Martians, Go Home

by Fredric Brown

  “Why’d yon drink them then?”

  “Irrelevant to what we’re discussing. That leaves two possibilities—you’re really there or I’m crazy.”

  The Martian made a rude noise. “And what makes you think those possibilities are mutually exclusive? I’m here all right. But I don’t know whether or not you’re crazy and I don’t care.”

  Luke sighed. It seemed to take a lot of sighing to get along with a Martian. Or a lot of drinking. His glass was empty. He went and refilled it. Straight whiskey again, but this time he put in a couple of ice cubes.

  Before he sat down again, he had a thought. He put down his drink, said, “Excuse me a minute,” and went outside. If the Martian was real and was really a Martian, there ought to be a spaceship somewhere around.

  Or would it prove anything if there was, he wondered. If he was hallucinating the Martian why couldn’t he hallucinate a spaceship as well?

  But there wasn’t any spaceship, hallucinated or real. The moonlight was bright and the country was flat; he could see a long way. He walked around the shack and around his car parked behind it, so he could see in all directions. No spaceship.

  He went back inside, made himself comfortable and took a sizable swallow of his drink, and then pointed an accusing finger at the Martian. “No spaceship,” he said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then how’d you get here?”

  “None of your damned business, but I’ll tell you. I kwimmed.”

  ’What do you mean?”

  “Like this,” said the Martian. And he was gone from the chair. The word “like” had come from the chair and the word “this” came from behind Luke.

  He whirled around. The Martian was sitting on the edge of the gas range.

  “My God,” Luke said. “Teleportation.”

  The Martian vanished. Luke turned back and found him in the chair again.

  “Not teleportation,” the Martian said. “Kwimming. You need apparatus to teleport. Kwimming’s mental. Reason you can’t do it is you’re not smart enough.”

  Luke took another drink. “You got here all the way from Mars that way?”

  “Sure, just a second before I knocked on your door.”

  “Have you kwimmed here before? Say—” Luke pointed a finger again, “I’ll bet you have, lots of you, and that accounts for superstitions about elves and—”

  “Nuts,” said the Martian: “You people got rocks in your heads, that’s what accounts for your superstitions. I’ve never been here before. None of us has. We just learned the technique of long-distance kwimming. Just short-range before. To do it interplanetary, you got to savvy hokima.”

  Luke pointed a finger again. “Got you. How come, then, you speak English?”

  The Martian’s lip curled. It was a lip well adapted to curling. “I speak all your simple silly languages. All of them spoken on your radio programs anyway, and whatever other ones there are I can pick up in an hour or so apiece. Easy stuff. You’d never learn Martian in a thousand years.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Luke said. “No wonder you don’t think much of us if you get your ideas about us from our radio programs. I’ll admit most of them stink.”

  “Then so do most of you or you wouldn’t put them on the air.”

  Luke took a firm grip on his temper and another drink from his glass. He was beginning, finally, to believe that this really was a Martian and not a figment of his own imagination or insanity. And besides, it struck him suddenly, what did he have to lose in assuming so? If he was crazy, that was that. But if this was really a Martian, then he was missing a hell of an opportunity for a science fiction writer.

  “What’s Mars like?” he asked.

  “None of your damn business, Mack.”

  Luke took another pull at his drink. He counted ten and tried to be as calm and reasonable as he could. “Listen,” he said. “I was rude at first, because I was surprised. But I’m sorry and I apologize. Why can’t we be friends?”

  “Why should we? You’re a member of an inferior race.”

  “Because if for no other reason it’ll make this conversation more pleasant for both of us.”

  “Not for me, Mack. I like disliking people, I like quarreling. If you’re going to go namby-pamby and pally-wally on me, I’ll go find someone else to chin with.”

  “Wait, don’t—” Luke suddenly realized that he was taking exactly the wrong tack if he wanted the Martian to stay. He said, “Get the hell out of here then, if you feel that way.”

  The Martian grinned. “That’s better. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Why did you come to Earth?”

  “That’s none of your business either, but it’ll be a pleasure to give you a hint. Why do people go to zoos here on your lousy planet?”

  “How long do you plan to stay?”

  The Martian cocked his head sidewise. “You’re a hard guy to convince, Mack. I’m not Information, Please. What I do or why I do it is none of your business. One thing I didn’t come here for is to teach kindergarten.”

  Luke’s glass was empty again. He filled it.

  He glared at the Martian. If the guy wanted to quarrel, why not? “You little green wart,” he said, “damned if I don’t think I ought to—”

  “You ought to what? Do something to me? You and who else?”

  “Me and a camera and a flash gun,” Luke said, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. “I’m going to get at least one picture of you. Then when I get it developed—”

  He put down his glass and hurried into the bedroom. Luckily his camera was loaded and there was a bulb in the flash gun; he’d stuck them in his suitcase, not in the expectation of shooting a Martian but because Benson had told him coyotes often prowled quite close to the slack at night and he’d hoped to get a shot of one.

  He hurried back, set the camera quickly, raised it an one hand and the flash gun in the other.

  “Want me to pose for you?” asked the Martian. He put his thumbs in his ears and waggled his ten other fingers, crossed his eyes and stuck out a long greenish yellow tongue.

  Luke took the shot.

  He put another bulb in the gun, wound the film, aimed the camera again. But the Martian wasn’t there. His voice, from another corner of the room, said, “One’s enough, Mack. Don’t crowd your luck by boring me any worse.”

  Luke whirled and aimed the camera that way, but by the time he’d raised the flash gun, the Martian was gone. And a voice behind him told him not to make more of an ass of himself than he already was.

  Luke gave up and put down the camera. Anyway, he had one shot on the film. When it was developed, it would either show a Martian or it wouldn’t. Too bad it hadn’t been color film, but you can’t have everything.

  He picked up his glass again. Sat down with it, because suddenly the floor was becoming just a bit unsteady. He took another drink to steady it.

  “Shay,” he said. “I mean, say. You catch our radio programs. What’s the matter with television? You people behind the times?”

  “What’s television, Mack?”

  Luke told him.

  “Waves like that don’t carry that far,” the Martian said. “Thank Argeth. It’s bad enough to listen to you people. Now that I’ve seen one of you and know what you look like—”

  “Nuts,” said Luke. “You never invented television.”

  “Of course not. Don’t need it. If anything’s going on anywhere on our world that we want to see, we just kwim there. Listen, did I just happen to find a freak, or are all people here as hideous as you are?”

  Luke almost choked over a sip he was taking from his drink. “Mean to shay—say, you think you’re worth looking at?”

  “To any other Martian, I am.”

  “I’ll bet you drive the little girls wild,” said Luke, “That is, if you’re bisexual like us and there are Martian girls.”

  “We’re bisexual but not, thank Argeth, like you. Do you people really carry on in the utterly di
sgusting way your radio characters do? Are you in what you people call love with one of your females?”

  “None of your damn business,” Luke told him.

  “Thats what you think,” said the Martian.

  And he vanished.

  Luke stood up—not too steadily—and looked around to see if he had kwimmed to another part of the room. He hadn’t.

  Luke sat down, shook his head to clear it, and took another drink, to fuddle it.

  Thank God or Argeth, he thought, that he’d got that picture. Tomorrow morning he’d drive back to Los Angeles and get it developed. If it showed an empty chair, he’d put himself in the hands of a psychiatrist, but fast.

  If it showed a Martian—Well, if it did, he’d decide then what he was going to do about it, if anything. Meanwhile, getting drunk as fast as he could was the only sensible thing he could do. He was already too drunk to risk driving back tonight and the faster he drank himself to sleep the sooner he’d wake up in the morning.

  He blinked his eyes and when he opened them again, there was the Martian back in the chair, grinning at him. “I was just in that pigsty of a bedroom, reading your correspondence. Foo, what trash.”

  Correspondence? He didn’t have any correspondence here with him, Luke thought. And then he remembered that he did have. A little packet of three letters from Rosalind, the ones she’d written him while he was in New York tree months ago, seeing his publisher and talking him out of more money on the book he was now trying to start. He’d stayed a week, mostly to renew his acquaintances among magazine editors while he was there; he’d written Rosalind every day and she’d written him three times. They were the only letters he’d ever had from her and he’d saved them carefully, had put them in the suitcase thinking to reread them here if he got too lonely.

  “Argeth, what mush,” said the Martian. “And what a damned silly way you people have of writing your language. Took me a full minute to break down your alphabet and correlate the sounds and letters. Imagine a language that has the same sound spelled three different ways—as in true, too and through.”

  “God damn it,” said Luke, “you had no business reading my mail.”

  “Chip, chip,” said the Martian. “Anything’s my business that I make my business and you wouldn’t tell me about your love life, Sweetie-pie, Darling, Honeybun.”

  “You really did read it then, you little green wart. For a dime, I’d—”

  “You’d what?” asked the Martian contemptuously.

  “Toss you all the way back to Mars, that’s what,” Luke said.

  The Martian laughed raucously. “Save your breath, Mack, for making love to your Rosalind. Bet you think she meant all that hogwash she fed you in those letters. Bet you think she’s as dopey about you as you are about her.”

  “She is as dopey—I mean, God damn it—”

  “Don’t get an ulcer, Mack. Her address was on the envelope. I’ll kwim there right now and find out for you. Hold your hat.”

  “You stay right—”

  Luke was alone again.

  And his glass was empty so he made his way across to the sink and refilled it. He was already drunker than he’d been in years, but the quicker he knocked himself out the better. If possible, before the Martian came back, or kwimmed back, if he really was coming or kwimming back.

  Because he just couldn’t take any more. Hallucination or reality, he couldn’t help himself, he would throw the Martian right through the window. And maybe start an interplanetary war.

  Back in the chair he started on the drink. This one should do it.

  “Hey, Mack. Still sober enough to talk?”

  He opened his eyes, wondering when he had closed them. The Martian was back.

  “Go ’way,” he said. “Get lost. Tomorrow I’ll—”

  “Straighten up, Mack. I got news for you, straight from Hollywood. That chick of yours is home and she’s lonesome for you all right.”

  “Yeah? Tole you she loved me, didden I? You li’l green—”

  “So lonesome for you she had someone in to console her. Tall blond guy. She called him Harry.”

  It partly sobered Luke for a second. Rosalind did have a friend named Harry, but it was platonic; they were friends because they worked in the same department at Paramount. He’d make sure and then tell off the Martian for tattling.

  “Harry Sunderman?” he asked. “Slender, snappy dresser, always wears loud sport coats—?”

  “Nope, this Harry wasn’t that Harry, Mack. Not if he always wears loud sport coats. This Harry wasn’t wearing anything but a wrist watch.”

  Luke Devereaux roared and got to his feet, lunged at the Martian. With both hands extended he grabbed at a green neck.

  And both hands went right through it and closed on one another.

  The little green man grinned up at him and stuck out his tongue. Then pulled it in again. “Want to know what they were doing, Mack? Your Rosalind and her Harry?”

  Luke didn’t answer. He staggered back for his drink and gulped the rest of it down.

  And gulping it down was the last thing he remembered when he woke up in the morning. He was lying on the bed; he’d got that far somehow. But he was atop the covers, not under them, and fully dressed even to his shoes.

  He had a God-awful headache and a hellish taste in his mouth.

  He sat up and looked around fearfully. No little green man.

  Made his way to the living room door and looked around in there. Came back and looked at the stove, wondering if coffee would be worth the effort of making it.

  Decided that it wouldn’t since he could get some already made on his way back to town, less than a mile after he got on the main highway. And the sooner he got there and the sooner thereafter he got back to town the better. He wouldn’t even clean up or pack. He could come back later and get his stuff. Or ask someone to come and get it for him if he was going to be in the loony bin for a while.

  Right now all he wanted was out of here and to hell with everything else. He wouldn’t even bathe or shave until he was home; he had an extra razor in his apartment and all of his good clothes were still there anyway.

  And after that, what?

  Well, after that he’d worry about what after that. He’d be nearly enough over his hang-over to think things out calmly.

  Walking through the other room he saw the camera, hesitated briefly and then picked it up to take along. Might as well, before he did his heavy thinking, get that picture developed. There was still a chance in a thousand that, despite the fact that his hands had passed through it, an actual Martian and not an hallucination had been in that chair. Maybe Martians had stranger powers than being, able to kwim.

  Yes, if there was a Martian on that photograph it would change all his thinking, so he might as well eliminate the possibility before making any decisions.

  If there wasn’t—well, the sensible thing to do if he could bring himself to do it would be to phone Margie and ask her the name of the psychiatrist she’d tried to get him to go to several times during their marriage. She’d been a nurse in several mental institutions before they were married and she’d gone to work in another one when she’d walked out on him. And she’d told him that she’d majored in psychology at college and, if she could have afforded the extra years of schooling, would have tried to become a psychiatrist herself.

  He went out and locked the door, walked around the house to his car.

  The little green man was sitting on the car’s radiator.

  “Hi, Mack,” he said. “You look like hell, but I guess you earned the right to. Drinking is sure a disgusting habit.”

  Luke turned and went back to the door, let himself in again. He got the bottle and poured himself a pickup drink and drank it. Before, he’d fought off the idea of taking one. If he was still hallucinating, though, he needed one. And, once his throat had quit burning, it did make him feel better physically. Not much, but a little.

  He locked the house again and went back to his c
ar. The Martian was still there. Luke got in and started the engine.

  Then be leaned his head out of the window. “Hey,” he said, “how can I see the road with you sitting there?”

  The Martian looked back and sneered. “What do I care whether you can see the road or not? If you have an accident it won’t hurt me.”

  Luke sighed and started the car. He drove the stretch of primitive road to the highway with his head stuck out of the window. Hallucination or no, he couldn’t see through the little green man so he had to see past him.

  He hesitated whether or not to stop at the diner for coffee, decided that he might as well. Maybe the Martian would stay where he was. If he didn’t, if he entered the diner too, well, nobody else would be able to see him anyway so what did it matter? Except that he’d have to remember not to talk to him.

  The Martian jumped down when he parked the car and followed him into the diner. There weren’t, as happened, any other customers. Just a sallow-faced counterman in a dirty white apron.

  Luke sat en a stool. The Martian jumped up and stood on the adjacent stool, leaned his elbows on the counter.

  The counterman turned and looked, not at Luke. He groaned, “Oh, God, another one of ’em.”

  “Huh?” said Luke. “Another what?” He found himself gripping the edge of the counter so tightly that it hurt his fingers.

  “Another Goddam Martian,” said the clerk. “Can’t you see it?”

  Luke took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You mean there are more of them?”

  The counterman stared at Luke in utter amazement. “Mister, where were you last night? Out on the desert alone and without a radio or TV? Jesus, there are a million of them.”

  2.

  The counterman was wrong. It was estimated later that there were approximately a billion of them.

  And let’s leave Luke Devereaux for a while—we’ll get back to him later—and take a look at things that were happening elsewhere while Luke was entertaining his visitor at the Benson shack near Indio.