The Illustrated Man (8 page)

“Doug,” be said, about five in the afternoon, as we were picking up our towels and heading back along the beach near the surf, “I want you to promise me something.”

“What?”

“Don’t ever be a Rocket Man.”

I stopped.

“I mean it,” he said. “Because when you’re out there you want to be here, and when you’re here you want to be out there. Don’t start that. Don’t let it get hold of you.”

“But—”

“You don’t know what it is. Every time I’m out there I think, If I ever get back to Earth I’ll stay there; I’ll never go out again. But I go out, and I guess I’ll always go out.”

“I’ve thought about being a Rocket Man for a long time,” I said,

He didn’t hear me. “I try to stay here. Last Saturday when I got home I started trying so damned hard to stay here.”

I remembered him in the garden, sweating, and all the traveling and doing and listening, and I knew that he did this to convince himself that the sea and the towns and the land and his family were the only real things and the good things. But I knew where he would be tonight: looking at the jewelry in Orion from our front porch.

“Promise me you won’t be like me,” he said.

I hesitated awhile. “Okay,” I said.

He shook my hand. “Good boy,” he said.

The dinner was fine that night. Mom had run about the kitchen with handfuls of cinnamon and dough and pots and pans tinkling, and now a great turkey fumed on the table, with dressing, cranberry sauce, peas, and pumpkin pie.

“In the middle of August?” said Dad, amazed.

“You won’t be here for Thanksgiving.”

“So I won’t.”

He sniffed it. He lifted each lid from each tureen and let the flavor steam over his sunburned face. He said “Ah” to each. He looked at the room and his hands. He gazed at the pictures on the wall, the chairs, the table, me, and Mom. He cleared his throat. I saw him make up his mind. “Lilly?”

“Yes?” Mom looked across her table which she had set like a wonderful silver trap, a miraculous gravy pit into which, like a struggling beast of the past caught in a tar pool, her husband might at last be caught and held, gazing out through a jail of wishbones, safe forever. Her eyes sparkled.

“Lilly,” said Dad.

Go on, I thought crazily. Say it, quick; say you’ll stay home this time, for good, and never go away; say it!

Just then a passing helicopter jarred the room and the windowpane shook with a crystal sound. Dad glanced at the window.

The blue stars of evening were there, and the red planet Mars was rising in the East.

Dad looked at Mars a full minute. Then he put his hand out blindly toward me. “May I have some peas,” he said.

“Excuse me,” said Mother. “I’m going to get some bread.”

She rushed out into the kitchen.

“But there’s bread on the table,” I said.

Dad didn’t look at me as he began his meal.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I came downstairs at one in the morning and the moonlight was like ice on all the housetops, and dew glittered in a snow field on our grass. I stood in the doorway in my pajamas, feeling the warm night wind, and then I knew that Dad was sitting in the mechanical porch swing, gliding gently. I could see his profile tilted back, and he was watching the stars wheel over the sky. His eyes were like gray crystal there, the moon in each one.

I went out and sat beside him.

We glided awhile in the swing.

At last I said, “How many ways are there to die in space?”

“A million.”

“Name some.”

“The meteors hit you. The air goes out of your rocket. Or comets take you along with them. Concussion. Strangulation. Explosion. Centrifugal force. Too much acceleration. Too little. The heat, the cold, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the asteroids, the planetoids, radiation . . .”

“And do they bury you?”

“They never find you.”

“Where do you go?”

“A billion miles away. Traveling graves, they call them. You become a meteor or a planetoid traveling forever through space.”

I said nothing.

“One thing,” he said later, “it’s quick in space. Death. It’s over like that. You don’t linger. Most of the time you don’t even know it. You’re dead and that’s it.”

We went up to bed.

It was morning.

Standing in the doorway, Dad listened to the yellow canary singing in its golden cage.

“Well, I’ve decided,” he said. “Next time I come home, I’m home to stay.”

“Dad!” I said.

“Tell your mother that when she gets up,” he said.

“You mean it!”

He nodded gravely. “See you in about three months.”

And there he went off down the street, carrying his uniform in its secret box, whistling and looking at the tall green trees and picking chinaberries off the chinaberry bush as he brushed by, tossing them ahead of him as he walked away into the bright shade of early morning. . . .

I asked Mother about a few things that morning after Father had been gone a number of hours. “Dad said that sometimes you don’t act as if you hear or see him,” I said.

And then she explained everything to me quietly.

“When he went off into space ten years ago, I said to myself, ‘He’s dead.’ Or as good as dead. So think of him dead. And when he comes back, three or four times a year, it’s not him at all, it’s only a pleasant little memory or a dream. And if a memory stops or a dream stops, it can’t hurt half as much. So most of the time I think of him dead——”

“But other times—”

“Other times I can’t help myself. I bake pies and treat him as if he were alive, and then it hurts. No, it’s better to think he hasn’t been here for ten years and I’ll never see him again. It doesn’t hurt as much.”

“Didn’t he say next time he’d settle down.”

She shook her head slowly. “No, he’s dead. I’m very sure of that.”

“He’ll come alive again, then,” I said.

“Ten years ago,” said Mother, “I thought, What if he dies on Venus? Then we’ll never be able to see Venus again. What if he dies on Mars? We’ll never be able to look at Mars again, all red in the sky, without wanting to go in and lock the door. Or what if he died on Jupiter or Saturn or Neptune? On those nights when those planets were high in the sky, we wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the stars.”

“I guess not,” I said.

The message came the next day.

The messenger gave it to me and I read it standing on the porch. The sun was setting. Mom stood in the screen door behind me, watching me fold the message and put it in my pocket.

“Mom,” I said.

“Don’t tell me anything I don’t already know,” she said.

She didn’t cry.

Well, it wasn’t Mars, and it wasn’t Venus, and it wasn’t Jupiter or Saturn that killed him. We wouldn’t have to think of him every time Jupiter or Saturn or Mars lit up the evening sky.

This was different.

His ship had fallen into the sun.

And the sun was big and fiery and merciless, and it was always in the sky and you couldn’t get away from it.

So for a long time after my father died my mother slept through the days and wouldn’t go out. We had breakfast at midnight and lunch at three in the morning, and dinner at the cold dim hour of 6 A.M. We went to all-night shows and went to bed at sunrise.

And, for a long while, the only days we ever went out to walk were the days when it was raining and there was no sun.

FIRE exploded over summer night lawns. You saw sparkling faces of uncles and aunts. Skyrockets fell up in the brown shining eyes of cousins on the porch, and the cold charred sticks thumped down in dry meadows far away.

The Very Reverend Father Joseph Daniel Peregrine opened his eyes. What a dream: he and his cousins with their fiery play at his grandfather’s ancient Ohio home so many years ago!

He lay listening to the great hollow of the church, the other cells where other Fathers lay. Had they, too, on the eve of the flight of the rocket Crucifix, lain with memories of the Fourth of July? Yes. This was like those breathless Independence dawns when you waited for the first concussion and rushed out on the dewy sidewalks, your hands full of loud miracles.

So here they were, the Episcopal Fathers, in the breathing dawn before they pinwheeled off to Mars, leaving their incense through the velvet cathedral of space.

“Should we go at all?” whispered Father Peregrine. “Shouldn’t we solve our own sins on Earth? Aren’t we running from our lives here?”

He arose, his fleshy body, with its rich look of strawberries, milk, and steak, moving heavily.

“Or is it sloth?” he wondered. “Do I dread the journey?”

He stepped into the needle-spray shower.

“But I shall take you to Mars, body.” He addressed himself. “Leaving old sins here. And on to Mars to find 
new
 sins?” A delightful thought almost. Sins no one had ever thought of.

Oh, he himself had written a little book: 
The Problem of Sin on Other Worlds
, ignored as somehow not serious enough by his Episcopal brethren.

Only last night, over a final cigar, he and Father Stone had talked of it.

“On Mars sin might appear as virtue. We must guard against virtuous acts there that, later, might be found to be sins!” said Father Peregrine, beaming. “How exciting! It’s been centuries since so much adventure has accompanied the prospect of being a missionary!”

“I 
will recognize sin,” said Father Stone bluntly, “even on Mars.”

“Oh, we priests pride ourselves on being litmus paper, changing color in sin’s presence,” retorted Father Peregrine, “but what if Martian chemistry is such we do not color 
at all!
 If there are new senses on Mars, you must admit the possibility of unrecognizable sin.”

“If there is no malice aforethought, there is no sin or punishment for same—the Lord assures us that,” Father Stone replied.

“On Earth, yes. But perhaps a Martian sin might inform the subconscious of its evil, telepathically, leaving the conscious mind of man free to act, seemingly without malice! What 
then?”

“What 
could
 there be in the way of new sins?”

Father Peregrine leaned heavily forward. “Adam 
alone
 did not sin. Add Eve and you add temptation. Add a second man and you make adultery possible. With the addition of sex or people, you add sin. If men were armless they could not strangle with their hands. You would not have that particular sin of murder. Add arms, and you add the possibility of a new violence. Amoebas cannot sin because they reproduce by fission. They do not covet wives or murder each other. Add sex to amoebas, add arms and legs, and you would have murder and adultery. Add an arm or leg or person, or take away each, and you add or subtract possible evil. On Mars, what if there are five new senses, organs, invisible limbs we can’t conceive of—then mightn’t there be five 
new sins?”

Father Stone gasped. “I think you enjoy this sort of thing!”

“I keep my mind alive, Father; just alive, is all.”

“Your mind’s always juggling, isn’t it?—mirrors, torches, plates.”

“Yes. Because sometimes the Church seems like those posed circus tableaus where the curtain lifts and men, white, zinc-oxide, talcum-powder statues, freeze to represent abstract Beauty. Very wonderful. But I hope there will always be room for me to dart about among the statues, don’t you, Father Stone?”

Father Stone had moved away. “I think we’d better go to bed. In a few hours we’ll be jumping up to see your 
new
 sins, Father Peregrine.”

The rocket stood ready for the firing.

The Fathers walked from their devotions in the chilly morning, many a fine priest from New York or Chicago or Los Angeles—the Church was sending its best—walking across town to the frosty field. Walking, Father Peregrine remembered the Bishop’s words:

“Father Peregrine, you will captain the missionaries, with Father Stone at your side. Having chosen you for this serious task, I find my reasons deplorably obscure, Father, but your pamphlet on planetary sin did not go unread. You are a flexible man. And Mars is like that uncleaned closet we have neglected for millenniums. Sin has collected there like bric-a-brac. Mars is twice Earth’s age and has had double the number of Saturday nights, liquor baths, and eye-poppings at women as naked as white seals. When we open that closet door, things will fall on us. We need a quick, flexible man—one whose mind can dodge. Anyone a little too dogmatic might break in two. I feel you’ll be resilient. Father, the job is yours.”

The Bishop and the Fathers knelt.

The blessing was said and the rocket given a little shower of holy water. Arising, the Bishop addressed them:

“I know you will go with God, to prepare the Martians for the reception of His Truth. I wish you all a 
thoughtful
 journey.”

They filed past the Bishop, twenty men, robes whispering, to deliver their hands into his kind hands before passing into the cleansed projectile.

“I wonder,” said Father Peregrine, at the last moment, “if Mars is hell? Only waiting for our arrival before it bursts into brimstone and fire.”

“Lord, be with us,” said Father Stone.

The rocket moved.

Coming out of space was like coming out of the most beautiful cathedral they had ever seen. Touching Mars was like touching the ordinary pavement outside the church five minutes after having 
really
 known your love for God.

The Fathers stepped gingerly from the steaming rocket and knelt upon Martian sand while Father Peregrine gave thanks.

“Lord, we thank Thee for the journey through Thy rooms. And, Lord, we have reached a new land, so we must have new eyes. We shall hear new sounds and must needs have new ears. And there will he new sins, for which we ask the gift of better and firmer and purer hearts. Amen.”

They arose.

And here was Mars like a sea under which they trudged in the guise of submarine biologists, seeking life. Here the territory of hidden sin. Oh, how carefully they must all balance, like gray feathers, in this new element, afraid that walking
itself 
might be sinful; or breathing, or simple fasting!

And here was the mayor of First Town come to meet them with outstretched hand. “What can I do for you, Father Peregrine?”

“We’d like to know about the Martians. For only if we know about them can we plan our church intelligently. Are they ten feet tall? We will build large doors. Are their skins blue or red or green? We must know when we put human figures in the stained glass so we may use the right skin color. Are they heavy? We will build sturdy seats for them.”

“Father,” said the mayor, “I don’t think you should worry about the Martians. There are two races. One of them is pretty well dead. A few are in hiding. And the second race—well, they’re not quite human.”

“Oh?” Father Peregrine’s heart quickened.

“They’re round luminous globes of light, Father, living in those hills. Man or beast, who can say? But they act intelligently, I hear.” The mayor shrugged. “Of course, they’re not men, so I don’t think you’ll care—

“On the contrary,” said Father Peregrine swiftly. “Intelligent, you say?”

“There’s a story. A prospector broke his leg in those hills and would have died there. The blue spheres of light came at him. When he woke, he was down on a highway and didn’t know how he got there.”

“Drunk,” said Father Stone.

“That’s the story,” said the mayor. “Father Peregrine, with most of the Martians dead, and only these blue spheres, I frankly think you’d be better off in First City. Mars is opening up. It’s a frontier now, like in the old days on Earth, out West, and in Alaska. Men are pouring up here. There’re a couple thousand black Irish mechanics and miners and day laborers in First Town who need saving, because there’re too many wicked women came with them, and too much ten-century-old Martian wine——”

Father Peregrine was gazing into the soft blue hills.

Father Stone cleared his throat. “Well, Father?”

Father Peregrine did not hear. “Spheres of blue 
fire?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Ah,” Father Peregrine sighed.

“Blue balloons.” Father Stone shook his head. “A circus!”

Father Peregrine felt his wrists pounding. He saw the little frontier town with raw, fresh-built sin, and he saw the hills, old with the oldest and yet perhaps an even newer (to him) sin.

“Mayor, could your black Irish laborers cook one more day in hellfire?”

“I’d turn and baste them for you, Father.”

Father Peregrine nodded to the hills. “Then that’s where we’ll go.”

There was a murmur from everyone.

“It would be so simple,” explained Father Peregrine, “to go into town. I prefer to think that if the Lord walked here and people said, ‘Here is the beaten path,’ He would reply, ‘Show me the weeds. I will 
make
 a path.’”

“But——”

“Father Stone, think how it would weigh upon us if we passed sinners by and did not extend our hands.”

“But globes of fire!”

“I imagine man looked funny to other animals when we first appeared. Yet he has a soul, for all his homeliness. Until we prove otherwise, let us assume that these fiery spheres have souls.”

“All right,” agreed the mayor, “but you’ll be back to town.”

“We’ll see. First, some breakfast. Then you and I, Father Stone, will walk alone into the hills. I don’t want to frighten those fiery Martians with machines or crowds. Shall we have breakfast?”

The Fathers ate in silence.

At nightfall Father Peregrine and Father Stone were high in the hills. They stopped and sat upon a rock to enjoy a moment of relaxation and waiting. The Martians had not as yet appeared and they both felt vaguely disappointed.

“I wonder——” Father Peregrine mopped his face. “Do you think if we called ‘Hello!’ they might answer?”

“Father Peregrine, won’t you ever be serious?”

“Not until the good Lord is. Oh, don’t look so terribly shocked, please. The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn’t it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn’t that true? And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to His humor.”

“I 
never thought of God as humorous,” said Father stone.

“The Creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man? Oh, come now!” Father Peregrine laughed.

But at this instant, from among the twilight hills, like a series of blue lamps lit to guide their way, came the Martians.

Father Stone saw them first. “Look!”

Father Peregrine turned and the laughter stopped in his mouth.

The round blue globes of fire hovered among the twinkling stars, distantly trembling.

“Monsters!” Father Stone leaped up. But Father Peregrine caught him. “Wait!”

“We should’ve gone to town!”

“No, listen, look!” pleaded Father Peregrine.

“I’m afraid!”

“Don’t be. This is God’s work!”

“The devil’s!”

“No, now, quiet!” Father Peregrine gentled him and they crouched with the soft blue light on their upturned faces as the fiery orbs drew near.

And again, Independence Night, thought Father Peregrine, tremoring. He felt like a child back in those July Fourth evenings, the sky blowing apart, breaking into powdery stars and burning sound, the concussions jingling house windows like the ice on a thousand thin ponds. The aunts, uncles, cousins crying, as to some celestial physician. The summer sky colors. And the Fire Balloons, lit by an indulgent grandfather, steadied in his massively tender hands. Oh, the memory of those lovely Fire Balloons, softly lighted, warmly billowed bits of tissue, like insect wings, lying like folded wasps in boxes and, last of all, after the day of riot and fury, at long last from their boxes, delicately unfolded, blue, red, white, patriotic—the Fire Balloons! He saw the dim faces of dear relatives long dead and mantled with moss as Grandfather lit the tiny candle and let the warm air breathe up to form the balloon plumply luminous in his hands, a shining vision which they held, reluctant to let it go; for, once released, it was yet another year gone from life, another Fourth, another bit of Beauty vanished. And then up, up, still up through the warm summer night constellations, the Fire Balloons had drifted, while red-white-and-blue eyes followed them, wordless, from family porches. Away into deep Illinois country, over night rivers and sleeping mansions the Fire Balloons dwindled, forever gone.

Father Peregrine felt tears in his eyes. Above him the Martians, not one but a 
thousand
 whispering Fire Balloons, it seemed, hovered. Any moment he might find his long-dead and blessed grandfather at his elbow, staring up at Beauty.

But it was Father Stone.

“Let’s go, please, Father!”

“I must speak to them.” Father Peregrine rustled forward, not knowing what to say, for what had he ever said to the Fire Balloons of time past except with his mind: 
you are beautiful, you are beautiful,
 and that was not enough now. He could only lift his heavy arms and call upward, as he had often wished to call after the enchanted Fire Balloons, “Hello!”

But the fiery spheres only burned like images in a dark minor. They seemed fixed, gaseous, miraculous, forever.