The Martian Chronicles

She held her breath and stood very still, waiting.

It was coming nearer.

At any moment it might happen.

It was like those days when you heard a thunderstorm coming and there was the waiting silence and then the faintest pressure of the atmosphere as the climate blew over the land in shifts and shadows and vapours. And the change pressed at your ears and you were suspended in the waiting time of the coming storm. You began to tremble. The sky was stained and coloured; the clouds were thickened; the mountains took on an iron taint. The caged flowers blew with faint sighs of warning. You felt your hair stir softly. Somewhere in the house the voice-clock sang. ‘Time, time, time, time …’ ever so gently, no more than water tapping on velvet.

And then the storm. The electric illumination, the engulfments of dark wash and sounding black fell down, shutting in, forever.

That’s how it was now. A storm gathered, yet the sky was clear. Lightning was expected, yet there was no cloud.

Ylla moved through the breathless summer-house. Lightning would strike from the sky any instant; there would be a thunder-clap, a boll of smoke, a silence, footsteps on the path, a rap on the crystalline door, and her running to answer …

Crazy Ylla! she scoffed. Why think these wild things with your idle mind?

And then it happened.

There was a warmth as of a great fire passing in the air. A whirling, rushing sound. A gleam in the sky, of metal.

Ylla cried out.

Running through the pillars, she flung wide a door. She faced the hills. But by this time there was nothing.

She was about to race down the hill when she stopped herself. She was supposed to stay here, go nowhere. The doctor was coming to visit, and her husband would be angry if she ran off.

She waited in the door, breathing rapidly, her hand out.

She strained to see over towards Green Valley, but saw nothing.

Silly woman. She went inside. You and your imagination, she thought. That was nothing but a bird, a leaf, the wind, or a fish in the canal. Sit down. Rest.

She sat down.

A shot sounded.

Very clearly, sharply, the sound of the evil insect weapon.

Her body jerked with it.

It came from a long way off. One shot. The swift humming distant bees. One shot. And then a second shot, precise and cold, and far away.

Her body winced again and for some reason she started up, screaming and screaming, and never wanting to stop screaming. She ran violently through the house and once more threw wide the door.

The echoes were dying away, away.

Gone.

She waited in the yard, her face pale, for five minutes.

Finally, with slow steps, her head down, she wandered about the pillared rooms, laying her hand to things, her lips quivering, until finally she sat alone in the darkening wine-room, waiting. She began to wipe an amber glass with the hem of her scarf.

And then, from far off, the sound of footsteps crunching on the thin, small rocks.

She rose up to stand in the centre of the quiet room. The glass fell from her fingers, smashing to bits.

The footsteps hesitated outside the door.

Should she speak? Should she cry out. ‘Come in, oh, come in’?

She went forward a few paces.

The footsteps walked up the ramp. A hand twisted the door latch.

She smiled at the door.

The door opened. She stopped smiling.

It was her husband. His silver mask glowed dully.

He entered the room and looked at her for only a moment. Then he snapped the weapon bellows open, cracked out two dead bees, heard them spat on the floor as they fell, stepped on them, and placed the empty bellows-gun in the corner of the room as Ylla bent down and tried, over and over, with no success, to pick up the pieces of the shattered glass. ‘What were you doing?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said with his back turned. He removed the mask.

‘But the gun – I heard you fire it. Twice.’

‘Just hunting. Once in a while you like to hunt. Did Dr Nlle arrive?’

‘No.’

‘Wait a minute.’ He snapped his fingers disgustedly. ‘Why, I remember now. He was supposed to visit us tomorrow afternoon. How stupid of me.’

They sat down to eat. She looked at her food and did not move her hands. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her, not looking up from dipping his meat in the bubbling lava.

‘I don’t know. I’m not hungry,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know; I’m just not.’

The wind was rising across the sky; the sun was going down. The room was small and suddenly cold.

‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ she said in the silent room, across from her cold, erect, golden-eyed husband.

‘Remember what?’ He sipped his wine.

‘That song. That fine and beautiful song.’ She closed her eyes and hummed, but it was not the song. ‘I’ve forgotten it. And, somehow, I don’t want to forget it. It’s something I want always to remember.’ She moved her hands as if the rhythm might help her to remember all of it. Then she lay back in her chair. ‘I can’t remember.’ She began to cry.

‘Why are you crying?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know, but I can’t help it. I’m sad and I don’t know why, I cry and I don’t know why, but I’m crying.’

Her head was in her hands; her shoulders moved again and again.

‘You’ll be all right tomorrow,’ he said.

She did not look up at him; she looked only at the empty desert and the very bright stars coming out now on the black sky, and far away there was a sound of wind rising and canal waters stirring cold in the long canals. She shut her eyes, trembling.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right tomorrow.’

AUGUST 1999

The Summer Night

In the stone galleries the people were gathered in clusters and groups filtering up into shadows among the blue hills. A soft evening light shone over them from the stars and the luminous double moons of Mars. Beyond the marble amphitheatre, in darknesses and distances, lay little towns and villas; pools of silver water stood motionless and canals glittered from horizon to horizon. It was an evening in summer upon the placid and temperate planet Mars. Up and down green wine-canals, boats as delicate as bronze flowers drifted. In the long and endless dwellings that curved like tranquil snakes across the hills, lovers lay idly whispering in cool night beds. The last children ran in torchlit alleys, gold spiders in their hands throwing out films of web. Here or there a late supper was prepared in tables where lava bubbled silvery and hushed. In the amphitheatres of a hundred towns on the night side of Mars the brown Martian people with gold coin eyes were leisurely met to fix their attention upon stages where musicians made a serene music flow up like blossom scent on the still air.

Upon one stage a woman sang.

The audience stirred.

She stopped singing. She put her hand to her throat. She nodded to the musicians, and they began again.

The musicians played and she sang, and this time the audience sighed and sat forward, a few of the men stood up in surprise, and a winter chill moved through the amphitheatre. For it was an odd and a frightening and a strange song this woman sang. She tried to stop the words from coming out of her lips, but the words were these:

‘She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes …’

The singer clasped her hands to her mouth. She stood, bewildered.

‘What words are those?’ asked the musicians.

‘What song is that?’

‘What language is that!’

And when they blew again upon their golden horns the strange music came forth and passed slowly over the audience, which now talked aloud and stood up.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ the musicians asked each other.

‘What tune is that you played?’

‘What tune did you play?’

The woman wept and ran from the stage. And the audience moved out of the amphitheatre. And all around the nervous towns of Mars a similar thing had happened. A coldness had come, like white snow falling on the air.

In the black alleys, under the torches, the children sang:

‘—But when she got there, the cupboard was bare, And so her poor dog had none!’

‘Children!’ voices cried. ‘What was that rhyme? Where did you learn it?’

‘We just thought of it, all of a sudden. It’s just words we don’t understand.’

Doors slammed. The streets were deserted. Above the blue hills a green star rose.

All over the night side of Mars lovers awoke to listen to their loved ones who lay humming in the darkness.

‘What is that tune?’

And in a thousand villas, in the middle of the night, women awoke, screaming. They had to be soothed while the tears ran down their faces. There, there. Sleep. What’s wrong? A dream?’

‘Something terrible will happen in the morning.’

‘Nothing can happen, all is well with us.’

A hysterical sobbing. ‘It is coming nearer and nearer and nearer!’

‘Nothing can happen to us. What could? Sleep now. Sleep.’

It was quiet in the deep morning of Mars, as quiet as a cool and black well, with stars shining in the canal waters, and, breathing in every room, the children curled with their spiders in closed hands, the lovers arm in arm, the moons gone, the torches cold, the stone amphitheatres deserted.

The only sound, just before dawn, was a night watchman, far away down a lonely street, walking along in the darkness, humming a very strange song …

AUGUST 1999

The Earth Men

Whoever was knocking at the door didn’t want to stop.

Mrs Ttt threw the door open. ‘Well?’

‘You speak English!’ The man standing there was astounded.

‘I speak what I speak,’ she said.

‘It’s wonderful English!’ The man was in uniform. There were three men with him, in a great hurry, all smiling, all dirty.

‘What do you want?’ demanded Mrs Ttt.

‘You are a Martian!’ The man smiled. ‘The word is not familiar to you certainly. It’s an Earth expression.’ He nodded at his men. ‘We are from Earth. I’m Captain Williams. We’ve landed on Mars within the hour. Here we are, the Second Expedition! There was a First Expedition, but we don’t know what happened to it. But here we are, anyway. And you are the first Martian we’ve met!’

‘Martian?’ Her eyebrows went up.

‘What I mean to say is, you live on the fourth planet from the sun. Correct?’

‘Elementary,’ she snapped, eyeing them.

‘And we’ – he pressed his chubby pink hand to his chest – ‘we are from Earth. Right, men?’

‘Right, sir!’ A chorus.

‘This is the planet Tyrr,’ she said, ‘if you want to use the proper name.’

‘Tyrr, Tyrr.’ The captain laughed exhaustedly. ‘What a fine name! But, my good woman, how is it you speak such perfect English?’

‘I’m not speaking, I’m thinking,’ she said. ‘Telepathy! Good day!’ And she slammed the door.

A moment later there was that dreadful man knocking again.

She whipped the door open. ‘What now?’ she wondered.

The man was still there, trying to smile, looking bewildered. He put out his hands. ‘I don’t think you understand—’

‘What?’ she snapped.

The man gazed at her in surprise. ‘We’re from Earth!’

‘I haven’t time,’ she said. ‘I’ve a lot of cooking today and there’s cleaning and sewing and all. You evidently wish to see Mr Ttt; he’s upstairs in his study.’

‘Yes,’ said the Earth Man confusedly, blinking. ‘By all means, let us see Mr Ttt.’

‘He’s busy.’ She slammed the door again.

This time the knock on the door was most impertinently loud.

‘See here!’ cried the man when the door was thrust open again. He jumped in as if to surprise her. ‘This is no way to treat visitors!’

‘All over my clean floor!’ she cried. ‘Mud! Get out! If you come in my house, wash your boots first.’

The man looked in dismay at his muddy boots. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is no time for trivialities. I think,’ he said, ‘we should be celebrating.’ He looked at her for a long time as if looking might make her understand.

‘If you’ve made my crystal buns fall in the oven,’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ll hit you with a piece of wood!’ She peered into a little hot oven. She came back, red, steamy-faced. Her eyes were sharp yellow, her skin was soft brown, she was thin and quick as an insect. Her voice was metallic and sharp. ‘Wait here. I’ll see if I can let you have a moment with Mr Ttt. What was your business?’

The man swore luridly, as if she’d hit his hand with a hammer. ‘Tell him we’re from Earth and it’s never been done before!’

‘What hasn’t?’ She put her brown hand up. ‘Never mind. I’ll be back.’

The sound of her feet fluttered through the stone house.

Outside, the immense blue Martian sky was hot and still as warm deep sea-water. The Martian desert lay broiling like a prehistoric mud-pot, waves of heat rising and shimmering. There was a small rocket-ship reclining upon a hilltop nearby. Large footprints came from the rocket to the door of this stone house.

Now there was a sound of quarrelling voices upstairs. The men within the door stared at one another, shifting on their boots, twiddling their fingers, and holding on to their hip-belts. A man’s voice shouted upstairs. The woman’s voice replied. After fifteen minutes the Earth Men began walking in and out of the kitchen door, with nothing to do.

‘Cigarette?’ said one of the men.

Somebody got out a packet and they lit up. They puffed low streams of pale white smoke. They adjusted their uniforms, fixed their collars. The voices upstairs continued to mutter and chant. The leader of the men looked at his watch.

‘Twenty-five minutes,’ he said. ‘I wonder what they’re up to up there.’ He went to a window and looked out.

‘Hot day,’ said one of the men.

‘Yeah,’ said someone else in the slow warm time of early afternoon. The voices had faded to a murmur and were now silent. There was not a sound in the house. All the men could hear was their own breathing.

An hour of silence passed. ‘I hope we didn’t cause any trouble,’ said the captain. He went and peered into the living-room.

Mrs Ttt was there, watering some flowers that grew in the centre of the room.

‘I knew I had forgotten something,’ she said when she saw the captain. She walked out to the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry.’ She handed him a slip of paper. ‘Mr Ttt is much too busy.’ She turned to her cooking. ‘Anyway, it’s not Mr Ttt you want to see; it’s Mr Aaa. Take that paper over to the next farm, by the blue canal, and Mr Aaa’ll advise you about whatever it is you want to know.’

‘We don’t want to know anything,’ objected the captain, pouting out his thick lips. ‘We already know it.’

‘You have the paper, what more do you want?’ she asked him straight off. And she would say no more.

‘Well,’ said the captain, reluctant to go. He stood as if waiting for something. He looked like a child staring at an empty Christmas tree. ‘Well,’ he said again. ‘Come on, men.’

The four men stepped out into the hot, silent day.

Half an hour later, Mr Aaa, seated in his library sipping a bit of electric fire from a metal cup, heard the voices outside in the stone causeway. He leaned over the windowsill and gazed at the four uniformed men who squinted up at him.

‘Are you Mr Aaa?’ they called.

‘I am.’

‘Mr Ttt sent us to see you!’ shouted the captain.

‘Why did he do that?’ asked Mr Aaa.

‘He was busy!’

‘Well, that’s a shame,’ said Mr Aaa sarcastically. ‘Does he think I have nothing else to do but entertain people he’s too busy to bother with?’

‘That’s not the important thing, sir,’ shouted the captain.

‘Well, it is to me. I have much reading to do. Mr Ttt is inconsiderate. This is not the first time he has been this thoughtless of me. Stop waving your hands, sir, until I finish. And pay attention. People usually listen to me when I talk. And you’ll listen courteously or I won’t talk at all.’

Uneasily the four men in the court shifted and opened their mouths, and once the captain, the veins on his face bulging, showed a few little tears in his eyes.

‘Now,’ lectured Mr Aaa, ‘do you think it fair of Mr Ttt to be so ill-mannered?’

The four men gazed up through the heat. The captain said, ‘We’re from Earth!’

‘I think it very ungentlemanly of him,’ brooded Mr Aaa.

‘A rocket ship. We came in it. Over there!’

‘Not the first time. Ttt’s been unreasonable, you know.’

‘All the way from Earth.’

‘Why, for half a mind, I’d call him up and tell him off.’

‘Just the four of us; myself and these three men, my crew.’

‘I’ll call him up; yes, that’s what I’ll do!’

‘Earth. Rocket. Men. Trip. Space.’

‘Call him and give him a good lashing!’ cried Mr Aaa. He vanished like a puppet from a stage. For a minute there were angry voices back and forth over some weird mechanism or other. Below, the captain and his crew glanced longingly back at their pretty rocket ship lying on the hillside, so sweet and lovely and fine.

Mr Aaa jerked up in the window, wildly triumphant. ‘Challenged him to a duel, by the gods! A duel!’

‘Mr Aaa –’ the captain started all over again, quietly.

‘I’ll shoot him dead, do you hear!’

‘Mr Aaa, I’d like to tell you. We came sixty million miles.’

Mr Aaa regarded the captain for the first time. ‘Where’d you say you were from?’

The captain flashed a white smile. Aside to his men he whispered, ‘Now we’re getting some place!’ To Mr Aaa he called, ‘We travelled sixty million miles. From Earth!’

Mr Aaa yawned. ‘That’s only fifty million miles this time of year.’ He picked up a frightful-looking weapon. ‘Well, I have to go now. Just take that silly note, though I don’t know what good it’ll do you, and go over that hill into the little town of Iopr and tell Mr Iii all about it. He’s the man you want to see. Not Mr Ttt, he’s an idiot; I’m going to kill him. Not me, because you’re not in my line of work.’

‘Line of work, line of work!’ bleated the captain. ‘Do you have to be in a certain line of work to welcome Earth Men?’

‘Don’t be silly, everyone knows that!’ Mr Aaa rushed downstairs. ‘Good-bye!’ And down the causeway he raced, like a pair of wild calipers.

The four travellers stood shocked. Finally the captain said, ‘We’ll find someone yet who’ll listen to us.’

‘Maybe we could go out and come in again,’ said one of the men in a dreary voice. ‘Maybe we should take off and land again. Give them time to organize a party.’

‘That might be a good idea,’ murmured the tired captain.

The little town was full of people drifting in and out of doors, saying hello to one another, wearing gold masks and blue masks and crimson masks for pleasant variety, masks with silver lips and bronze eyebrows, masks that smiled or masks that frowned, according to the owners’ dispositions.

The four men, wet from their long walk, paused and asked a little girl where Mr Iii’s house was.

‘There,’ The child nodded her head.

The captain got eagerly, carefully down on one knee, looking into her sweet young face. ‘Little girl, I want to talk to you.’

He seated her on his knee and folded her small brown hands neatly in his own big ones, as if ready for a bedtime story which he was shaping in his mind slowly and with a great patient happiness in details.

‘Well, here’s how it is, little girl. Six months ago another rocket came to Mars. There was a man named York in it, and his assistant. Whatever happened to them, we don’t know. Maybe they crashed. They came in a rocket. So did we. You should see it! A big rocket! So we’re the Second Expedition, following up the First. And we came all the way from Earth …’

The little girl disengaged one hand without thinking about it, and clapped an expressionless golden mask over her face. Then she pulled forth a golden spider toy and dropped it to the ground while the captain talked on. The toy spider climbed back up to her knee obediently, while she speculated upon it coolly through the slits of her emotionless mask and the captain shook her gently and urged his story upon her.

‘We’re Earth Men,’ he said. ‘Do you believe me?’

‘Yes.’ The little girl peeped at the way she was wiggling her toes in the dust.

‘Fine.’ The captain pinched her arm, a little bit with joviality, a little bit with meanness to get her to look at him. ‘We built our own rocket ship. Do you believe that?’

The little girl dug in her nose with a finger. ‘Yes.’

‘And – take your finger out of your nose, little girl – I am the captain, and—’

‘Never before in history has anybody come across space in a big rocket ship,’ recited the little creature, eyes shut.

‘Wonderful! How did you know?’

‘Oh, telepathy.’ She wiped a casual finger on her knee.

‘Well, aren’t you just ever so excited? cried the captain. ‘Aren’t you glad?’

‘You just better go see Mr Iii right away.’ She dropped her toy to the ground. ‘Mr Iii will like talking to you.’ She ran off, with the toy spider scuttling obediently after her.

The captain squatted there looking after her with his hand out. His eyes were watery in his head. He looked at his empty hands. His mouth hung open. The other three men stood with their shadows under them. They spat on the stone street …

Mr Iii answered the door. He was on his way to a lecture, but he had a minute, if they would hurry inside and tell him what they desired …

‘A little attention,’ said the captain, red-eyed and tired. ‘We’re from Earth, we have a rocket, there are four of us, crew and captain, we’re exhausted, we’re hungry, we’d like a place to sleep. We’d like someone to give us the key to the city or something like that, and we’d like somebody to shake our hands and say “Hooray” and say “Congratulations, old man!” That about sums it up.’

Mr Iii was a tall, vaporous, thin man with thick blind blue crystals over his yellowish eyes. He bent over his desk and brooded upon some papers, glancing now and again with extreme penetration at his guests.

‘Well, I haven’t the forms with me here, I don’t think.’ He rummaged through the desk drawers. ‘Now where did I put the forms?’ He mused. ‘Somewhere. Somewhere. Oh, here we are! Now!’ He handed the papers over crisply. ‘You’ll have to sign these papers, of course.’

‘Do we have to go through all this rigmarole?’

Mr Iii gave him a thick glassy look. ‘You say you’re from Earth, don’t you? Well, then there’s nothing for it but you sign.’

The captain wrote his name. ‘Do you want my crew to sign also?’

Mr Iii looked at the captain, looked at the three others, and burst into a shout of derision. ‘Them sign! Ho! How marvellous! Them, oh, them sign!’ Tears sprang from his eyes. He slapped his knee and bent to let his laughter jerk out of his gaping mouth. He held himself up with the desk. ‘Them sign!’

The four men scowled. ‘What’s funny?’

‘Them sign!’ sighed Mr Iii, weak with hilarity. ‘So very funny. I’ll have to tell Mr Xxx about this!’ He examined the filled-out form, still laughing. ‘Everything seems to be in order.’ He nodded. ‘Even the agreement for euthanasia if final decision on such a step is necessary.’ He chuckled.

‘Agreement for what?’

‘Don’t talk. I have something for you. Here, Take this key.’

The captain flushed. ‘It’s a great honour.’