The Best Science Fiction of 1949

by Everett F. Bleiler

  “Come on, sir!” cried Cheroke to the captain, jumping around, one foot in the air, wailing a song.

  The captain shook his head.

  “Come on, sir!” called several others.

  The captain had to join the dance. He didn’t do a very good one. His face was solemn. Spender watched, thinking, you poor man, oh, you poor man, what a night this is! A good man among fools. They don’t know what they’re doing. They should have been prepared for this. Before they came to Mars they should have been told how to look and how to walk around and be good for a few days.

  “That does it.” The captain begged off and sat down, saying he was exhausted. Spender looked at the captain’s chest. It wasn’t moving up and down very fast. His face wasn’t sweaty either.

  Accordion, harmonica, wine, shout, dance, wail, roundabout, clash of pan, break of bottle, laughter, giggle, stamping—all of it. They had quite a time.

  Biggs weaved to the rim of the canal. He carried six bottles in his arms and he dropped one of them, empty, down into the blue canal waters. It made an empty hollow drowning sound as it sank.

  “I christen thee, I chrisien thee, I christen thee—” said Biggs, thickly, unable to say it. “I christen thee Biggs Canal, Biggs, Biggs Canal!” And he dropped two more bottles.

  Spender was on his feet and over the fire and alongside of Biggs before anybody could move. He hit Biggs once in the teeth, and once in the ear and then pushed him so Biggs toppled and fell down into the canal water. Spender did it all without so much as a word. After the splash he just stood there, waiting for Biggs to climb back up onto the rim stones. By that time, the men were holding Spender.

  “Hey, hey—what’s wrong?” they asked.

  “What’s eating you, Spender? Hey?” Spender stared brightly into the canal waters where Biggs

  floundered like a large fat beetle.

  The wind came in off the dead sea.

  Biggs climbed up and stood dripping. “Who kicked me off?” he said. He saw the men holding

  Spender. “Well,” he said, and started forward. “That’s enough,” said Captain Wilder. The men broke and left Spender standing there. Biggs did riot

  continue his movement. He stopped and looked at the captain.

  “Sir,” he said.

  “All right, Biggs, go climb into some dry clothes,” ordered the captain. Biggs went into the ship.

  “Here now!” Captain Wilder gestured at Spender. The captain waved his hand at the men. “Carry on

  with your party! You come with me, Spender.” The men took up the party. Captain Wilder walked off with Spender after him, and stopped quite

  some distance from the other men.

  “I suppose you can just explain what happened now,” Wilder said.

  Spender looked at the canal. “I don’t know. I was ashamed.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of Biggs and us and the noise. Pah, what a spectacle!”

  “They’ve got to have their fun, it’s been a long trip.”

  “Where’s their respect, sir? Where’s their sense of the right thing?”

  “You’re tired, too, and you have a different way of looking at things, Spender. That’ll be a fifty-dollar fine for you.”

  “Yes, sir. It was just the idea of Them watching us make vile fools of ourselves.”

  “Them, Spender?”

  “The Martians, dead or not.”

  “Most certainly dead,” said the captain. “But do you think They know we’re here?”

  “Doesn’t an old thing always know when a new thing comes?” said Spender.

  “I suppose so. You sound as if you believe in ghosts and spirits.”

  “I believe in the things that were done, sir, and there are evidences of many things done on Mars. There are streets and there are houses and there are books, I imagine, and big canals and clocks and places for stabling, if not horses, well then some domestic animal, perhaps with twelve legs, who knows. Everywhere I look I see things that were used. They were touched and handled for centuries.

  “Ask me if I believe in the spirit of the things as they were used, and I’ll say yes. They’re all here. All the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names. And we’ll never be able to use them without feeling uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right to us, we’ll give them new names, but the old names are there, somewhere, in time, and the mountains were shaped and seen under those names. The names we’ll give to the canals and mountains and cities will fall like so much water on the back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we’ll never touch it. And then we’ll get mad at it, and you know what we’ll do. We’ll rip it all up, rip the skin off and change it to fit ourselves.”

  “We won’t ruin Mars,” said the captain. “It’s too big and too good.”

  “You think not? We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things. The only reason we didn’t set up hot dog stands in the midst of the Temple of Karnak in Egypt is because it was out of the way, and served no large commercial purpose. And Egypt is a small part of Earth. But here, this whole thing is ancient and different, and we have to set down somewhere and start fouling it up. I haven’t any faith in humans. We’ll call the canal the Rockefeller Canal and we’ll call the mountain King George Mountain and we’ll call the sea the Dupont Sea and we’ll call the cities Roosevelt and Lincoln and Coolidge City and it won’t ever be right, when there are the proper names to these places.”

  “That’ll be your job, as archaeologist, to find out the names and we’ll use them.”

  “A few men like myself, against all the commercial interests?” Spender looked at the iron mountains. “They know we’re here tonight, and I imagine they hate us because we’ve come to pry and ruin things.”

  The captain shook his head. “There’s no hatred here.” He listened to the wind. “From the look of their cities, they were a graceful, aesthetic, beautiful and philosophical people. They accepted what came to them. They acceded to racial death, that much we know, and without a last-moment war of frustration to tumble down their cities. Everyone we’ve seen so far has been flawlessly intact. They probably don’t mind us being here, any more than they’d mind children playing on the lawn, knowing and understanding children for what they are. And, anyway, perhaps all this will change us for the better.

  “Did you notice the peculiar quiet of the men, Spender, until Biggs forced them to get happy? They looked pretty humble and frightened. Looking at all this we know we’re not so hot, we’re young kids in rompers, shouting with our play-rockets and our atoms, loud and alive. But, one day, Earth will be this way, too. This will sober us up. It’s an object lesson in civilizations. We’ll learn from Mars. Now, suck in your chin and let’s go back and play happy. That fifty-dollar fine still stands.”

  The party was not going too well. The wind kept coming in off the dead sea. It moved around the men and it moved around the captain and Jeff Spender as they returned to the group. The wind pulled at the dust and the shining rocket and pulled at the accordion and the dust got into the vamped harmonica. The dust got in their eyes and the wind made a high singing sound in the air. As suddenly as it had come the wind died.

  But the party had died, too.

  The men stood upright against the dark cold sky. They had their pale hands to their eyes, some of them coughed. Spender and the captain sat down.

  “Come on, gents, come on!” Biggs bounded from the ship, in a fresh uniform, not looking at Spender even once. “Come on, you guys!” His voice was like someone in an empty auditorium. It was alone. It sounded like bad oratory.

  Nobody did anything but stand there.

  “Come on, Whitie, your harmonica!”

  The wind passed on away along the length of the canal, stirring the cool deep clear waters like so much distilled wine lying in the stone channel.

  “Oh,” said Whitie, and blew a harmonica chord. It sounded funny and alone and wrong. Whitie knocked the moisture from the harmonic
a and put it in his pocket.

  The party was over.

  “Come on,” insisted Biggs. “What kind of a party is this?” Somebody hugged the accordion. It gave a sound like a dying animal. That was all.

  Biggs put his hands down. “We’re tired,” said Whitie.

  “Well, me and my bottle will go off and have our own party, by gosh!” Biggs held a bottle to his chest. He walked to the ship and squatted against it, taking a drink from the flask.

  Jeff Spender watched him. Spender did not move for a long time. Then his fingers crawled up along his trembling leg to his holstered pistol very quietly and stroked and tapped the leather sheath for a moment.

  “All of those who want to can come into the city with me. Come along,” said the captain. “We’ll need a guard posted here at the rocket, of course, and we’ll go armed, in case anything untoward happens.”

  The men counted off. Fourteen of them wanted to go along, including Biggs, who laughed when he included himself and waved his bottle. Six others stayed behind.

  The party moved out into the night, through the moonlight, saying not a word, Captain Wilder and Jeff Spender in the lead, Biggs bringing up the rear, stumbling and swearing.

  “Here we go!” Biggs shouted.

  They stood on the outer rim of the dreaming dead city in the light of the racing twin moons. Their shadows, under them, were double shadows. They did not breathe, or it seemed they did not, perhaps, for a long time. They were waiting for something to stir in the dead city, some gray form to rise, some ancient, ancestral shape to come galloping across the vacant sea bottom on an ancient, armored steed of impossible lineage, of unbelievable derivation.

  Spender filled the streets with his eyes and his mind. People moved like blue vapor lights on the cobbled avenues, and there were faint murmurs of sound, and odd animals scurrying across the gray-red sands. Each window was given a person who leaned from it and waved slowly, as if under a timeless water, at some moving form in the fathoms of space below the moonsilvered towers. Music was played on some inner ear, and Spender imagined the shape of such instruments to evoke such music. The land was haunted.

  “Hey!” shouted Biggs, standing tall, his hands around his open mouth. He pointed his face at the city. “Hey, you people in there, you!”

  “Biggs!” said the captain.

  Biggs quieted.

  They walked forward on a tiled avenue. They were all whispering now, for it was like entering a vast open library or a mausoleum in which the wind lived and over which the stars shone. The captain talked. He wondered where the people had gone, and what they had been, and who their kings were and how they died? And he wondered, quietly aloud, how they had built this city to last the ages through, and had they ever come to Earth? Were they ancestors of

  Earth men, ten thousand years removed? And had they loved and hated similar loves and similar hates, and done similar silly things when silly things were done?

  Nobody moved. The moons held and froze them, the wind beat slowly around them, the sand shifted in little tremors over their feet.

  “Lord Byron,” said Jeff Spender.

  “Lord who?” The captain turned and regarded the man.

  “Lord Byron, a Nineteenth Century poet. He wrote a poem a long time ago. that fits this city and how the Martians may feel, if there’s anything left of them to feel. It might have been written by the last Martian poet.”

  The men stood motionless, their shadows under them. The captain said, “How does it go, Spender?”

  “What, sir?”

  “The poem, how does it go?”

  Spender shifted, put out his hands to remember, squinted silently a moment; then, remembering, his slow quiet voice repeated the words and the men listened to everything he said:

  So we’ll no more a-roving So late into the night

  Though the heart be still as loving

  And the moon be still as bright

  The city was gray and high and motionless. The men’s faces were turned in the light.

  For the sword outwears its sheath

  And the soul wears out the breast

  And the heart must pause to breathe

  And love itself must rest.

  Though the night was made for loving

  And the day returns too soon

  Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

  By the light of the moon.

  Without a word, the Earth men stood in the center of the city. It was a clear night. There was riot a sound, except the wind. At their feet lay a tile court, worked into the shape of ancient animals and peoples. They stood looking down upon it.

  Biggs, made a noise in his throat. His eyes were dull. He groped out thick senseless fingers, shuffled forward upon the tiles, there to hesitate. His hands went up to his neck, he choked several times, shut his eyes, bent, and a thick rush of fluid filled his mouth, came out, fell to and lay upon the tiles, covering the patterns. Biggs repeated this twice and a sharp stench filled the quiet air.

  Nobody moved to help Biggs. He went on being sick.

  Spender stared for a moment, then turned and walked off into the avenues of the city, lost to their sight, alone in the moonlight. Never once did he pause to look back at the gathered men there.

  They turned in at four in the morning. They lay down upon the blankets with pillows under their heads and shut their eyes and breathed the quiet air. Captain Wilder sat feeding the fire little sticks. His hands hung down between his muscular legs. He watched the fire steadily.

  McClure opened his eyes for a moment. “Are you sleeping, sir?”

  “Never you mind.” The captain smiled faintly. “I’m waiting for Spender.”

  “Isn’t he back, sir?”

  Captain Wilder shook his head.

  McClure thought it over a moment. “You know, sir, I don’t think he’ll ever come back. I don’t know how I know it, but that’s the way I feel about him, sir, he’ll never come back.”

  McClure rolled over into sleep. The fire crackled and died out.

  Spender did not return in the following week. The captain sent out a party for him, but they came back saying they didn’t know where he could have gone. He would be back when he got good and ready. He was a sorehead, they said. To the devil with him.

  The captain said nothing, but wrote it down in the log….

  It was a morning that might have been a Monday or a Tuesday or any day on Mars. Biggs was sitting at the edge of the canal, now and again lifting his bare feet up and peering at them while he spread the toes with his fingers. Then he hung the feet back down into the cool water and sat there.

  A man came walking along the rim of the canal. The man threw a shadow down upon Biggs and Biggs looked up. “Well, I’ll be blistered!” said Biggs.

  “I’m the last Martian,” said the man, taking out a gun.

  “What did you say?” asked Biggs.

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Cut it. What kind of joke is that, Spender?”

  “Stand up and take it in the stomach.”

  “For Christ’s sake, put that gun away.”

  Spender pulled the trigger only once. Biggs sat on the edge of the canal for a moment before he leaned forward and fell into the water. The body drifted with slow unconcern under the slow tides of the canal. It went away and down, making a hollow bubbling sound that ceased after a moment.

  Spender shoved his gun into its holster and walked away quietly. The sun was shining down upon Mars. He felt it burn his hands and slide over the sides of his tight face. He did not run, he walked as if nothing was new except the daylight. It was good to take it easy. He walked down to the rocket and some of the men were having a freshly cooked breakfast under a shelter built by Cookie.

  “Here comes the Lonely One,” somebody said.

  “Hello, Spender! Long time no see.”

  The four men at the table regarded the silent man who stood looking back at them.

  “You and them shoddy ruins,” said Cookie,
stirring a black substance in a crock. “You’re like a dog

  in a boneyard.” “Maybe.” Spender sat down and said, “I’ve been finding out things. What would you say if I said I’d

  found a Martian prowling around?”

  The four men laid down their forks.

  “Did you? Where?”“I’m not saying I did, I just said ‘supposing.’ ”

  The four men relaxed. Cookie went on stirring the stuff in the crock. “Well, supposing,” said

  Cheroke, at the table, waiting.

  “How would you feel if you were a Martian and people came to your land and started tearing it up?” asked Spender.

  “I know exactly how I’d feel,” said Cheroke. “I’ve got some Cherokee blood in me. My grandfather told me a lot of things about the Oklahoma Territory. If there’s a Martian around, I’m all for him.”

  “What about you other men?” asked Spender, carefully.

  Nobody said anything, but the silence they maintained was talk enough. Catch as catch can, finder’s keepers, if the other fellow turns his cheek slap it hard. Et cetera.

  “Well,” said Spender. “I’ve found a Martian.”

  “Where?” The men squinted at him.

  “Up in the ruins. I didn’t think I’d find him. I didn’t intend to find him. I don’t know what he was doing there. I’ve been living in a little valley town for about a week, learning how to read the ancient books and looking at their old art forms. And one day I saw this Martian. He stood there for a moment and then he was gone. He didn’t come back for another day. And I sat around, learning how to read the old writing and the Martian came back, each time a little nearer, until, on the day I learned how to read the old writing—it’s an amazingly simple language to learn, and there are tile picture-graphs to help you, and old song-spools you can listen to.”

  “On that day when I learned the language, the Martian appeared before me. He said to me, ‘Give me your boots,’ and I gave him my boots and he said, ‘Give me your shirt and all the rest of your clothes,’ and I gave him all of that, and then he looked at me and he said, ‘Give me your gun,’ and I gave him my gun. Then he said, ‘Now come along, and watch what happens.’ And the Martian walked down into camp and he’s here now.”