Уолтер Тевис - The Man Who Fell to Earth

Nathan Bryce had first discovered Thomas Jerome Newton through a roll of caps. He rediscovered him through a phonograph record. He found the record as accidentally as he had found the caps, but what it meant—at least in part—was much more immediately evident than the meaning of the caps had been. This happened in October of 1990, in a Walgreen drugstore in Louisville, a few blocks from the apartment where Bryce and Betty Jo Mosher lived together. It was seven months after the time of Newton’s tiny farewell address on television.

Both Bryce and Betty Jo had saved the larger part of their World Enterprises salaries, and it was not really necessary that Bryce work for a living, at least not for a year or two. He had, however, taken a job as consultant to a manufacturer of scientific toys—a job which he felt, with a certain satisfaction, brought his career in chemistry full circle. He was on his way home from work one afternoon when he stopped in the drug-store. His purpose was to buy a pair of shoelaces, but he paused at the doorway when he saw a large metal basket of phonograph records beneath a sign that read, Closeout 89¢. Bryce had always been a bargain hunter. He thumbed through a few of the record tags, toyed for a moment with one or two, and then encountered an amateurishly turned-out one that, by its title, immediately startled him. Since the time that phonograph records had become small steel balls, the manufacturers ordinarily packed them in little plastic boxes fastened to a large plastic tag. The tag displayed the arty picture and the usually ridiculous commentary that the old-fashioned quadraphonic albums had carried. But the tag on this one was merely of cardboard, and there was no picture. In an inexpensive attempt at the required artiness, the record’s title made use of the trite device of lower case printing throughout. It read: poems from outer space . And, on the reverse side of the card: we guarantee you won’t know the language, but you’ll wish you did! Seven out-of-this-world poems by a man we call “the visitor.”

Without any hesitation at all Bryce took the record to the trial booth, put the ball in its channel, and turned on the switch. The language that came out was weird indeed—sad, liquid, long-voweled, rising and falling strangely in pitch, completely unintelligible. But the voice, without question, was that of T. J. Newton.

He turned the switch off. At the bottom of the record card was printed: RECORDED BY “THE THIRD RENAISSANCE,” TWENTY-THREE SULLIVAN STREET, NEW YORK….

The “third renaissance” was in a loft. It’s office staff consisted solely of one person, a dapper young black with an enormous mustache. This person was, fortunately, in an expansive mood when Bryce dropped into his office, and he readily explained that “the visitor” of the record was a rich nut named Tom something-or-other who lived someplace-or-other in the Village. This nut, it seemed, had approached the recording outfit himself and had underwritten the cost of making and distributing the record. He might be found at a coffee-and-booze house around the corner, a place called The Key and Chain….

The Key and Chain was a relic of the old coffeehouses that had gone out in the seventies. Along with a few others it had managed to survive by installing a bar and selling cheap liquor. There were no bongo drums and no announcements of poetry readings—their era had passed away a long time before—but there were amateurish paintings on the walls, cheap wooden tables placed at random around the room, and what few customers there were studiously dressed like bums. Thomas Jerome Newton was not among them.

Bryce ordered himself a whiskey and soda at the bar and drank it slowly, resolved to wait for at least several hours. But he had only begun his second drink when Newton came in. At first Bryce did not recognize him. Newton was slightly stooped and he walked more heavily than before. He had on his usual dark glasses, but now he carried a white cane, and he was wearing, of all absurdities, a gray fedora hat. A fat uniformed nurse led him by the arm. She took him to an isolated table in the back of the room, seated him, and left. Newton faced toward the bar and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Elbert.” And the bartender said, “I’ll be right with you, dad.” Then the bartender opened a bottle of Gordon’s gin, put it on a tray with a bottle of Angostura bitters and a glass, and carried the tray over to Newton’s table. Newton produced a bill from his shirt pocket, handed it to him, smiled vaguely, and said, “Keep the change.”

Bryce watched him intently from the bar while he groped for the glass, found it, and poured himself a half tumbler full of gin, and added to this a generous dash of bitters. He used no ice and did not stir the drink but began sipping it immediately. Abruptly Bryce began to wonder, almost in panic, what he was going to say to Newton, now that he’d found him. Could he rush over from the bar, clutching his whiskey and soda, and say, “I’ve changed my mind in the past year. I want the Antheans to take over, after all. I’ve been reading the newspapers, and now I want the Antheans to take over.” It all seemed so ridiculous now that he was actually with the Anthean again—and Newton seemed, now, like such a pathetic creature. That shocking conversation in Chicago seemed to have taken place in a dream, or on another planet.

He stared at the Anthean for what seemed a long time, remembering the last time he had seen the Project, Newton’s ferry boat, beneath the Air Force plane that had carried him, together with Betty Jo and fifty others, from the site in Kentucky.

For a moment, thinking about this, he almost forgot where he was. He remembered that fine big absurd ship they had all been building down in Kentucky, remembered the pleasure he had taken in his work on it, the way he had, for a time, been so absorbed in solving those problems of metals and ceramics, of temperature and pressure, that he had felt his life was actually involved in something important, something worthwhile. Probably by now parts of the ship were beginning to rust—if the FBI hadn’t already sealed the whole thing in thermoplastic and sent it off to be filed in the basement of the Pentagon. But whatever had happened, it certainly would not have been the first means of possible salvation to get the official treatment.

Then, in the mood that this line of thinking had put him in, he thought what the hell , stood up, walked over to Newton’s table, sat down and said, his voice calm and deliberate, “Hello, Mr. Newton.”

Newton’s voice seemed equally calm. “Nathan Bryce?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Newton finished the drink in his hand. “I’m glad you came. I thought that maybe you would come.”

For some reason the tone of Newton’s voice, possibly the casual unconcern in it, rattled Bryce. He found himself suddenly feeling awkward. “I found your record,” he said. “The poems.”

Newton smiled dimly. “Yes? How did you like them?”

“Not very much.” He had been trying for boldness in saying that, but felt as though he only managed to be pettish. He cleared his throat. “Why did you make it, anyway?”

Newton remained smiling. “It’s amazing how people don’t think things out.” he said. “At least that’s what a man with the CIA told me.” He began pouring himself another drink of gin, and Bryce noticed that his hand trembled while he did it. He set the bottle down shakily. “The record is not of Anthean poems at all. It’s something like a letter.”

“A letter to whom?”

“To my wife, Mr. Bryce. And to some of the wise people at my home who trained me for… for this life. I’ve hoped it might be played on FM radio sometimes. You know, only FM goes between planets. But as far as I know it hasn’t been played.”