The Stories of Ray Bradbury (18 page)

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 is it—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 butterflies 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 clips, 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 rockets!’

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 butter. ‘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
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.’

Somehow the idea was brought up by Mom that perhaps the whole family would enjoy a fishing trip. But they weren’t Mom’s words: Timothy knew that. They were Dad’s words, and Mom used them for him somehow.

Dad shuffled his feet in a clutter of Martian pebbles and agreed. So immediately there was a tumult and a shouting, and very quickly the camp was tucked into capsules and containers. Mom slipped into traveling jumpers and blouse. Dad stuffed his pipe full with trembling hands, his eyes on the Martian sky, and the three boys piled yelling into the motorboat, none of them really keeping an eye on Mom and Dad, except Timothy.

Dad pushed a stud. The water boat sent a humming sound up into the sky. The water shook back and the boat nosed ahead, and the family cried, ‘Hurrah!’

Timothy sat in the back of the boat with Dad, his small fingers atop Dad’s hairy ones, watching the canal twist, leaving the crumbled place behind where they had landed in their small family rocket all the way from Earth. He remembered the night before they left Earth, the hustling and hurrying, the rocket that Dad had found somewhere, somehow, and the talk of a vacation on Mars. A long way to go for a vacation, but Timothy said nothing because of his younger brothers. They came to Mars and now, first thing, or so they said, they were going fishing.

Dad had a funny look in his eyes as the boat went up-canal. A look that Timothy couldn’t figure. It was made of strong light and maybe a sort of relief. It made the deep wrinkles laugh instead of worry or cry.

So there went the cooling rocket, around a bend, gone.

‘How far are we going?’ Robert splashed his hand. It looked like a small crab jumping in the violet water.

Dad exhaled. ‘A million years.’

‘Gee,’ said Robert.

‘Look, kids.’ Mother pointed one soft long arm. ‘There’s a dead city.’

They looked with fervent anticipation, and the dead city lay dead for
them alone, drowsing in a hot silence of summer made on Mars by a Martian weatherman.

And Dad looked as if he was pleased that it was dead.

It was a futile spread of pink rocks sleeping on a rise of sand, a few tumbled pillars, one lonely shrine, and then the sweep of sand again. Nothing else for miles. A white desert around the canal and a blue desert over it.

Just then a bird flew up. Like a stone thrown across a blue pond, hitting, falling deep, and vanishing.

Dad got a frightened look when he saw it. ‘I thought it was a rocket.’

Timothy looked at the deep ocean sky, trying to see Earth and the war and the ruined cities and the men killing each other since the day he was born. But he saw nothing. The war was as removed and far off as two flies battling to the death in the arch of a great high and silent cathedral. And just as senseless.

William Thomas wiped his forehead and felt the touch of his son’s hand on his arm, like a young tarantula, thrilled. He beamed at his son. ‘How goes it, Timmy?’

‘Fine, Dad.’

Timothy hadn’t quite figured out what was ticking inside the vast adult mechanism beside him. The man with the immense hawk nose, sunburnt, peeling—and the hot blue eyes like agate marbles you play with after school in summer back on Earth, and the long thick columnar legs in the loose riding breeches.

‘What are you looking at so hard, Dad?’

‘I was looking for Earthian logic, common sense, good government, peace, and responsibility.’

‘All that up there?’

‘No, I didn’t find it. It’s not there any more. Maybe it’ll never be there again. Maybe we fooled ourselves that it was ever there.’

‘Huh?’

‘See the fish,’ said Dad, pointing.

There rose a soprano clamor from all three boys as they rocked the boat in arching their tender necks to see. They
oohed
and
ahed
. A silver ring fish floated by them, undulating, and closing like an iris, instantly, around food particles, to assimilate them.

Dad looked at it. His voice was deep and quiet.

‘Just like war. War swims along, sees food, contracts. A moment later—Earth is gone.’

‘William,’ said Mom.

‘Sorry,’ said Dad.

They sat still and felt the canal water rush cool, swift, and glassy. The
only sound was the motor hum, the glide of water, the sun expanding the air.

‘When do we see the Martians?’ cried Michael.

‘Quite soon, perhaps,’ said Father. ‘Maybe tonight.’

‘Oh, but the Martians are a dead race now,’ said Mom.

‘No, they’re not. I’ll show you some Martians, all right,’ Dad said presently.

Timothy scowled at that but said nothing. Everything was odd now. Vacations and fishing and looks between people.

The other boys were already engaged making shelves of their small hands and peering under them toward the seven-foot stone banks of the canal, watching for Martians.

‘What do they look like?’ demanded Michael.

‘You’ll know them when you see them.’ Dad sort of laughed, and Timothy saw a pulse beating time in his cheek.

Mother was slender and soft, with a woven plait of spun-gold hair over her head in a tiara, and eyes the color of the deep cool canal water where it ran in shadow, almost purple, with flecks of amber caught in it. You could see her thoughts swimming around in her eyes, like fish—some bright, some dark, some fast, quick, some slow and easy, and sometimes, like when she looked up where Earth was, being nothing but color and nothing else. She sat in the boat’s prow, one hand resting on the side lip, the other on the lap of her dark blue breeches, and a line of sunburnt soft neck showing where her blouse opened like a white flower.

She kept looking ahead to see what was there, and, not being able to see it clearly enough, she looked backward toward her husband, and through his eyes, reflected then, she saw what was ahead; and since he added part of himself to this reflection, a determined firmness, her face relaxed and she accepted it and she turned back, knowing suddenly what to look for.

Timothy looked too. But all he saw was a straight pencil line of canal going violet through a wide shallow valley penned by low, eroded hills, and on until it fell over the sky’s edge. And this canal went on and on, through cities that would have rattled like beetles in a dry skull if you shook them. A hundred or two hundred cities dreaming hot summer-day dreams and cool summer-night dreams…

They had come millions of miles for this outing—to fish. But there had been a gun on the rocket. This was a vacation. But why all the food, more than enough to last them years and years, left hidden back there near the rocket? Vacation. Just behind the veil of the vacation was not a soft face of laughter, but something hard and bony and perhaps terrifying. Timothy could not lift the veil, and the two other boys were busy being ten and eight years old, respectively.

‘No Martians yet. Nuts.’ Robert put his V-shaped chin on his hands and glared at the canal.

Dad had brought an atomic radio along, strapped to his wrist. It functioned on an old-fashioned principle: you held it against the bones near your ear and it vibrated singing or talking to you. Dad listened to it now. His face looked like one of those fallen Martian cities, caved in, sucked dry, almost dead.

Then he gave it to Mom to listen. Her lips dropped open.

‘What—’ Timothy started to question, but never finished what he wished to say.

For at that moment there were two titanic, marrow-jolting explosions that grew upon themselves, followed by a half-dozen minor concussions.

Jerking his head up, Dad notched the boat speed higher immediately. The boat leaped and jounced and spanked. This shook Robert out of his funk and elicited yelps of frightened but ecstatic joy from Michael, who clung to Mom’s legs and watched the water pour by his nose in a wet torrent.

Dad swerved the boat, cut speed, and ducked the craft into a little branch canal and under an ancient, crumbling stone wharf that smelled of crab flesh. The boat rammed the wharf hard enough to throw them all forward, but no one was hurt, and Dad was already twisted to see if the ripples on the canal were enough to map their route into hiding. Water lines went across, lapped the stones, and rippled back to meet each other, settling, to be dappled by the sun. It all went away.

Dad listened. So did everybody.

Dad’s breathing echoed like fists beating against the cold wet wharf stones. In the shadow, Mom’s cat eyes just watched Father for some clue to what next.

Dad relaxed and blew out a breath, laughing at himself.

‘The rocket, of course. I’m getting jumpy. The rocket.’

Michael said, ‘What happened, Dad, what happened?’

‘Oh, we just blew up our rocket, is all,’ said Timothy, trying to sound matter-of-fact. ‘I’ve heard rockets blown up before. Ours just blew.’

‘Why did we blow up our rocket?’ asked Michael. ‘Huh, Dad?’

‘It’s part of the game, silly!’ said Timothy.

‘A game!’ Michael and Robert loved the word.

‘Dad fixed it so it would blow up and no one’d know where we landed or went! In case they ever came looking, see?’

‘Oh boy, a secret!’

‘Scared by my own rocket,’ admitted Dad to Mom. ‘I am nervous. It’s silly to think there’ll ever
be
any more rockets. Except
one
, perhaps, if Edwards and his wife get through with
their
ship.’

He put his tiny radio to his ear again. After two minutes he dropped his hand as you would drop a rag.

‘It’s over at last,’ he said to Mom. ‘The radio just went off the atomic beam. Every other world station’s gone. They dwindled down to a couple in the last few years. Now the air’s completely silent. It’ll probably remain silent.’

‘For how long?’ asked Robert.

‘Maybe—your great-grandchildren will hear it again,’ said Dad. He just sat there, and the children were caught in the center of his awe and defeat and resignation and acceptance.

Finally he put the boat out into the canal again, and they continued in the direction in which they had originally started.

It was getting late. Already the sun was down the sky, and a series of dead cities lay ahead of them.

Dad talked very quietly and gently to his sons. Many times in the past he had been brisk, distant, removed from them, but now he patted them on the head with just a word and they felt it.

‘Mike, pick a city.’

‘What, Dad?’

‘Pick a city, Son. Any one of these cities we pass.’

‘All right,’ said Michael. ‘How do I pick?’

‘Pick the one you like the most. You, too, Robert and Tim. Pick the city you like best.’

‘I want a city with Martians in it,’ said Michael.

‘You’ll have that,’ said Dad. ‘I promise.’ His lips were for the children, but his eyes were for Mom.

They passed six cities in twenty minutes. Dad didn’t say anything more about the explosions; he seemed much more interested in having fun with his sons, keeping them happy, than anything else.

Michael liked the first city they passed, but this was vetoed because everyone doubted quick first judgments. The second city nobody liked. It was an Earth Man’s settlement, built of wood and already rotting into sawdust. Timothy liked the third city because it was large. The fourth and fifth were too small and the sixth brought acclaim from everyone, including Mother, who joined in the Gees, Goshes, and Look-at thats!

There were fifty or sixty huge structures still standing, streets were dusty but paved, and you could see one or two old centrifugal fountains still pulsing wetly in the plazas. That was the only life—water leaping in the late sunlight.

‘This is the city,’ said everybody.

Steering the boat to a wharf, Dad jumped out.

‘Here we are. This is ours. This is where we live from now on!’

‘From now on?’ Michael was incredulous. He stood up, looking, and then turned to blink back at where the rocket used to be. ‘What about the rocket? What about Minnesota?’

‘Here,’ said Dad.

He touched the small radio to Michael’s blond head. ‘Listen.’

Michael listened.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘That’s right. Nothing. Nothing at all any more. No more Minneapolis, no more rockets, no more Earth.’

Michael considered the lethal revelation and began to sob little dry sobs.

‘Wait a moment,’ said Dad the next instant. ‘I’m giving you a lot more in exchange, Mike!’

‘What?’ Michael held off the tears, curious, but quite ready to continue in case Dad’s further revelation was as disconcerting as the original.

‘I’m giving you this city, Mike. It’s yours.’

‘Mine?’

‘For you and Robert and Timothy, all three of you, to own for yourselves.’

Timothy bounded from the boat. ‘Look, guys, all for
us
! All of
that
!’ He was playing the game with Dad, playing it large and playing it well. Later, after it was all over and things had settled, he could go off by himself and cry for ten minutes. But now it was still a game, still a family outing, and the other kids must be kept playing.

Mike jumped out with Robert. They helped Mom.

‘Be careful of your sister,’ said Dad, and nobody knew what he meant until later.

They hurried into the great pink-stoned city, whispering among themselves, because dead cities have a way of making you want to whisper, to watch the sun go down.

‘In about five days,’ said Dad quietly, ‘I’ll go back down to where our rocket was and collect the food hidden in the ruins there and bring it here; and I’ll hunt for Bert Edwards and his wife and daughters there.’

‘Daughters?’ asked Timothy. ‘How many?’

‘Four.’

‘I can see that’ll cause trouble later.’ Mom nodded slowly.

‘Girls.’ Michael made a face like an ancient Martian stone image.

‘Girls.’

‘Are they coming in a rocket, too?’

‘Yes. If they make it. Family rockets are made for travel to the Moon, not Mars. We were lucky we got through.’

‘Where did you get the rocket?’ whispered Timothy, for the other boys were running ahead.

‘I saved it. I saved it for twenty years, Tim. I had it hidden away, hoping I’d never have to use it. I suppose I should have given it to the government for the war, but I kept thinking about Mars…’