Long After Midnight (28 page)

 
          
"Yes."

 
          
"They're
not what you think, son. It's not July Fourth, Tom. Not in the usual way. Every
day's Independence Day now. Man has declared his Freedom from Earth. Gravitation
without representation has been overthrown. The Revolt has long since been
successful. That green Roman Candle's going to Mars. That red fire,
thaf
s the Venus rocket. And the others, you see the yellow
and the blue? Rockets, all of
theml
"

 
          
Thomas
Wolfe gazed up like an immense child caught amid the colorized glories of a
July evening when the set-pieces are awhirl with phosphorus and glitter and
barking explosion.

 
          
"What
years is this?"

 
          
"The
year of the rocket. Look here." And the old man touched some flowers that
bloomed at his touch. The blossoms were like blue and white fire. They burned
and sparkled their cold, long petals. The blooms were two feet wide, and they
were the color of an autumn moon. "Moon-flowers," said the old man. "From
the other side of the moon." He brushed them and they dripped away into a
silver rain, a shower of white sparks on the air. "The year of the rocket.
That's a title for you, Tom. That's why we brought you here, we've need of you.
You're the only man could handle the sun without being burnt to a ridiculous
cinder. We want you to juggle the sun, Tom, and the stars, and whatever else
you see on your trip to Mars."

 
          
"Mars?"
Thomas Wolfe turned to seize the old man's arm, bending down at him, searching
his face in unbelief.

 
          
"Tonight.
You leave at
six o'clock
."

 
          
The
old man held a fluttering pink ticket on the air, waiting for Tom to think to
take it.

 
          
It
was five in the afternoon. "Of course, of course I appreciate what you've
done," cried Thomas Wolfe.

 
          
"Sit
down, Tom. Stop walking around."

 
          
"Let
me finish, Mr. Field, let me get through with this, I've got to say it."

 
          
"We've
been arguing for hours," pleaded Mr. Field, exhaustedly.

 
          
They
had talked from breakfast until lunch until tea, they had wandered through a dozen
rooms and ten dozen arguments, they had perspired and grown cold and perspired
again.

 
          
"It
all comes down to this," said Thomas Wolfe, at last. "I can't
"stay here, Mr. Field. I've got to go back. This isn't my time. You've no
right to interfere—"

 
          
"But,
I-"

 
          
"I
was deep in my work, my best yet to come, and now you run me off three
centuries. Mr. Field, I want you to call Mr. Bolton back. I want you to have
him put me in his machine, whatever it is, and return me to 1938, my rightful
place and year. That's all I ask of you."

 
          
"But,
don't you
want
to see Mars?"

 
          
"With
all my heart. But T know it isn't for me. It would throw my writing off. I'd
have a huge handful of experience that I couldn't fit into my other writing
when I went home."

 
          
"You
don't understand, Tom, you don't understand at all."

 
          
"I
understand that you're selfish."

 
          
"Selfish?
Yes," said the old man. "For myself, and for others, very
selfish."

 
          
"I
want to go home."

 
          
"Listen
to me, Tom."

 
          
"Call
Mr. Bolton."

 
          
"Tom,
I don't want to have to tell you this. I thought I wouldn't have to, that it
wouldn't be necessary. Now, you leave me only this alternative." The old
man's right hand fetched hold of a curtained wall, swept back the drapes,
revealing a large white screen, and
dialem
a number,
a series of numbers. The screen flickered into vivid color, the lights of the
room darkened, darkened, and a graveyard took line before their eyes.

 
          
"What
are you doing?" demanded Wolfe, striding forward, staring at the screen.

 
          
"I
don't like this at all," said the old man. "Look there."

 
          
The
graveyard lay in
midafternoon
light, the light of
summer. From the screen drifted the smell of summer earth, granite, and the
odor of a nearby creek. From the trees, a bird called. Red and yellow flowers
nodded among the stones, and the screen moved, the sky rotated, the old man
twisted a dial for emphasis, and in the center of the screen, growing large,
coming closer, yet larger, and now filling their senses, was a dark granite
mass; and Thomas Wolfe, looking up in the dim room, ran his eyes over the
chiseled words, once, twice, three times, gasped, and read again, for there was
his name:

 
          
THOMAS WOLFE.

 
          
And
the date of his birth and the date of his death, and the flowers and green
ferns smelling sweetly on the air of the cold room.

 
          
"Turn
it off," he said.

 
          
"I'm
sorry, Tom."

 
          
"Turn
it off, turn it off! I don't believe it."

 
          
"It's
there."

 
          
The
screen went black and now the entire room was a
midnight
vault, a tomb, with the last faint odor of
flowers.

 
          
"I
didn't wake up again," said Thomas Wolfe.

 
          
"No.
You died that September of 1938. So, you see. O God, the ironies, it's like the
title of your book. Tom, you
can't
go
home again."

 
          
"I
never finished my book."

 
          
"It
was edited for you, by others who went over it, carefully."

 
          
"I
didn't finish my work, I didn't finish my work."

 
          
"Don't
take it so badly, Tom."

 
          
"How
else can I take it?"

 
          
The
old man didn't turn on the lights. He didn't want to see Tom there. "Sit
down, boy." No reply. "Tom?" No answer. "Sit down, son;
will you have something to drink?" For answer there was only a sigh and a
kind of brutal moaning.

 
          
"Good
Lord," said Tom, "it's not fair. I had so much left to do, it's not
fair." He began to weep quietly.

 
          
"Don't
do that," said the old man. "Listen. Listen to me. You're still
alive, aren't you? Here? Now? You still
feel,
don't
you?"

 
          
Thomas
Wolfe waited for a minute and then he said, "Yes."

 
          
"All
right, then." The old man pressed forward on the dark air. "I've
brought you here, I've given you another chance, Tom. An extra month or so. Do
you think I haven't grieved for you? When I read your books and saw your
gravestone there, three centuries worn by rains and wind, boy, don't you
imagine how it killed me to think of your talent gone away? Well, it did! It
killed me, Tom. And I spent my money to find a way to you. You've a respite,
not long, not long at all. Professor Bolton says that, with luck, he can hold
the channels open through time for eight weeks. He can keep you here that long,
and only that long. In that interval, Tom, you must write the book you've
wanted to write—no, not the book you were working on for them, son, no, for
they're dead and gone and it can't be changed. No, this time if s a book for
us, Tom, for us the living, that's the book we want A book you can leave with
us, for you, a book bigger and better in every way than anything you ever
wrote; say you'll
do
it, Tom, say
you'll forget about that stone and that hospital for eight weeks and start to
work for us, will you, Tom, will you?"

 
          
The
lights came slowly on. Tom Wolfe stood tall at the window, looking out, his
face huge and tired and pale. He watched the rockets on the sky of early
evening. "I imagine I don't realize what you've done for me," he
said. "You've given me a little more time, and time is the thing I love
most and need, the thing I always hated and fought against, and the only way I
can show my appreciation is by doing as you say." He hesitated. "And
when I'm finished, then what?"

 
          
"Back
to your hospital in 1938, Tom."

 
          
"Must
I?"

 
          
"We
can't change time. We borrowed you for five minutes. We'll return you to your
hospital cot five minutes after you left it. That way, we upset nothing. It's
all been written. You can't hurt us in the future by living here now with us,
but, if you refused to go back, you could hurt the past, and resultantly, the
future, make it into some sort of chaos."

 
          
"Eight
weeks," said Thomas Wolfe.

 
          
"Eight
weeks."

 
          
"And
the Mars rocket leaves in an hour?"

 
          
"Yes."

 
          
"I'll
need pencils and paper."

 
          
"Here
they are."

 
          
"I'd
better go get ready. Good-bye, Mr. Field."

 
          
"Good
luck, Tom."

 
          
Six o'clock
. The sun setting. The sky turning to wine.
The big house quiet. The old man shivering in the heat until Professor Bolton
entered. "
Bolton
, how is he getting on, how was he at the
port; tell me?"

 
          
Bolton
smiled. "What a monster he is, so big
they had to make a special uniform for him! You should've seen him, walking
around, lifting up everything, sniffing like a great hound, talking, his eyes
looking at everyone, excited as a ten-year-old!"

 
          
"God
bless him, oh, God bless him!
Bolton
, can
you keep him here as long as you say?"

 
          
Bolton
frowned. "He doesn't belong here, you
know. If our power should falter, he'd be snapped back to his own time, like a
puppet on a rubber band. We'll try and keep him, I assure you."

 
          
"You've
got to, you understand, you can't let him go back until he's finished with his
book. You've—"

 
          
"Look,"
said
Bolton
. He pointed to the sky. On it was a silver
rocket.

 
          
"Is
that him?" asked the old man.

 
          
"That's
Tom Wolfe," replied
Bolton
.
"Going to Mars."

 
          
"Give
'
em
hell, Tom, give '
em
hell!" shouted the old man, lifting both fists.

 
          
They
watched the rocket fire into space.

 
          
By
midnight
, the story was coming through.

 
          
Henry
William Field sat in his library. On his desk was a machine that hummed. It
repeated words that were being written out beyond the moon. It scrawled them in
black pencil, in facsimile of Tom Wolfe's fevered hand a million miles away.
The old man waited for a pile of them to collect and then he seized them and
read them aloud to the room where
Bolton
and
the servants stood listening. He read the words about space and time and
travel, about a large man and a large journey and how it was in the long
midnight
and coldness of space, and how a man could
be hungry enough to take all of it and ask for more. He read the words that
were full of fire and thunder and mystery. " Space was like October, wrote
Thomas Wolfe. He said things about its darkness and its loneliness and a man so
small in it The eternal and timeless October, was one of the things he said.
And then he told of the rocket itself, the smell and the feel of the metal of
the rocket, and the sense of destiny and wild exultancy to at last leave Earth
behind, all problems and all
sadnesses
, and go
seeking a bigger problem and a bigger sadness. Oh, it was fine writing, and it
said what had to be said about space and man and his small rockets out there
alone.