Norton, Andre - Anthology (12 page)

 
          
 
"Liar!"

 
          
 
His wife took him aside a few days later.
"Harry, I've used up all the food in
the deep-freeze
.
There's nothing left. I'll have to make sandwiches using food grown on
Mars."

 
          
 
He sat down heavily.

 
          
 
"You must eat," she said.
"You're weak."

 
          
 
"Yes," he said.

 
          
 
He took a sandwich, opened it, looked at it,
and began to nibble at it.

 
          
 
"And take the rest of the day off,"
she said. "It's hot. The children want to swim in the canals and hike.
Please come along."

 
          
 
"I can't waste time. This is a
crisis!"

 
          
 
"Just for an hour," she urged.
"A swim'll do you good."

 
          
 
He rose, sweating.
"All
right, all right.
Leave me alone. I'll come."

 
          
 
"Good for you, Harry."

 
          
 
The sun was hot, the day quiet. There was only
an immense staring burn upon the land. They moved along the canal, the father,
the mother, the racing children, in their swimsuits. They stopped and ate meat
sandwiches. He saw their skin baking brown. And he saw the yellow eyes of his
wife and his children, their eyes that were never yellow before. A few
tremblings shook him, but were carried off in waves of pleasant heat as he lay
in the sun. He was too tired to be afraid.

 
          
 
"Cora, how long have your eyes been
yellow?"

 
          
 
She was bewildered. "Always, I
guess."

 
          
 
"They didn't change from brown in the last
three months?

 
          
 
She bit her lips. "No. Why do you
ask?"

 
          
 
"Never mind."

 
          
 
They sat there.

 
          
 
"The children's eyes," he said.
"They're yellow, too."

 
          
 
"Sometimes growing children's eyes change
color."

 
          
 
"Maybe we're children, too.
At least to Mars.
That's a thought." He laughed.
"Think I'll swim."

 
          
 
They leapt into the canal water, and he let
himself sink down and down to the bottom like a golden statue and lie there in
green silence. All was water, quiet and deep, all was peace. He felt the steady,
slow current drift him easily.

 
          
 
If I lie here long enough, he thought, the
water will work and eat away my flesh until the bones show like coral. Just my
skeleton left. And then the water can build on that skeleton—green things, deep
water things, red things, yellow things.
Change.
Change.
Slow, deep
,^
ifent change.
And isn't that what it is up there?

 
          
 
He saw the sky submerged above him, the sun
made Martian by atmosphere and time and space.

 
          
 
Up there, a big river, he thought, a Martian
river, all of us lying deep in it, in our pebble houses, in our sunken boulder
houses, like crayfish hidden, and the water washing away our old bodies and
lengthening the bones and—

 
          
 
He let himself drift up through the soft
light.

 
          
 
Tom sat on the edge of the canal, regarding
his father seriously.

 
          
 
"Utha," he said.

 
          
 
"What?" asked his
father.

 
          
 
The boy smiled. "You know. Utha's the
Martian word for 'father.' "

 
          
 
"Where did you learn it?"

 
          
 
"I don't know.
Around.
Utha!"

 
          
 
"What do you want?"

 
          
 
The boy hesitated. "I—I want to change my
name."

 
          
 
"Change it?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
His mother swam over. "What's wrong with
Tom for a name?"

 
          
 
Tom fidgeted. "The other day you called
Tom, Tom, Tom. I didn't even hear. I said to myself, that's not my name. I got
a new name I want to use."

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering held to the side of the canal,
his body cold and his heart pounding slowly. "What is this new name?"

 
          
 
"Linnl.
Isn't
that a keen name? Can I use it? Can I, please?"

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering put his hand to his head. He
thought of the rocket, himself working alone, himself alone even among his
family, so alone.

 
          
 
He heard his wife say, "Why not?"

 
          
 
He heard himself say, "Yes, you can use
it."

 
          
 
"Yaaa!" screamed the boy. "I'm
Linnl, Linnl!"

 
          
 
Racing down the meadowlands, he danced and
shouted.

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering looked at his wife. "Why
did we do that?"

 
          
 
"I don't know," she said. "It
just seemed like a fair idea."

 
          
 
They walked into the hills. They strolled on
old mosaic paths, beside still-pumping fountains. The paths were covered with a
thin film of cool water all summer long. You kept your bare feet cool all the
day, splashing as in a creek, wading.

 
          
 
They came to a small deserted Martian villa
with a good view of the valley. It was on top of a hill.
Blue
marble halls, large murals, a swimming pool.
It was refreshing in this
hot summertime. The Martians hadn't believed in large cities.

 
          
 
"How nice," said Mrs. Bittering,
"if we could move up here to this villa for the
summer.
"

 
          
 
"Come on," he said. "We're
going back to town. There's work to be done on the rocket."

 
          
 
But as he worked that night, the thought of
the cool blue-marble villa entered his mind. As the hours passed, the rocket
seemed less important.

 
          
 
In the flow of days and weeks,* the rocket
receded and dwindled. The old fever was gone. It frightened him to think he had
let it slip this way. But somehow, the heat, the air, the working conditions—

 
          
 
He heard the men murmuring on the porch of his
metal shop.

 
          
 
"Everyone's going. You heard?"

 
          
 
"All going.
That's right."

 
          
 
Bittering came out. "Going where?"
He saw a couple of trucks, loaded with children and furniture, drive down the
dusty street.

 
          
 
"Up to the villas," said the men.

 
          
 
"Yeah, Harry. I'm going. So is Sam.
Aren't you, Sam?"

 
          
 
"That's right, Harry. What about
you?"

 
          
 
"I've got work to do here."

 
          
 
"Work!
You can
finish that rocket in the autumn, when it's cooler!"

           
 
He took a breath. "I got the frame all
set up."

 
          
 
"In the autumn is better." Their
voices were lazy in the heat.

 
          
 
"Got to work," he said.

 
          
 
"
Autumn
,"
they reasoned. And they sounded so sensible, so right.

 
          
 
"
Autumn
would be
best," he thought.
"Plenty of time, then."

 
          
 
No!
cried
part of
himself, deep down, put away, locked tight, suffocating. No! No!

 
          
 
"In the autumn," he said.

 
          
 
"Come on, Harry," they all said.

 
          
 
"Yes," he said, feeling his flesh
melt in the hot liquid air. "Yes, in the autumn. I'll begin work again
then."

 
          
 
"I got a villa near the Tirra
Canal," said someone.

 
          
 
"You mean the Roosevelt Canal, don't
you?"

 
          
 
"Tirra.
The old Martian name."

 
          
 
"But on the map—"

 
          
 
"Forget the map. It's Tirra now. Now I
found a place in the Pillan
mountains
—"

 
          
 
"You mean the Rockefeller range,"
said Bittering.

 
          
 
"I meant the Pillan
mountains
,"
said Sam.

 
          
 
"Yes," said Bittering, buried in the
hot swarming air. "The Pillan
mountains
."

 
          
 
Everyone worked at loading the truck in the
hot still afternoon of the next day.

 
          
 
Laura, Tom, and David carried packages. Or, as
they preferred to be known, Ttil, Linnl, and Werr carried packages.

 
          
 
The furniture was abandoned in the little
white cottage.

 
          
 
"It looked just fine in Boston,"
said the mother.
"And here in the cottage.
But up
at the villa? No. We'll get it when we come back in the autumn."

 
          
 
Bittering himself was quiet.

           
 
"I've some ideas on furniture for the
villa," he said, after a time.
"Big, lazy
furniture."