This idea of turning back was tempting, but he couldn’t do it. Bernstein didn’t have the courage to turn away and go back to the camp as though nothing had happened. He would always wonder. He had to know.
He continued down the shallow declivity to the upward-tilting slope behind which lay the canal.
He scrambled up the embankment, sliding on loose sand and gravel. Then he came over the top and the canal was directly ahead of him. Its clear waters sparkled invitingly. It flowed in a channel that had been constructed with large stone blocks.
What he was looking at was quite impossible. But the canal was there. And flowing through it was what looked like water.
It was the surprise of a lifetime. But startling as it was, he had no time to react to it. The first thing he needed to react to were the four figures sitting on the bank of the canal.
They appeared to be men. Earthmen. The only kind of man there were, as far as Bernstein knew. They were lounging on the canal bank, happy as you please, paddling their feet in the water.
That was bad. But what was worse, they wore no space helmets. Yet somehow they were surviving in the oxygenless air, in the burning ultraviolet radiation of a planet without an ozone layer.
Either that, or he was crazy.
If you know you’re crazy, does that make you sane? If so, what are you supposed to do when one of the forms you’re hallucinating turns around, looks at you, and remarks to his friends, “Hey, guys, look what we got here.”
The other three turned. They surveyed Bernstein with frank interest, their gazes attentive and unalarmed.
“He’s not from our expedition.”
“What expedition could he be from?”
“Maybe the Chinese got their rocket launched sooner than we expected.”
“This guy doesn’t look Chinese.”
“Can’t you talk, fella?” one of the men asked.
“Yes, of course I can talk,” Bernstein said, his voice sounding strange in his own ear as he spoke through the suit’s amplified speaker.
“He could be an American on a Chinese rocket,” the second man remarked. To Bernstein he said, “What about it, Charlie? Is that how you got here? On a Chinese rocket? Or did the Rooskies finally make a launch?”
“Stop calling me Charlie,” Bernstein said. “My name is Joshua Bernstein. I’m a member of the First NASA-Mars Project.”
“Nasa? What’s that?”
“It’s the national space agency,” Bernstein told him.
“Never heard of it,” the first man said. “But of course there’s a lot they don’t tell us. Anyhow, welcome to Mars. It doesn’t matter to me how you got here. But you’re still in deep-space rig. I don’t know what they told you, but you don’t need it. The air’s a little thin here, but an occasional sniff of oxygen takes care of that.”
“What about exposure to ultraviolet?” Bernstein asked.
“Hey, no problem. This planet is a pussycat. This is one nice planet. Loosen up, stranger. Sit down and have a beer. Strip down and have a swim. Those little silver fish in there aren’t going to bother you.”
Peering over the side of the canal, Bernstein could see, deep in the blue-tinted crystal water, the quick-darting silver forms of fish. Goldfish! No, silverfish. But that couldn’t be because silverfish weren’t fish at all, but insects. But here were these silver goldfish, and here were some lads from Earth out having a picnic on the bank of a Martian canal that never existed, breathing air that couldn’t be there, basking in the lethal ultraviolet and laughing at him because he was a greenhorn on their Mars and he didn’t even know enough to take off his helmet.
When you’re having a hallucination, Bernstein thought, and you can’t do anything about it, you might as well relax and enjoy it.
And then, moving as though in a dream, he took off his helmet, expecting momentarily to fall down dead. But it was all right. The air was a little thin, as they’d said, but eminently breathable.
“How many of you are there?” Bernstein asked.
“About twenty of us back at headquarters on the other side of Mars City. Twenty miles over that way.” His thumb jerked to the left. Looking in that direction, Bernstein recognized, beyond the glittering sands, the spired white city that he had seen before.
“That’s a Martian city, isn’t it?” Bernstein asked, striving to keep his voice casual.
“Yeah,” the first speaker said. “One of the real old ones. Only a couple of Martians live there now. But sometimes at night, when the wind blows from a certain direction and at a certain speed—” his voice lowered and took on a mysterious tone—“you can hear them singing, those old Martians in their metal masks and long robes.”
The others began to laugh. “He’s a card, isn’t he, Josh? No, no ghosts around here, though they do say some Martians still exist, up in the hills over that way.” He pointed to a range of low blue hills just to the left of the sand dunes.
It was all impossible. And yet, it was strangely familiar. Bernstein searched his memory. And suddenly he knew who these guys were.
“Look, fellows,” he said, “it’s been great talking to you. I have to get back to my base now, but I’d like to have your names. Just for the record.”
The first man said, “I’m Captain John Black. This is Lustig, our navigator. And this scholarly-looking fellow over here is Samuel Hinkston, the expedition’s archeologist.”
“Glad to meet you all,” Bernstein said. “You flew here from Ohio, is that right?”
“Good old Ohio,” Black said.
“Beautiful Ohio,” Lustig said.
“See you soon,” Bernstein said, and went back the way he had come.
He knew who those guys were. But he didn’t want to think about it. As he returned to the camp, Bernstein tried to figure how he’d tell the others what he’d seen.
“Hey, fellas, guess what? There’s a whole other Mars just a couple of miles from here. A Mars with air, and water, and cities. There’s a whole other expedition here, too. They came from Ohio in a rocket. Just follow me and I’ll show you.”
They’d lock him up and send him back to Earth at the first opportunity. He decided not to say anything about his discoveries. Not now. First he needed proof, for himself as well as for them.
Now that he thought about it, he was amazed that he’d gone through this whole thing without bringing back a shred of physical evidence. But what could he have brought back that would have proven conclusively what he’s seen? “This is a bit of rock I picked up alongside the Martian Grand Canal.” No, the only way to prove anything would be with a camera. And that’s what he’d bring with him tomorrow, when he went out again.
Should he ask one of the expedition members to accompany him when he went out next? If someone else saw what he’d seen, that would be proof, wouldn’t it?
It was a tempting idea. But he didn’t know any of the others well, and he wasn’t especially friendly with any of them. They were Californians. He was the loner from M.I.T. And how would he ask someone to go with him? What reason would he give?
“I saw something I’d like to check out again, but I think I might be hallucinating, so if you have nothing else to do . . .”
No, he couldn’t, wouldn’t do it.
And how could he explain the final incredible thing? He hadn’t just seen people. That would have been bad enough. But these had been people from a story he had read long ago. These people, this Mars, was the place that Ray Bradbury had dreamed up in a book called The Martian Chronicles.
He’d have to go back by himself. For all he knew, he had just gone through an unaccountable hallucination, never to be repeated. Maybe he’d never find the stone arch again, never find the other Mars. It probably wouldn’t be there next time. Then at least the strangeness would be over. He would know he’d had an unusual experience, and he wouldn’t embarrass himself, or get himself into trouble, by claiming to have seen things that couldn’t be.
The evening seemed very long. He thought at fir
st he couldn’t sleep, then fell off at last into troubled dreams. Morning came suddenly. He dressed, checked out a camera, loaded it, and started out.
One of the men called to him as he reached the camp perimeter, “Where you going, Bernstein?”
“I found some unusual rock formations yesterday. I thought I’d follow up on them.”
“Don’t get too far from base.”
“Don’t worry.”
If they only knew how far away he was really going!
The rocks he followed this time didn’t look familiar. But there was no reason they should. He’d be unlikely to have memorized their exact shapes and locations. It was the stone arch he was looking for. That was the sign he’d recognize, and he hadn’t gone far enough yet to reach it.
Then, when he’d almost despaired of finding it, the arch was there in front of him.
He walked through, looking for familiar landmarks. He was annoyed at himself; he should have been more attentive when he came through yesterday. He should have taken notes with the little pocket recorder he carried in one of his zippered pockets.
As he moved on, he was sure he had dreamed up the whole thing. He seemed to be walking through some sort of canyon, and there were high stone walls on either side. It was like a maze, a maze of stone, and he was lost. He continued to go forward, and once he recoiled when a big monitor lizard scrambled hastily out of his path, rubbing its dry claws together, its tongue flicking.
It took Bernstein a moment to remember there was no life here, so he couldn’t have seen a reptile. When he looked again it was gone. Had he really seen it? Or was it a hallucination?
Now he was coming to the end of the rock maze, and as he walked, moving with utmost caution, he heard a sound of tinkling laughter.
He spun around clumsily, and in the light gravity he turned right past the woman and had to catch his balance so that he didn’t fall at her feet.
“My goodness!” the woman said. “Who are you?”
She was small, delicate, golden-haired, and she wore a gown of a shimmering metallic substance that changed color when she moved. Her features were elfin, and she was beautiful—but she was not human. Bernstein got an almost uncontrollable tremor in his hands for a moment when he realized that she was, she had to be, a Martian.
When he didn’t answer she turned away from him, scanning the distant horizon. She seemed to have forgotten all about him, and he couldn’t understand this at first, until he looked at her expression. She seemed enchanted, her violet eyes far away and filled with dreams, and she was singing something very softly in a high, clear voice. He listened, and after a moment he could recognize it:
“Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine . . .”
She was singing that ancient song, just as Ylla had sung it in Bradbury’s story.
Bernstein said, “Ylla?”
She turned to him, and seemed to take him in for the first time.
“Why, you are a spaceman from Earth, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Ylla!”
Ylla looked at him. “I can’t see your face,” she said.
Bernstein took off the space helmet just as he had the previous day. She looked at him intently.
“Why are you so sad?” she asked.
Bernstein hadn’t realized his unhappiness was so visible.
She asked, “Is no one waiting for you?”
“No, no one is waiting for me.”
“Perhaps you’ll find a nice girl here on Mars.”
Bernstein felt himself drifting away into an impossible realm of magic. He pulled himself together. “I’ve got a problem,” he told her. “I don’t know how to tell my own people about you. Or about the other Earthmen here. Or the canal, or the city. None of it belongs, you see. Not in our construct. Not in our reality.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“In my world,” Bernstein went on, “a conversation like we’re having now would be impossible. In my world—the real world—Mars is a dead chunk of stone and sand.”
“What a terrible world you must live in!” Ylla said. “You must get away from such a horrid world.”
“I’ve thought that myself,” Bernstein said.
Bernstein remembered Bradbury’s story, of how Ylla had dreamed of Captain York’s arrival on Mars before he actually arrived, how he had talked to her in dreams, how he’d promised to take her away from Mars, to visit Earth. And somehow Yll, Ylla’s husband, had gotten wind of this. He had forbidden Ylla to go walking in the valley where she had foreseen York’s ship would land. And Yll had gone there himself, with his gun. And it was pretty clear that Yll had killed York.
“York hasn’t come yet,” Bernstein told her. “You know what your husband is planning to do to him?”
“Yes, I know,” Ylla said. “It is terrible. But perhaps it will be different this time.”
“Where is Yll now?”
“He has gone to the south valley. He has gone hunting.”
“But that is the valley where York will land his ship, is it not?”
“That’s what I thought,” Ylla said. “But I see now my dream was wrong. Your ship is there, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And there is some great mystery about you and the others who came with you. But where is York?”
“I don’t know,” Bernstein said.
He saw, in the far distance, a tiny figure trudging along slowly. Yll, no doubt. He carried a gun over his shoulder, a silver gun with a bell-shaped muzzle. There was no way of telling at this distance if he had fired it, and whether he’d hit anything if he had fired it. Bernstein decided he had to get away.
“Goodbye, Ylla! I hope to see you again.”
He turned, but she was already gone. He realized too late that he hadn’t taken a picture of her. He continued walking. Now he wanted to find the canal again, and go beyond it to the Martian city he had glimpsed yesterday. If he could take pictures of that, it would prove something . . . Wouldn’t it?
The distant spires of the city came into view. Bernstein walked toward it steadily, and it grew larger and more distinct. It was a fairyland desert city, open to the sighing wind, and in front of it ran the long canal. There was a hint of moisture in the air, as though it might rain soon.
Was this the true Mars? Well, why not? Why should the version he knew be more lifelike or realistic than the one he was encountering now? Wasn’t he being guilty of the sin of pride and intellectual arrogance, demanding that the universe conform to his opinion of it? Why should Mars be the way it seemed to him when he lived on Earth?
He entered the Martian city through a tall gate that pierced the wall surrounding it. Within the wall, he found himself in a magical place of tall thin buildings with crystal spires and golden columns. Marble walls bore the carvings of strange creatures—the gods of a world that never had been, perhaps. Bernstein sat down on a curb in the enchanted city, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Then a Martian came around the corner and sat down beside him.
“Is anything wrong?” the Martian asked.
“Something very strange is going on here,” Bernstein said. “This isn’t my Mars!”
“I’m bothered, too,” the Martian says. “It’s not mine, either.”
“Then whose is it?”
“Perhaps it’s the new version . . . the next thing that will be . . .”
“How could that be?”
“I wish I knew,” the Martian said. “Maybe Mr. Xyx could tell you.”
The Martian arose and drifted away. Bernstein forced himself to his feet. He needed to talk to someone who knew something.
He moved through the silent streets, beneath the strange, tall, old buildings, and after a while he saw someone else walking. It was a Martian, considerably older than the first one he’d met. “You must be Mr. Xyx,” Bernstein said.
“Who else would I be?” said Xyx. “And you’re another, aren’t you?”
/>
“Another what?”
“Of those Earthmen. We had some here a while ago. I don’t know where they went to.”
“They were in a story,” Bernstein said. “A story that never happened.”
“Ah . . . then it’s all right. You see, if it had happened, that might be the end of it. But since it was only imagined, we can be sure it will go on.”
“You mean that this dream civilization is actually still being created?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Wait till I tell the others!”
“What others?”
“The men of the NASA expedition that I came with to this place. In our Mars, you see, there’s no air to breathe and the climate is freezing cold.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Xyx said.
“Why?”
“Because the two constructs, your Mars and mine, cannot coexist. There are too many anomalies, too much difference between the natural laws that the two are based upon.”
“But what will happen?”
Xyx shrugged. “It’s difficult to say.”
Then Bernstein remembered the camera. He set his space helmet down on a doorstep and took it out.
Xyx asked, “What is that?”
“This is a camera,” Bernstein said. “It takes pictures of what one sees. They can be viewed later, and they can prove what I’m seeing.”
“Have you taken any pictures yet?”
“No. But I’m going to start with you.”
“I advise you not to do that,” Xyx said in a concerned tone.
Bernstein smiled. “It’s perfectly safe. No harm will come to you.”
“I’m not worried about myself,” Xyx said. “The danger is to the one who takes the picture, not to the one whose picture is taken.”
“That’s crazy! Are you going to try and stop me?”
“Not at all. I was merely advising you for your own good. Do whatever you please.”
The Martian strolled away.
Bernstein raised his camera, irresolute. He focused on Mr. Xyx’s receding form, hesitated, scanned the buildings in the viewholder, poised the camera, then put it down again.
This was a very big moment. A moment of concern for human history. If he didn’t take the pictures now, when he had the opportunity, he felt sure the whole thing would remain like a dream or a vision. Just another strange tale, like ten thousand other strange tales that men have dreamed up.
Various Fiction Page 371