Уолтер Тевис - The Man Who Fell to Earth

But he did not care very much—did not care what they found out about him, did not even care very much what happened to that old, old plan, conceived twenty years before in another part of the solar system. He supposed, without thinking about it very much, that it was all over anyway, and he felt little more than relief. What he cared most about was that they would get their infernal experiments and tests and questions done with, and leave him alone. Being imprisoned as he was, was no problem for him—in many ways it was more native to his way of life, and more satisfying, than freedom.

The FBI was polite and gentle enough, but after two days of nonsensical questions, Bryce was profoundly weary, unable even to feel anger at the contempt he could sense behind their politeness. Had they not released him on the third day, he felt that he might have gone to pieces. Yet they hadn’t put him under any noticeable strain; in fact they hardly seemed to consider him important.

On the third morning the man came, as usual, to pick him up at the YMCA and to drive him the four blocks to the Federal Building in downtown Cincinnati. The YMCA had been a contributing factor to his weariness. Had he credited the FBI with enough imagination he would have blamed his stay at the Y upon a deliberate wish to depress him with the tattered cheeriness that filled the public rooms along with the grimy oak furniture and the countless unread Christian tracts.

The man took him to a new room in the Federal Building this time, a room like a dentist’s office where a technician put hypodermics in him, measured his heartbeat and blood pressure, and even took X-ray photographs of his skull. These things were done, as someone explained, for “routine identification procedure.” Bryce could not imagine what his heartbeat rate would have to do with identifying him; but he knew better than to ask. Then, abruptly, they finished, and the man who had brought him there told him that, as far as the FBI was concerned, he was free to go. Bryce looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty in the morning.

As he left the room and went down the corridor to the main entrance-way, he had another shock. Being led by a matron to the room he had just left, was Betty Jo. She smiled at him, but said nothing, and the matron hustled her past him and into the room.

He was astonished at his own reaction. Despite his weariness he felt a stomach-borne excitement, a kind of delight, at seeing her—even more so at seeing her frank-faced, chubby person in this absurd, ponderously severe corridor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Outside the building he sat on the steps in the cold December sunlight and waited for her to come out. It was almost noon when she came and sat, heavily and shyly, beside him. With the cold air her perfume seemed warm—strong and sweet. A brisk young man with an attaché case came striding up the steps, and pretended not to see them sitting there. Bryce turned to Betty Jo and was surprised to see that her eyes were puffy, as though she had been recently crying. He glanced at her nervously. “Where’ve they been keeping you?”

“At the YWCA.” She shuddered. “I didn’t care for it much.”

It was logical that they would have had her there, but he hadn’t thought about it. “I’ve been at the other one,” he said. “At the YM. How did they treat you? The FBI, I mean.” It seemed foolish to use all of those initials—YMCA, FBI.

“All right, I guess.” She shook her head and then moistened her lips. Bryce liked the gesture; she had full lips, without lipstick, red now from the cold air. “But they sure asked a lot of questions. About Tommy.”

Somehow the reference to Newton embarrassed him. He did not want to talk about the Anthean just then.

She seemed to sense his embarrassment—or shared it. After a pause she said, “Do you want to go eat lunch?”

“That’s a good idea.” He stood up and pulled his overcoat around him. Then he leaned down and helped her to her feet, taking both her hands in his.

By luck they found a good, quiet restaurant and they both ate a large lunch. It was all natural food, with no synthetics, and there was even real coffee to drink afterward, although it was thirty-five cents a cup. But they both had plenty of money.

They talked little during the meal, and they did not mention Newton. He asked her what her plans were and found that she had none. When they had finished eating he said, “What do we do now?”

She looked better now, more composed and cheerful. “Why don’t we go to the zoo?” she said.

“Why not?” It seemed like a good idea. “We can take a taxi.”

Possibly because it was the Christmas holiday season, there were very few people at the zoo, which suited Bryce perfectly. The animals were all indoors, and the two of them wandered from building to building, talking pleasantly. He liked the big, insolent cats, especially the panthers, and she liked the birds, the bright-colored ones. He was thankful and pleased that she cared for the monkeys no more than he did—he found them obscene little creatures—for it would have dismayed him had she, like so many women, found them cute and funny. He had never seen anything funny about monkeys.

He was also pleased to find that he could buy beer from a stand at, of all places, the entrance to the aquarium. They took their beers inside with them—although a sign told them plainly not to—and seated themselves in the dusky light before a large tank which contained an enormous catfish. The catfish was a fine, solid, placid-looking creature, with Mandarin mustaches and gray, pachydermous skin. It watched them dolefully while they drank their beer.

After they had sat in silence for a while, watching the catfish, Betty Jo said, “What do you think they’ll do with Tommy?”

He realized that he had been waiting for her to bring up the subject. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll hurt him or anything.”

Betty Jo sipped from her cup. “They said he wasn’t… wasn’t an American.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know if he is, Doctor Bryce?”

He started to tell her to call him Nathan, but it didn’t seem right to do that, just then. “I imagine they’re right,” he said, wondering how in the name of heaven they could deport him if they had found out.

“Do you think they’ll keep him long?”

He remembered that X-ray of Newton’s skeleton and the thoroughness of the FBI in testing him in the little dentist’s office and abruptly he understood why they had tested him. They wanted to make sure that he was not an Anthean, too. “Yes,” he said. “I think they’ll probably keep him for a long time. As long as they can.”

She didn’t reply and he looked over at her. She was holding her paper cup in her lap, with both hands, and staring down into it as if into a well. The flat, diffused light from the catfish’s tank made no shadows on her face, and the unlined simplicity of her features and her poised, solid position on the bench made her appear like a fine and solid statue. He looked at her silently for what seemed a long time.

Then she looked over at him and it became obvious why she had been crying before. “You’ll miss him, I suppose,” he said. Then he finished his beer.

Her expression did not change. Her voice was soft. “I sure will miss him,” she said. “Let’s go look at the rest of the fish.”

They looked at the rest of them, but there was none he liked so well as the old catfish.

When the time came to take a taxi back into town he realized that he had no address to give, that there was no particular place for him to go. He looked at Betty Jo, standing beside him now in the sunshine, “where are you going to stay?” he asked.