He went back to his drink, suddenly remembering that he’d forgotten to ask Margie about Forbes. Well, the hell with Forbes; it didn’t matter. He was either okay or he wasn’t, and nothing could be done about it if he wasn’t.
Surprising, though, that Margie’d been so friendly. Especially since she’d recognized that he was drunk. She wasn’t a prig about drinking—she herself drank moderately. But always got mad at him if he let go and drank too much, like tonight.
Must really have been worried about him. But why? And then he remembered. She’d always suspected him of not being very stable mentally. Had tried to get him to have analysis once—that was one of the things they’d quarreled about. So naturally now, with so many people going nuts, she’d think him likely to be one of the first to go.
To hell with her, if she thought that. He was going to be the last to let the Martians get him down, not the first.
He poured himself another drink. Not that he really wanted it—he was plenty drunk already—but to defy Margie and the Martians. He’d show ’em.
One was in the room now. One Martian, not one Margie.
Luke leveled an unsteady finger at it. “Can’t get me down,” he said. “I ’nvented you.
“You’re already down, Mack. You’re drunk as a skunk.” The Martian looked disgustedly from Luke to Gresham, snoring on the bed. And must have decided that neither of them was worth annoying, for it vanished.
“See. Told you so,’’ Luke said.
Took another drink from his glass and then put the glass down just in time, for his chin fell forward on his chest and he slept.
And dreamed of Margie. Part of the time he dreamed of quarreling and fighting with her and part of the time he dreamed—but even while the Martians were around, dreams remained private.
5.
The Iron Curtain quivered like an aspen leaf in an earthquake.
The leaders of the People found themselves faced with an internal opposition that they could not purge, could not even intimidate.
And not only could they not blame the Martians on the Capitalist warmongers but they soon found out that the Martians were worse than Capitalist warmongers.
Not only were they not Marxists but they would admit to no political philosophy whatsoever and sneered at all of them. They sneered equally at all terrestrial governments and forms of government, even theoretical ones. Yes, they themselves had the perfect form of government but they refused to tell anyone what it was—except that it was none of our business.
They weren’t missionaries and had no desire to help us. All they wanted was to know everything that went on and to be as annoying and irritating as they possibly could.
Behind the trembling curtain, they succeeded wonderfully.
How could one tell the Big Lie or even a little one, with a third of a billion Martians gleefully ready to punch holes in it? They loved propaganda.
And they tattled so. No one can guess how many people were summarily tried and executed in Communist countries during the first month or two of the Martians’ stay. Peasants, factory superintendents, generals, Politburo members. It wasn’t safe to do or say anything, with Martians around. And there seemed always to be Martians around.
After a while, of course, that phase of things eased up. It had to. You can’t kill everybody, not even everybody outside the Kremlin, if for no other reason than that then the Capitalist warmongers could march in and take over. You can’t even send everybody to Siberia; Siberia would hold them all right, but it wouldn’t support them.
Concessions had to be made; minor variations in opinion had to be permitted. Minor deviations from the party line had to be ignored if not actually winked at. These things were bad enough.
But what was worse was that propaganda, even internal propaganda, was impossible. Facts and figures, in speeches or in print, had to be honest. The Martians loved it when they found even the slightest misstatement or exaggeration, and told everybody.
How could you run a government that way?
6.
But the Capitalist warmongers were having their troubles too. Who wasn’t?
Take Ralph Blaise Wendell. Born at the turn of the century and now sixty-four years old. Tall but becoming a little stooped; slender, with thinning gray hair and tired gray eyes. Although it had not seemed a misfortune at the time, he had had the misfortune to have been elected President of the United States in 1960.
Now and until the November elections brought surcease he was president of a country that contained a hundred and eighty million people—and about sixty million Martians.
Now—now being an evening in early May, six weeks after the Coming—he sat alone in his big office, brooding. Completely alone; there wasn’t even a Martian present.
Such solitude was not unusual. Alone, or with only his secretary present, he had as good a chance as anyone else of not being bothered. The Martians haunted presidents and dictators no more than they haunted file clerks and baby sitters. They were no respecters of persons; they were no respecters of anything at all.
And now, at least for the moment, he was alone. The day’s work finished, but loath to move. Or too tired to move. Tired with the special weariness that comes from the combination of great responsibility and a feeling of utter inadequacy. Tired with defeat.
He thought back bitterly over the past six weeks and of the mess things had become. A depression that made the so-called Great Depression of the thirties look like prosperity beyond the dreams of avarice.
A depression that had started—not with a stock market crash, although that had followed quickly enough—with the sudden loss of employment of millions of people all at once. Almost everyone connected with entertainment; not only the entertainers but stagehands, ticket takers, scrubwomen. Everyone connected in any capacity with professional sports. Everyone connected with the movie industry in any capacity whatsoever. Everyone connected with radio and television except a few technicians to keep transmitters running and to handle the already filmed or already-taped replays. And a few, a very few, announcers and commentators.
Every orchestra and dance band musician. Shades of Petrillo!
Nobody had guessed how many millions of people had made their living in one way or another, directly or indirectly, from sports and entertainment. Not until they all lost their jobs at once.
And the fall to almost zero of entertainment stocks had set off the stock market crash.
And the depression had pyramided, and was still pyramiding. Automobile production down 87 per cent over the same month a year ago. People, even those who still had jobs and money, weren’t buying new cars. People were staying at home. Where was there to go? Sure, some of them had to drive to work and back but for that purpose the old car was plenty good. Who would be silly enough to buy a new one in a depression like this and especially with the used car market glutted with almost-new cars people had been forced to sell? The wonder was not that automobile production was down 87 per cent but that any new cars were being made at all.
And with cars being driven only when necessary—pleasure driving being no longer a pleasure—the oil fields and the refineries were hard hit too. More than half of the filling stations had closed.
Steel and rubber were hit. More unemployment.
Less construction because people had less money and they weren’t building. More unemployment.
And the jails! Jammed to overflowing, despite the almost complete disappearance of organized crime. But they’d become jammed before criminals had discovered that their trade was no longer practical. And what to do now with the thousands of people being arrested daily for crimes of violence or desperation?
What to do with the armed forces, with war no longer a possibility—disband them? And increase unemployment by several more million? Just that afternoon he had signed an order that would grant immediate release to any soldier or sailor who could prove that he had either a job waiting for him or sufficient capital to guarantee his not becoming a public charge. But a pitif
ully small percentage would be able to qualify.
The national debt—the budget—the make-work programs—the army—the budget—the national debt—
President Wendell dropped his head in his hands on the desk in front of him and groaned, feeling very old and very futile.
From a corner of the room came an echoing groan, a mocking one. “Hi, Mack,” said a voice. “Working overtime again? Want help?”
And a laugh. A nasty laugh.
7.
Not all business was bad.
Take the psychiatrists. Going crazy trying to keep other people from going crazy.
Take the morticians. With the death rate, due to the increase in deaths from suicide, violence and apoplexy, still several times normal, there was no depression among the coffin stuffers. They were doing big business, despite the increasing trend toward simple burial or cremation without anything that could really be called a funeral. (It was all too easy for Martians to make a farce out of a funeral, and they especially loved to kibitz a minister’s eulogy whenever it strayed from strict fact about the virtues of the deceased or glossed over any of his vices.
Whether from previous observation, from eavesdropping or from having read hidden letters or records, the Martians who attended funerals were always able to pounce gleefully on any deviation from the truth in a funeral oration. It wasn’t always safe even when the loved one was thought to have led a truly blameless life; all too often the mourners learned things about him that shocked them silly.)
Drugstores did a land-office business in the sale of aspirin tablets, sedatives and ear stopples.
But the biggest boom of all was in the industry in which you’d expect the biggest boom to be, the liquor industry.
Since time immemorial alcohol has been man’s favorite gateway of escape from the routine vicissitudes of everyday life. Now man’s everyday life had little green vicissitudes a thousand times worse than the routine ones had been. Now he really had something to escape from. Most drinking, of course, was done in homes.
But taverns were still open, and they were crowded in the afternoon and jammed in the evening. In most of them the backbar mirrors were broken as a result of people throwing glasses, bottles, ashtrays or what have you at Martians, and the mirrors weren’t replaced because if they were they’d be broken again the same way.
But the taverns still operated and people thronged to them. Sure, Martians thronged to them too, even though Martians didn’t drink. The owners and frequenters of taverns had found a partial answer—noise level. Jukeboxes were kept going at top volume and most taverns had at least two of them. Radios helped add to the din. People who talked had to yell in their neighbors’ ears.
Martians could only add to the volume of sound and the volume was already such that addition was practically superfluous.
If you were a solitary drinker (and more and more people were becoming solitary drinkers) you had less chance of being bothered by Martians in a tavern than anywhere else. There might be a dozen of them about but of you stood bellied up to the bar with a glass in your hand and your eyes closed, you could neither see them nor hear them. If, after a while, you opened your eves and saw them, it didn’t matter because they really didn’t register.
Yes, taverns were doing all right.
8.
Take The Yellow Lantern on Pine Avenue in Long Beach. A tavern like any tavern, but Luke Devereaux is in it, and it’s time we got back to Luke because something big is about to happen to him.
He’s bellied up to the bar, with a glass in his hand. And his eyes are closed so we can look him over without disturbing him.
Except that he looks a little thinner, there’s no great difference in him since we saw him last, which was seven weeks ago. He’s still clean and neatly shaven. His clothes are still good and are in good shape, although his suit could use pressing and the wrinkles in his shirt collar show that he is now doing his own laundry. But it’s a sport shirt and doesn’t look too bad.
Let’s face it; he’s been lucky, until tonight. Lucky in that he had been able to make his original fifty-six dollars, supplemented by occasional small earnings, last him these seven weeks and hasn’t had to go on relief. As yet.
Tomorrow, he had decided, he would.
And he’d made the decision while he still had six dollars left, and for a very good reason. Since the night when he’d got drunk with Gresham and had phoned Margie, he had not had a single, solitary drink. He had lived like a monk and had toiled like a beaver whenever he’d found anything to toil at.
For seven weeks his pride had kept him going. (The same pride, incidentally, had kept him from phoning Margie again as he had drunkenly promised to do that night. He’d wanted to, but Margie had a job and he wasn’t going to see or even talk to her until and unless he himself had one.)
But tonight after the tenth consecutive completely discouraging day (eleven days ago he’d earned three dollars helping a man move a houseful of furniture) and after paying for a frugal meal of day-old buns and discouraged cold frankfurters to eat in his room, he had counted his dwindling capital and had found it to be exactly six dollars, to the penny.
And had decided to hell with it. Unless a miracle happened, and he thought that no miracle was going to happen, he’d have to give up and go on relief within a few more days in any case. If he decided now to go on relief tomorrow he had enough left for one final binge first. After seven weeks of total abstinence and on a not too full stomach, six dollars was enough to get him plenty drunk even if he spent it all in a tavern. Or if he didn’t enjoy the tavern he could spend only part of it there and the rest on a bottle to take back to his room. In either case he’d awaken horribly hung over, but with empty pockets and a clear conscience in going on relief. It would be less unpleasant, probably, with a hang-over than otherwise.
And so, having decided that no miracle could happen to him, he had come to The Yellow Lantern, where the miracle awaited him.
Stood at the bar with his fourth drink in front of him and his hand clasped around it. A bit disappointed that he didn’t feel the first three drinks more. But there was still money for quite a few more—in his pocket, of course; you don’t leave money on a crowded bar and stand in front of it with your eyes closed. And for the same reason, you keep your hand around your glass.
He took another sip from it.
Felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a voice scream, “Luke!” in his ear. The scream could have been a Martian, but not the hand. Somebody here knew him, and he’d wanted to get drunk alone tonight. Damn. Well, he could brush the guy off.
He opened his eyes and turned around.
It was Carter Benson, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Carter Benson, from whom he’d borrowed the use of the shack near Indio where, a couple of months ago, he’d tried to start that science-fiction novel that hadn’t got started and never would get started now.
Carter Benson, nice guy, but looking as prosperous as he always looked and probably still in the chips, and the hell with him, tonight. Any other time okay, but tonight Luke didn’t want even Carter Benson’s company. Not even if Carter bought him drinks, as he no doubt would if allowed to. Tonight he wanted to get drunk alone so he could feel sorry for himself for what was going to happen tomorrow.
He nodded to Carter and said, “The jabberwock with eyes of fame came whiffling through the tulgey wood,” because Carter would see his lips moving but wouldn’t be able to hear a word anyway, so why did it matter what he said? And nodded again before he turned back to his drink and closed his eyes. Carter wasn’t a stupe; he’d get the idea and go away.
He had time to take one more sip from his drink and sigh once more, deeply, in sorrow for himself. And then the hand was on his shoulder again. Damn Carter, couldn’t he take a hint?
He opened his eyes. They were blocked by something in front of them. Something pink, so it wasn’t a Martian. It, whatever it was, was too close to his eyes and made them cross. So he pulled back his head to look at i
t.
It was a check. A very familiar type of check, although he hadn’t seen one like it for a long time. A check of Bernstein Publishers, Inc., his own publisher as well as Carter Benson’s. Four hundred and sixteen dollars and some cents. But what the hell was Carter showing it to him for? To show off that he was still making money writing and wanted help in celebrating. To hell with him. Luke closed his eyes again.
Another and more urgent tap on his shoulder and he opened them again. The check was still there in front of them.
And he saw this time that it was made out to Luke Devereaux, and not to Carter Benson.
What the hell? He owed Bernstein money, on all those advances he’d had, not the other way around.
Just the same, he reached up with suddenly trembling fingers and took the check, held it at the proper distance from his eyes to examine it properly. It looked real all right.
He jerked back and dropped it as a Martian who was running and sliding the length of the bar as though it were an ice slide slid right through his hand and check. But Luke picked it up again without even being annoyed and turned again to Carter, who was still grinning.
“What the hell?” he asked, this time forming words exaggeratedly so Carter could read his lips.
Carter pointed to the bar and held up two fingers, then mouthed, “Want to step outside?”
It wasn’t an invitation to fight, as, in happier times, that sentence had been when spoken in a bar. It had a new meaning that had developed because of the deafening din that prevailed in post-Martian drinking places. If two people wanted to talk for a minute or a few minutes without having to scream at one another or read lips, they’d step outside the front or back door onto the sidewalk or into an alley, and walk a few paces away, taking their drinks with them. If no Martian followed them or kwimmed suddenly to join them they could talk undisturbed. If a Martian did bother them they could go back inside to the maddening noise and they’d lost nothing. Bartenders understood and didn’t mind people going outside with their drinks; besides, bartenders were usually too busy to notice.
Martians, Go Home Page 8