The Best Science Fiction of 1949

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The Best Science Fiction of 1949 Page 20

by Everett F. Bleiler


  The men looked around and then looked at each other. “I don’t see any Martian,” said Cheroke.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Spender took out his gun. The first bullet got the man on the left, the second and third bullets got the men on the right and the center of the table. Cookie turned in horror from the fire to receive the fourth bullet. He fell back into the fire and lay there while his clothes caught the flames. It was like stamping your foot lightly, for all the sound it made.

  The rocket lay in the sun. Three men sat at breakfast, their hands on the table, not moving, their food getting cold in front of them. Cheroke, untouched, sat alone, staring in numb disbelief at Spender.

  “You can come with me,” said Spender to Cheroke. Cheroke said nothing. His lips moved but nothing came out. His eyes widened into a kind of dull blindness. “You can be with me on this.” Spender waited.

  Finally Cheroke was able to speak. “You killed them,” he said, daring to look at the men around him.

  “They deserved it.”

  “You killed them. Why? You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe I am. But you can come with me.”

  “Come with you, for what?” cried Cheroke, the color out of his face, his eyes watering. “Go on, get out.”

  “You won’t come with me?”

  “No, no, you idiot!”

  Spender’s face hardened. “And of all of them, I thought you would understand.”

  “Go on, get out.” Cheroke reached for his gun.

  Spender pressed the trigger of his own gun once more. Cheroke stopped moving.

  Now Spender swayed. He put his hand to his sweating face. He glanced at the rocket and suddenly began to shake all over. He almost fell down, the physical reaction was so overwhelming. His face held an expression of one awakening from hypnosis, from a dream. He sat down for a moment and told the shaking to go away.

  “Stop it, stop it,” he commanded his body. Every fibre of him was quivering and shaking. “Stop it!” He crushed his body with his mind until all the shaking was squeezed out of it. His hands lay calmly now upon his silent knees.

  He arose and strapped a portable storage locker on his back with quiet efficiency. His hand began to tremble again, just for a breath of an instant, but he said, “No!” very firmly and the trembling passed. Then, walking stiffly, he moved out between the hot red hills of the land, alone.

  As the day advanced, it grew nice and warm. The sun burned further along the sky. An hour later, the captain climbed down out of the ship to get some ham and eggs. He was just saying hello to the four men sitting there when he stopped and noticed a faint smell of powder fumes on the air. He saw the cook lying on the ground, with the camp fire under him. The four men at the table sat before food that was cold.

  From the ship, a moment later, Whitie and two other men climbed down. The captain stood in their way, fascinated by the silent men before him and the way they sat so quietly at their breakfast. The others moved past him and stopped.

  The captain’s face was pale. “Get the men, all of them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Whitie hurried off down the canal rim.

  The captain walked up and touched Cheroke. Cheroke twisted quietly and fell from his chair. Sunlight burned in his bristled short hair and on his high cheekbones.

  The men were called in. They looked at each other’s faces and counted each other, one, two, three, four, and said each other’s names.

  “Who’s missing?”

  “Just a moment.”

  “It’s still Spender, sir.”

  “Spender!”

  The captain saw the hills rising in the daylight. The sun showed the captain’s teeth in a grimace as he stared at the hills. “Blast him,” he said, in tired tones. “Why didn’t he come and talk to me?”

  “He should’ve come and talked to me,” cried Whitie, his eyes blazing. “I’d ‘ve shot his bloody brains out, that’s what I’d ‘ve done, and I’ll do it now, by God! I’ll spill them all over the place!”

  Captain Wilder nodded at two of the men. “Get shovels. There’ll be a service, and then we’ll go up in the hills and find Spender.”

  “We’ll beat his brains out,” said Whitie.

  It was hot digging the graves. A warm wind came from over the vacant sea and blew the dust up into their faces as the captain turned the Bible pages and said the few necessary words. They were all sweating around the opened earth. When the captain closed the book, somebody began shoveling slow streams of sand down upon the wrapped figures.

  They walked back to the rocket, clicked the mechanisms of their stifles, put thick packets of grenades on their backs and checked the free play of pistols in their holsters. They were each assigned to a certain part of the hills. The captain directed them without raising his voice or moving his hands from his belt at the waist. It was like a little sermon on fishing.

  “Let’s go,” he said… .

  Spender saw the thin dust rising in several places in the valley and he knew the pursuit was organized and ready. He put down the thin aluminum book that he had been reading as he perched easily on a flat boulder. The pages were tissue-thin pure aluminum, stamped in black and gold. It was a book of philosophy at least 10,000 years old he had found in one of the buildings of a Martian valley town. He was reluctant to lay it aside.

  For a long time he had thought, What’s the use? I’ll sit here reading until they come along and shoot me.

  The first reaction to his killing the five men at breakfast had caused a period of stunned blankness, then sickness, and now, a strange peace. But the peace was passing too, for he saw the dust going up from the trails of the hunting men and experienced the return of resentment.

  He took a drink of cool water from the hip canteen. Then he stood up, stretched, yawned, and listened to the peaceful wonder of the valley around him. How very fine if he and a few others that he knew on Earth could be here, live out their lives here, without a sound or a worry.

  He carried the book with him in one hand, the pistol ready in the other hand. There was a little swift running stream filled with white pebbles and rocks where he undressed and waded in for a brief washing. He took all the time he wanted before dressing and picking up the gun again.

  The firing began about three in the afternoon. By then, Spender was high in the hills. They passed through three small Martian towns. Really, it looked to all of them, as if the Martians were a tribal or family lot. One or another of the families from one town would find a green spot in the hills and a villa would be built with a pool and a library and some sort of stage and a good many balustrades and tiled terraces. Spender spent half an hour in one, bathing once more in a pool filled by the seasonal rains, waiting for the men to catch up with him. The shots rang out just as he was leaving the little family town, and some tile chipped up about twenty feet behind him. He broke into a trot, got behind a series of little hills, turned, and, with the first shot, dropped one of the men dead in his tracks.

  They would form a net, a circle, Spender knew that. They would go around and close in and they would get him. It was a strange thing that the grenades were not used. Captain Wilder could easily order the grenades tossed.

  But I’m much too nice to be blown to bits, thought Spender, that’s what the captain thinks. He wants me with only one hole in me. Now isn’t that strange? The captain wants my death to be clean. Nothing messy. Because why? Because he understands me and, because he understands, therefore is willing to risk his good men to give me a clean shot in the head?

  Seven, eight, nine shots broke out in a rattle. The rocks around him flew up at the explosions. Spender fired steadily, sometimes while looking at the aluminum book he carried in his hand.

  The captain ran in the hot sunlight, with a rifle in his hand. Spender followed him in the sights of his pistol, but did not fire. Instead he shifted over and blew the top off a rock where Whitie lay, and heard an angry shout. Suddenly the captain stood up and he had a white handkerchief in his hands. He
said something to the men and came walking up the mountain after putting aside his rifle. Spender lay there, then arose to his feet, his pistol ready.

  The captain came up and sat down on a warm boulder, not looking at Spender for a moment.

  When he reached into his pocket, Spender waved his pistol a little.

  The captain said, “Cigarette?”

  “Thanks.” Spender took one.

  “Light?”

  “Got my own.”

  They took one or two puffs and let it out.

  “Warm,” said the captain.

  “It is.”

  “Are you comfortable up here?”

  “Enough.”

  “How long do you think you can hold out?”

  “About twelve men’s worth.”

  “Why didn’t you kill all of us this morning when you had the chance. You could have, you know.”

  “I know. I got sick. When you want to do a thing badly enough you lie to yourself. You say the other is all wrong. Well, soon after I started killing people, I realized they were just fools and I shouldn’t be killing them. But it was too late. I couldn’t go on with it then, so I came up here so I could lie to myself some more and get angry, to build it all up.”

  “Is it built up?”

  “Not very high. Enough.”

  The captain puffed on a cigarette. “Why did you do it?”

  Spender quietly laid his pistol at his feet. “Because I’ve seen that what these Martians had was just as good as anything we’ll ever hope to have. They stopped where we should have stopped a hundred years ago. I’ve walked in their cities and I know these people and I’d be glad to call them my ancestors.”

  “They have a beautiful city there.” The captain nodded at one of several places.

  “It’s not that alone. Yes, they have a good city here. They knew how to blend art into their living. It’s always been a thing apart for Americans. Art was something you kept in the crazy son’s room upstairs. Art was something you took in Sunday doses, mixed with some religion, maybe. Well, these

  Martians have art and religion and everything.” “You think they knew what it was all about, do you?”

  “For my money.”

  “And for that reason, you started shooting people.” “When I was a kid my folks took me on a visit to Mexico City. I’ll always remember the way my father acted—loud and big. And my mother didn’t like the people because they were dark and didn’t wash right. And my sister wouldn’t talk to some of them. I was the only one really liked it. And I can see my mother and my father coming to Mars and doing the same.

  “Anything that’s strange is no good to the average American. If it doesn’t have Chicago plumbing, it’s nonsense. The thought of that! Oh God, the thought of that! And then—the war. You heard the Congressional speeches before we left. If things work out they hope to establish three atomic research and atom bomb depots on Mars. And that means Mars is doomed, all of this wonderful stuff gone. How would you feel if a Martian came and vomited stale liquor all over the White House floor?”

  Quietly the captain sat blinking in the smoke.

  “And then the other power interests coming hi,” said Spender. “The mineral men and the travel men. Do you remember what happened to Mexico when Cortez and his very fine good friends arrived from Spain? A whole civilization destroyed by greedy, righteous bigots. History will never forgive Cortez.”

  “You haven’t been acting ethically yourself, today,” observed the captain.

  “What could I do? Argue with you? It’s simply me against the whole crooked grinding greedy setup on earth. They’ll be flopping their filthy atom bombs up here, fighting for bases to have wars. Isn’t it enough they’re ruining one planet, without ruining another; do they have to foul someone else’s manger? The simple-minded wind-bags. When I got up here, I felt I was not only free of their so called culture, I felt I was free of their ethics and their customs. I’m out of their frame of reference, I thought. All I have to do is kill you all off, and live my own life.”

  “But it didn’t work out,” said Captain Wilder.

  “No, after the fifth killing at breakfast, I discovered I wasn’t all new, all Martian, after all. I couldn’t throw away everything I had learned on earth so easily. But now I’m all right. I’ll kill all of you off. That’ll delay the next trip in a rocket for a good five years. There’s no other rocket in existence today, save this one. The people on Earth will wait a year, two years, and then when they hear nothing from us, they’ll be very afraid to build a new rocket. They’ll take twice as long, and make a hundred extra experimental models to insure themselves against another failure.”

  “You’re correct.”

  “A good report from you, on the other hand, when you returned, would hasten the whole invasion of Mars. If I’m lucky, I’ll live to be sixty years old. Every expedition that lands on Mars will be met by me. There won’t be more than one ship at a time coming up, one every year or so, and never more than twenty men. After I’ve made friends with them and explained that our rocket blew up one day—I intend to blow it up after I finish my job, today—I’ll kill them off, every one of them. Mars will be untouched for the next half century. After awhile, perhaps the people of Earth will give up trying. Remember how they grew leery of the idea of building Zeppelins that were always going down in flames?”

  “You’ve got it all planned,” said the captain.

  “I have.”

  “And yet you’re outnumbered and in about an hour we’ll have you surrounded and you’ll be dead.”

  “I’ve found some underground passages and a place to live that you’ll never find. I’ll withdraw there and live for a few weeks. Until you’re off guard. Then I’ll come out and pick you off, one by one.”

  “Will you have something to drink?” The captain threw down his cigarette.

  “I don’t mind.”

  The captain poured two drinks from a hip flask.

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll take your cup, you take mine. That way we won’t have anyone falling down poisoned.” The captain looked him in the face. “You don’t think I’d pull a thing like that.”

  Spender said, “No. No, I guess you wouldn’t. Here.” They drank the whisky slowly.

  “Tell me about your civilization here,” suggested the captain, casually examining his man.

  “They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn’t try too hard to be all men and no animal. That’s the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him, and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn’t mix. Or at least we didn’t think they did. We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud, and they wouldn’t move very well. So, like fools, we tried knocking down religion.

  “We succeeded pretty well in many instances. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answers to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are a lost people.”

  Wilder was staring steadily at Spender whose eyes had taken on a dreamy expression.

  “And these Martians are a found people?” asked the captain.

  “Yes, They knew how to combine science and religion so the two worked side by side, neither denying the other, one enriching the other.”

  “That sounds ideal.”

  “It was. And do you know how the Martians did this? I’d like to show you.”

  “The men are waiting down the hill for me.”

  “We’ll be gone hall an hour. Tell them that, sir.”

  The captain hesitated, then rose and called an order down the hill.

  Spender took him down into a little mountain village built all of cool perfect marble. There were great friezes of beautiful animals, white-limbed cat things, and yellow-limbed sun symbols, and statues of bull-like crea
tures and statues of men and women and huge, fine-featured dogs.

  “There’s your answer, Captain.”

  “I don’t see.”

  “The Martians discovered the secret of life in the animals. The animal does not question life. It lives. Its very reason for living is life, it enjoys and relishes life. You see—the statuary, the animal symbols, again and again.”

  “It looks pagan.”

  “On the contrary, those are God symbols, symbols of life. Man had become too much man, and not enough animal on Mars, too, one day. And man realized that, in order to survive, he would have to forego asking that one question any longer. Why live? Life was its own answer. Life was the propagation of more life and the living of as good life as possible. The Martians realized that they asked the question “Why live at all?” at the height of some period of war and despair, when there was no answer. But once the civilization calmed, quieted, and became economically sound, and wars ceased, the question became senseless in a new way: Life was good now, and needed no arguments.”

  “It sounds as if the Martians were quite naive.”

  “Only when it paid to be naive. They quit trying too hard to destroy everything, to humble everything. They blended religion and art and science, because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle. They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It is all simply a matter of degree. The Earth man thinks:

  “In that picture, color does not exist, really. A scientist can prove that color is only the way the cells are placed in a certain material to reflect light. Therefore color is not really an actual part of the thing I happen to see.”

  “A Martian, far cleverer, would say: “This is a fine picture. It came from the hand and mind of a man inspired. Its idea and its color are from life. This thing is good.”

  Curiously the captain looked around at the little quiet cool town, sitting in the afternoon sun.

  “I’d like to live here,” he said.

  “You may if you want.”

  “You ask me that?”

  “Will any of those men under you ever really understand all this? They’re professional cynics, and it’s too late for them. Why do you want to go back with them? So you can keep up with the Joneses? To buy a gyro just like Smith has? To listen to music with your pocketbook instead of your glands? There’s a little patio down here with a reel of Martian music in it at least fifty thousand years old. It still plays. Music you’ll never hear in your life. You could hear it. There are books. I’ve gotten on well in reading them, already. You could sit and read.”

 

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