Martians, Go Home

by Fredric Brown

  Luke smiled and looked at him through eyes that were, or at least seemed, perfectly calm and sane.

  He said, “I’ll tell you what happened, if you’re really curious. Two months ago I went insane—I think from pressure of trying to force myself to write when I was in a slump and couldn’t. I was in a shack on the desert and I started hallucinating about Martians. I’ve been having hallucinations ever since. Until tonight, when I snapped out of it.”

  “Are you—are you sure they were hallucinations?” the doctor asked. At the same tune he put his hand quietly on the interne’s shoulder. As a signal, a signal to keep quiet. If the patient, in this frame of mind, should look down too suddenly, the trauma might happen all over again, and worse.

  But the interne didn’t get the signal. “Then what,” he asked Luke, “do you call that creature in your lap?” Luke looked down. The Martian looked up and stuck out a long yellow tongue right into Luke’s face. He pulled the tongue back with a loud slurping noise. Then stuck it out again and let its tip vibrate just in front of Luke’s nose.

  Luke looked up and stared at the interne curiously. “There’s nothing in my lap. Are you crazy?”

  10.

  The case of Luke Devereaux, upon which a monograph was later written by Dr. Ellicott H. Snyder (psychiatrist and proprietor of the Snyder Foundation, the asylum for the mentally deranged to which Luke was committed), was probably unique. At least no other case has been authenticated by a reputable alienist in which the patient could both see and hear perfectly but could neither see nor hear Martians.

  There were, of course, a great many people who had the combined afflictions of blindness and deafness. Since Martians could not be felt, smelled or tasted, these otherwise unfortunate people could have no objective or sensory proof of their existence and had to take the word, communicated by whatever means, of those about them that there were such things as Martians. And some of them never did fully believe; one cannot blame them.

  And, of course, there were millions, many millions sane and insane, scientists, laymen and crackpots—who accepted their existence but refused to believe that they were Martians.

  The most numerous of these were the superstitious and the fanatically religious who claimed that the self-styled Martians were really banshees, brownies, daemons, demons, devils, elves, fairies, fays, gnomes, goblins or hob-goblins; imps, jin, kobolds, peris, pixies, powers of darkness or powers of evil; sprites, trolls, unclean spirits or what-have-you.

  All over the world, religions, sects and congregations split over this issue. The Presbyterian Church, for example, found itself split into three separate denominations. There was the Demonist Presbyterian Church, which believed they were devils out of Hell sent to punish us for our sins. There was the Scientific Presbyterian Church, which accepted that they were Martians and that the invasion of Earth by them was no more—or no less—an Act of God than are many of the earthquakes, tidal waves, fires and floods by which, from time to time, He keeps in His hand. And the Revisionist Presbyterian Church, which accepted the basic doctrine of the Demonists but took it a further step and accepted them also as Martians by simply revising their concept of the physical location of Hell. (A small splinter group of Revisionists, calling themselves the Rerevisionists, believed that, since Hell is on Mars, Heaven must be located beneath the everlasting clouds of Venus, our sister planet on the opposite side.)

  Almost every other denomination found itself divided or dividing along similar—or even more startling—lines. The two outstanding exceptions were the Christian Scientists and the Roman Catholics.

  The Church of Christ, Scientist, held most of its membership (and those who did wander away joined other groups rather than form a new group) by proclaiming that the invaders were neither devils nor Martians but the visible and audible product of human error and that if we refused to believe in their existence they would go away. A doctrine, one might note, with considerable parallel to the paranoiac delusion of Luke Devereaux, except that his theory worked, for him.

  The Roman Catholic Church likewise maintained its integrity and a good ninety per cent of its membership due to the common sense or the Infallibility, as you prefer, of the Pope. His proclamation was to the effect that a special diet composed of Catholic theologians and Catholic scientists would be called to determine the position of the Church and that until an official announcement was made Catholics might hold opinions either way. The Diet of Cologne convened within a month and was still in session; since a condition of its adjournment was that a unanimous decision be reached, its deliberations promised to continue indefinitely and meanwhile schism was averted. True, in various countries young girls had Divine if conflicting revelations as to the nature of the Martians and their place and purpose in the universe, but none of them was recognized by the Church or gained more than local adherents. Not even the one in Chile who could show stigmata, the prints of small six-fingered hands, green, in the palms of her own hands.

  Among those who inclined more to superstition than to religion, the number of theories about the Martians was as near as matters infinite. As were suggested methods of dealing with or exorcising them. (The churches at least agreed that, whatever the nature of the Martians, prayer to God to free us from them was indicated.)

  But among the superstitious, books on sorcery, demonology, and black and white magic sold prodigiously. Every known form of thaumaturgy, demonomancy and conjuration was tried, and new forms were invented.

  Among the soothsayers, the practitioners of astrology, numerology and the myriad other forms of prediction from the reading of cards to the study of the entrails of sheep, predicting the day and hour of the departure of the Martians became such an obsession that at no matter what hour they might have left us hundreds of the diviners must have been proved right. And any prognosticator who predicted their departure at any hour within a few days could gain followers, for a few days.

  11.

  “The strangest case of my entire experience, Mrs. Devereaux,” said Dr. Snyder.

  He sat at his expensive mahogany desk in his expensively furnished office, a short, stocky man with piercing eyes in a bland moon face.

  “But why, Doctor?” asked Margie Devereaux. She looked very pretty, sitting straight in a chair made for lounging. A tall girl with honey hair and blue eyes. Slender, but she filled a nurse’s uniform (she had come to the sanitarium directly from her job at the hospital) beautifully in the right places. “I mean, you say you diagnose it as paranoia.”

  “With hysterical blindness and deafness to Martians, yes. I don’t mean the case is complicated, Mrs. Devereaux. But he is the first and only paranoiac I have ever known who is ten times as well off, ten times as well adjusted, as though he were sane. I envy him. I hesitate to try to cure him.”

  “But—”

  “Luke—I’ve got to know him well enough to call him by his first name—has been here a week now. He’s perfectly happy—except that he keeps demanding to see you—and is working beautifully on that Western novel. Eight and ten hours a day. He has completed four chapters of it; I’ve read them and they are excellent. I happen to enjoy Westerns and read several a week and I am a good judge of them. It’s not back work; it’s fine writing, up to the best of Zane Grey, Luke Short, Haycox, the other top writers in the field. I managed to find a copy of Hell in Eldorado, the one other Western Luke wrote some years ago—Was that before he and you were married?”

  “Long before.”

  “—and read it. The one he’s writing now is infinitely superior. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a best seller, or as near to a best seller as a Western can become. Best seller or not, it should definitely become a classic in its field. Now if I cure him of his obsession—his purely negative obsession that there are no Martians—”

  “I see what you mean. He’d never finish it—unless the Martians drove him insane again.”

  “And happened to drive him again into exactly the same form of aberration. A ch
ance in thousands. Is he going to be happier seeing and hearing Martians again and being unable to write because of them?”

  “So you suggest not curing him?”

  “I don’t know. I’m puzzled, Mrs. Devereaux—and that’s putting it mildly. It’s completely unethical to care for a patient who might be cured without attempting to cure him. I’ve never considered such a thing, and I shouldn’t be considering it now. Nevertheless—”

  “Did you find out about those checks?”

  “Yes. I telephoned his publisher, Mr. Bernstein. The smaller of the two, the four hundred dollar one, is money his publisher owed him. It will be all right for us to have him endorse that and deposit, or use it for him in any case. At the hundred dollars a week I charge here, it alone will cover the past week and the next three. The—”

  “But your own fee, Doctor?”

  “My own fee? How can I charge a fee if I don’t even try to cure him? But about the other check, the thousand-dollar one; it was an advance against a Western novel. When I explained the circumstances to Mr. Bernstein—that Luke is definitely insane but still working well and rapidly on the novel—he was skeptical; I fear he didn’t trust my literary judgment. He asked me to borrow the manuscript from Luke, telephone him back collect and read him the first chapter over the phone. I did so—the call must have cost him well over a hundred dollars—and he was enthusiastic about it. He said that if the rest of the book held up to that level, it would earn Luke at least ten thousand dollars and possibly many times that. He said that of course Luke could cash and keep the check for the advance. And that if I did anything to Luke that would stop him from finishing it, he would personally fly out here and shoot me. Not that he meant that literally, of course, and even if I thought he did I couldn’t let it affect my decision, but—”

  He spread his hands apologetically and a Martian appeared, sitting on one of them, said “-- you, Mack,” and disappeared again.

  Dr. Snyder sighed. “Look at it this way, Mrs. Devereaux. Take ten thousand dollars as the minimum figure Trail to Nowhere—he changed the title as well as the opening from the one he originally projected—will bring Luke. The four chapters he has written in the week he’s been here constitute approximately one-fourth of the book.

  “On that basis, he’s earned two and a half thousand dollars within the past week. If he keeps on producing at that rate, he will have earned ten thousand dollars within a month. And, even allowing for vacations between books and for the fact that he’s writing unusually rapidly at present as reaction against not having been able to write at all for so long—well, he should earn at least fifty thousand dollars within the next year. Possibly a hundred or two hundred thousand if, as Mr. Bernstein said, the book may earn ‘many times’ the minimum figure. Last year, Mrs. Devereaux, I cleared twenty-five thousand dollars. And I should cure him?”

  Margie Devereaux smiled. “It rather frightens me to think of it myself. Luke’s best year thus far, the second year of our marriage, he made twelve thousand. But one thing I don’t understand, Doctor?”

  “And what is that?”

  “Why you sent for me. I want to see him, of course. But you said it would be better if I didn’t, that it might disturb or distract him and cut down or even stop his production. Not that I want to wait any longer, but if at the rate he’s writing he can finish that novel within another three weeks, might it not be wiser for me to wait that long? To make sure that, even if he—changes again, he’ll at least have that book finished?”

  Dr. Snyder smiled ruefully. He said, “I’m afraid I was given no choice, Mrs. Devereaux. Luke went on strike.”

  “On strike?”

  “Yes, this morning he told me he wouldn’t write another word unless I phoned you and asked you to come to see him. He meant it.”

  “Then he lost a day’s writing today?”

  “Oh, no. Only half an hour—it took me that long to get you on the phone. He started working again the moment I told him you’d promised to come this evening. He took my word for it.”

  “I’m glad. Now before I go up to see him, any instructions, Doctor?”

  “Try not to argue with him, especially about his obsession. If any Martians come around, remember that he can neither see nor hear them. And that it’s quite genuine; he isn’t pretending in the slightest.”

  “And ignore them myself, of course. But you know perfectly well, Doctor, that isn’t always completely possible. If, for instance, a Martian suddenly shouts in your ear when you’re not expecting it—”

  “Luke knows that other people still see Martians. He won’t be surprised if you start suddenly. Or if you have to ask him to repeat something he just said, he’ll know it’s because a Martian must have been yelling louder than he was talking—that is, that you think a Martian is yelling,”

  “But if a Martian should make noise while I’m talking to him, Doctor, how is it that—even if his subconscious won’t let him hear the sound the Martian makes—he can hear me clearly despite it? Or can he?”

  “He can. I’ve checked that. His subconscious must simply tune out the Martian by pitch and he hears you clearly even though you’re whispering and the Martian is screaming. It’s similar to the case of people who work in boiler factories or other noisy places. Except that it’s long practice rather than hysterical deafness that lets them hear and understand ordinary conversation over, or rather under, the noise level.”

  “I understand. Yes, I see now how he could hear despite interference. But how about seeing? I mean, a Martian is opaque. I don’t see how even someone who doesn’t believe in them can see through one. Suppose one got between him and me when he’s looking at me. I can see how he might not see it as a Martian—as a blur, maybe—but he couldn’t possibly see through it and he’d have to know something was there between us.”

  “He looks away. Common defense mechanism of specialized hysterical blindness. And his is specialized of course since he is not blind to anything but Martians.

  “You see, there is a dichotomy between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, and his subconscious mind is playing tricks on his conscious one. And it makes him turn away, or even close his eyes rather than let him find out that there’s something in his direct range of vision he can’t see through.”

  “But why does he think he turns away or closes his eyes?”

  “His subconscious provides him an excuse for it, somehow. Watch and study him any time there are Martians around and you’ll see how. Watch what happens any time a Martian gets in his direct range of vision.”

  He sighed. “I made a careful check of that the first few days he was here. I spent quite a bit of time in his room, talking with him and also in reading or pretending to read while he worked. Several times a Martian got between him and the typewriter while he was typing. Each time he’d put his hands behind his head and lean backward staring up at the ceiling—”

  “He always does that when he’s writing and stops to think.”

  “Of course. But these times his subconscious stopped his flow of thought and made him do it, because otherwise he’d have been looking at his typewriter and unable to see it. If he and I were talking, he’d find an excuse to get up and move if a Martian got between us. And once a Martian sat on top of his head and blocked his vision completely by letting its legs hang in front of his face. He simply closed his eyes, or I presume he did—I couldn’t see through the Martian’s legs either—because he remarked that his eyes were pretty tired and asked my pardon for closing them. His subconscious just wouldn’t let him recognize that there was something there he couldn’t see through.”

  “I’m beginning to understand, Doctor. And I suppose that if one used such an occasion to try to prove to him that there were Martians—told him there was one dangling its legs in front of his eyes and challenged him to open his eyes and tell you how many fingers you were holding up or something—he’d refuse to open his eyes and rationalize it somehow.”

  “Yes. I can see
you’ve had experience with paranoiacs, Mrs. Devereaux. How long have you been a nurse at General Mental, if I may ask?”

  “Almost six years altogether. Just ten months this time—since Luke and I separated—and for about five years before we were married.”

  “Would you mind telling me—as Luke’s physician, of course—what caused the break-up between you?”

  “I wouldn’t mind at all, Doctor—but could I tell you another time? It was—a lot of little things rather than one big thing and it would take quite a while to explain it, especially if I try to be fair to both of us.”

  “Of course.” Dr. Snyder glanced at his wrist watch.

  “Good Lord, I had no idea I’d kept you this long. Luke will be chewing his fingernails. But before you go up to see him, may I ask you one very personal question?”

  “Of course.”

  “We’re very shorthanded on nurses. Would you by any chance care to quit your job at General and come here to work for me?”

  Margie laughed.

  “What’s personal about that?” she asked.

  “The inducement I had in mind to get you away from them. Luke has discovered that he loves you very much and knows now he made a bad mistake in letting you get away from him. I—ah—gather from your concern that you feel the same way about him?”

  “I—I’m not sure, Doctor. I feel concern, yes, and affection. And I’ve come to realize that at least part of the trouble between us was my fault. I’m so—so damn normal myself that I didn’t sufficiently understand his psychic problems as a writer. But as to whether I can love him again—I’ll want to wait until I’ve seen him.”

  “Then the inducement applies only if you decide that you do. If you decide to work and live here, the room next to his has a connecting door. Ordinarily kept locked of course, but—”

  Margie smiled again. “I’ll let you know before I leave, Doctor. And I guess you’ll be glad to know that if I do so decide, you won’t be condoning an illegality. Technically, we’re still married. And I can call off the divorce at any time before it becomes final, three months from now.”