Shock III Part 22

He leaned back his head and stared at the ceiling. 'I needed work to support my wife and our children. I joined this company. Other men became miners in their own mines. Labourers, servants, slavesa'

He looked down at me. And it was as though his people looked with murderous hate upon ours. A hate time could never wipe out. 'The rest died,' he said, 'seven millions of them.'

I sat there, numb with the shock of his words. I just couldn't understand them, believe them.

For I, like you, had heard of these things, read distorted glossed-over reports on the decimation of the Martian race. Studied from history books that told of disease and drought and famine. Of internecine warfare, of savage death-attacks on Earth military posts on Mars. Of racial suicide due to psychotic pride.

The blame has always been displaced. Twisted, contorted, dropped on the Martians, on Nature, on everything a" except us. It is never placed on us.

Those were the thoughts I had. And through all my thinking I could hear the fragile flutter of Larg's breath. Like the last feeble protest of a murdered race.

And then, like a loyal Earthman, I would not even then accept the blame. 'I never knew,' I said. 'I don't expect you'll believe me, but I never knew.'

He sighed. 'What does it matter?' he said.

Silence again. Nervously I took out my cigarettes. I offered him one. He shook his head. I noticed the bluish veins in his forehead. I lit the cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke to the side.

'Why did you do that?' he asked.

I didn't understand. 'Do what?' I asked.

'Blow the smoke away from me?'

I still didn't know. I shrugged. 'I don't go around blowing smoke at people's faces,' I said.

He stared at me for a long moment. Then something seemed to resolve itself in his expression. He relaxed back against the pillow. 'So,' he said, 'I'm people.'

He made a sound of tired amus.e.m.e.nt. 'Why, I'd forgotten it,' he said ironically.

And what could I say? Let me admit it a" as we all should admit it. I was penitent and mute before this fellow creature. Yes, fellow creature, though we have not earned even the right to claim him as brother.

Does that shock you, reader? Does that offend your sensibilities? I can well imagine that it does. For how should a man feel if he is told that what he has always regarded as inferior to him is equal? And, perhaps, superior. How should a man greet the news that his standards are wrong?

No, I expect little sympathy for this account. No man loves another who has shown his frailty to the light.

But I write anyway. For I, too, was one of you just this early evening. I, too, believed myself a liberal mind, thought that I had won my personal triumph over bigotry. I, too, felt perfectly justified in standing on the soapbox of the universe and crying a" 'I am of the clean, the pure in heart!'

Well, I was wrong. You see that. Or maybe you don't.

'What's your name, young man?' Larg asked.

Once again I felt shock. And yet it was obvious that he was no child, no mere cynical youth. He was much older than I and much wiser.

'My name?' I faltered. 'Walter. Walter Thompson.'

And I knew he would never forget it then. He nodded a" and looked at me without rancour for the first time. 'You know my name,' he said quietly.

And the way he said it, it was a gentle, unspoken invitation to friendship.

'Why did you come back here?' he asked.

I started to speak. But then I had to stop. Because I had no answer. 'I don't know,' I finally admitted, shaking my head. 'I'm afraid I just don't know.'

And for the first time, Larg smiled at me. 'Well, that's a novelty,' he said, his gentle voice bubbling with an undercurrent of kind amus.e.m.e.nt. 'You're the first Earth-man I ever met who admitted not knowing everything.'

I tried to smile back. But, somehow, I couldn't. 'I could give you any number of reasons why I didn't come back here,' I said, 'but for a reason I dida I'm stumped.'

He sat up a little. His eyes became bright and interested. He cleared his throat delicately and put his hands on his kneecaps.

'I have found that to be commonplace among you Earth people,' he said, 'the ready knowledge of why you don't do things. But no attendant ability to explain why you do execute them.'

He smiled again. And we both smiled, one at the other. As men smile when they are friends.

'If you would really like to interview me,' he said, 'I wouldn't mind. Not now.'

Hurriedly I put out my cigarette in an ashtray. The outlines of a plan were rising in my mind.

'Listen, Larg,' I said.

He listened.

'I'm no intellect,' I said. 'I haven't the ability to split hairs a" or to delve into sociological aspects or philosophy or anything like that.

'But I can report. And this situation cries for reporting. I want to tell the readers about you. Not about Rip Van Winkle. Not about the funny little guy from Mars.'

I felt my throat contract. 'I don't think about you that way anymore,' I said. 'I think you're as good as the rest of Then I twisted my shoulders impatient with my own words.

'I'm sorry,' I said, 'I don't mean to sound smug or self-righteous. Believe me, I'm ashamed a" terribly ashamed. For myself and for my people. But I a" I just don't know how to put it.

'You see, I've been brought up to believe the things I believed about you. That others still believe. And now that those beliefs have been pretty well kicked out from under me a" well, I'm a little fuzzy at the edges.'

Our eyes met. And I thought suddenly how differences in appearance disappear when you look at minds instead of faces.

Larg seemed a brother then. Not an Earth-brother or a Mars-brother. I mean a brother a" a person possessing that non-racial, universal trait which is separate from feature or environment. That sense of being which may exist in the savage and not in the priest. Or in the Martian and not in the Earthman. A dignity, a self-respect, a soul.

Larg looked at me, smiling. 'You've said it very well,' he said.

I put out my hand. Then I jerked it back. I wasn't sure. I started to speak to cover the move. And Larg said, 'Yes, I'd like to shake your hand.'

He extended his small fingers. I grasped them as gently as I could. Something beyond anything I had ever felt surged up in me. I can't explain it. But if it ever happens to you you'll know it.

We clasped hands for a long moment.

'I wish I could give you something more than words,' I told him, 'Something substantial. A doctor, a letter from your wife and children, a promise to get you home a" anything. But I a" I can't.'

He smiled. 'You've given me much,' he said, 'something more valuable than you may realize. For you have an excess of it each day, I'm sure.'

He looked at me carefully. 'You've given me friendship,' he said, 'understanding, respect.'

Then he closed his eyes. His lips tightened. 'Those are things that we must have as well as you,' he said quietly; 'those are things without which no being is complete.'

When Walt came in the next morning the city editor called him in. He tossed the review across his desk.

'Finish this off,' he said, 'I started the deletions.'

Walt asked, 'What deletions?'

'Cut out all that stuff about the murder of a race. Larg and his n.o.ble character. Handle it straight. The show, the kids' reactions. That's all we want.'

Walt looked at Barton in disbelief. 'You're not going to run it?' he asked. '

Barton's eyelids flickered. 'You know our policy, Thompson. You knew d.a.m.n well we couldn't run it.'

'No, I didn't.' Walt clenched his fists. 'I thought this was a newspaper. Not somebody's propaganda sheet a" not some rich man's solace.'

Barton looked up at him like a harried father. 'Where have you been, Walter?' he said patiently. 'Welcome back to society.'

Walt tossed the review back on Barton's desk. 'It goes like that or not at all,' he snapped.

'Then not at all,' Barton said. 'Look, Walt, what are you jumping on me for? I don't make policy.'

'You help it along!'

'Sit down, Walt,' Barton said, gesturing.

Walt slumped down in the chair facing Barton's desk. The editor leaned back.

'I've been wondering how long it would take you to come up with something like this,' he said. 'It's been overdue. Usually you kids get it out of your system right after college. They don't let it linger inside them until they're married and have a kid like you.'

Barton fingered the review.

'We can't run it, kid,' he said, 'You know that as well as I do. No matter how true it is.'

'Then truth isn't the criterion anymore,' Walt said acidly.

'Was it ever?' Barton said. 'We killed it. The same way I'll have to kill "our review unless you doctor it. Let's be practical about this.'

'Practical!'

They stared at each other.

'Is it an order?' Walt asked, 'Am I ordered to cut its heart out?'

Barton shrugged. 'Call it an order then,' he said. 'Pin it on me if it will make you feel any better.'

Walt's face tightened. 'Sure,' he said, 'that will make me feel just fine.'

Barton sighed. 'Well, here it is, Walt. It's out of my hands, it's policy.'

'Policy!' Walt jumped to his feet. 'G.o.d d.a.m.n the word!'

They were silent. Barton held out the review. Walt didn't budge.

'I know how you feel, Walter,' Barton said, 'But you're in a trap, don't you see? I'm in a trap. We all are. And we can't afford to tear ourselves loose.'

Walt took the review.

'I know what you're going through,' said Barton.

'No, you don't,' Walt said very quietly, 'Not anymore.' He turned at the door. 'And some day,' he said, 'I'll be just like you.'

He rewrote the story. He cut, chiselled, reworded. It emerged from his efforts clean and pleasant and without subversion. He sent it downstairs and it was printed.

That night he read it as he rode home on the pneumatic tube. He thought about Larg reading it. First anxiously, then with rising disappointment. Then at last with despairing bitterness.

They would never see each other again.

He crumpled the paper and threw it down a disposal chute as he got off the tube car. 'He thinks he has troubles,' he muttered angrily, about Larg, as he walked home.

He thought of the red tape involved in leaving one job and getting another. It took the Position Bureau at least six months. And in the meantime there were bills to be paid. He thought of them. Food bills, clothing bills, payments on the ground-car and the house and the furniture and everything.

He almost hated Larg for injecting dissatisfaction into his life.

Then, after supper, he sat in his clean bright living room and thought of it again. Full circle, he thought. That was what it amounted to.

Larg couldn't do anything about it. He couldn't do anything about it. Both of them, knowing the situation for what it was, were powerless to change it. They were hemmed in. Bound within an enchanted circle of economics, of policy.

'What's the matter?' asked his wife that night.

'I'm sick, that's what's the matter,' he said. 'I'm very d.a.m.ned sick.'

XIII a" NIGHTMARE AT 20,000.

FEET.

Seat belt, please," said the stewardess cheerfully as she pa.s.sed him.

Almost as she spoke, the sign above the archway which led to the forward compartment lit up-fasten seat belt-with, below, its attendant caution-NO smoking. Drawing in a deep lungful, Wilson exhaled it in bursts, then pressed the cigarette into the armrest tray with irritable stabbing motions.

Outside, one of the engines coughed monstrously, spewing out a cloud of fume which fragmented into the night air. The fuselage began to shudder and Wilson, glancing through the window, saw the exhaust of flame jetting whitely from the engine's nacelle. The second engine coughed, then roared, its propeller instantly a blur of revolution. With a tense submissiveness, Wilson fastened the belt across his lap.

Now all the engines were running and Wilson's head throbbed in unison with the fuselage. He sat rigidly, staring at the seat ahead as the DC-7 taxied across the ap.r.o.n, heating the night with the thundering blast of its exhausts.