The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  He paused for breath. “Therefore, anything at all might be waiting for us beyond that mysterious door that we call space. And now we find that a being from another world has pushed open that door and passed through it. Just one hour and forty-seven minutes ago, a spaceship landed silently in the park of this city. It had been detected an hour and a half earlier, when it entered the upper layers of the atmosphere. It appears to be small in size. It is still too early for any conjectures about its method of propulsion. My distinguished colleague Professor Li is of the opinion that the device may be propelled by an effect of oriented spatial asymmetry, but the research undertaken in this direction—”

  “Professor,” the announcer interrupted, “some people have advanced the idea that it isn’t a ship at all, but merely a creature capable of movement among the stars. What do you think of that theory?”

  “Well, it’s still too soon for any definite opinion. No one has yet seen the object, and all we know is that it seemed able to direct its flight and arrest its fall. We don’t even know whether it actually contains a living being. It’s possible that it’s only a machine, a sort of robot, if you like. But in any case, it contains a message of the highest scientific interest. This is the greatest scientific event since the discovery of fire by our remote ancestors. We know now that we’re not alone any longer in the starry immensity. To answer your question: frankly, I do not believe that a living creature, in the sense you mean, could survive in the conditions of outer space—the absence of atmosphere, of heat and gravitation, the destructive radiation.”

  “Professor, do you think there’s the slightest danger?”

  “Honestly, no. This thing has shown no hostile intentions, it’s simply stayed in a corner of the park. I’m amazed at the swiftness with which the necessary precautions have been taken, but I don’t think they will accomplish anything. I’m more concerned with the possible reactions of people when they meet an absolutely alien being. That is why I ask each person to remain calm, whatever happens. The scientific authorities have the situation in hand. Nothing unfortunate can happen….”

  —

  Marion took a cigarette out of the drawer and lit it awkwardly. It was something she had not done for years, since her fifteenth birthday, perhaps. She inhaled the smoke, and coughed. Her fingers were trembling. She brushed a little white ash off her dress.

  “What shall we have for dinner tonight?” she asked aloud, reproaching herself for her nervousness. But she did not have the courage to take a frying pan from the cupboard, or even to open the refrigerator.

  She put out the light, then went back to the window, and drawing on her cigarette like a little girl, tried to hear a sound of footsteps in the road. But there were only the voices in the peaceful houses, a strain of music, muffled like the humming of bees in a hive, and the purring of words in the loudspeaker.

  “Keep calm,” she said in a loud voice, biting her lips. “Thousands of people have gone through the park tonight and nothing has happened to them. And nothing will happen to him. Things never happen to people you know, only to gray faces with unlikely names in the newspapers.”

  The clock struck eight. “Maybe I could telephone the office,” Marion thought. “Maybe he’ll be there half the night.” But they had no telephone, and it would have meant putting on a coat, going out into the darkness, and running through the cold, going into a cafe full of curious faces, unhooking the little black dead humming beast of the phone, and calling with a changed, metallic voice while she crumpled a handkerchief in her pocket. That was what she should do. That was what a brave, independent woman would do. But she was not, she told herself, filled with shame—either brave nor independent. All she could do was wait, and look out at the glittering city with eyes full of nightmares.

  “Thank you, Professor,” said the radio. “We are standing now not more than four hundred meters from the place where the creature is hiding. The men of the special brigades are moving forward slowly, studying every square centimeter of the ground. I can’t make out anything yet—oh yes, a black shape, vaguely spherical, on the other side of the pond, perhaps a little taller than a man. It’s really quite dark, and…The park is absolutely empty. The ambassador from the stars is all alone now, but don’t worry, you’ll be able to make his acquaintance very soon….”

  —

  Marion dropped her cigarette and watched it burning itself out on the clean tiles. Bernard was not in the park. Perhaps he was strolling toward it, or perhaps he was prowling around the park fence, trying to glimpse the visitor from the stars. In fifteen minutes he would be here, smiling, his hair sparkling with the microscopic droplets of the mist.

  Then the old anxiety rose up out of some internal cavern, purple and damp. “But why don’t they move on faster,” she thought, imagining the men working in darkness, measuring, weighing, analyzing, moving soundlessly through the night like moles aboveground; “why don’t they move on faster if there’s no danger?”

  And it came to her mind that something was being hidden behind the calm screen of the loudspeaker and the words embroidered with confidence. She thought suddenly that perhaps they were trembling as they spoke, perhaps their hands were clenching convulsively on the microphone while they pretended to be sure of themselves; perhaps their faces were horribly pale in spite of the red glare of the dark lanterns. She told herself that they didn’t know any more than she did about things that might be wandering outside the atmosphere of Earth. And she thought that they would do nothing for Bernard, that only she could make the least gesture, even if she couldn’t think what it might be: perhaps run to meet him, throw her arms around his neck, and press herself against him, perhaps take him far away from that loathsome star creature—or perhaps simply weep in a white-metal kitchen chair, and wait, motionless, like a silhouette cut out of black paper.

  She was incapable of thinking about anything else. She did not want to hear the voice from the radio anymore, but she dared not turn it off, for fear of being still more alone. She picked up a magazine and opened it at random, but she had never really liked to read, and now she would have had to spell everything out letter by letter, her eyes were so blurry; and anyway, the stale words had no more meaning for her at this moment. She tried to look at the pictures, but she saw them as if through a drop of water, or a prism, transparent, strangely dislocated, broken along impossible lines.

  Then she heard a step; she got up, ran to the door, opened it, and leaned out into the night, toward the dim wet lawn, and listened, but the footsteps dwindled suddenly, paused, receded, and died out altogether.

  She went back into the kitchen and the sound of the radio seemed unendurable. She turned down the volume and pressed her ear right up against the loudspeaker, listening through the curtain of her hair to that minuscule voice, that insect rubbing against a vibrating membrane.

  “Look out,” said a voice at the other end of a long tube of shivering glass, “something’s happening. I think the creature is moving. The specialists are maybe two hundred meters away from it, not more. I hear a sort of voice. Maybe the being from another world is about to speak…it’s calling out…its voice seems almost human…like a long sigh…I’m going to let you listen to it.”

  Marion crushed her ear against the radio, her hair imprinting itself into her skin. She heard a series of clicks, a long wordless buzzing, a sharp whistle, then silence; then the voice came into being in the depths of the loudspeaker, hardly audible, deep as the heavy breathing of a sleeper.

  “MA-riON,” said the voice, nested in the hollow of the loudspeaker, huddling in a dark corner of the park.

  It was Bernard’s voice.

  —

  She sprang up; the chair toppled behind her with a crash.

  “MA-riON,” murmured the strange, familiar voice. But she did not hear it, she was running down the road, leaving behind her the door wide open and all her anguish dead. She ran past two houses, then stopped a moment, out of breath, shaking with cold. The night was ev
erywhere. Hairlines of light barely escaped from the drawn blinds of the houses. The streetlights were out. She began to walk down the middle of the road, where she was less likely to trip over a stone or fall in a puddle.

  An unaccustomed silence hung over the neighborhood, punctuated from time to time by a distant bark, or the metallic uproar of a train. She met a man who was singing as he walked, as black as a statue carved from anthracite. She was about to stop him and ask him to go with her, but when she got near she saw he was drunk, and walked around him.

  It seemed to her that she was lost in a hostile city, even though she knew every one of these houses, and had criticized the curtains at every window a hundred times, out walking with Bernard in the daytime. She ran between the tall buildings as if between walls of trees overhanging a forest trail. And she was certain that if she paused, she would hear the breathing of a fierce animal behind her. She was crossing a desert place, a concrete clearing, which the night had roofed over with a canopy pierced with pinholes that were the stars. She came to the edge of the park and began to run along the fence, counting the bars.

  Her heels struck the asphalt with the clear ringing of a hammer falling on the keys of a xylophone. Fear ran over her skin like an army of ants. She held her breath. The moon cast a tenuous, impalpable shadow before her.

  She whirled, her skirt flaring. There was nothing behind her but the row of nocturnal walls, without form or tint, like great mounds of obsidian devouring all light and all color, turning the night into a gulf and the edge of the sidewalk into a tightrope along which she had run, weightless and numb with her anguish and her cold. She was alone with the night.

  A hand touched her arm, made her turn around. She cried out. The hand released her and she backed away to the park fence and pressed her shoulders against the bars, throwing up her hands.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” said the policeman in a heavy, stumbling voice that was strangely reassuring. “Everybody was asked to stay home. Do you have a radio?”

  “Yes,” Marion whispered with an effort, not moving, not breathing, not even really moving her lips.

  “Want me to take you back home? There isn’t much danger here, but…” He hesitated. His face was pale in the darkness. A tic jumped at regular intervals in his cheek. “…A man was caught just now, and it would be better…”

  “Bernard,” said Marion, her spread fingers pressed against the folds of her dress.

  “It wasn’t pretty,” the policeman muttered. “It would be better if you came with me. And now the thing’s calling out. Hurry up, ma’am. I’ve got my rounds to finish. Hope you don’t live far. I don’t usually patrol by myself, you understand. But we’re short of men tonight.”

  With the tip of his shoe he crushed a half-smoked cigarette, swollen with water; the paper tore apart and the tobacco scattered.

  “My husband,” said Marion.

  “Come on, let’s go. He’s waiting for you at home.”

  “No,” said Marion, shaking her head, and her hair fell across her face like a net of fine black mesh. “He’s there in the park. I heard him.”

  “There’s nobody in the park.” The tic appeared again, deforming his cheek. Marion saw that his jaw was trembling slightly. His left hand rubbed his leather belt and his right hand touched the polished holster of his revolver. He was more frightened than she. He was afraid for himself.

  “Don’t you understand?” she cried. “Don’t you realize?” She threw herself at him, seized him by the arms. She wanted to claw that pale, trembling face, that human façade, as white as the façades of the city were dark.

  “My husband is in there calling for me. I heard his voice on the radio. Why won’t you let me alone?”

  Without warning, she felt tears running down her cheeks. “Oh, let me go,” she moaned.

  He tipped up momentarily on the square toes of his shiny black leather shoes. “Maybe,” he said hesitantly, “maybe. I don’t know.” Then, more gently, “Sorry, ma’am. Come with me.”

  —

  They walked along the fence. She ran ahead of him on tiptoe, paused to wait for him every four or five steps.

  “Hurry,” she said, “for God’s sake, hurry.”

  “Don’t make too much noise, ma’am, it’s not so far away, and it seems it has sharp ears. Pretty soon now we’ll hear it.”

  “I know,” she said, “it’s my husband’s voice.”

  He looked at her fixedly, in silence.

  “It ate him up,” she said. “I know it. I saw it. It has great big pointed teeth all made of steel. I heard them click. It was awful.”

  Suddenly she began to cry again. Her body shook with her sobs.

  “Calm down. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  “No,” she admitted. “Not anymore.”

  But her voice was broken with hiccoughs and tears blurred her eyes as she ran. She slipped and one of her shoes flew in the air and she kicked the other off hastily and went on running in her stockings.

  Suddenly she heard the monster’s voice, and she saw Bernard’s lips moving. It was a prolonged, tranquil sound, not at all frightening, but so weak that she would have liked to cup it in her hand to protect it from the wind.

  She saw the men in dark uniforms who were guarding the park entrance. She stood still and waited through the exchange of questions and the muttered, tight-lipped answers. She went into the park. She saw the web of copper wires they had woven, glittering wires in a circle, surrounding the strange thing that spoke with Bernard’s voice. She felt the dampness of the grass under her feet.

  “Who are you?” breathed a voice.

  “I came to…,” she began, but she heard the voice in the distance: “MA-riON. MA-riON.”

  “Don’t you hear it?” she said.

  “I’ve been hearing it for an hour,” said the man. He turned the beam of his flashlight on Marion. His teeth and the buttons of his uniform gleamed. His thin mustache made his mouth seem forever smiling, but his eyes, now, looked desperate.

  “It makes human sounds, Earth words it found in that poor guy it caught—words without any connection or sense. At first we thought it was a man calling out. Then we realized no man in the world has a voice like that.”

  “It’s Bernard’s voice,” she said. “Bernard is my husband. We’ll be married a year next month.”

  “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  She let herself fall on the grass and wrapped her arms around her head to shut out the voice.

  “Marion,” the voice repeated insistently. It could not be the voice of a man, it was too penetrating. It seemed to come from the bottom of a pit, or from the inside of an oven. It flowed along the ground and seemed to issue from the earth, like the voice of plants, or the voice of insects, or the voice of a snake gliding through the damp grass.

  “You’d almost think it was waiting for somebody,” said the man. He sat down beside her. “Tell me your name.”

  “It’s me he’s calling to,” she said. “I have to go to him.”

  “Don’t move. What’s your name? What are you doing here, in that dress, on a night like this?”

  “Marion,” she whispered, “Marion Laharpe. That was my name.”

  She thought of her name, that fragile bubble, floating away in the time it took to put a ring on her finger, blown up again in the time it took to run to a park invaded by the night.

  “My husband was”—she hesitated, then made up her mind—“eaten by that thing, and he’s calling me and I have to go to him.”

  “Don’t excite yourself,” said the man. His narrow mustache quivered. “No one’s been eaten. And even if they had, how could you be sure it was your husband?”

  But his voice shook, cracked apart like a wall about to tumble down; it had a quality of uncertainty, fear, and pity, all mixed together and weighed down by anger.

  “Don’t lie,” said Marion. “I recognize his voice and that policeman that came with me said a man had been killed, and he had to go through t
he park, and he didn’t come home, and I heard the voice on the radio, just now, and it was calling me. A million people heard that voice. You can’t say they didn’t.”

  “No,” he said, “I believe you.” His voice faded as he spoke, and seemed dead, the syllables dancing like ashes in the breath of air from his lungs. “There was nothing we could do. We shut the gates too late. We saw him come out of a path, and just like that the thing was on him, covering him. It happened very fast. I’m sorry. If there’s any way I can help…”

  Then his voice hardened. “We’re going to kill that thing. I know that won’t bring your husband back, but I wanted to tell you. We’re not going to take any unnecessary risks. Look.”

  The long tubes of flamethrowers shone like tongues on the grass, like sound teeth in a rotten mouth. They lay on the lawn, on the other side of the glittering network of electric wires. And beside each of these lances a man seemed to sleep, but from time to time a shudder ran over his back and his head turned as he tried to look through the tall weeds and the leaves of bushes and probe that hostile, ambush-filled area in front of him.

  “No,” said Marion in a loud voice. “Don’t touch it. I’m sure it’s Bernard.”

  The man shook his head. “He’s dead, madam. We saw it happen. The monster may be just repeating his last words, over and over, mechanically. He died thinking of you, that’s certain. The professor can explain it better than I can.”

  “The professor,” said Marion. “I heard him. He said there was no danger, that we should keep calm and that he knew what he was doing and that it was a historic event and…”

  “He’s human like the rest of us. He yelled when that thing attacked your husband. He said he didn’t understand. He said he’d been waiting all his life for a friend from the stars. He said he’d rather have been eaten himself than see that.”

  “He kept quiet,” she said bitterly. “He said everything was all right. He said we mustn’t lose our heads, and he knew that Bernard…”