by Bryce Walton
groped for reason and the terrorreceded.
She went on up to the ridge and found the old man waiting. From thathigh ridge where the night wind cut coldly toward the Martian south, thelights of the rituals in the amphitheatre of Martian Haven flickered ina misty halo far away, like phosphorescent globes of spooky glowing, andfrenetic dancings and shiftings of crazed flames.
The old man had a vague, insubstantial look, only his eyes seemed real,almost too real, in their intensity as he looked at her. He was proppedagainst a block of eroded rock and the wind rustled the fringes of hisragged robe.
She sat beside him, their shoulders touched. And then, as though slowlydissolving through some chemical reaction, the old man began to fade.Vaguely Don was there, too, in a nebulous transparency like the old man.And Madeleine lay there, her face pressed into the sand. On Mars oneshould expect, without shock, a different kind of reality.
Their voices weren't really voices. Just thoughts, thoughts in the head,feelings, but nothing solid. The thoughts of Don and the old man seemedto be in some kind of time-worn conflict.
"You encouraged her," Don was thinking.
"Those who can see a little should be urged to try to see more. Maybe,sometime, we'll find one who is different enough to come through to us."
"No! It never works that way! They just--die."
"Maybe they won't--always," the old man thought.
Madeleine felt strangely disoriented, as though dreaming with deliriousfever. All time and space seemed for a moment to be enclosed within thatrocky space, itself unmoored and unhelmed upon a dark and compasslessocean.
Martians, Martians all around, but not a one to see. Like disembodiedspirits, they had long ago evolved beyond confinement to fleshly bodies.But Earth people suspected there was something, so the younger ones,like Don, allowed suspicion to take any stereotyped, acceptable form.But the oldsters believed in being honest. Let those who can see--see.
"Madeleine!" Don was thinking, desperately, as desperate as only purefeeling can be. "Go back--back to the Haven. You can still go back!"
"But she cannot," the old man said. "For those who come this far,there's never anything to go back to."
"No--I cannot," Madeleine thought. "I don't want to go back."
"All right," Don thought after a while. "All right, Madeleine."
Then she was on her feet and moving over sand and stone that seemedalive toward the Ruins of Taovahr--but they were no longer ruins. Sheheard the murmur of sea-tides and warmer winds sighing over a youngerland.
The sterile sand blossomed. Aridity drifted away. "_Don! Is that you,Don?_"
Don seemed to be somewhere, felt rather than heard, sensed, not seen.And instead of ruins, the high white walls and rising towers surroundedby gardens, fountains, and through the gardens a stream of clear water,soft with the pads of giant water lilies, trailing like glass under themoonlight and sympathetic shadows of leaves.
"Don! You knew what real living was in your youth. It was way, way backin time. Didn't you? And only if you're really living do you know whereyou're going, and you knew, didn't you? You gave up the machines, andwent on to freedom. You escaped the confining flesh that can be caughtup in war, and in hopeless peonage to the radios and teevee and radarand thundering jets that drown out the song of real life, and a horde ofcunningly made, treacherous machines--"
"Madeleine. Join us--the way we are now. You can do it--"
"I--I can't see you, Don."
"You don't have to. You just think about it and join us, all of us--"
"Just--just a spirit of some kind, Don--is that it?"
"Yes, yes--something like that! You can't explain it! Just do it!"
It was too late, she knew that now. "We're old, too old, where I comefrom, Don. When I was very young, I might have done it." Only thewonder-filled child can go through the looking glass and--stay.
And he knew she was right, that she was too old. But the old man hadpromised her a moment of joy. She suddenly saw him--Don--the bright,strong man waiting across the stream. "It's what you brought to me," hesaid softly. "When we were young we looked this way--and we were real."
She moved toward the water and her arms lifted to him. At first shecouldn't recognize the woman who bathed there. From the water's surfacea slight vapor drifted, and she saw the wet gleam of naked arms as theylowered and raised and the water shone on the pale loveliness ofunashamed nakedness. And then she knew that the woman there, her hairfloating over the water, was Madeleine. She whispered her own name.
He took her in his arms, and she could hear her breath joining his asthe mist drifted up among the buttressed writhings of the trees. She waslaughing, her breasts pressed to the damp richness of the loam, and inthe water she could see her face, white, with sharp shadows under theeyes and a high look of joy.
"I love you, Madeleine."
His face was above her and his lips crushed to hers, and she could hearthe stream flowing all around her like blood in her ears.
"I love you, Madeleine."
A whisper went through the gray starlight that Mars was turning towardmorning. And the waters of the mind drained away, leaving high and clearthe common desire that stands like a drowned tower.
"I love you, Madeleine."
She could hear it all fading away--her own joy, the fires--as ifeverything were melting, a wax candle dying, a wine glass draining, asoft light dimming....
* * * * *
They had found her by following the pathway left by bits of abandonedclothing. There was nothing but the rescue party and thousands of milesof waste around Madeleine where she lay in the ancient, dried-up creekbed. And she was shriveled and dried out and resembled, as Don hadpredicted, a mummy. But there was a kind of softness of repose on herface that hadn't been there before. Don stood back and looked down ather and thought about the waste.
Mr. Ericson ran forward in his purple shirt and fell to his kneeswhispering, "Madeleine, we've found you! Madeleine--Madeleine--can't youhear your Daddy?"
"We give you anything you want," Don whispered, but no one heard him.
And while Mr. Ericson wept, Mrs. Ericson slumped into Don's arms asthough it was the end of the world.
