Уолтер Тевис - The Man Who Fell to Earth

Abruptly, the FBI man’s hands had clamped over his wrists again and his arms—those arms with so little strength in them when pitted against the strength of a human being—were drawn once again behind his back and held. And then someone put a clamp around his head, tightening it at the temples. “No!” he said, softly, trembling. “No!” He could not move his head.

“I’m sorry,” the technician said. “I’m sorry, but we have to hold your head still for this.” He did not sound at all sorry. He pushed the machine directly up to Newton’s face. Then he turned a knob that brought the lenses and rubber cups up to Newton’s eyes, like binoculars.

And Newton, for the second time in two days, did something new to him, and very human. He screamed. He screamed wordlessly at first and then he found himself forming words: “Don’t you know I’m not human? I’m not a human being! ” The cups had blocked off all light. He could see nothing, no one. “ I’m not a human being at all! ”

“Now come on,” the FBI man said, behind him.

And then there was a flash of silver light that was brighter, to Newton, than the midday sun of deep summer is to a man who has come from a dark room and has forced himself to stare up at it, open-eyed, until his eyes had gone dark. Then he felt the pressure leave his face, and knew that they had wheeled the machine away.

It was only after he had fallen twice that they tested his eyes and discovered that he was blind.

He was kept incommunicado in a government hospital for six weeks, where the government doctors were able to do nothing whatever for him. The light-sensitive cells of his retinas had been almost completely seared; they were no more capable of visual distinctions than is a greatly overexposed photographic plate. He could, after a few weeks, faintly make out light and dark, and could tell, when a large dark object was placed in front of him, that it was, indeed, a large, dark object. But that was all—no color was apparent, no form.

It was during this period that he began to think again of Anthea. At first his mind found itself recalling old and scattered memories, mostly of his childhood. He remembered a certain chesslike game that he had loved as a child—a game played with transparent cubes on a circular board—and he found himself recalling the complex rules whereby the pale green cubes took precedence over the gray ones when their configurations formed polygons. He remembered the musical instruments he had studied, the books he had read, especially the history books, and the automatic ending of his childhood at the age of thirty-two Anthean years—or forty-five, as the human beings counted time—by marriage. He had not chosen his wife himself, although that was sometimes done, but had permitted his family to make the choice. The marriage had been an effective one, and pleasant enough. There had been no passion, but Antheans were not a passionate race. Now blind, in a United States hospital, he found himself thinking of his wife more fondly than he ever had before. He missed her, and wished she were with him. Sometimes he wept.

Not being able to watch television, he would listen at times to the radio. The government, he learned, had not been able to keep his blindness a secret. The Republicans were making considerable use of him in their campaign. What had happened to him they called an example of administrative high-handedness and irresponsibility.

After the first week he felt no rancor toward them. How could he be angry with children? Van Brugh offered embarrassed apologies; it had all been a mistake; he had not known the FBI hadn’t been informed of Newton’s peculiarities. He was aware that Van Brugh did not actually care, that he was only worried about what he, Newton, might eventually say to the press, what names he would name. Newton assured him, wearily, that he would say nothing except that it was all an unavoidable accident. No one’s fault—an accident.

Then one day Van Brugh told him that he had destroyed the tape. He had known from the beginning, he said, that no one would believe it anyway. They would believe it to be a fake, or that Newton was insane, or anything except that it was true.

Newton asked him if he believed it was true.

“Of course I believe it,” Van Brugh said quietly. “At least six people know about it and believe it. The President is one of them, and so is the Secretary of State. But we’re destroying the records.”

“Why?”

“Well,” Van Brugh laughed coldly, “among other things we don’t want to go down in history as the greatest assembly of crackpots ever to govern this country.”

Newton set down the book with which he had been practicing Braille. “Then I can resume my work? In Kentucky?”

“Possibly. I don’t know. We’ll be watching you every minute for the rest of your life. But if the Republicans get in I’ll be replaced. I don’t know.”

Newton picked up the book again. For a moment he had been interested, for the first time in weeks, in what was going on around him. But the interest had gone as quickly as it had come, leaving no trace. He laughed gently. “That’s interesting,” he said.

When he left the hospital, led by a nurse, there was a crowd waiting outside the building. In the bright sunlight he could see their silhouettes, and he could hear their voices. A passage in the crowd was kept open for him, probably by policemen, and the nurse led him through this to his car. He heard faint applause. Twice he stumbled, but did not fall. The nurse led him expertly; she would stay with him for months or years, as long as he needed her. Her name was Shirley, and as well as he could tell she was fat.

Suddenly his hand was taken and he felt it being gripped softly. A large person was in front of him. “Good to have you back, Mr. Newton.” Farnsworth’s voice.

“Thank you, Oliver.” He felt very tired. “We have some business to discuss.”

“Yes. You’re on television, you know, Mr. Newton.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.” He looked around, trying unsuccessfully to find the shape of a camera. “Where’s the camera?”

“On your right.” Farnsworth said, sotto voce .

“Turn me toward it, please. Did someone want to ask me something?”

A voice, evidently that of a television commentator, spoke at his elbow. “Mr. Newton, I’m Duane Whitely of CBS television. Can you tell me how it feels to be out again?”

“No,” Newton said. “Not yet.”

The announcer did not seem taken aback. “What,” he said, “are your plans for the future? After the experience you’ve just been through?”

Newton had finally been able pick out the camera, and he faced it now, almost totally unconscious of his human audience, both here in Washington and behind sets all over the country. He was thinking of another audience. He smiled faintly. At the Anthean scientists? At his wife? “I was, as you know,” he said, “working toward a space exploration project. My company was engaged in a rather large undertaking, to send a craft out into the solar system, to measure the radiations that have so far made interplanetary travel impossible.” He paused for breath, and realized that his head and shoulders were aching. Perhaps it was the gravity again, after so long a time in bed. “During my confinement—which was in no way unpleasant—I have had a chance to think.”

“Yes?” the announcer said, filling the pause.

“Yes.” He smiled gently, meaningfully, even happily toward the camera, toward his home. “I’ve decided that the project was over-ambitious. I am going to abandon it.”