Anywhen (16 page)
Authors: James Blish
I MAY SEE AGAIN
WITH A TRANSPLANT EYE
GOD BLESS YOU
The travellers settled in the St. Germain and the Three G's, except for the trade press, which took refuge in the American Bar. Secretaries stopped outside the restaurants, looked at the menus, looked at each other indignantly, and swung up Fifth toward Stouffer's, where they would be charged just as much. The match players said "Viva-la!" and "Law of averages!" and "That's a good call," and damned the Administration. The girl account exec had one Martini more and told the man from the client something he had suspected for five months and was not glad to hear; the agency would not be glad to hear it either, but it never would. Rogers and Whitehead, Authors Representatives ( they had never been able to decide where the apostrophe should go ), had shad roe and bacon and decided to drop all their western authors, of whom they had three. The president and editor-in-chief of the largest magazine enterprise in the world decided to run for President after all.
The men listened and shook their cups and walked
their dogs. The transistor radio reported that the news was worse today.
At 3:0o P.M. the temperature was 92 degrees, the humidity 4o percent, the T.H.I. 80. The German shepherd pulled his man back toward Sixth. The other dogs followed. At the token booth the cups were checked: There was enough money to get home on. Along Forty-eighth, the restaurants emptied, leaving behind a thick miasma of smoke, tomato sauce, and disastrous decisions. Tomorrow they would do for Forty-seventh Street, where the public-relations types gathered.
The cave on Mott Street was relatively cool. The men took off their signs and sat down. The radio said something about Khrushchev, something about Cuba, and something about beer.
"Not a bad day," the big man said finally. "Lots of jangle. Did you hear that guy with the three kids decide to quit?"
The man with the radio reported: "Goin' to rain tomorrow."
"It
is?"
the big man said. "Hell, that's no good." He thought for a while, and then, getting deliberately to his feet, he crossed the dark, chill room and kicked the German shepherd. "Who's in charge here?" The dog looked back sullenly. Satisfied, the man went back and sat down.
"Nah," he said. "It won't rain."
This story has several important features in common with my 1966 novel
The Hour Before Earthrise
(Putnam's, 1967, as
Welcome to Mars!),
but neither depends upon a knowledge of the other. Though the story was written first, the events in it presumably take place at least a decade after those in the novel.
The skimmer soared easily through a noon sky as blue-black as freshly spilled washable ink. On Mars, the gravity was so low that almost anything could be made to fly, given power to spare; on Earth, the skimmer would have been about as airworthy as a flat stone.
On Earth, Karen had never felt very airworthy either, but here on Mars she weighed only forty-nine pounds and was soaring nicely. She wished she could keep the Martian weight when she got home, but she knew well enough that the loss was only a loan.
The official strapped in on her right—as the first Earth-side reporter in a year and a half, she had rated nothing less than the executive officer of Port Ares—had already shown signs of believing that Karen's weight was distributed quite well, no matter what it was. That was pleasant, too.
"This is the true desert we're going over now—the real Mars," he was saying, his voice muffled by his oxygen mask. "That orange-red sand is hematite, a kind of iron ore. Like most rusts, it's got a little water in it, and the Martian lichens can get it out. Also, it can blow up a fine sandstorm."
Karen took no notes; she had known that much before she'd left Cape Kennedy. Besides, perhaps perversely, she was more interested in Joe Kendricks, the skimmer's civilian pilot. Colonel Margolis was all right: young, hard-muscled, highly trained, with that modest but dedicated look cultivated by the Astronaut Corps. Like most of the A.C. complement here, he also looked as though he had spent most of his hitch at Port Ares under glass. Kendricks, on the other hand, looked weathered.
Joe Kendricks showed not the faintest sign of returning her interest. At the moment, his attention was totally on the skimmer and on the desert. He too was a reporter, representing a broadcasting-wire service pool, but since he had been on Mars since the second landing, he had suffered the usual fate of the local leg man: He had first become familiar, then invisible. Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps from simple staleness, or loneliness, or a combination of these and still other reasons, his copy lately had been showing signs of cynicism about the whole Mars venture.
Maybe that had been inevitable. All the same, when he had taken to slugging his weekly column "JoKe's on Mars," the home office emitted only one dutiful chuckle and sent Karen across forty-eight million miles of expensive space to trouble-shoot. Neither the press nor the A.C. wanted the taxpayer to think anybody found anything funny about Mars.
Kendricks banked the skimmer sharply and pointed down. "Cat," he said, to nobody in particular.
"Oho." Colonel Margolis picked up his binoculars. Karen followed suit. The glasses were difficult to look into through the eyepieces of her oxygen mask, and even more difficult to focus with the heavy gloves; but suddenly the big dune cat sprang to life in front of her.
It was beautiful. The dune cat, as all encyclopedias note, is the largest animal on Mars, usually measuring about four feet from nose to base of spine (it has no tail). The eyes, slitted and with an extra membrane against the flying sand, give it a vaguely catlike appearance, as does the calico pelt ( orange, marbled with blue-green, which is actually a parasitic one-celled plant that helps supply its oxygen); but it is not a cat. Though it has an abdominal pouch like a kangaroo or a 'possum, it is not a marsupial either. Some of the encyclopedias—the cheaper and more sensational ones—suggest that it may be descended from the long-extinct Canal Masons of Mars, but since the Masons left behind neither pictures nor bones, this is at best only a wild guess.
It loped gracefully over the rusty dunes, heading in nearly a straight line, probably for the nearest oasis. Joe Kendricks followed it easily. Evidently, it hadn't yet spotted the skimmer, which was nearly noiseless in the Everest-thin air.
"A real break, Miss Chandler," Colonel Margolis was saying. "We don't see much action on Mars, but a cat's always good for a show. JoKe, have you got a spare canteen you can throw him?"
The leg man nodded and set his machine to wheeling in a wide arc over the cat, while Karen tried to puzzle out what Colonel Margolis could be talking about. Action? The only encyclopedia entry she recalled at all well said that the dune cat was "quick and strong, but aloof and harmless to man." Nobody, the entry added, knew what it ate.
Joe Kendricks produced a flat can of water, loosened the pull tab slightly, and, to Karen's astonishment—for water was worth more than fine gold on Mars—threw it over the side of the skimmer. It fell with dreamlike slowness in the weak gravity, but the weakened pull tab burst open when it struck, just ahead of the cat.
Instantly, the sands all around the cat were aswarm with creatures. They came running and wriggling toward the rapidly evaporating stain of water from as far away as fifteen feet.
Most of them were too small to be made out clearly, even through the binoculars. Karen was just as glad, for the two that she could see clearly were quite bad enough.
They were each about a foot long, and looked like a nightmare combination of centipede and scorpion. And where the other crawlers were all headed mindlessly toward the water stain, these had sensed that their first target had to be the dune cat.
The cat fought with silent fury, with great flat blows of one open paw; in the other, something metallic flashed in the weak, harsh sunlight. It paid no heed to the creatures' claws, though it sustained several bloody nips from them in the first few seconds; it was their stings it was wary of. Karen was instantly certain that they were venomous.
She was beginning to think the men in the skimmer were, too.
The struggle seemed to last forever, but it was actually only a moment before the cat had neatly amputated one sting, and had smashed the other horror halfway into the sand. From there it was upon the burst canteen with a single bound, and tossing back whatever trickle of liquid gold it might still hold.
Then, without a single upward glance, it was running like a dust devil for the near horizon. Nothing was left to see below but the smaller critters, some of which were now becoming aware of the two losers of the battle.
Karen discovered that she was breathing again—and that she had forgotten to take pictures. Colonel Margolis pounded Joe Kendricks excitedly on one shoulder.
"After him!" the A.C. officer crowed. "Let's not drop the ball now, JoKe. Give her the gun!"
Even beneath the oxygen mask there was something cold and withdrawn about the set of Kendricks' expression, but the skimmer nevertheless leapt obediently after the vanished dune cat. The cat was fast, but the chase was no contest.
"Set me down about a mile ahead of him," the colonel said. He loosened his pistol in its holster.
"Colonel," Karen said. "Are you—are you going to kill the cat? Even after the fight it put up?"
"No, indeed," Colonel Margolis said heartily. "Just collect our little fee for the water we gave it. Over behind that dune looks about right, JoKe."
"It isn't legal," Kendricks said unexpectedly. "You know that."
"The law's an anachronism," the colonel said in an even voice. "Hasn't been enforced for years."
"You should know," Kendricks said. "You enforce 'em. All right, hop out. I'll cover you."
The A.C. officer jumped from the hovering skimmer to the rusty sand, and Kendricks took the machine aloft again, circling him.
The cat stopped when it topped the rise and saw the man, but after a glance aloft at the skimmer, it did not try to run away. The colonel had his gun out now, but he was not pointing it anywhere.
"I should very much like to know," Karen said in her quietest and most dangerous voice, "just exactly what is going on here."
"A little quiet poaching," Kendricks said, his eyes on the ground. "The cat carries a thing in his pouch. Our hero down there is going to rob him of it."
"But—what is it? Is it valuable?"
"Valuable to the cat, but valuable enough to the colonel. Ever seen a Martian pomander?"
Karen had indeed seen several; they had been the ultimate in gifts from swains for several years. It was a fuzzy sphere about the size of a grape, which, when suspended and warmed between the breasts, surrounded the wearer with a sweet and literally unearthly musk. Karen had tried one only once, for the perfume, though light, also had a faint narcotic quality which encouraged a lady to say "maybe" when what she had meant was "no."
"The pomander—it's part of the cat? Or a charm or treasure or something like that?"
"Well, that's hard to say. The experts call it his hibernation organ—he won't get through next winter without it. It isn't attached to him in any way, but the cats always act as though they can't come by another one—or grow another, whichever it is."
Karen clenched her fists. "Joe—put me down."
He darted a quick sidewise glance at her. "I wouldn't advise it. There's nothing you can do—and I know. I've tried."
"Joe Kendricks, I don't know what else you'd call what's going on down there, but there's one thing you know it is, as well as I do. It's a story—and I want it."
"You'll never get it off the planet," he said. "But—all right, all right. Down we go."
As they trudged closer, the cat, erect, seemed to be holding out something toward the colonel, who had his back to them. Because it was closer to the crest of the dune than the man was, the cat did not seem to be any shorter. After a moment, Colonel Margolis threw back his head and laughed. At this distance the air failed to carry the sound.
"Not the pomander," Joe Kendricks muttered without waiting for Karen's question. "It's trying to buy its life with a shard. They always do."
"What's—?"
"A stone with Canal Mason inscriptions on it."
"But Joe! Surely
that's
valuable!"
"Not worth a dime; the planet's littered with them. The Masons wrote all over every brick they laid. The cat could have picked that one up right where he's standing. Nobody's ever been able to read a line of the stuff, anyhow. No connection to Earthly languages."
The cat saw them now; it turned slightly and held out its fragment of stone toward Joe Kendricks. Colonel Margolis looked at them over his shoulder with a start of annoyance.
"No good, cat," he said harshly. "It's
me
you're dickering with. And I don't want your rock. Empty the pouch."
He could not possibly have expected the dune cat to understand his words—but the situation, and a brusque eviscerating gesture of both his hands, obviously had already conveyed more than enough.
Another slight movement, and slanted eyes like twin sapphires blazed into Karen's own out of the tigerish mask. In a gnarled voice that carried human speech only with pain, the dune cat said:
"Missessss Earsssman, buy?"
It held out the worthless bit of brick it offered, for its life. Its stare was proud, and its outthrust paw absolutely steady.
"I'll be glad to buy," Karen said, and reached out. "And, Colonel Margolis—the Lord and the Astronaut Corps help you if you break my bargain."
Gloved hand touched orange paw. The Martian looked at her a moment longer, and then was gone.
Colonel Margolis remained silent during the whole of the trip back to Port Ares, but once there, he lost no time in having them both on the carpet—in, of course, his own office. He was obviously also in a pet—in part, Karen was almost sure, for having made up to her in the first place.
Well, that's the
way
the world wags, Colonel; actions have consequences . . . even on Mars.