Уолтер Тевис - The Man Who Fell to Earth

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.

“Yes. You’re… Mr. Newton?”

“That’s right. Why don’t we sit down and talk for a while?”

He sat, and they talked for several minutes. Newton was pleasant, easy, a shade over-correct in his manner, but neither imposing nor snobbish. He had a great deal of natural dignity, and he discussed the painting that Bryce mentioned—it was a Klee after all—with interest and intelligence. In talking about it he stood up for a minute to point out a detail and Bryce got his first good look at the man’s face. It was a fine face, beautifully featured, almost womanish, with a strange cast to it. Immediately the thought, the absurd thought that he had toyed with for over a year, came to him strongly. For a moment, watching the strange, tall man pointing a delicate finger toward an eerie, nervous-lined painting there in the dim light, it did not seem at all absurd. Yet it was; and, when Newton turned back to him, smiled, and said, “I think we ought to have a drink. Professor Bryce,” the illusion vanished completely and Bryce’s reason asserted itself. There were stranger-looking men than this one in the world, and there had been brilliant inventors before.

“I’d like a drink,” he said. And then, “I know you’re busy.”

“Not at all.” Newton smiled easily, walking over toward the door. “Not today at least. What would you like?”

“Scotch.” He started to add, “If you have it,” but checked himself. He imagined Newton would have it. “Scotch and water.”

Instead of pressing a button or ringing a gong—in this house ringing a gong would not have seemed out of place—Newton merely opened the door and called out, “Betty Jo.” When she answered, he said, “Bring Professor Bryce the Scotch, with water and ice. I’d like my gin and bitters.” Then he closed the door and returned to his chair. “I’ve only recently come to enjoy gin,” he said. Bryce shuddered inwardly at the thought of gin and bitters.

“Well, Professor Bryce, what do you think of our site here? I suppose you saw all the… activity when you got off the plane?”

He settled back in his chair, feeling more at ease now. Newton seemed very gracious, genuinely interested in hearing what he had to say. “Yes. It looked very interesting. But to tell you the truth I don’t know what you are building.”

Newton stared for a moment, and then laughed. “Didn’t Oliver tell you, in New York?”

Bryce shook his head.

“Oliver can be very secretive. I certainly didn’t mean him to go that far.” He smiled—and for the first time. Bryce was vaguely bothered by the smile, although he could not see precisely what it was that bothered him. “Perhaps that was why you demanded to see me?”

Apparently he only meant it lightly. “Maybe.” Bryce said. “But I had other reasons as well.”

“Yes,” Newton started to say something, but stopped when the door opened and Betty Jo came in, carrying the bottles and pitchers on a tray. Bryce looked at her closely. She was a slightly pretty, middle-aged woman, the kind you would expect to see at a matinee or a bridge club. Yet her face was not vacant, not stupid, and there was a warmth, a trace of good humor or amusement, around her eyes and in her full lips. But she was somewhat out of place as this millionaire’s only visible servant. She said nothing and set the drinks down, and as she walked past him on her way out he was astonished at the unmistakable odors of liquor and perfume as she went by.

The Scotch had been freshly opened, and he fixed himself a drink with some amusement and wonder. Was this the way millionaire scientists went about things? One asks for a drink and a half-drunk servant brings a fifth? Perhaps it was the best way. The two of them poured the liquor in silence and then, after the first drink, Newton said unexpectedly, “It’s a space vehicle.”

Bryce blinked, not understanding what the man meant. “How’s that?”

“The thing we’re building here will be a space vehicle.”

“Oh?” It was a surprise, but not overmuch of one. Space-probing craft, unmanned, of one sort or another were common enough…. Even the Cuban bloc had put one up a few months ago.

“Then you’ll want me on metals for the frame?”

“No.” Newton was sipping his drink slowly, and looking out the window as if thinking of something else. “The frame is worked out thoroughly already. I’d like you to work on the fuel-carrying systems—to find materials that can contain some of the chemicals, such as fuels and wastes and the like.” He turned back to Bryce, smiling again, and Bryce realized that the smile was vaguely disquieting because of a hint of some incomprehensible weariness about it. “I’m afraid I know very little about materials—heat and acid resistance and stresses. Oliver says that you’re one of the very best men for that kind of work.”

“Farnsworth may be overrating me, but I know the work fairly well.”

That seemed to end the subject and they were silent for a while. From the moment Newton had mentioned a space vehicle the old suspicion had, of course, returned. But with it came the obvious refutation—if Newton were, through some wild irrationality, from some other planet, he and his people would not be building spacecraft. That would be the one thing that they would be certain to have already. He smiled at himself, at the cheap, science-fiction level of his own private discourse. If Newton were a Martian or a Venusian, he should, by all rights, be importing heat rays to fry New York or planning to disintegrate Chicago, or carrying off young girls to underground caves for otherworldly sacrifices. Betty Jo? Feeling imaginative now, from the whiskey and his fatigue, he almost laughed aloud at the thought: Betty Jo, on a movie poster, with Newton in a plastic helmet, menacing her with a ray gun, a bulky, silver gun with heavy convector fins and little bright zig-zags coming out of it. Newton was still looking distractedly out the window. He had already finished his first gin drink and had poured himself another. A drunken Martian? An extraterrestrial who drank gin and bitters?