The Stories of Ray Bradbury (13 page)

‘Will anyone in this town believe us?’ said Hinkston. ‘Are we playing with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn’t we just take off and go home?’

‘No. Not until we try another house.’

They walked three houses down to a little white cottage under an oak tree. ‘I like to be as logical as I can be,’ said the captain. ‘And I don’t believe we’ve put our finger on it yet. Suppose, Hinkston, as you originally suggested, that rocket travel occurred years ago? And when the Earth people lived here a number of years they began to get homesick for Earth.
First a mild neurosis about it, then a full-fledged psychosis. Then threatened insanity. What would you do as a psychiatrist if faced with such a problem?’

Hinkston thought. ‘Well, I think I’d rearrange the civilization on Mars so it resembled Earth more and more each day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every road, and every lake, and even an ocean, I’d do so. Then by some vast crowd hypnosis I’d convince everyone in a town this size that this really
was
Earth, not Mars at all.’

‘Good enough, Hinkston. I think we’re on the right track now. That woman in that house back there just
thinks
she’s living on Earth. It protects her sanity. She and all the others in this town are the patients of the greatest experiment in migration and hypnosis you will ever lay eyes on in your life.’

‘That’s
it
, sir!’ cried Lustig.

‘Right!’ said Hinkston.

‘Well.’ The captain sighed. ‘Now we’ve got somewhere. I feel better. It’s all a bit more logical. That talk about time and going back and forth and traveling through time turns my stomach upside down. But
this
way—’ The captain smiled. ‘Well, well, it looks as if we’ll be fairly popular here.’

‘Or will we?’ said Lustig. ‘After all, like the Pilgrims, these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won’t be too happy to see us. Maybe they’ll try to drive us out or kill us.’

‘We have superior weapons. This next house now. Up we go.’

But they had hardly crossed the lawn when Lustig stopped and looked off across the town, down the quiet, dreaming afternoon street. ‘Sir,’ he said.

‘What is it, Lustig?’

‘Oh, sir,
sir
, what I
see
—’ said Lustig, and he began to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and shaking, and his face was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if at any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked down the street and began to run, stumbling awkwardly, falling, picking himself up, and running on. ‘Look, look!’

‘Don’t let him get away!’ The captain broke into a run.

Now Lustig was running swiftly, shouting. He turned into a yard halfway down the shady street and leaped up upon the porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof.

He was beating at the door, hollering and crying, when Hinkston and the captain ran up behind him. They were all gasping and wheezing, exhausted from their run in the thin air. ‘Grandma! Grandpa!’ cried Lustig.

Two old people stood in the doorway.

‘David!’ their voices piped, and they rushed out to embrace and pat him on the back and move around him. ‘David, oh, David, it’s been so
many years! How you’ve grown, boy; how big you are, boy. Oh, David boy, how are you?’

‘Grandma, Grandpa!’ sobbed David Lustig. ‘You look fine, fine!’ He held them, turned them, kissed them, hugged them, cried on them, held them out again, blinking at the little old people. The sun was in the sky, the wind blew, the grass was green, the screen door stood wide.

‘Come in, boy, come in. There’s iced tea for you, fresh, lots of it!’

‘I’ve got friends here.’ Lustig turned and waved at the captain and Hinkston frantically, laughing. ‘Captain, come on up.’

‘Howdy,’ said the old people. ‘Come in. Any friends of David’s are our friends too. Don’t stand there!’

In the living room of the old house it was cool, and a grandfather clock ticked high and long and bronzed in one corner. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls filled with books and a rug cut in a thick rose pattern, and iced tea in the hand, sweating, and cool on the thirsty tongue. ‘Here’s to our health.’ Grandma tipped her glass to her porcelain teeth.

‘How long you been here, Grandma?’ said Lustig.

‘Ever since we died,’ she said tartly.

‘Ever since you what?’ Captain John Black set down his glass.

‘Oh yes.’ Lustig nodded. ‘They’ve been dead thirty years.’

‘And you sit there calmly!’ shouted the captain.

‘Tush.’ The old woman winked glitteringly. ‘Who are you to question what happens? Here we are. What’s life, anyway? Who does what for why and where? All we know is here we are, alive again, and no questions asked. A second chance.’ She toddled over and held out her thin wrist. ‘Feel.’ The captain felt. ‘Solid, ain’t it?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘Well, then,’ she said triumphantly, ‘why go around questioning?’

‘Well,’ said the captain, ‘it’s simply that we never thought we’d find a thing like this on Mars.’

‘And now you’ve found it. I dare say there’s lots on every planet that’ll show you God’s infinite ways.’

‘Is this Heaven?’ asked Hinkston.

‘Nonsense, no. It’s a world and we get a second chance. Nobody told us why. But then nobody told us why we were on Earth, either. That other Earth. I mean. The one you came from. How do we know there wasn’t
another
before
that
one?’

‘A good question,’ said the captain.

Lustig kept smiling at his grandparents. ‘Gosh, it’s good to see you. Gosh, it’s good.’

The captain stood up and slapped his hand on his leg in a casual fashion. ‘We’ve got to be going. Thank you for the drinks.’

‘You’ll be back, of course,’ said the old people. ‘For supper tonight?’

‘We’ll try to make it, thanks. There’s so much to be done. My men are waiting for me back at the rocket and—’

He stopped. He looked toward the door, startled.

Far away in the sunlight there was a sound of voices, a shouting and a great hello.

‘What’s that?’ asked Hinkston.

‘We’ll soon find out.’ And Captain John Black was out the front door abruptly, running across the green lawn into the street of the Martian town.

He stood looking at the rocket. The ports were open and his crew was streaming out, waving their hands. A crowd of people had gathered, and in and through and among these people the members of the crew were hurrying, talking, laughing, shaking hands. People did little dances. People swarmed. The rocket lay empty and abandoned.

A brass band exploded in the sunlight, flinging off a gay tune from upraised tubas and trumpets. There was a bang of drums and a shrill of fifes. Little girls with golden hair jumped up and down. Little boys shouted. ‘Hooray!’ Fat men passed around ten-cent cigars. The town mayor made a speech. Then each member of the crew, with a mother on one arm, a father or sister on the other, was spirited off down the street into little cottages or big mansions.

‘Stop!’ cried Captain Black.

The doors slammed shut.

The heat rose in the clear spring sky, and all was silent. The brass band banged off around a corner, leaving the rocket to shine and dazzle alone in the sunlight.

‘Abandoned!’ said the captain. ‘They abandoned the ship, they did! I’ll have their skins, by God! They had orders!’

‘Sir,’ said Lustig, ‘don’t be too hard on them. Those were all old relatives and friends.’

‘That’s no excuse!’

‘Think how they felt, Captain, seeing familiar faces outside the ship!’

‘They had their orders, damn it!’

‘But how would you have felt, Captain?’

‘I would have obeyed orders—’ The captain’s mouth remained open.

Striding along the sidewalk under the Martian sun, tall, smiling, eyes amazingly clear and blue, came a young man of some twenty-six years. ‘John!’ the man called out, and broke into a trot.

‘What?’ Captain John Black swayed.

‘John, you old son of a bitch!’

The man ran up and gripped his hand and slapped him on the back.

‘It’s you,’ said Captain Black.

‘Of course, who’d you
think
it was?’

‘Edward!’ The captain appealed now to Lustig and Hinkston, holding the stranger’s hand. ‘This is my brother Edward. Ed, meet my men, Lustig, Hinkston! My brother!’

They tugged at each other’s hands and arms and then finally embraced. ‘Ed!’ ‘John, you bum, you!’ ‘You’re looking fine, Ed, but, Ed, what
is
this? You haven’t changed over the years. You died, I remember, when you were twenty-six and I was nineteen. Good God, so many years ago, and here you are and, Lord, what goes on?’

‘Mom’s waiting,’ said Edward Black, grinning.

‘Mom?’

‘And Dad too.’

‘Dad?’ The captain almost fell as if he had been hit by a mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and without co-ordination. ‘Mom and Dad alive? Where?’

‘At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue.’

‘The old house.’ The captain stared in delighted amaze. ‘Did you hear that, Lustig, Hinkston?’

Hinkston was gone. He had seen his own house down the street and was running for it. Lustig was laughing. ‘You see, Captain, what happened to everyone on the rocket? They couldn’t help themselves.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ The captain shut his eyes. ‘When I open my eyes you’ll be gone.’ He blinked. ‘You’re still there. God, Ed, but you look
fine
!’

‘Come on, lunch’s waiting. I told Mom.’

Lustig said, ‘Sir, I’ll be with my grandfolks if you need me.’

‘What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then.’

Edward seized his arm and marched him. ‘There’s the house. Remember it?’

‘Hell! Bet I can beat you to the front porch!’

They ran. The trees roared over Captain Black’s head; the earth roared under his feet. He saw the golden figure of Edward Black pull ahead of him in the amazing dream of reality. He saw the house rush forward, the screen door swing wide. ‘Beat you!’ cried Edward. ‘I’m an old man,’ panted the captain, ‘and you’re still young. But then, you
always
beat me, I remember!’

In the doorway, Mom, pink, plump, and bright. Behind her, peppergray, Dad, his pipe in his hand.

‘Mom, Dad!’

He ran up the steps like a child to meet them.

It was a fine long afternoon. They finished a late lunch and they sat in the parlor and he told them all about his rocket and they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just the same and Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted it thoughtfully in his old fashion. There was a big turkey dinner at night and time flowing on. When the drumsticks were sucked
clean and lay brittle upon the plates, the captain leaned back and exhaled his deep satisfaction. Night was in all the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of pink light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down the street came sounds of music, pianos playing, doors slamming.

Mom put a record on the Victrola, and she and Captain John Black had a dance. She was wearing the same perfume he remembered from the summer when she and Dad had been killed in the train accident. She was very real in his arms as they danced lightly to the music. ‘It’s not every day,’ she said, ‘you get a second chance to live.’

‘I’ll wake in the morning,’ said the captain. ‘And I’ll be in my rocket, in space, and all this will be gone.’

‘No, don’t think that,’ she cried softly. ‘Don’t question. God’s good to us. Let’s be happy.’

‘Sorry, Mom.’

The record ended in a circular hissing.

‘You’re tired. Son.’ Dad pointed with his pipe. ‘Your old bedroom’s waiting for you, brass bed and all.’

‘But I should report my men in.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Well. I don’t know. No reason, I guess. No, none at all. They’re all eating or in bed. A good night’s sleep won’t hurt them.’

‘Good night. Son.’ Mom kissed his cheek. ‘It’s good to have you home.’

‘It’s good to
be
home.’

He left the land of cigar smoke and perfume and books and gentle light and ascended the stairs, talking, talking with Edward. Edward pushed a door open, and there was the yellow brass bed and the old semaphore banners from college and a very musty raccoon coat which he stroked with muted affection. ‘It’s too much,’ said the captain. ‘I’m numb and I’m tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I’d been out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an umbrella or a coat. I’m soaked to the skin with emotion.’

Edward slapped wide the snowy linens and flounced the pillows. He slid the window up and let the night-blooming jasmine float in. There was moonlight and the sound of distant dancing and whispering.

‘So this is Mars,’ said the captain, undressing.

‘This is it.’ Edward undressed in idle, leisurely moves, drawing his shirt off over his head, revealing golden shoulders and the good muscular neck.

The lights were out; they were in bed, side by side, as in the days how many decades ago? The captain lolled and was nourished by the scent of jasmine pushing the lace curtains in upon the dark air of the room. Among the trees, upon a lawn, someone had cranked up a portable phonograph and now it was playing softly, ‘Always.’

The thought of Marilyn came to his mind.

‘Is Marilyn here?’

His brother, lying straight out in the moonlight from the window, waited and then said, ‘Yes. She’s out of town. But she’ll be here in the morning.’

The captain shut his eyes. ‘I want to see Marilyn very much.’

The room was square and quiet except for their breathing.

‘Good night, Ed.’

A pause. ‘Good night, John.’

He lay peacefully, letting his thoughts float. For the first time the stress of the day was moved aside: he could think logically now. It had all been emotion. The bands playing, the familiar faces. But now…

How? he wondered. How was all this made? And why? For what purpose? Out of the goodness of some divine intervention? Was God, then, really that thoughtful of his children? How and why and what for?

He considered the various theories advanced in the first heat of the afternoon by Hinkston and Lustig. He let all kinds of new theories drop in lazy pebbles down through his mind, turning, throwing out dull flashes of light. Mom. Dad. Edward. Mars, Earth. Mars. Martians.