The Man Who Fell to Earth (12 page)

One time, more than a year before, he had mentioned to Farnsworth that he was becoming interested in music. This had been only partly true, since the melodies and tonal system of human music had always been mildly unpleasant to him. He had, however, become interested in music historically, since he had an historian’s interest in almost all aspects of human folklore and art—an interest built up by the years of studying television, and continued through long nights of reading, here on Earth. Farnsworth, shortly after that casual mention of the fact, had presented him with a brilliantly accurate, octaphonic speaker system—several components of which were based on W. E. Corporation patents—and the necessary amplifiers, sound sources, and the like. Three men with MS degrees in electrical engineering had built the components into the study for him. It was a bother, but he had not wanted to hurt Farnsworth’s feelings. They had arranged all of the controls on one brass panel—he would have preferred something less scientific than flat brass—perhaps delicately painted china or porcelain—at one end of a bookcase. Farnsworth had also given him an automatic magazine of five hundred recordings, all done on the little steel balls that W. E. Corporation held the patents on and with which the corporation had earned at least twenty million dollars. You pressed a button, and a ball the size of a pea fell into place in the cartridge. Its molecular structure was then followed by a tiny, slow-moving scanner, and the patterns were converted into the sounds of orchestras or bands or guitarists or voices. Newton almost never played music. He had tried some symphonies and quartets on Farnsworth’s insistence, but they meant almost nothing to him. It was odd that their meaning was so obscure to him. Some of the other arts, although misinterpreted and patronized by Sunday television (the most dull and pretentious television of all), had been able to move him greatly—especially sculpture and painting. Perhaps he saw as the humans saw, but could not hear as they heard.

When he came to his room, musing about cats and men, he decided, on an impulse, to play some music. He pressed the button for a Haydn symphony that Farnsworth had told him he should hear. After a moment the sounds came on, militant and precise and, to him, of no logical or aesthetic consequence. He was like an American listening to Chinese music. He fixed himself a drink from the gin bottle on the shelf and drank it straight, trying to follow the sounds. He was preparing to seat himself on the sofa when there came a sudden knocking on the door. Startled, he dropped his glass. It broke at his feet. For the first time in his life he shouted, “What the hell is it?”
How human had he become?

Betty Jo’s voice, sounding frightened, said from behind the door, “It’s Mr. Farnsworth again, Tommy. He insisted. He said I had to get you….”

His voice was softer now, but still angry. “Tell him no. Tell him I’m not seeing anyone before tomorrow: I’m not talking to anyone.”

For a minute there was silence. He stared at the broken glass at his feet, then kicked the larger pieces under the couch. Then Betty Jo’s voice: “All right, Tommy. I’ll tell him.” She paused. “You rest now, Tommy. Hear?”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll rest.”

He heard her footsteps receding from the door. He went to the bookcase. There was no other glass. He started to shout for Betty Jo, instead picked up the nearly full bottle, twisted the cap off, and began to drink from it. He switched off the Haydn—who could expect him to understand music like that?—and then switched on a collection of folk music, old Negro songs, Gullah music. There was, at least, something in the words of those songs that he could understand.

A rich and weary voice came from the speakers:

He smiled thoughtfully; the words of the song seemed to reach something in him. He settled himself on the couch with the bottle. He began to think about Nathan Bryce and about the conversation they had had together that afternoon.

He had imagined from their first meeting that Bryce suspected him; the very fact that the chemist had insisted on the interview was itself a kind of giveaway. He had made himself certain, through expensive investigation, that Bryce represented no one other than himself—that he did not work for the FBI, as did at least two of the construction workers at the missile site, nor for any other government agency. But then, if Bryce had somehow come to suspect him and his purposes—as, certainly, Farnsworth and probably several others had—why had he, Newton, gone out of his way to cultivate an afternoon’s intimacy with the man? And why had he been dropping hints about himself, talking about the war and the Second Coming, calling himself Rumplestiltskin—that evil little dwarf who came from nowhere to weave straw into gold and to save the princess’s life with his unheard-of knowledge, the stranger whose final purpose was to steal the princess’s child? The only way to defeat Rumplestiltskin was to uncover his identity, to name him.

And why, he thought abruptly, had Rumplestiltskin given the princess a chance to escape the bargain? Why had he given her that three-day respite in which to discover his name? Was it simply over-confidence—for who would ever imagine or guess at a name like that one?—or did he want to be found out, caught, deprived of the object of his deceit and magic? And for himself, Thomas Jerome Newton, whose magic and whose deceptions were greater than those of any enchanter or elf in any fairy tale—and he had read them all—did he now want to be found out, caught?

Why, thought Newton, his bottle in his hand, would I want to be found out? He stared at the label on the bottle, feeling very strange, dizzy. Abruptly, the recording ended. There was a pause, while another ball rolled into place. He took a long, shocking drink. Then, from the speakers, an orchestra boomed, assaulting his ears.

He stood up wearily, and blinked. He felt very weak—it seemed as if he had not been so weak since that day, now so many years ago, when, frightened and alone, he had been sick in a barren field, in November. He walked to the panel, turned off the music. Then he walked to the television controls and turned them on—maybe a Western…

The large picture of the heron on the far wall began to fade. When it was gone it was replaced by the head of a handsome man with the falsely serious stare in his eyes that is cultivated by politicians, faith healers, and evangelists. The lips moved soundlessly, while the eyes stared.

Newton turned up the volume. The head gained a voice, saying,”… of the United States as a free and independent nation, we must gird up our loins like men, with the free world behind us, and face the challenges, the hopes and fears of the world. We must remember that the United States, regardless of what the uninformed may say, is
not
a second-rate power. We must remember that freedom will conquer, we must…”

Suddenly Newton realized that the man speaking was the President of the United States, and he was speaking the bombast of the hopeless. He turned a switch. A bedroom scene appeared on the screen. Some tired suggestive jokes were made by the man and woman, both of them in pyjamas. He turned the switch again, hoping for a Western. He liked Westerns. But what appeared on the screen was a propaganda piece, paid for by the government, about the American virtues and strengths. There were pictures of white New England churches, field hands—always one smiling black person in each group—and maple trees. These films seemed more and more common lately; and, like so many popular magazines, more and more wildly chauvinistic—more committed than ever to the fantastic lie that America was a nation of God-fearing small towns, efficient cities, healthy farmers, kindly doctors, bemused housewives, philanthropic millionaires.

“My God,” he said aloud. “My God, you frightened, self-pitying hedonists. Liars! Chauvinists! Fools!”

He turned the switch again and a nightclub scene appeared on the screen, with soft music as background. He let it stay, watching the movement of bodies on the dance floor, the men and women dressed like peacocks, embracing one another while the music played.

And what am I, he thought, if not a frightened, self-pitying hedonist? He finished the bottle of gin, and then looked at his hands holding the bottle, staring now at the artificial fingernails, shining like translucent coins in the flickering light from the television screen. He looked at them for several minutes, as though he were seeing them for the first time.

Then he stood up and walked shakily to a closet. From a shelf he took a box that was about the size of a shoebox. On the inside of the closet door hung a full-length mirror. He looked at himself, at his tall, skinny frame, for a moment. Then he went back to the couch and set the box on the marble-topped coffee table in front of him. From it he took a small plastic bottle. On the table sat an empty bowl-shaped ashtray, of Chinese porcelain; Farnsworth had given it to him. He poured the liquid from the bottle into the ashtray, set the bottle down, and then dipped the fingertips of both his hands into the tray, as if it were a finger bowl. He held them there for a minute, and then took them out and slapped his hands together, hard. The fingernails fell on to the marble table with small, tinkling sounds. The fingers were smooth at the ends now, the tips flexible but somewhat sore.

From the television came the sound of jazz, with a loud, insistent rhythm.

He stood up, walked to the door of the room, locked it. Then he went back to the box on the table, and took from it a ball of something resembling cotton, and dipped the ball into the liquid for a moment. His hands, he noticed, were trembling. He knew, too, that he was drunker than he had ever been. But that, apparently, was not drunk enough.

Then he went to the mirror and held the damp ball against each of his ears until the synthetic earlobes fell off. Unbuttoning his shirt, he removed false nipples and hair from his chest in the same manner. The hair and nipples were attached to a thin, porous sheet, and they came off together. He took these things and laid them on the coffee table. Walking back to the mirror he began speaking in his own language, first softly and then loudly, to drown out the jazz from the television set, quoting a poem that he himself had written in his youth. The sounds did not come well from his tongue. He was too drunk; or he was losing the ability to speak in the Anthean sibilants. Then, breathing heavily, he took a small, tweezerlike instrument from the box and stood in front of the mirror and carefully removed the thin, colored plastic membrane from each of his eyes. Still struggling to speak his poem, he blinked at himself with the eyes whose irises opened vertically, like a cat’s.

He stared at himself a long time, and then he began to cry. He did not sob, but tears came from his eyes—tears exactly like a human’s tears—and slid down his narrow cheeks. He was crying in despair.

Then he spoke aloud, to himself, in English. “Who are you?” he said. “And where do you belong?”

His own body stared back at him; but he could not recognize it as his own. It was alien, and frightening.

He got himself another bottle. The music had stopped. An announcer was saying, “…ballroom of the Seelbach Hotel in downtown Louisville, brought to you live by Worldcolor—films and developers for all that’s best in photography….”

Newton did not look at the screen; he was opening the bottle. A woman’s voice began to speak: “To store up memories of the holidays ahead, of the children, the traditional family feast at Thanksgiving and Christmas, there is nothing more lovely than Worldcolor prints, filled with glowing life…”

And on the couch, Thomas Jerome Newton now lay drinking, his gin bottle open, his nailless fingers trembling, his catlike eyes glazed and staring at the ceiling in anguish….

3

On a Sunday morning five days after his drunken conversation with Newton, Bryce was at home, trying to read a detective novel. He was seated by the electric heater in his small, prefabricated living room, was dressed only in his green flannelette pyjamas, and was drinking his third cup of black coffee. He felt better this morning than he had lately; his concern with Newton’s identity did not plague him so much as it had for the past several days. The question was still the paramount one in his mind; but he had decided on a sort of policy—if watchful waiting could be called a policy—and had managed to dismiss the problem, if not from his thoughts, at least from his continual scrutiny. The detective novel was pleasantly dull enough; the weather outside had turned bitterly cold. He was comfortable by the would-be fireplace, and he felt no sense of urgency about anything. On the wall to his left hung
The Fall of Icarus
. He had moved it there from the kitchen two days before.

He was about halfway through the book when a faint knock came at his front door. He got up with some irritation, wondering who in hell would call on him on a Sunday morning. There was social life enough among the staff; but he rigorously avoided it, and he had few friends. He had no friend close enough to come calling on a Sunday morning before lunch. He got his bathrobe from the bedroom and then opened the front door.

Outside in the gray morning, shivering in a light nylon jacket, was Newton’s housekeeper.

She smiled at him and said, “Doctor Bryce?”

“Yes?” He could not remember her name, although Newton had mentioned it in his presence once. There were a good many rumors about Newton and this woman. “Come in and get warm.” he said.

“Thanks.” She came in quickly, but apologetically, closing the door behind her. “Mr. Newton sent me.”

“Oh?” He led her to the electric fire. “You need a heavier coat.”

She seemed to blush—or perhaps it was only the redness of her cheeks from the cold. “I don’t get out much.”