The Man Who Fell to Earth (8 page)

Well that was a shock. She blinked at him. “Housekeeper?”

“Yes. The house will be ready Saturday, but there will be furniture to arrange, things of that sort to take care of. I’ll need someone to help with it all. And,” he smiled, getting up with his cane and limping over toward her, “you know I dislike meeting strangers. You could talk to people for me.” He stood up over her.

She blinked up at him. “I fixed you a drink. On the television.” His offer was hard to believe. She had known about the house from when the real estate people had come by that second week—a huge old mansion that he was buying, and nine hundred acres of land, down east in the mountains.

He picked up the glass, sniffed it, and said, “Gin?”

“I thought you ought to try it,” she said. “It’s pretty good. Sweet.”

“No,” he said. “No. But I’ll be glad to have some wine with you.”

“Sure, Tommy.” She got up, staggering a bit, and went to the kitchen for his bottle of Sauterne and his crystal glass. “You don’t need me,” she called, from the kitchen.

His voice was solemn. “Why yes I do. Betty Jo.”

She came back in, standing close to him as she handed him the glass. He was such a nice man. She felt almost ashamed of herself wanting to seduce him, as though he were a baby. She could not help being drunkenly amused. He probably didn’t know what it was all about. He was the kind that probably peed in a silver pot when he was little and ran away if a girl tried to touch him. Or maybe he was queer—anybody who sat around reading all the time and looked like he did… But he didn’t talk like a queer. She liked to hear him talk. He looked tired now. But he looked tired all the time.

He sat down, painfully, in the armchair, and set his cane on the floor beside him. She sat on the couch and then lay back on her side, facing him. He was looking at her but he hardly seemed to see her. When he looked that way it made her feel creepy. “I’m wearing new clothes.” she said.

“So you are.”

“Yeah. So I am.” She laughed self-consciously. “The pants was sixty-five and the blouse was fifty, and I bought gold undies and earrings.” She raised a leg to show off the bright-red pants and then scratched her knee through the cloth. “With the money you been giving me I could dress like a movie star if I wanted to. I could get my face fixed, you know, and take off weight and all.” She felt her earrings for a minute, thoughtfully, tugging at them and running her thumbnail across the soft, metallic gold, enjoying the little hints of pain on her earlobes. “But I don’t know. I been sloppy for a long time. Ever since me and Barney went on welfare and Medicare and all I let myself go and, hell, you get so you like it that way.”

He said nothing for a while and they sat in silence while she finished her drink. Finally he said, “Will you come with me to the new house?”

She stretched and yawned, beginning to feel tired. “You sure you really need me?”

For a moment he blinked at her and his face looked a way she had never seen it look before, as if he were pleading with her. “Yes, I do need you,” he said. “I know very few people….”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll come.” She gestured tiredly. “I’d be a damn fool not to, anyway, since I imagine you’ll pay me twice as much as I’m worth.”

“Good.” His face relaxed a little and he settled back in his chair and picked up a book.

Before he could get started in it she recalled her plans, already cool by now, and after a moment of reluctant doubt she made a final try. But she was sleepy and her heart wasn’t in it. “Are you married, Tommy?” she asked. It should have been a pretty obvious question.

If he had any idea of what she was driving at he didn’t show it. “Yes, I’m married,” he said, politely putting his book in his lap and looking over at her.

Embarrassed, she said, “I just wanted to know.” And then, “What does she look like? Your wife?”

“Oh, she resembles me, I imagine. Tall and thin.”

Somehow her embarrassment was turning into irritation. She finished off her drink and said, “I used to be thin,” almost with defiance. Then, tired of it, she stood up and walked over to her bedroom door. The whole thing had been silly anyway. And maybe he was queer—being married didn’t prove anything that way. Anyway he was peculiar. A nice, rich man, but weird as green milk. Still irritated she said, “Good night,” and went into her room and began peeling off her expensive clothes. Then she sat on the edge of the bed a moment, in her nightgown, thinking. She was much more comfortable with the tight clothes off, and when she finally lay down, her mind now blank, she had no difficulty in falling into a deep sleep, pleasantly filled with undisturbing dreams.

9

They flew over the mountains, but the little plane was so stable, the pilot so expert, that there was no pitching, almost no sensation of movement. They flew over Harlan, Kentucky, a drab city sprawled loosely in the foothills, and then over vast, barren fields and down into a valley. Bryce, a glass of whiskey in his hand, saw the distant gleam of a lake, its static surface shining like a new and rich coin; and then they dipped lower, losing sight of the lake, and landed on a broad, new strip of concrete that sat at the flat bottom of the valley, amid broom straw and upturned red clay, like a wild Euclidian diagram drawn there with gray chalk by some geometrically minded god.

Bryce stepped from the plane into the thumping din of earthmoving machinery, the confusion of khaki-shirted men, red-faced in the summer heat, shouting hoarsely at one another, in the process of building unidentifiable buildings. There were machinery sheds, some kind of huge concrete platform, a row of barracks. For a moment, having left the quiet and coolness of the smooth, air-conditioned plane—Thomas Jerome Newton’s personal plane, sent to Louisville for him—he was bewildered, made dizzy by heat and noise, by all this feverish and unexplained activity.

A young man, rugged looking as a cigarette advertisement, stepped up to him. The man wore a pith helmet; his rolled-up sleeves displayed an abundance of tanned, youthful muscle; he looked exactly like a hero of one of those half-forgotten boys’ novels that had, at a dimly remembered time of aspiring adolescence, made him, Bryce, dedicated to becoming an engineer—a chemical engineer, a man of science and of action. He did not smile at the young man, thinking of his own paunch, his graying hair, and the taste of whiskey in his mouth; but he nodded his head in recognition.

The man held out a hand. “You’re Professor Bryce?”

He took the hand, expecting an affectedly firm grip, pleased to receive a gentle one. “Professor no more,” he said, “but I’m Bryce.”

“Good. Good. I’m Hopkins. Foreman.” The man’s friendliness seemed doglike, as if he were pleading for approval. “What do you think of it all, Doctor Bryce?” He gestured toward the rows of buildings going up. Just beyond them was a tall tower, apparently a broadcasting antenna of some kind.

Bryce cleared his throat. “I don’t know.” He started to ask what they were making here, but decided that his ignorance would be embarrassing. Why hadn’t that fat buffoon, Farnsworth, told him what he was being hired for? “Is Mr. Newton expecting me?” he said aloud, not looking at the man.

“Sure. Sure.” Suddenly showing efficiency, the young man hustled him around to the other side of the plane, where a small monorail car, obscured before, sat atop a dully gleaming track that snaked away into the hills at the side of the valley like a thin, silvery pencil line. Hopkins slid the door back, revealing polished leather upholstery and a satisfyingly dark interior. “This’ll have you up at the house in five minutes.”

“The house? How far is it?”

“About four miles. I’ll call ahead and Brinnarde’ll meet you. Brinnarde’s Mr. Newton’s secretary; he’ll probably do the interviewing”

Bryce hesitated before getting into the car. “Won’t I meet Mr. Newton?” The thought upset him; after these two years, not to meet the man who invented Worldcolor, who operated the biggest oil refineries in Texas, who had developed three-D television, reusable photo negatives, the ATF process in dye-transfer—the man who was either the world’s most original inventive genius, or an extraterrestrial.

The young man frowned. “I doubt it. I’ve been here six months and I’ve never seen him, except from behind the window of that car you’re getting into. About once a week he comes down here in it, to look things over, I guess. But he never gets out, and it’s so dark inside that you can’t see his face, only the shadow of it, looking out.”

Bryce settled himself into the car. “Doesn’t he ever get out?” He nodded toward the plane, where a group of mechanics, seeming to have come from nowhere, were beginning to go over the jets. “To fly… places?”

Hopkins grinned, inanely, it seemed to Bryce. “Only at night, and you can’t see him then. He’s a tall man, though, and thin. The pilot’s told me that; but that’s about all. The pilot isn’t much of a talker.”

“I see.” He touched the door button and the door slid back, noiselessly. As it was shutting, Hopkins said, “Good luck!” and he replied quickly, “Thank you,” but was not sure whether or not his voice had been cut off by the door.

Like the plane, the car was soundproof and very cool. Also like the plane, it began moving with almost imperceptible acceleration, gathering speed so smoothly that there was little sensation of motion. He lightened the transparency of the windows by turning the little silver knob that was obviously for that purpose, and watched the frail-looking aluminum construction sheds, and the groups of working men—an unusual and, he felt, satisfactory sight, in these days of automatic factories and six-hour working days. The men seemed eager, working heartily, sweating under the Kentucky sun. It occurred to him that they must be very we’ll paid to have come to this barren place, so far from golf courses, municipal gambling halls, and other consolations of the working man. He saw one young man—so many of them seemed young—sitting atop a huge earthmover, grinning with the pleasure of pushing great quantities of mud; for a moment Bryce envied him his work and his young, unquestioning confidence, easy under the hot sun.

A moment later he had left the construction site and was threading through densely foliated hills, moving so fast now that the trees close to him were a blur of sunlight and green leaves, of light and shadow. He leaned back, against the extraordinarily comfortable cushions, trying to enjoy the ride. But he was too excited to relax, too keyed up by the speed of events and all of the excitement of a strange, new place—so blissfully far, now, from Iowa, from college students, bearded intellectuals, men like Canutti. He looked toward the windows, watching the increasingly rapid flashing of light, shade, light, pale green and dark shadows; and then, abruptly ahead of him, as the car sped over a rise, he saw the glimmer of the lake, spread out in a hollow like a sheet of wonderfully blue-gray metal, a giant, serene disc. Just beyond it rose, in the shadow of a mountain, a huge, old white house with a white-columned porch and large, shuttered windows, sitting quietly at the edge of the broad lake, solidly, at the base of a mountain. Then the house and lake, seen in the distance, vanished behind another hill as the monorail track dipped down, and he realized that the car was beginning to decelerate. A minute later the house and lake reappeared and the car eased in a broad, curving glide that swooped along the edge of the water, delicately inclining with the curve of the track, and he saw a man standing, waiting for him, at the side of the house. The car came to a gentle stop and Bryce took a deep breath, touched the doorknob, watched the wood-paneled door slide quietly open, and stepped out into the shade of the mountain and the smell of pine trees and the gentle, almost inaudible sound of water lapping against the shore of the lake. The man was small and dark, with little bright eyes and a mustache. He stepped forward, smiling formally. “Doctor Bryce?” His accent was French.

Suddenly feeling exhilarated, he answered, “Monsieur Brinnarde?” holding out his hand to the man. “
Enchanté
.”

The man took his hand, his eyebrows slightly raised. “
Soyez le bienvenu, Monsieur le Docteur. Monsieur Newton vous attend. Alors
…”

Bryce caught his breath. “Newton will see me?”

“Yes. I will show you the way.”

Inside the house he was greeted by three cats, who stared at him from the floor where they had been playing. They seemed to be ordinary alley cats, but well fed, and scornful of his entrance. He did not like cats. The Frenchman led him silently through the parlor and up a heavily carpeted staircase. There were pictures on the walls—odd, expensive-looking tableaux by painters he did not recognize. The staircase was very wide, and curved. He noticed that it had one of those motor-powered seats, folded now, that could run up and down by the banister. Could Newton be a cripple? There seemed to be no one else in the house except the two of them, and the cats. He glanced back; they were still staring at him, eyes wide, curious and insolent.

At the top of the stairs was a hall, and at the end of the hall was a door, which obviously led into Newton’s room. It opened and a rather sad-eyed, plump woman came out, wearing an apron. She walked up to them, blinked at him and said. “I guess you’re Professor Bryce.” Her voice, amiable and throaty, was thick with a hillbilly accent.

He nodded and she led him to the door. He walked in alone, noticing to his dismay that his breath was short and his legs unsteady.

The room was immense and the air in it was cold. The light came dimly from a huge, only slightly transparent bay window that overlooked the lake. There seemed to be furniture everywhere, in a bewildering array of colors—the heavy forms of couches, a table, desks, taking on blues and grays and faded orange as his eyes became accustomed to the dim, yellowish light. Two pictures faced him on the back wall; one was an etching of a giant bird, a heron or whooping crane; the other a nervous abstraction by someone like Klee. Maybe it was a Klee. The two works did not go well together. In the corner was a giant birdcage, with a purple and red parrot, apparently asleep. And now walking toward him slowly, carrying a cane, was a tall, thin man, with indistinct features. “Professor Bryce?” The voice was clear, faintly accented, pleasant.