The Man Who Fell to Earth

by Tevis, Walter

  He began to feel what he had sometimes felt before; a heavy lassitude, a world-weariness, a profound fatigue with this busy, busy, destructive world and all its chittering noises. He felt as though he could give the whole thing up, that it was foolish, impossibly foolish to have started it, more than twenty years before. He looked around him again, tiredly. What was he doing here—here on this other world, third from the sun, a hundred million miles from his home? He got up and turned the television set off, and then sat back deeply in the chair, still drinking the wine, feeling the alcohol now and not caring.

  He had watched American, British, and Russian television for fifteen years. His colleagues had collected a huge library of monitored and recorded television broadcasts, and by the time, forty years ago, when America had begun continuous television broadcasting, they had already deciphered most of the subtleties of the language from FM radio broadcasts. He had studied daily, learning the language, the manners, the history and geography, everything available, until he had memorized, by means of exhaustive cross-referencing, the meaning of obscure words like “yellow,” “Waterloo,” and “Democratic Republic”—the last a thing which had no counterpart whatever on Anthea. And, while he had worked and studied and done endless physical exercises, while he agonized in anticipation for years, they had deliberated, deciding whether the trip should even be attempted. There was so little power, other than the solar batteries in the desert. It would require so much fuel to send even one Anthean across the empty gulf, possibly to his death, possibly to be received by an already dead world, a world that might by then be, like so much of Anthea itself, littered with atomic rubble, the burnt-out residue of apelike wrath. But they had told him, finally, that the trip would be attempted, in one of the old, old craft that still remained underground. He was informed a year before the journey that the plans at last were definite, that the ship would be ready when the planets had assumed the right position for the crossing. He had not been able to control the trembling of his hands, when he had told his wife of the decision….

  ***

  He waited in his hotel room, not moving from the chair, until five o’clock. Then he got up, called the real estate office, and told them they could expect him at five-thirty. He left the room, leaving the half-empty bottle of wine on the bar. He hoped that the weather would be much cooler by then, but it was not.

  He had chosen the hotel because it was within three blocks of the office he was going to visit, the office where he was to begin the huge real estate transaction he had already planned. He was able to walk the distance; but the sullen, heavy, and agonizingly hot air that seemed to cover the streets like a cushion made him dizzy, confused, and weak. For a few moments he thought he should return to the hotel and have the real estate men come to him, but he kept on walking.

  And then, when he found the building, he discovered a thing that frightened him; the office he wanted was on the nineteenth floor. He had not expected tall buildings in Kentucky, had not anticipated this. Walking up the stairs was out of the question. And he did not know anything about the elevators. If he should ride in one that went up too fast, or jerked, it might be disastrous to his already gravity-strained body. But the elevators looked new and well made, and, at least, the building was air-conditioned. He stepped into one, empty except for the operator, a quiet-looking old man with a tobacco-stained uniform. They took on one more passenger, a chubby, pretty woman who came running up breathless, at the last moment. Then the operator closed the brass doors. Newton said. “Nineteen, please,” the woman muttered “twelve,” and the old man lazily, somewhat contemptuously, placed his hand on the manual control handle. Newton realized instantly, in dismay, that this was not a modern, push-button elevator, but some kind of refurbished old one. But this realization was a moment too late, for, before he could protest, he felt his stomach twist and his muscles tighten in pain as the elevator jerked, hesitated, jerked again and then shot upward, doubling, for a moment, his already trebled weight. And then everything seemed to happen at once. He saw the woman staring at him and knew that his nose must be bleeding, pouring blood on his shirt front, and looking down saw that this was so. At the same instant he heard—or felt, in his quivering body—a brittle cracking, and his legs collapsed under him and he fell to the floor of the elevator, grotesquely twisted, seeing one leg horribly jackknifed under him as he lost consciousness, his mind falling into a blackness as profound as that of the void that separated him from his home….

  ***

  He had been unconscious twice before in his life; once during the training in the centrifuge at home, and once during the blind acceleration of his take-off in the ship. Both of those times he had recovered himself quickly, coming awake to confusion and pain. This time, too, he awoke to the aching of an abused body and the frightened confusion of not knowing where he was. He was lying on his back, on something smooth and soft, and there were bright lights in his eyes. He squinted and then winced, turning his head. He was lying on some kind of couch. On the other side of the room, a woman was standing at a desk, holding a telephone in her hand. She was looking at him. He stared at her, and then realized who she was—the woman from the elevator.

  She hesitated, seeing him awaken, and did not seem to know what to do with the telephone, holding it limply in her hand. She smiled at him vaguely. “You all right, mister?”

  His voice sounded like someone else’s, weak and soft. “I believe so. I don’t know….” His legs were stretched out in front of him. He was afraid to try and move them. The blood on his shirt was still sticky, but cold now. He could not have been unconscious long. “I believe I hurt my legs….”

  She looked at him gravely, shaking her head. “You sure did. One of ’em bent up like old baling wire.”

  He kept looking at her, not knowing what to say, trying to think of what he should do. He could not go to a hospital; there would be an examination. X-rays….

  “I been trying to get you a doctor for five minutes.” Her voice was hoarse and she looked frightened. “I already called three and they’re not in.”

  He blinked at her, trying to think clearly. “No.” he said. “No! Don’t call…”

  “Don’t call a doctor? But you got to have a doctor, mister. You been hurt bad.” She looked doubtful, worried, but too frightened to be suspicious.

  “No,” He tried to say more, but was suddenly overcome with nausea and, hardly aware of what he was doing, found himself vomiting over the side of the couch, his legs screaming with pain at each convulsion. Then, exhausted, he lay back again, face up. But the lights were too bright, burning his eyes even through the closed lids—his thin, translucent eyelids—and, groaning, he threw his arm up, to cover them.

  Somehow, his being sick seemed to calm her. Perhaps it was the recognizable humanness of the act. Her voice was more easy. “Can I help?” she said. “Is there something I can do to help?” She hesitated. “I can get you a drink….”

  “No. I don’t want…” What was he going to do?

  Suddenly her voice got light, as though she had been near hysteria and had just drawn back from it. “You sure are a mess,” she said.

  “I imagine.” He turned his face toward the back of the couch, trying to avoid the lights. “Can you… can you just leave me alone? I’ll be better… if I can rest.”

  She laughed softly. “I don’t see how. This here’s an office; there’s going to be people filling it up in the morning. The elevator boy gave me the key.”

  “Oh.” He had to do something about the pain, or he would not stay conscious long. “Listen.” he said. “I have a hotel key in my pocket, the Brown Hotel. It’s three blocks from here, down the street you take as—”

  “I know where the Brown Hotel is.”

  “Oh. That’s fine. Can you take the key and get a black briefcase from the bedroom closet in the room? And bring it to me? I have… medicine in it. Please.”

  She was silent.

  “I can pay you….”

&nbs
p; “That’s not what I’m worried about.” He turned and opened his eyes to look at her a moment. Her broad face was frowning, the eyebrows wrinkled in a kind of parody of deep thought. Then she laughed loosely, not looking at him. “I don’t know as they’d let me in the Brown Hotel—or let me walk into one of the rooms, like I owned it.”

  “Why not?” It hurt him somewhere in his chest to talk. He felt as though he would faint again before long. “Why can’t you?”

  “You don’t know much about clothes, do you, mister? You look like you never had to worry. I ain’t wearing nothing but a country dress, and that torn. And they might not like my breath.”

  “Oh!” he said.

  “Gin. But maybe I could…” She looked thoughtful. “No, I couldn’t.”

  He felt himself going watery again, his body felt as if he were floating. Blinking, he forced himself to hold on, trying to ignore the weakness, the pain. “In my billfold. Get the twenty-dollar bills. Give the bellboys the money. You can do it.” The room was spinning about him, the lights going fainter now, seeming to move in dim procession, across his vision. “Please.”

  He felt her fumbling in his pocket, felt her hot breath on his face, then, after a moment, heard her gasp. “Lordy!” she said, “if you ain’t loaded…! Why I could run off with this.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Please help me. I’m rich. I can…”

  “I won’t,” she said wearily. And then, more brightly, “You just hang on, mister. I’ll get back with your medicine, if I have to buy the hotel. You just take it easy.”

  He heard her closing the door behind her as he fainted…

  It seemed only a moment later that she was back in the room, panting, and had the briefcase open on the desk.

  And then, after he had taken the pain capsules and the pills that would help heal his leg, the elevator operator came in with a man who said he was the building superintendent and Newton had to reassure them that he would sue no one, that, really, he felt fine and that all would be well. No, he did not need an ambulance. Yes, he would sign a waiver to absolve the building of responsibility. Now would they get him to a taxi? He almost fainted again, several times, during this frenetic discussion, and when it was over he did faint again.

  He awoke in a taxi with the woman. She was shaking him gently. “Where do you want to go?” She said, “Where’s your home?”

  He stared at her. “I… I don’t really know.”

  7

  He looked up from his reading, somewhat startled. He had not known she was in the room. She frequently did that, seemed to appear from nowhere, and her hoarse, serious voice could be irritating to him. But she was a good woman, and entirely unsuspicious. In four weeks he had grown very fond of her, as if she were a kind of useful pet. He shifted his leg to a more comfortable position before he answered. “You’ll be going to church this afternoon, won’t you?” He looked over his shoulder at her. She must have just come in; she was carrying a red plastic grocery bag, hugging it against her heavy bosom as if it were a child.

  She grinned at him a little foolishly, and he realized that she was probably already somewhat drunk, even though it was early afternoon. “That’s what I mean, Mr. Newton. I thought you might want to go to church.” She set the bag on the table by the air-conditioner—the one he had bought for her during his first week at her home. “I got you some wine.” she said.

  He turned back toward his leg, propped up in front of him on a flimsy little crate that was weighted down with old comic books, her only reading material. He was annoyed. Her buying wine meant that she definitely intended to get drunk that evening, and, although she held her liquor well, he was always made apprehensive by her drunkenness. Even though she commented often and with amused wonder upon his lightness and frailty, she probably still had no idea of the harm she could do his frame—his slight, birdlike bones—if she were ever to stumble over him, fall on him, or even merely slap him hard. She was a sturdy, fleshy woman, and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. “It was thoughtful of you to bring the wine, Betty Jo,” he said. “Is it chilled?”

  “Uh huh,” she said. “Too damn cold, in fact.” She took the bottle from the sack, and he heard it clink against other, still hidden, companions. She looked at it speculatively. “I didn’t buy it at Reichmann’s this time. Today was my day for the welfare check, and I just got it as I come out of the welfare building. There’s a little store there called Goldie’s Quickie. Gets a lot of the welfare business.” She took a tumbler from a row of them that sat on top of the ancient, red-painted bookshelf and set it on the window ledge. Then, with a kind of lazy abstraction that characterized her dealings with liquor, she pulled a bottle of gin from the bag, and stood now, a wine bottle in one hand, a bottle of gin in the other, as if undecided which to set down first. “They keep all the wine in a regular refrigerator, and it gets too cold. I should of bought it over at Reichmann’s.” She finally set the wine bottle down, and opened the gin.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “It shouldn’t take long to warm up.”

  “I’ll just set it here, and just any time you want some you ask me, hear?” She poured herself a half tumbler of the gin and then went into the little kitchen. He heard her clinking the sugar bowl, spooning in the sugar that she always put in her gin, and then she returned in a minute, drinking as she walked. “Damn, I like gin!” she said, in a self-satisfied tone.

  “I don’t believe I’ll be able to go to church.”

  She looked genuinely disappointed. She came over and sat awkwardly in the aged chintz-covered chair that faced his, pulling her print skirt over her knees with one hand while she held the glass with the other. “I’m sorry. Its a real good church, and high-class too. You wouldn’t be out of place at all.” He noticed for the first time that she was wearing a diamond ring. She had probably bought it with his money. He did not begrudge it to her; she had certainly earned it by the care she had taken of him. In spite of her habits and her talk, she was an excellent nurse. And she wasn’t curious about him.

  Not wanting to talk further about the church, he remained silent while she settled herself comfortably in the chair and began working seriously on her gin. She was the sort of irregular and sentimental churchgoer whom television interviewers would call deeply religious—she claimed that her religion was a great source of strength. It consisted largely of attending Sunday afternoon lectures about personal magnetism and Wednesday evening lectures about men who became successful in business through prayer. Its faith was based on a belief that whatever happened, all would be well; its morality was that each must decide for himself what was right for him. Betty Jo apparently had decided on gin and relief, as had a great many others.

  In a few weeks of living with this woman he had learned a great deal about one aspect of American society that television had not informed him of at all. He had known about the general prosperity that had bloomed continuously, like the flower of some giant and impossibly hardy weed, for the forty years since the end of World War II, and he had known how this wealth had been distributed among and spent by the nearly all-inclusive middle class that, as every year passed, put more time into less productive work and made more money for it. It was that overdressed and immensely comfortable middle class that almost all television shows dealt with, so that one could easily get the notion that all Americans were young, suntanned, clear-eyed and ambitious. In meeting Betty Jo he had learned that there was a large substratum of society that was totally unaffected by this middle-class prototype, that a huge and indifferent mass of persons had virtually no ambitions and no values whatever. He had read enough history to realize that people like Betty Jo would once have been the industrial poor; but they were now the industrial well-to-do, living comfortably in government-built housing—Betty Jo rented a three-room dwelling unit in a huge old brick housing project, now a semi-slum—on checks from a bewildering diversity of agencies; Federal Welfare, State Welfare, Emergency Relief, Country Poor Relief. This American soci
ety was so rich that it could support the eight or ten million members of Betty Jo’s class in a kind of shabby, gin-and-used-furniture luxury in the cities, while the bulk of the country tanned its healthy cheeks by its suburban swimming pools and followed the current fashions in clothes and child-rearing and mixed drinks and wives, playing endless games with religion and psychoanalysis and “creative leisure.” With the exception of Farnsworth, who belonged to still another, rarer class, that of the genuinely wealthy, all of the men whom Newton had met were of this middle class. All of them were very much alike and seeming, if you caught them off their guard, when the hand wasn’t extended in friendliness or the face composed in its usual mask of smug and boyish charm, a little haggard, a little lost. It seemed to Newton that Betty Jo, with her gin, her boredom, her cats, and her used furniture, was getting the better part of the social arrangement.

  She had had a party once, with some “girl friends” from other units in the building. He had remained in the bedroom out of sight, but he had been able to hear them well enough, singing old hymns like Rock of Ages and Faith of Our Fathers, and getting drunk on gin and sentimentality, and it had seemed to him that they had found a better kind of satisfaction in this emotional debauch than the middle class derived from its Roman barbecue feasts, its drunken midnight swimming, and its quick sex. Yet even Betty Jo was false to those childish old hymns, for after the other women had gone drunkenly back to their own three-room cells, she had laid by him in bed and giggled about the silliness of the Baptist, hymn-singing, revivalist religion that her Kentucky family had brought her up in and how she had “outgrown all that, even though, sometimes, it was kind of cute to sing the songs.” Newton said nothing to this, yet he could not help but wonder. He had seen an “old-time revival hour” several times, on the old Anthean TV tapes, and he had seen a “modern” church hour which “made a creative use of God,” for which the music consisted solely of an electronic organ playing Strauss waltzes and parts of The Poet and Peasant Overture. He was not at all certain that these people had been entirely wise in their development of that strange manifestation of theirs, a thing Anthea was totally without—and yet which the Antheans, in their ancient visits to the planet, were probably to blame for—this peculiar set of premises and promises called religion. He did not understand it very well, however. Antheans believed, to be sure, that there probably were gods in the universe, or creatures that might be called gods, but this was not a thing of any great importance to them, any more than it really was to most humans, Yet the old human belief in sin and redemption was meaningful to him and, he, like all Antheans, was quite familiar with the sense of guilt and the need for its expiation. Yet now the humans seemed to be building loose constructions of half-belief and sentiment to replace their religions, and he did not know what to make of it; he could not really fathom why Betty Jo was so much concerned over the supposed strength she received in weekly doses from her synthetic church, a form of strength that seemed less certain and more troublesome than that she received from her gin.