Norton, Andre - Anthology (11 page)

 
          
 
"They're changed."

 
          
 
"Perhaps."

 
          
 
"You know they have!
Onions
but not onions, carrots but not carrots.
Taste: the same but different.
Smell: not like it used to be." He felt his heart pounding, and he was
afraid. He dug his fingers into the earth. "Cora, what's happening? What
is it? We've got to get away from this." He ran across the garden. Each
tree felt his touch.
"The roses.
The roses.
They're turning green."

 
          
 
And they stood looking at the green roses.

 
          
 
And two days later, Tom came running.
"Come see the cow. I was milking her and I saw it. Come on!"

 
          
 
They stood in the shed and looked at their one
cow.

 
          
 
It was growing a third horn.

 
          
 
And the lawn in front of their house very
quietly and slowly was coloring itself like spring violets.
Seed
from earth, but growing up a soft purple.

 
          
 
"We must get away," said Bittering.
"We'll eat this stuff and then we'll change—God knows to what. I can't let
it happen. There's only one thing to do. Burn this food."

 
          
 
"It's not poisoned."

 
          
 
"But it is.
Subtly,
very subtly.
A little bit.
A very little bit.
We mustn't touch it."

 
          
 
He looked with dismay at their house.
"Even the house.
The wind's done something to it. The
air's burned it.
The fog at night.
The boards, all
warped out of shape. It's not an Earthman's house any more."

 
          
 
"Oh, your
imagination!"

 
          
 
He put on his coat and
tie
.
"I'm going into town. We've got to do something now. I'll be back."

 
          
 
"Wait, Harry!" his wife cried.

 
          
 
But he was gone.

           
 
In town, on the shadowy steps of the grocery
store, the men sat with their hands on their knees, conversing with great
leisure and ease.

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering wanted to fire a pistol in the
air.

 
          
 
What are you doing, you fools!
he
thought. Sitting here! You've heard the news—we're
stranded on this planet. Well, move! Aren't you frightened? Aren't you afraid?
What are you going to do?

 
          
 
"Hello, Harry," said everyone.

 
          
 
"Look," he said to them. "You
did hear the news, the other day, didn't you?"

 
          
 
They nodded and laughed. "Sure. Sure,
Harry."

 
          
 
"What are you going to do about it?"

 
          
 
"Do, Harry, do? What can we do?"

 
          
 
"Build a rocket! That's what!"

 
          
 
"A rocket, Harry?
To go back to all that trouble? Oh, Harry!"

 
          
 
"But you must want to go back. Have you
noticed the peach blossoms, the onions,
the
grass?"

 
          
 
"Why, yes,
Harry,
seems we did," said one of the men.

 
          
 
"Doesn't it scare you?"

 
          
 
"Can't recall that it
did, much, Harry."

 
          
 
"Idiots!"

 
          
 
"Now, Harry."

 
          
 
Bittering wanted to cry. "You've got to
work with me. If we stay here, we'll all be got to.
The air.
Don't you smell it?
Something in the air.
A Martian virus, maybe.
Some seed, or
a
pollen
. Listen to me!"

 
          
 
They stared at him.

 
          
 
"Sam," he said to one of them.

 
          
 
"Yes, Harry?"

 
          
 
"Will you help me build a rocket?"

 
          
 
"Harry, I got a whole load of metal and
some old blueprints. You want to work in my metal shop on a rocket, you're
welcome. I'll sell you that metal for five hundred dollars. You should be able
to construct a right pretty rocket, if you work alone, in about thirty
years."

 
          
 
Everyone laughed.

 
          
 
"Don't laugh!"

 
          
 
Sam looked at him with quiet good humor.

 
          
 
"Sam," Bittering said. "Your
eyes—"

 
          
 
"What about them, Harry?"

 
          
 
"Didn't they used to be gray?"

 
          
 
"Well, now, I don't remember."

 
          
 
"They were, weren't they?"

 
          
 
"Why do you ask, Harry?"

 
          
 
"Because now they're
kind of yellow-colored."

 
          
 
"Is that so,
Harry
?"
Sam said, casually.

 
          
 
"And you're taller and thinner—"

 
          
 
"You might be right, Harry."

 
          
 
"Sam, you shouldn't have yellow
eyes."

 
          
 
"Harry, what color eyes have you
got?" Sam said.

 
          
 
"My eyes?
They're blue, of course."

 
          
 
"Here you are, Harry." Sam handed
him a pocket mirror. "Take a look at yourself."

 
          
 
Mr. Bittering hesitated, and then raised the
mirror to his face.

 
          
 
There were little, very dim flecks of new gold
captured in the blue of his eyes.

 
          
 
"Now look what you've done," said
Sam, a moment later. "You broke my mirror."

 
          
 
Harry Bittering moved into the metal shop and
began to build the rocket. Men stood in the open door and talked and joked
without raising their voices. Once in a while they gave him a hand on lifting
something. But mostly they just idled and watched him with their yellowing
eyes.

 
          
 
"It's suppertime, Harry," they said.

 
          
 
His wife appeared with his supper in a wicker
basket.

 
          
 
"I won't touch it," he said.
"I'll eat only food from
our deep-freeze
.
Food that came from Earth.
Nothing from
our garden."

 
          
 
His wife stood watching him. "You can't
build a rocket."

 
          
 
"I worked in a shop once when I was
twenty. I know metal. Once I get it started, the others will help," he
said, not looking at her, laying out the blueprints.

 
          
 
"Harry, Harry," she said,
helplessly.

 
          
 
"We've got to get away, Cora. We've got
to!"

 
          
 
The nights were full of wind that blew down
the empty moonlit sea meadows past the little white chess cities lying for
their twelve-thousandth year in the shallows. In the Earthmen's settlement, the
Bittering house shook with a feeling of change.

 
          
 
Lying abed, Mr. Bittering felt his bones
shifted, shaped, melted like gold. His wife, lying beside him, was dark from
many sunny afternoons. Dark she was, and golden, burnt almost black by the sun,
sleeping, and the children metallic in their beds, and the wind roaring forlorn
and changing through the old peach trees, the violet grass, shaking out green
rose petals.

 
          
 
The fear would not be stopped. It had his
throat and heart. It dripped in a wetness of the arm and the temple and the
trembling palm.

 
          
 
A green star rose in the east.

 
          
 
A strange word emerged from Mr. Bittering's
lips.

 
          
 
"Iorrt.
Iorrt."
He repeated it.

 
          
 
It was a Martian word. He knew no Martian.

 
          
 
In the middle of the night he arose and dialed
a call through to Simpson, the archaeologist.

 
          
 
"Simpson, what does the word 'Iorrt'
mean?"

 
          
 
"Why that's the old Martian word for our
planet Earth. Why?"

           
 
"No special reason."

 
          
 
The telephone slipped from his hand.

 
          
 
"Hello, hello, hello, hello," it
kept saying while he sat gazing out at the green star. "Bittering? Harry,
are you there?"

 
          
 
The days were full of metal sound. He laid the
frame of the rocket with the reluctant help of three indifferent men. He grew
very tired in an hour or so and had to sit down.

 
          
 
"The altitude," laughed a man.

 
          
 
"Are you eating, Harry?" asked
another.

 
          
 
"I'm eating," he said, angrily.

 
          
 
"From
your deep-freeze
?"

 
          
 
"Yes!"

 
          
 
"You're getting thinner, Harry."

 
          
 
"I'm not!"

 
          
 
"And taller."