The Steps of the Sun

by Walter Tevis

  Surprise was clearly the thing. They would be expecting me, but they’d be expecting a middle-aged, potbellied billionaire like one of those Texas fatties. Hell, past middle age; I turned fifty-three the day before we landed.

  They’d know I was there and they’d have a half hour to be ready. Their radar would have picked up the Isabel even before we entered our orbit, but they had no way of knowing where I’d try to set down. Once we left orbit, it would take about three minutes for them to get a fix on our trajectory and conclude I was coming down over Washington; that was the scary part for me, since Washington sure had the wherewithal to blow the Isabel out of the sky as if she were an ICBM hot from Aberdeen. That was unlikely, though, since they weren’t dumb enough to think I’d attack the United States. What they would do, in the half hour they had after they’d figured we’d come down at Aynsley Field, would be to surround the ship with military police, wait for the landing area to cool, and arrest me. Then into the Chateau d’lf with me, while Baynes and his cronies figured out what to do with my uranium.

  Thinking all this out calmed my spirit immensely. With a few minutes left before touchdown, the G forces had leveled off. I got out of my landing seat, grabbed the scissors and finished trimming my beard, steady as a rock this time. By then the touchdown counter had started and a red light was blinking over the mirror in the head where I’d been doing this barbering. I set the scissors down, got back into my chair and belted myself in with about three seconds to spare before the Isabel burned herself into Aynsley’s midfield. I could see nothing through the porthole; rippling heat from our retros crimped the outside air. Suddenly the shudder of the landing began to massage my spine like a demon chiropractor, yet the effect was soothing. I literally felt the Isabel burn her way twenty feet into topsoil and bedrock like a white-hot coin dropped onto butter. She trembled, gave a sigh, settled in, and came to rest back on the planet where she was made—where we were all made.

  I undid my belt and lit a cigar. I looked out the stateroom window and son of a bitch if I didn’t see a goalpost! Judging by the distance, Betty must have brought us down right on the fifty-yard line. What an encouraging thing for a first sight on Earth in nine months! What an emblem for my plans! Ben Belson, broken-field runner. I bent over and retied my shoes. Outside, the ground was smoking; there were spotlights bearing down on us and smoke rose foggily into the beams.

  The Isabel has two exit hatches. On Belson and Juno, where low gravity and a hard surface had made for less devastating setdowns, we could merely walk out the bottom one, and down a short stairway to the terrain. But for landings like this there was a hatchway thirty feet up, just off the mess hall. And the Isabel, being Chinese, had a special gimmick; I was counting on it to add to the surprise. I’d studied spaceships before buying this one and knew that a U.S. or Russian craft might have to wait eight hours for the ground to cool after Betty’s hot-pilot landing, before anybody tried getting out and walking. But the Isabel had a foldout, magnesium-alloy footbridge that could arch its way over the hot circle of earth the engines had made; it could be sent out thirty feet away from the upper hatch. The only thing was I’d never tested it. On the blueprints it looked flimsy. And I’m no compact Chinese astronaut.

  There was no time to sit agonizing about that one. I checked the tapes that held the endolin to my body, made sure I had my billfold, which held exactly forty dollars, some credit cards and a photograph. I patted the pocket of my plaid lumberjack shirt, my basic space-travel shirt; there were three cigars and a lighter. I checked my wristwatch; it was 2:43 A.M., Wednesday, August 23, 2064. I left my cabin, chugging with adrenalin, and scrambled up the ladder to the messroom. The hatchway was just past the dining table.

  There was a porthole in the door about a foot across; I had to stoop to look out. There wasn’t much to be seen: white vapor rising from the ground, and searchlights. Near the door-release handle was a switch that controlled the footbridge. I flipped its safety off, took a breath, and pulled it. A servo motor began whirring. I looked out the porthole again but could see nothing. The glass had steamed over. I waited, chomping my cigar and feeling my heart beat like a rubber mallet, until the whirring stopped. I grabbed the lug wheel in both hands and spun it. The hatchway lugs pulled in and there was a hiss as the Belson pressure inside the ship equalized with the 14.7 Earth pressure; I could feel warm Earth air rushing in to mingle. I heaved the hatchway open into the breeze; some papers on the table behind me rippled and swooshed to the deck. I looked out. Searchlights. Warm night air. Earth! I looked down. There was my narrow, shiny bridge, looking as if made of aluminum foil, as if the weight of a teddy bear would collapse it. Up ahead were lights, steam, the shadows of some kind of equipment. I stuck my head out and looked straight down, to one side of the bridge. Heat from molten ground hit my face. A siren was going somewhere in the distance. Right at the base of the ship was the rim of a serious crater; it actually glowed with a muted crimson. Black, acrid smoke was rising from it. It looked like Dante’s hell and smelled like it too. I pulled my head back in the doorway, took a deep breath, and hit the bridge running. It swayed and bobbed sickeningly under my feet. I could hear it creak; a vision of myself being dropped into liquid stone pierced my mind like a spear. I ran on, trying to soften the pounding of my Adidas. Halfway across I looked up ahead. I could see the end of the bridge, swaying from side to side. The fucker had never lowered itself on the turf! It was about fifteen feet above the ground! For a moment I almost turned to go back aboard the Isabel, to wait till everything cooled. But if I did there would be at least four men with adamant-steel handcuffs to hold me till the warrants arrived. To hell with that. I did not want to continue my spiritual growth in a federal prison. I kept on going. At a distance I heard someone shouting, but I could see no one. Past the midmark on that Japanese Garden bridgeway my weight started pushing it down. It fell about three feet and stuck, jarring the teeth in my jaws and vibrating like a drumhead. I could feel heat from the walking surface penetrating the soles of my shoes; if I stood there long my feet would start cooking. Life gets that way at times. The wise man profits from the hot foot. I was thinking like a fortune cookie, but I’ll stick by it still. I ran on to the end of the bridge, stopped, and began to jump up and down, shouting, “Goddamn you, you Chinese puzzle, you fucking aluminum chopstick! Get your ass down.” Thump, thump! It was like Anna taking off her girdle. That goddamned thing! And hot as blazes by now too. The sirens got louder. The bridge dropped another couple of feet and stuck again. I saw two men in uniform suddenly emerge from the shadows below me, looking up puzzled. A searchlight fanned across my chest and face. What the hell. I jumped.

  I landed on what must have been Astroturf, fell forward, and rolled. No pain. The surface felt springy, a little like Belson grass. I sat for a moment and shook my addled brains clear. In front of me was a goalpost! I had landed in the end zone! Six points. From my right the two men were approaching me. They were about ten feet away. Cops. But no guns—or none in sight. They seemed a bit dumbfounded. I stood up, looked quickly around. Lots of bleachers. To one side were a couple of trucks, one of which had headlights pointing toward me. Clearly the Army, since only the Army had trucks. Some women with rifles stood by them. Near them were men in business suits. No one was moving in my direction. They were all just watching the show.

  The cops walked up, a little more composed by now. One of them came very close to me and put his face in mine. I suddenly realized I was still smoking my cigar, had held it in my teeth through the whole jump, tumble and roll act. “Are you Mr. Belson?” he said, just a shade impolitely.

  I’d never hit anyone before in my life. What I did was just extend my right arm the way you do in the Nautilus pectoral machine; in the back of my head was the memory that I’d increased the drag in that machine to a hundred eighty pounds the Thursday before. I caught him in the neck with my forearm and he fell like a stone. Jesus Christ, I’d no idea it was so easy!

  The other cop seemed undi
ssuaded by this display of muscle, or he was too confused by it all to react properly. Maybe he had lost heart when he looked up to see me jumping up and down, with my lumberjack shirtsleeves rolled up and a cigar in my mouth, on the end of that flimsy Chinese cantilever. Strong men could quail at such a sight. Anyway, he was not forewarned by his partner’s sudden drop and I punched him out with a right cross to the jaw. Then I took off running. I doubled back past the Isabel’s crater, looked around and saw an open place in the grandstand facing the fifty-yard line. There were no people or vehicles that I could see in that direction. I poured it on and ran that way, through a gate that, mirabile dictu, was open, and out onto a sidewalk. I looked up and down an avenue; it was deserted. Down the street was the Washington Monument, big and clean in the moonlight. I ran that way. Back at the stadium I heard trucks moving up, and people shouting. I ran on, took a left at the bottom of the street and a right at the end of the next one, to confuse the trail. I really stretched my legs. I ran like a night wind down those dark Washington streets, past the shells of old slum houses and then down the Mall, where I ran even more gaily on grass. If you could sing while running, with your chest at the bursting, I would have sung a hallelujah chorus of my own devising. Goddamn, it was good to be home!

  Chapter 10

  There was a chance Baynes was back at the stadium, but I didn’t think it likely. If I was right he’d be at home and in touch with them by phone. It was his house I was headed for.

  I stopped running at the far end of New Mall, across the street from the Mendoza Monument, and sat on the grass for a while to get my breath. It was a warm night; the ground was faintly damp and had that good Earth-grass smell. This grass was not going to say it loved me or feed me, but right now silence was all I wanted. The monument was lit and I lay on my elbow in the quiet for a while panting heavily and contemplated the heroic bronze of Guadelupe Mendoza, the first woman Chief Justice and one of my favorite people in history. When I was a kid I saved bubble-gum cards with her picture; I had always liked her motherly ways and her liberal decisions.

  Baynes’s house was three blocks from Lupe, a fairly modest mansion—considering its owner’s wealth and power—at the eastern edge of the Congressional Compound. I was wary of guards, but there was no need to be; none were around. The place was lit up with the kind of candlepower only a senator could command; even the pair of metal deer on the front lawn had a spotlight.

  I considered climbing through a bedroom window but rejected the idea. I hadn’t been reborn on Belson to get shot as a burglar. So I walked up the brickwork path and climbed the stairs to the broad porch. I knocked loudly on the door and then checked my watch. It was two-thirty. I knocked again.

  The door opened and a young man was standing there blinking at me. I recognized him from a visit I’d paid Baynes a few years before. I gave him my steely, no-nonsense look. “Good evening,” I said. “I’m Ben Belson and I’m here to see the Senator.” I paused a second and then pushed past him into the enormous living room. On the floor at one end of the room a couple of small black boys wearing pajamas were playing with a modern rarity, an electric train. At the other end, half lying on a Chesterfield sofa, was a thin, elderly black man. He was smiling warmly at me. “Son of a bitch!” he said with a grin. He rose sleepily to his feet, jammed his hands into his bathrobe pockets, and looked at me as friendly as you please. “If it isn’t Benjamin Belson!” he said.

  “Hello, L’Ouverture,” I said, not smiling. I have to admit that he’s a charming bastard. And nobody is going to outpoise him.

  “They called me a few hours ago, Ben, when they found your ship on the radar.” He gestured toward the children and yawned. “Woke up my grandchildren too.”

  There was a blue viddiphone on the table by the sofa. Just then it began to hum. “L’Ouverture,” I said. “Turn the video off and don’t tell them I’m here. It’ll be in your interest.”

  He nodded, flicked off the camera switch and answered the phone. After a moment he said, explosively, “Ran away? How is it that thirty MPs can’t catch a running billionaire?” He smiled at me, and listened for a bit. Finally he said, “Well, he won’t get far. I’m going to bed. And for heaven’s sake don’t shoot him.” He hung up the phone.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He smiled. “Nothing to thank me for, Ben. I’m curious to know why you came here.”

  “Sure,” I said. “How about some coffee first?”

  “Get us some coffee, Morton,” he said, “and something light to eat. Melba toast.”

  Morton left for the kitchen and I looked around me for a moment. It was a homey place, sort of shabby-genteel, with beige corduroy-covered sofas and unmatching overstuffed armchairs. There were a couple of acrylic landscapes on the walls. Baynes was as rich as Croesus, but he lived like a college president. People said he had more opulent digs tucked away in the sun, that he didn’t want to put on a show in Washington. Maybe that was it. But I’ve known other rich people who won’t spend serious money on themselves, and I distrust them.

  I seated myself in one of the overstuffed chairs and leaned back. I hadn’t realized until then how tired I was. Baynes remained standing, stretching now as if trying to wake up. He’d probably spent the evening berating his captive Energy Committee, gone to bed late and then was wakened by being told I was on my way to Washington. Would he have had cops sent to his home? I didn’t think so; he had no way of knowing I was coming.

  “L’Ouverture,” I said, “what in heaven’s name made you do me that way? Taking away my citizenship. Why do a thing like that?”

  “Nobody’s trying to hurt you, Ben,” he said. “And you’re a rich man. You have friends.”

  I just stared at him. Such a cool son of a bitch. L’Ouverture is very good-looking. He is cheap about his household furnishings and I can’t remember his ever picking up a check in a restaurant, but he dresses gorgeously. He looked like an expensive whiskey advertisement in that bathrobe with the monogram over the pocket. The kids in the corner kept buzzing their little green train around its track; through silvery draperies I could see the ghosts of L’Ouverture’s lawn deer in frozen grazing; two miles away the Isabel was sitting, packed with uranium, waiting for the ground to cool. And here I was in this dumpy living room talking to this elegant man like an angry son just back from college. Somewhere in that sky out there, down south in Pisces Austrinus, shone Fomalhaut, no bigger than a bright pinhead. And Belson? Obsidian Belson, my heart’s quiet home? Too small to see from here. Too small and far away. I looked back to L’Ouverture.

  Baynes was born in the twentieth century and is a fine grandfatherly figure of a man. Tall, purplish-black and shiny. In his seventies. He must be six feet six—nearly as tall as his celebrated father, one of the finest basketball players who ever lived.

  I’m tall enough to be unused to looking up at the person I’m talking to. Napoleon claimed that being short was an advantage; it made others feel awkward to bend down to him. But I didn’t feel that way with Baynes. A part of me was like a kid with him and I didn’t like it. “Being a pirate has style,” I said. “It goes with my beard. But I resent the rest of it. And think of the money the government will lose on taxes alone if I don’t get my uranium to work.”

  Baynes seated himself on the sofa and leaned forward, elbows on knees and chin on those big fists of his. It made our heads at the same level. “The Committee discussed that, Benjamin. The loss in revenue will be considerable.”

  There was a clatter behind me as the toy train derailed. “Motherfucker!” squeaked one of the kids. Neither of them seemed to be more than five years old.

  Baynes spoke sharply. “You ought to say ‘Goodness!’ when a thing like that happens.”

  “You don’t,” said the kid, matter-of-factly, and set the engine back on its track.

  Baynes shrugged and spoke to me. “You went off to wherever it was you went in violation of the law. An act of Congress forbids space travel as wasteful of energy. You attemp
ted to import a dangerous extraterrestrial substance…”

  “Come on, L’Ouverture,” I said. “Why in hell did you throw the book at me? Are you afraid I’ll ruin you in the wood business?” I pulled a cigar from my shirt pocket and started getting it ready to light. “Are you still mad at me for bankrupting Exxon?” I’d bought what was left of some energy corporations a few years back, put them into receivership, and made a fortune on the tax losses. Baynes had put his money on the other side and lost.

  He laughed pleasantly. “Not at all. Revenge is a waste of time. The Committee just can’t let you have a monopoly. There’s a delicate balance of energy use in the United States, Benjamin. We won’t have any one person disrupting it…”

  “Goddamn it!” I said. “That ‘delicate balance’ means the military gets the oil, the Mafia gets most of the coal, and people like you and me get rich off the leftover coal and wood. It means that what little uranium there is is being saved for bombs. People are freezing out there and it may get worse. What if the temperature drops again next winter?” I puffed my cigar furiously for a moment, staring into Baynes’s grandfatherly look, into his pose of bemused patience. “You charlatans in Congress have campaigned on the word ‘crisis’ for so long you think it’s only meaningful in TV spots.”

  “Your concern for the ordinary citizen is touching.”

  “Oh, come off it!” I said. “That uranium out there is a gift from the heavens. Everybody can profit from it. It’ll run the elevators in New York and heat houses in Omaha, enrich the U. S. Treasury and give me a lot of money. What in hell’s wrong with that, L’Ouverture?”

  “You make it sound idyllic,” Baynes said. “A TV spot in its own right. You’re ignoring some things, Benjamin, in your polemic. There is currently a forty percent surplus of wood in the country. Talk of an ice age is premature. There is enough coal in Wyoming alone to run all the elevators in the world, continuously, until the good Lord sees fit to blink this planet back into chaos. The U.S. has tidal engines, windmills and solar plants. And uranium has a bad reputation. Very bad. Consider what the conservationists did to your country home in Georgia.”