would ride all the seas of wind that roam this world. Whenever it is a damp November in my soul, I know it is high time to brave the skies again.

So I soared up among bird cries, bright kites, and thunderheads on a Sat.u.r.day, late summer in this year of 2099, borne upon my own jet-packet power. I flew over and away toward Cape Kennedy in my wild journey hung upon the air, a fledgling bird among the memories of old da Vinci's antique aircraft dreams. I was warmed by the real fire of great birds of steel, and felt the floodgates of the vast and waiting universe swing open my soul.

There were great concussions at a distance: the furnace heat of Kennedy and its thousands of rockets, burning in towers all about. When the fires died at last, only a simple wind whispered.

Then, quickly and calmly, I descended into town, where a river flowed for me to walk upon, a moving sidewalk.

Shadows stirred all about me as I glided through architectural arches and doors. Where was I going? Not to a cold metal barracks for tired s.p.a.cemen, no, but a beautiful, quietly programmed, machined Garden of Eden. I was to attend an academy for astronauts to train for a great voyage beyond the stars, a mission about which as of yet I knew nothing.

Such a place is a world between: part meadow for mind, part gymnasium for flesh, and part theological seminary, reaching ever skyward in its thoughts. For does s.p.a.ce not have the look of a vast cathedral?

So I walked among shifting shadows and entered the reception foyer of the school's dormitory. I registered by pressing my hand to an ident.i.ty panel, which read my sweaty prints like some modern witch of palmistry, and instantaneously chose my roommate for my coming mission.

There was a buzz, a hum, a bell, and a voice-female, sibilant, mechanical-came from somewhere above: "Ishmael Hunnicut Jones; twenty-nine years; height, five-foot-ten; eyes, blue; hair, brown; bone frame, light. Please attend: floor one, room nine. Cubicle roommate, Quell."

And I repeated, "Quell."

"Quell?" another voice cried behind me. "My G.o.d, that's terrible."

Yet another voice added, "G.o.d help you, Mr. Jones."

I turned to find three astronauts of varying sizes and demeanors, all some years older than me, facing me, holding drinks. One was held out to me.

"Take this, Ishmael Jones," said the first man, who was tall and thin. "You'll need it if you're going upstairs to meet that monster," he said. "Drink up."

"But first," said the second, holding out his hand to stay my arm, "how do you fly, shallow or deep?"

"Why, deep, I think," I said. "Deep s.p.a.ce."

"By the timid mile or the great light-year?"

"Light-year, yes," I thought, then said.

"You may drink with us, then."

The third man, who had been silent to this point, spoke up. "I'm John Redleigh. This fellow here," with a nod toward the tall man, "is Sam Small. And he," indicating the remaining man, "is Jim Downs."

And so we drank. Small declared, "We give you permission to share our s.p.a.ce, and also with G.o.d's permission. Do you go to unravel a comet's tail?"