The officer quickly surveyed the sky, then turned toward me, looked - I will never forget that cold merciless glance - and, holding his machine gun by the strap, headed toward my car. I heard the men below shout something at him, but he didn't turn around. He headed toward me. Probably I fell unconscious for a few seconds, because I don't remember anything more until I found myself standing beside my automobile in front of the officer and two more insurgents. God, what a lot! All three were crusty and long unshaven; their clothes were ragged and splattered, and the officer's overcoat was in a disgraceful condition. The officer wore a helmet; one of the civilians, a black beret; the other one with glasses, nothing at all on his head.
"What's wrong with you, gone deaf?" said the officer sharply, shaking me by the shoulder, and the man in the beret frowned and bit out the words: "Why don't you leave him alone, what do you need to do that for?"
I gathered up the last vestiges of strength and forced myself to speak calmly, for I knew it was a matter of my life.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"An ordinary townsman," said the man in the beret. "He doesn't know anything and doesn't want to know anything!"
"Wait a minute, engineer," said the officer irritably. "Who are you?" he asked me. "What are you doing here?"
I answered all his questions without hiding anything, and while I was speaking he kept glancing around and looking at the sky from time to time, as if expecting rain. The man in the beret interrupted me once, shouting: "I don't want to risk it! I'm leaving - you do what you want!" - after which he turned and ran downhill. But the other two remained and heard me out to the end, while I kept trying to guess my fate from their faces, without seeing anything good for myself. And then a saving thought came into my head, and forgetting everything I had just said, I burst out: "Keep in mind, gentlemen, that I am Mr. Charon's father-in-law."
"Who's Mr. Charon?" asked the insurgent with glasses.
"The chief editor of the newspaper in this area."
"So what?" asked the insurgent with glasses, and the officer kept surveying the sky.
I really got scared: they obviously didn't know Charon. But anyway I said, "My son-in-law took his gun and left home on the very first day."
"Is that so?" said the insurgent with glasses. "That's to his credit."
"That's a load of bull," said the officer. "What's going on in the city? Where are the troops?"
"I don't know," I said. "Everything's quiet with us in the city."
"Is there free access to the city?" asked the officer.
"I believe there is," I said and considered it my duty to add: "But you may be stopped by the men of the city's Voluntary Anti-Martian Patrol."
"What?" said the officer, and for the first time something like surprise registered on his hardened face. He even stopped looking at the sky and looked at me. "What patrol?"
"The Anti-Martian," I said. "Commanded by Noncommissioned Officer Polyphemus. Perhaps you know him? He's an invalid."
'The devil knows what to make of it," said the officer. "Can you lead us into the city?"
My heart sank. "Certainly," I said, "but my automobile ..."
"Yes," said the officer. "What's wrong with it?"
I plucked up courage and lied: "It seems the motor froze."
The officer whistled and without another word turned and disappeared in the wheat. The insurgent with glasses continued to eye me closely and then suddenly asked, "Do you have any grandchildren?"
"Yes!" I lied in complete desperation. "Two! One's still at the breast...."
He nodded sympathetically. "That's terrible," he said. "That torments me most of all. They know nothing, and now they will never know anything. ..."
I didn't understand a word he was saying, and I didn't want to understand, I only prayed that he would soon leave and not do anything to me. For some reason I suddenly imagined that this quiet fellow with glasses was the most terrible of the lot. For several seconds he awaited my answer, and then tossed his machine gun over his shoulder and said, "I advise you to get the hell out of here. Goodbye."
I didn't even wait for him to go in the wheat. I turned and walked as fast as I could down the hill toward town. As if some storm carried me on its wings. I wasn't aware of my legs, I didn't notice my short-windedness, I seemed to hear some mechanical rumbling and buzzing behind my back, but I didn't even turn around and simply tried to run. But I hadn't gotten very far when a small truck full of farmers turned out toward me from the crossroad. I was nearly unconscious, but found the strength to stand across their way. I waved my arms and shouted: "Stop! Not that way! Partisans ahead!"
The truck stopped and I was surrounded by rough simple people, for some reason armed with rifles. They grabbed me by the chest, shook me and cursed me with filthy language; I understood nothing, I was horrified and only after a while figured out that they had taken me for an accomplice of the partisans. My legs gave way under me, but here the driver got out of the cabin, and luckily he turned out to be a former student of mine.
"Hey, what are you guys doing!,, he yelled, grabbing their upraised threatening hands. 'That's Mr. Apollo, the town teacher! I know him."
Not immediately, but eventually they all calmed down, and I told them what I had seen.
"Aha," said the driver. "We knew it. Now we'll catch them. Let's go, you guys."
I wanted to continue on my way to the city, but he convinced me that it would be safer to stay with them, and he would fix my car in good time, after they had caught the bandits. They sat me in the cabin, and the truck rolled to the scene of the tragedy. There was the top of the rise, there was my automobile, but the road ahead was completely empty. There were no bodies, no fragments, only burned spots on the asphalt and a little dent in the place where the explosion had occurred.
"Pretty obvious," said the driver, stopping the truck. "They've already cleaned up. There they go flying ..."
Everyone started yelling and pointing at the horizon in the direction of Marathon, but no matter how I stared into the untroubled sky with my one good eye, I couldn't see anything.
Then the farmers, with an alacrity demonstrating a certain amount of training, without any unnecessary fuss or argumentation, split up into two groups of ten men each. These groups spread out into two chains and began the comb through the wheat - one to the right and one to the left.
"They have machine guns," I warned them, "grenades too, it seems."
"We are well aware of that," I was answered, and after a while shouts announced that the search party had hit on a trail.
Meanwhile the driver was fixing my car, while I, sitting in the back seat, let myself fall into a blessed half-sleep, having finally managed to calm my nerves. The driver not only got rid of the problem (it turned out to be an air lock in the fuel line) but also cleaned up the front seat, the splattered steering wheel and dashboard. Tears of gratitude burst from my eyes, I shook his hand and paid him as much as I could. He was satisfied. This simple, good man (I can't recall his name) turned out to be quite talkative, unlike most farmers, who are also simple and good, but stern and tight-lipped. He explained what had been going on.
It turned out that the insurgents, whom the peasant folk simply call bandits, had shown up in the area the very day after the arrival of the Martians. At first they were friendly toward the farmers, and it was learned that most of them were residents of Marathon, people well educated as a rule and harmless at first glance, if you don't count the military men. Their intentions remained moot to the farmers. In the beginning they encouraged the villagers to rise up against the new regime, but their reasons for the necessity of this were vague - they all kept repeating that it meant the ruination of culture, degeneration and other bookish things of little interest to the man in the village. Nevertheless, the farmers fed them and gave them shelter, because the situation was still unclear and no one knew as yet what to expect from the new regime. When it came out that nothing bad and only good was to be seen from the new powers,
when the powers bought up the crop (not only the standing crop, but also the shoots) at a good price, when they made a generous advance on the new blue wheat, when money seemed to pour from heaven for the previously useless stomach juice and when, on the other hand, it was learned that the bandits were laying ambushes for the representatives of the administration as they were transporting money to the village, when a deputy from Marathon let them know that this outrage must be brought to a swift end for the good of everyone, then the farmers' attitude toward the insurgents changed completely.
Several times we interrupted our conversation and listened. Occasional shots could be heard from the fields, and every time we nodded at each other and winked with satisfaction. By now I had completely recovered and sat down at the wheel with the intention of turning around and driving home. (I had no thought, of course, of continuing my trip to Marathon. God be with him, that Alcimus, if this is what happens on the road.) At this moment, the search party returned to the highway. At first four farmers dragged two unmoving bodies to the truck. One of the dead men I recognized - it was the man in the beret whom the officer had called an engineer. The other, a young man, was unknown to me. With some relief I saw that fortunately he was not dead, but only seriously wounded. Then the rest of the search party returned in a mass, talking merrily to one another. They led forward a prisoner with tied hands whom I also recognized, although he was now without glasses. It was a complete rout, not one of the farmers had suffered. I felt a great moral satisfaction seeing how these simple people, still apparently fired up by the battle, nevertheless showed unquestionable spiritual nobility by addressing the defeated enemy in almost chivalrous terms. They bandaged the wounded man and laid him fairly gently in the back of the truck. And although they didn't untie the prisoner's hands, they gave him something to drink and stuck a cigarette in his mouth.
"Well, they've done a good job," said my friend the driver. "Now it'll be a bit quieter around here."
I considered it my duty to inform him that there were at least five insurgents.
"No matter," he answered. "That means two got away. They won't get far. Either in our district or the next, it's the same thing. They'll get kilt or caught."
"And what are you going to do with these three?" I asked.
"Drive 'em away. About forty kilometers from here there's a Martian post. They take all kinds there: dead or alive, however you bring 'em."
I thanked him and again shook his hand, and he headed for his truck, saying to the others, "What d'ya say, let's get a move-on."
And here they led the prisoner past me: he stopped for a moment and peered at my face with his myopic eyes. Perhaps it only seemed that way to me. Now I hope that it only seemed that way to me. Because in his eyes there was something that made my heart sink. Miserable world! No, I'm not justifying that man. He's a radical, he's a partisan, he has committed murder and should be punished, but still I'm not blind. I saw clearly that this was a noble man. Not a black-shirt, not a goon, but a man with convictions. However, I hope now that I made a mistake. All my life I have suffered because I think too well of people.
The truck rolled away in one direction, I in the other, and an hour later I was already home, completely bushed, aggravated and sick. I will note, by the way, that Mr. Nicostratus was sitting in the living room and Artemis was treating him to tea. But I was in no mood for them. Hermione started to fuss over me, turned back the bedspread, put an ice pack over my heart, and soon I fell asleep, and when I woke up during the night I knew that my eczema was getting worse again. It was a horrible, tormenting night.
Temperature: +17° C, cloud cover: 10, pouring rain.
Yes, they are rebels, people who destroy the peace and quiet. Yet I can't help but feel sorry for them, soaked to the bone, dirty, chased like wild beasts. And in the name of what? What is this - anarchism? A protest against injustice? What injustice? I simply don't understand them. Strange, now I remember that during the search there were no bursts of machine-gun fire nor grenade explosions. They must have run out of ammunition.
June 11 (midnight)
Hermione wanted me to spend today in bed, but I didn't obey her, and rightly so. By midday I felt quite well, and right after lunch I decided to go to town. Man is weak. I won't conceal the fact that I couldn't wait to tell the boys about the terrible and tragic events I had had the misfortune to witness yesterday. True, by lunchtime these events appeared to me in more a romantic light than a tragic one. My story had a huge success at The Five Spot, questions were hurled at me, and my petty vanity was fully satisfied. It was amusing to look at Polyphemus. (He, by the way, is the only member of the Anti-Martian Patrol to still drag a shotgun around with him.) When I reported my conversation with the officer-rebel to the boys, Polyphemus began to act important, assuming himself to be a part of the desperate and dangerous activity of the insurgents. He even went so far as to call the insurgents brave lads, even though they were acting outside of the law. What he meant by this, I don't know - in fact, no one knew. He also declared that in the insurgents' shoes he would have shown "that peasant rabble" what a pound of smoke was worth, and then a fight almost broke out, because Myrtilus's brother is a farmer and Myrtilus himself comes from peasant stock. I don't like arguments, can't stand them, so while the disputants were wrangling I went off to the mayor's office.
Mr. Nicostratus was a model of politeness with me. He inquired considerately about my health and listened to my tale of yesterday's adventure with great sympathy. And he wasn't the only one - all the other employees left their current business and gathered around me, so I enjoyed a complete success here as well. Everyone agreed that I had acted courageously and that my behavior spoke to my credit. I had to shake a lot of hands, and pretty Thyone even asked my permission to kiss me, which permission I granted, of course, with pleasure. (Blast it, I haven't been kissed by young girls for such a long time! I must admit I'd even forgotten how delightful it is.) Regarding my pension, Mr. Nicostratus assured me that everything would probably be all right, and he informed me in the greatest confidence that the matter of taxes had now definitely been decided: beginning in July taxes would be collected in stomach juice.
This engaging conversation was unfortunately interrupted by an outright scandal. The door of the mayor's office suddenly burst open and Mr. Corybantus appeared on the threshold with his back to us, shouting at Mr. Mayor that he would not let this pass, this was a violation of the freedom of speech, this was corruption, Mr. Mayor should remember the lamentable fate of Mr. Laomedon, and so on. Mr. Mayor also talked in a raised voice, but his timbre was a bit softer than Mr. Corybantus's, and I couldn't understand what he was saying. Mr. Corybantus at long last went away, slamming the door forcefully, and then Mr. Nicostratus explained to me what it was all about.
It happens that Mr. Mayor fined our newspaper and closed it for a week because the issue the day before yesterday had published some verses sent in by a certain XYZ, which contained these lines:
And where the sky meets with the Earth, The planet Mars burns bright and fierce.
Mr. Corybantus refused to submit to Mr. Mayor's decision, and for the second day now he has been cursing him over the telephone and in person. Discussing the affair, Mr. Nicostratus and I came to the same conclusion, namely that both sides in this dispute are right in their own way and wrong in their own way. On the one hand, the penalty Mr. Mayor leveled at the newspaper is excessively severe, especially since the poem in its entirety is absolutely harmless, as it speaks only of the author's unrequited love for the night fairy. But on the other hand, the situation is such that you shouldn't tease the geese: Mr. Mayor has enough troubles without this, if only the same old Minotaur, who got plastered again the day before yesterday and ran his stinking cistern into a Martian car.
Returning to The Five Spot, I joined the boys again. The argument between Polyphemus and Myrtilus had already been cleared up, and conversation was proceeding in the usual friendly atmosphere. Not without satisfaction, I not
iced that my story had apparently led the collected minds down the same path. They were talking about insurgents, the military methods at the Martians' disposal and similar topics.
The Second Invasion from Mars Page 7