The Steps of the Sun

by Walter Tevis

  I crossed the room to my full-length mirror, taken from the Isabel’s gym. I looked at myself for the first time in months. I saw John the Baptist. My hair was wild and sweaty, and my beard was a bramble. I was all bone and sinew and deep tan—angular and as tough-looking as leather. The most startling thing was my eyes, which were piercing and prophetic—the eyes of a mad seer. My prick and balls were heavy, and the hair on my abdomen and my legs was curled like wires; my eyes were the eyes of some mad old Jew come straight from the desert with his brains permanently addled by the force of the sun and of Jehovah.

  I liked the way I looked and I did not want to put on clothes. I had come into the cabin with the thought of dressing myself, but now I did not want to. I wasn’t ready to don civilization with blue jeans and Adidas. I might never be ready.

  I walked outside and ignored the crew members who stood there silently waiting for me. I walked between Mimi and Charlie, looking at neither of them, and across the bare surface toward my field of grass. I kept walking, crossing the field and coming back onto obsidian and then walking to another field. I turned back. I could see them standing, looking in my direction. For a moment I was furious and waved at them to go away. But of course they didn’t. In agitation I lay on the grass and held myself rigid, waiting for its tendrils to take hold, waiting for the rocking motion. But nothing happened. There was no movement beneath my body. After a frustrating twenty minutes, I stood and began walking back, crossing my first grass field again. I stopped in its middle and lay down again, but there was no hope in me. I got nothing from the grass.

  I got up and continued walking, a bit less angry and a bit reconciled, until I came back to the crew of the Isabel, still standing by the cabin porch. They looked at me strangely but no one spoke. I nodded roughly and went past them and back into the cabin. I got my jeans and put them on. I slipped my Adidas over my bare feet and then put on a gray tee-shirt. Then I went to my pitcher of water, poured some into the bowl and washed my face and the back of my sun-wrinkled neck. The skin was shockingly rough to the touch.

  I ran my fingers through my hair several times, wincing as I pulled out tangles. Then I looked in the mirror again and lit a cigar. I was now John the Baptist, Chairman of the Board. I took scissors and hacked off some of the bushiness at the sides of the beard, letting bunches of hair fall on the moonwood floor, watching myself in the mirror as I did so until what I saw was less a prophet than Ben Belson himself. Then I stopped, before all prophecy and mysticism had left my face. I did not want to forget how my bloodstream had been fed for two months, nor how my sexual self had spurted a seminal fountain that very dawn.

  I stepped out onto the porch. They were standing around silently. When they saw me come out looking near-civilized and dressed again, I could see the relief on their faces. Mimi’s thin features lit up and Charlie smiled gently at me, clearly glad to find me more recognizable.

  Mimi was carrying what looked like a gym bag. She set it on the edge of the porch, unzipped it, and brought out two bottles of Mumm’s and some champagne glasses. We all watched while she undid the wires around the corks and then blasted them out of the bottles like miniature Isabels. She poured mine first and handed it to me. I held it and watched the way Fomalhaut’s blue light sparkled on its fizz. When the others all had glasses I held mine aloft for a toast. “To the United States,” I said. “Hear, hear,” Charlie said, and we drank them off. The taste was strange to my subdued tongue, acquainted of late mostly with salads. The fizz in my throat brought back New York, the opera, and women with white shoulders.

  “Well,” I said, “how did they like our uranium?”

  At first nobody answered. Finally Charlie spoke up, a little grimly. “They didn’t, Captain.”

  “Call me Ben,” I said. “What do you mean they didn’t like it?”

  “It’s still on board.”

  I stared at him.

  “That’s right,” Charlie said. “They wouldn’t let us take it off.”

  I permitted myself a quiet explosion. “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  “The uranium was classified as a dangerous import,” Mimi said. “We were lucky to stay out of jail.”

  I could see it. The energy lobbies, and Baynes in the Senate. I tossed off the rest of my champagne and held my glass out to Mimi. As she filled it I looked over her shoulder toward the field of Belson grass and gritted my teeth. Biting the umbilical cord. It had to be.

  I drank off the second glass of champagne and then I said to Charlie, “Do you have a fresh cigar?”

  “I sure do, Ben,” he said, and gave me a Sacre Fidel.

  I nodded thanks to him and saw relief on his face and the faces of the others. It can be a cause of tension to find a naked madman greeting you right after planetfall. “Still on board,” I said. “Son of a bitch.”

  “You’ll be arrested when you go back, Ben,” Charlie said. “The only reason we’re not in jail is we had to come get you. They couldn’t leave you out here to die.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “The U.S. District Court,” Mimi said. “In Miami. The hearing took a week.”

  “Someone was on board the ship, with some experts,” Charlie said, “while we were in court. There was talk of unloading the Isabel into a government warehouse, but the Sons of Denver started picketing. We were in custody awhile.”

  “What about my lawyers?” I said. “What about Mel and Met Luk…?”

  “We couldn’t even see them,” Mimi said. “They were under an injunction.” She shook her head angrily and finished her champagne. “I got in touch with Howard’s lawyer and he told me there was nothing he could do. He said you were clearly in violation of the law. Then I got Whan and Summers on the phone…”

  “What did they say?”

  “They couldn’t touch it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking, Baynes got to them. He would have plugged the holes. I lit my cigar. Things were serious. I was warming to the fight.

  “What about my other people?” I said. “I told you to call Earth the minute you got into the warp.”

  “We did,” Charlie said. “We sent your message to Dolum and Flynn and this is what we got.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to me:

  PUBLIC LAW 229BR764 of MARCH, 2064, FORBIDS BENJAMIN BELSON THE USE OF COUNSEL. FOREMENTIONED IS NO LONGER A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES. HE HAS BEEN DECLARED A DANGEROUS ALIEN UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL LAWS OF PIRACY…

  “Piracy!” I said. I have to admit it was kind of a thrill. I had grown a beard just in time.

  But my citizenship! What in hell had happened to all my friends?

  …AND THE FIRM OF DOLUM AND FLYNN IS UNDER INJUNCTION TO SEVER ALL TIES WITH THE STATELESS PIRATE, BENJAMIN BELSON. THIS MESSAGE CONSTITUTES A NOTICE OF THE SEVERANCE OF THIS FIRM’S TIES WITH ALL CORPORATE HOLDINGS AND ENTERPRISES ON BEHALF OF THE AFOREMENTIONED BELSON.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  “I didn’t believe it at first,” Charlie said.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said. “I’ve got to pack.” I believed it. I had just underestimated Baynes and whoever was on his side.

  “You know, Captain,” Charlie said, “driving over here from the ship was… wonderful. Bad as our news is, it’s great to be here again. Back on Earth I would think about the sky here, and the quiet…”

  “Are you trying to tell me something?” I said.

  “You could stay,” he said. “On Earth they’ll put you in prison. Belson is a whole lot better than that.”

  “We could drop you off at Juno,” Mimi said. “That place is an Eden…”

  “Crew,” I said, “I’m getting back to New York.” I chomped down on Charlie’s cigar and inhaled deeply. I was making plans. I felt totally human again. I puffed the cigar and stroked my beard. “Let’s get my stuff back on board. Let’s do it fast.”

  ***

  Getting those Nautilus machines onto the jeep and back to the ship was a nuisance, but I wasn’t going t
o leave them behind. I wanted to be in top shape when we landed at Islamorada. For a moment I pictured myself wearing a tee-shirt in Washington when I started knocking on doors. I wanted them to see my muscles, those whey-faced charlatans. Make the bastards walk the plank.

  We got the machines bolted back in place in the ship’s gym and I had Annie take charge of harvesting what she could of my corn and beans and the other stuff. It was sad to see a strange face as pilot, but Ruth was gone, along with her brother, Howard. The new pilot was a quiet little Japanese named Betty. She looked competent enough, but I missed Ruth.

  After the ship was ready for takeoff, I told everyone else to stay on board and I went out of the ship one last time. I walked slowly over to my field of grass and stood by its edge. Then I squatted down and held the palms of both hands against the tips of the blades. I felt them touch me back.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for feeding me.”

  The grass was silent.

  “I have to leave you now, Love,” I said. “I may never come back.”

  I got up and walked to the ship.

  We were strapped down and lifting off in ten minutes. I had my endolin concentrate in the little gym bag that Mimi had brought the champagne in. My red computer was back on my stateroom desk, ready to continue with this memoir. My head was clear. I felt ready to move.

  Chapter 9

  We orbited a couple of times and then I gave the order to slip into warp. I began formulating messages to Earth in my head as the universe outside the portholes began to wrinkle.

  Warp travel is a weird business, and although the physics of it doesn’t defy comprehension it does transfix it. Trying to picture it can glaze your eyes as speedily as three martinis on an empty stomach. It’s a matter of pressuring your vehicle into a place where the effects of movement are grossly exaggerated. Seven-league boots. It’s called “analogy travel” by some. When you’re doing it there’s a side effect that makes message-sending fast and easy; there’s no speed-of-light limit because messages don’t travel from or into spacewarp; they are, in a sense, already there.

  From Belson there were the regular Einstein limits to contend with. I didn’t even have a radio. It would take twenty-three years for an FM “I love you, Isabel” to have gotten to New York, and another twenty-three for a geriatric “Too late, Ben” to come back. Like impotence, only worse.

  When we were settled into the warp and the sense of no-time and loose space began to come down on us like the lull at the end of a party, Charlie asked me if I wanted to log the trip in chemical sleep.

  “No, Charlie,” I said. “Let’s make this flight on coffee.”

  My first message was to Isabel’s old address:

  HONEY, I’VE BEEN A SON OF A BITCH. I’M SORRY. I LOVE YOU. WILL YOU MARRY ME?

  BEN

  That felt good even though it had little hope of reaching her. Then I sent one to a friend in Chicago and told him to telephone Arnie my lawyer at his home:

  TELL MEL DOLUM I WANT MY CITIZENSHIP BACK. I WANT HIM TO REPRESENT ME AND IF HE CAN’T I WANT HIM TO GET ME A LAWYER WHO CAN. TELL HIM TO CALL BELSON ENTERPRISES IN PEKING AND HAVE THEM SEND INFORMATION ABOUT THE LAWS OF PIRACY AND HOW I CAN GET TO BE A CITIZEN AGAIN.

  The messages were sent scrambled. I had left decoders with the friend in Chicago, with Isabel, and with my brokers, to keep messages private in case I wanted to transmit buy-and-sell orders or do business in general.

  I sent a few more messages on the lines of the one to Arnie, trying to find out about my bank accounts and how long it would take to get the uranium unloading problem solved. After about twenty hours my first reply came:

  MISS CRAWFORD NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS.

  Well. What had I expected? I sent a message to Aaron, my accountant, telling him to try finding her for me.

  Then I got a reply from Mel:

  SORRY, BEN. I CAN’T HELP. THEY’LL DISBAR ME IF I ADVISE YOU.

  I smashed my Spode coffee cup on the deck when I read that one.

  And right away this came in:

  THE ISABEL IS FORBIDDEN TO LAND AT THE ISLAMORADA SPACEPORT BECAUSE OF HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS. REPEAT: DO NOT LAND AT ISLAMORADA.

  The sons of bitches. I added forty pounds to the spring tension of the Nautilus double shoulder machine, strapped myself in and heaved against a hundred-sixty-pound drag thirty times. Goddamn, I’m strong when I’m pissed. My muscles bulged beautifully. I felt ready for violence.

  By the time we came out of the warp and could see Sol the size of a dollar in the ports from the bridge, I had received a greater accumulation of negative messages than Moses had on Sinai. All of my bank accounts were under court seizure. My apartment was sealed off and barricaded. There was a contingent of mounted police on round-the-clock vigil at Islamorada to arrest me if I landed there. Anna was suing for more alimony. My house in Georgia had been burned to the red clay under it by outraged conservationists. The U.S. Public Health Service and the Narcotics Bureau had warrants out for me as a dangerous drug addict. Isabel had gone to London in Hamlet in the company of the young actor who played Laertes. (I thought of trying to negotiate a Mafia hit on him when we got in orbit. It would have been a first.) Hamlet had closed in London; Isabel had left no address. My safe-deposit boxes, stock and bond certificates, and Aunt Myra’s set of Haviland china were all under government seals. As far as my legal status was concerned, any thug could probably knife me on the streets and not be prosecuted. Belson Enterprises in Peking, Belson Ltd. in Montreal, and Belson and Co. in New York were all shut down and their directors strapped by court orders. My wood lots stood idle. My car had been sold. The Pierre couldn’t take me.

  “Let’s go into an orbit,” I said to Betty. “East to west.” She bobbed her head down over the console and began punching figures in. “I want to make a few passes over New York and Los Angeles while I decide where to set down.”

  ***

  Don’t ever trim your beard in free fall. While we were getting into orbit I grabbed a pair of scissors and tried it. It was like leveling a table by sawing the legs: I wound up with a lopsided effect, but stopped in time.

  We circled at a hundred twenty miles up; it was nighttime in North America, and although there was little cloud cover it was shocking how few lights there were to see, compared with the photographs taken fifty years ago from the weapons carriers and spacelabs that used to coast around up there. You could barely make out New York, Chicago and Los Angeles; they looked like small towns. Well, they were on their way to being small towns.

  I sat at one of the tables on the bridge puffing a cigar and watching a dark North America go by, saw the penumbra of dawn over the Pacific and then morning and then noon over Australia and South China. What a lovely blue ball that Earth is! You can’t beat it for a place to live. Even with all those bastards down there trying to do me in.

  After our fourth orbit I made my decision. “Betty,” I said, “can you find Washington and bring us down there?”

  She didn’t look up from the console. “Washington, D.C.?”

  “Yes.”

  “Certainly, Captain. On the White House lawn?”

  “We don’t want that kind of attention. How bad a hole would the Isabel make in a football field?”

  “Pretty bad. More crater than hole.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “If there’s anybody there—a night football game or something—can you change your mind and pull back up into orbit?”

  She turned her rice-paper face up to me and said, “Are you out of your mind, Captain?”

  “I was afraid of that.” I looked at my watch. August 23, a little past midnight. Well, there wouldn’t be any ball games. “Get out your Washington map and bring us down in Aynsley Field. How long will it take?”

  “One hour twenty-three minutes after we leave orbit.”

  She was very sharp. “How many G’s?”

  “Twelve at maximum, for thirty seconds.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let�
��s do it after one more time around. I’ve got some things to pack.”

  “Yes sir, Captain.”

  Bill put Washington into the course console and brought a map of the city onto the screen. He turned lacquered knobs. The two coordinate lines appeared and jiggled a bit and then settled on a black rectangle not far from the Congressional Shelter Complex. Then he pushed a lever in slowly and the map expanded until the rectangles filled the screen and the outlines of Aynsley Field were recognizable. You could see the grid lines of the football field, and the end zones. He gripped a handle and a clear black dot appeared on the screen; he twisted the handle, pushed it forward and the dot found the center of the field. Then he threw the “Lock” switch and the dot locked itself in place. “All set, Betty,” he said.

  Betty threw a couple of switches and said, “We have our trajectory, Captain, and our atmosphere entry point.”

  I really loved all this. Like Ruth, I’d watched spaceship shows on TV as a kid. Even though the actual doing of it-determining a point to drop out of orbit and a trajectory to ride down on—was no more difficult than getting a manicure, there was panache to it. Especially with our bright-red Chinese equipment.

  I flipped on the intercom. “This is the Captain. We’ll drop out of orbit next time around, in about two hours. Tie everything down for twelve G’s.” Then I drew a breath. “I’ll be the first person off the ship, and I’m going to run for it. You people are all still citizens and they won’t give you too hard a time. I’m the one they want. I’ll get you your salaries and bonuses as soon as I’m able. For God’s sake don’t tell anyone we’ve been to Aminidab. The important thing is to get the uranium out of here. We’ll all be rich. I’ll be in touch.”

  The endolin packets were still in Mimi’s gym bag in my stateroom. The gym had a first-aid cabinet; I got a handful of big stretch-Synlon bandages out and, winding them around myself, managed to tape about eight pounds of concentrated endolin to my chest and two or three pounds to each arm. Enough for all the hangovers in Los Angeles. I left my legs free, for running.