The Martian Chronicles Part 21

In the sunlight, snow melts, crystals evaporate into a steam, into nothing. In the firelight, vapors dance and vanish. In the core of a volcano, fragile things burst and disappear. The girl, in the gunfire, in the heat, in the concussion, folded like a soft scarf, melted like a crystal figurine. What was left of her, ice, snowflake, smoke, blew away in the wind. The tiller seat was empty.

Sam holstered his gun and did not look at his wife.

"Sam," she said after a minute more of traveling, whispering over the moon-colored sea of sand, "stop the ship."

He looked at her and his face was pale. "No, you don't. Not after all this time, you're not pulling out on me."

She looked at his hand on his gun. "I believe you would," she said. "You actually would."

He jerked his head from side to side, hand tight on the tiller bar. "Elma, this is crazy. We'll be in town in a minute, we'll be okay!"

"Yes," said his wife, lying back cold in the ship.

"Elma, listen to me."

"There's nothing to hear, Sam."

"Elma!"

They were pa.s.sing a little white chess city, and in his frustration, in his rage, he sent six bullets crashing among the crystal towers. The city dissolved in a shower of ancient gla.s.s and splintered quartz. It fell away like carved soap, shattered. It was no more. He laughed and fired again, and one last tower, one last chess piece, took fire, ignited, and in blue flinders went up to the stars.

"I'll show them! I'll show everybody!"

"Go ahead, show us, Sam." She lay in the shadows.

"Here comes another city!" Sam reloaded his gun. "Watch me fix it!"

The blue phantom ships loomed up behind them, drawing steadily apace. He did not see them at first. He was only aware of a whistling and a high windy screaming, as of steel on sand, and it was the sound of the sharp razor prows of the sand ships preening the sea bottoms, their red pennants, blue pennants unfurled. In the blue light ships were blue dark images, masked men, men with silvery faces, men with blue stars for eyes, men with carved golden ears, men with tinfoil cheeks and ruby-studded lips, men with arms folded, men following him, Martian men.

One, two, three. Sam counted. The Martian ships closed in.

"Elma, Elma, I can't hold them all off!"

Elma did not speak or rise from where she had slumped.

Sam fired his gun eight times. One of the sand ships fell apart, the sail, the emerald body, the bronze hull points, the moon-white tiller, and all the separate images in it. The masked men, all of them, dug into the sand and separated out into orange and then smoke-flame.

But the other ships closed in.

"I'm outnumbered, Elma!" he cried. "They'll kill me!"

He threw out the anchor. It was no use. The sail fluttered down, folding unto itself, sighing. The ship stopped. The wind stopped. Travel stopped. Mars stood still as the majestic vessels of the Martians drew around and hesitated over him.

"Earth man," a voice called from a high seat somewhere. A silverine mask moved. Ruby-rimmed lips glittered with the words.

"I didn't do anything!" Sam looked at all the faces, one hundred in all, that surrounded him. There weren't many Martians left on Mars-one hundred, one hundred and fifty, all told. And most of them were here now, on the dead seas, in their resurrected ships, by their dead chess cities, one of which had just fallen like some fragile vase hit by a pebble. The silverine masks glinted.

"It was all a mistake," he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. "I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads-you know where it is. You've got to admit it's a good job of building." Sam laughed, staring around. "And that Martian-I know he was a friend of yours-came. His death was an accident, I a.s.sure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice."

The silver masks did not move. They burned in the moonlight. Yellow eyes shone upon Sam. He felt his stomach clench in, wither, become a rock. He threw his gun in the sand.

"I give up."

"Pick up your gun," said the Martians in chorus.

"What?"

"Your gun." A jeweled hand waved from the prow of a blue ship. "Pick it up. Put it away."

Unbelieving he picked up the gun.

"Now," said the voice, "turn your ship and go back to your stand."

"Now?"

"Now," said the voice. "We will not harm you. You ran away before we were able to explain. Come."

Now the great ships turned as lightly as moon thistles. Their wing-sails flapped with a sound of soft applause on the air, The masks were coruscating, turning, firing the shadows.

"Elma!" Sam tumbled into the ship. "Get up, Elma. We're going back." He was excited. He almost gibbered with relief. "They aren't going to hurt me, kill me, Elma. Get up, honey, get up."

"What-what?" Elma blinked around and slowly, as the ship was sent into the wind again, she helped herself, as in a dream, back up to a seat and slumped there like a sack of stones, saying no more.

The sand slid under the ship. In half an hour they were back at the crossroads, the ships planted, all of them out of the ships.

The Leader stood before Sam and Elma, his mask beaten of polished bronze, the eyes only empty slits of endless blue-black, the mouth a slot out of which words drifted into the wind.

"Ready your stand," said the voice. A diamond-gloved hand waved. "Prepare the viands, prepare the foods, prepare the strange wines, for tonight is indeed a great night!"

"You mean," said Sam, "you'll let me stay on here?"

"Yes."

"You're not mad at me?"

The mask was rigid and carved and cold and sightless.

"Prepare your place of food," said the voice softly. "And take this."

"What is it?"

Sam blinked at the silver-foil scroll that was handed him, upon which, in hieroglyph, snake figures danced.

"It is the land grant to all of the territory from the silver mountains to the blue hills, from the dead salt sea there to the distant valleys of moonstone and emerald," said the Leader.

"M-mine?" said Sam, incredulous.

"Yours."

"One hundred thousand miles of territory?"

"Yours."

"Did you hear that, Elma?"

Elma was sitting on the ground, leaning against the aluminum hot-dog stand, eyes shut.

"But why, why-why are you giving me all this?" asked Sam, trying to look into the metal slots of the eyes.

"That is not all. Here." Six other scrolls were produced. The names were declared, the territories announced.

"Why, that's half of Mars! I own half of Mars!" Sam rattled the scrolls in his fists. He shook them at Elma, insane with laughing. "Elma, did you hear?"

"I heard," said Elma, looking at the sky.

She seemed to be watching for something. She was becoming a little more alert now.

"Thank you, oh, thank you," said Sam to the bronze mask.

"Tonight is the night," said the mask. "You must be ready."

"I will be. What it is-a surprise? Are the rockets coming through earlier than we thought, a month earlier from Earth? All ten thousand rockets, bringing the settlers, the miners, the workers and their wives, all hundred thousand of them? Won't that be swell, Elma? You see, I told you. I told you, that town there won't always have just one thousand people in it. There'll be fifty thousand more coming, and the month after that a hundred thousand more, and by the end of the year five million Earth Men. And me with the only hot-dog stand staked out on the busiest highway to the mines!"

The mask floated on the wind. "We leave you. Prepare. The land is yours."

In the blowing moonlight, like metal petals of some ancient flower, like blue plumes, like cobalt b.u.t.terflies immense and quiet, the old ships turned and moved over the shifting sands, the masks beaming and glittering, until the last shine, the last blue color, was lost among the hills.

"Elma, why did they do it? Why didn't they kill me? Don't they know anything? What's wrong with them? Elma, do you understand?" He shook her shoulder. "I own half of Mars!"

She watched the night sky, waiting.

"Come on," he said. "We've got to get the place fixed. All the hot dogs boiling, the buns warm, the chili cooking, the onions peeled and diced, the relish laid out, the napkins in the dips, the place spotless! Hey!" He did a little wild dance, kicking his heels. "Oh boy, I'm happy; yes, sir, I'm happy," he sang off key. "This is my lucky day!"

He boiled the hot dogs, cut the buns, sliced the onions in a frenzy.

"Just think, that Martian said a surprise. That can only mean one thing, Elma. Those hundred thousand people coming in ahead of schedule, tonight, of all nights! We'll be flooded! We'll work long hours for days, what with tourists riding around seeing things, Elma. Think of the money!"

He went out and looked at the sky. He didn't see anything.

"In a minute, maybe," he said, snuffing the cool air gratefully, arms up, beating his chest. "Ah!"

Elma said nothing. She peeled potatoes for French fries quietly, her eyes always on the sky.

"Sam," she said half an hour later. "There it is. Look."

He looked and saw it.

Earth.

It rose full and green, like a fine-cut stone, above the hills.

"Good old Earth," he whispered lovingly. "Good old wonderful Earth. Send me your hungry and your starved. Something something-how does that poem go? Send me your hungry, old Earth. Here's Sam Parkhill, his hot dogs all boiled, his chili cooking, everything neat as a pin. Come on, you Earth, send me your rocket!"

He went out to look at his place. There it sat, perfect as a fresh-laid egg on the dead sea bottom, the only nucleus of light and warmth in hundreds of miles of lonely wasteland. It was like a heart beating alone in a great dark body. He felt almost sorrowful with pride, gazing at it with wet eyes.

"It sure makes you humble," he said among the cooking odors of wieners, warm buns, rich b.u.t.ter. "Step up," he invited the various stars in the sky. "Who'll be the first to buy?"

"Sam," said Elma.

Earth changed in the black sky.

It caught fire.

Part of it seemed to come apart in a million pieces, as if a gigantic jigsaw had exploded. It burned with an unholy dripping glare for a minute, three times normal size, then dwindled.

"What was that?" Sam looked at the green fire in the sky.

"Earth," said Elma, holding her hands together.

"That can't be Earth, that's not Earth! No, that ain't Earth! It can't be."

"You mean it couldn't be Earth," said Elma, looking at him. "That just isn't Earth. No, that's not Earth; is that what you mean?"

"Not Earth-oh no, it couldn't couldn't be," he wailed. be," he wailed.

He stood there, his hands at his sides, his mouth open, his eyes wide and dull, not moving.

"Sam." She called his name. For the first time in days her eyes were bright. "Sam?"

He looked up at the sky.

"Well," she said. She glanced around for a minute or so in silence. Then briskly she flapped a wet towel over her arm. "Switch on more lights, turn up the music, open the doors, There'll be another batch of customers along in about a million years. Gotta be ready, yes, sir."

Sam did not move.

"What a swell spot for a hot-dog stand," she said. She reached over and picked a toothpick out of a jar and put it between her front teeth. "Let you in on a little secret, Sam," she whispered, leaning toward him. "This looks like it's going to be an off season."

November 2005: THE WATCHERS.

They all came out and looked at the sky that night. They left their suppers or their washing up or their dressing for the show and they came out upon their now-not-quite-as-new porches and watched the green star of Earth there. It was a move without conscious effort; they all did it, to help them understand the news they had heard on the radio a moment before. There was Earth and there the coming war, and there hundreds of thousands of mothers or grandmothers or fathers or brothers or aunts or uncles or cousins. They stood on the porches and tried to believe in the existence of Earth, much as they had once tried to believe in the existence of Mars; it was a problem reversed. To all intents and purposes, Earth now was dead; they had been away from it for three or four years. s.p.a.ce was an anesthetic; seventy million miles of s.p.a.ce numbed you, put memory to sleep, depopulated Earth, erased the past, and allowed these people here to go on with their work. But now, tonight, the dead were risen, Earth was reinhabited, memory awoke, a million names were spoken: What was so-and-so doing tonight on Earth? What about this one and that one? The people on the porches glanced sidewise at each other's faces.

At nine o'clock Earth seemed to explode, catch fire, and burn.

The people on the porches put up their hands as if to beat the fire out.