Уолтер Тевис - The Man Who Fell to Earth

A servant, sleepy-eyed and wearing a bathrobe, met them at the door. Farnsworth dismissed the man with an order for coffee, and then shouted after him that he must have a room prepared for his guest and that he would receive no telephone calls for at least three days. Then Farnsworth led him into the library.

The room was very big and even more expensively decorated than the study in the New York apartment had been. Obviously Farnsworth read the best rich men’s magazines. In the center of the floor was a white statue of a naked woman holding an elaborate lyre. Two of the walls were covered with bookshelves, and on the third was a large painting of a religious figure whom Newton recognized as Jesus, nailed to a wooden cross. The face in the picture startled him for a moment—with its thinness and large piercing eyes it could have been the face of an Anthean.

Then he looked at Farnsworth, who, although bleary-eyed, was more composed now, leaning back in his armchair, his small hands clasped together over his belly, looking at his guest. Their eyes met for an embarrassed moment, and the lawyer turned his away.

Then, in a moment, he looked back and said, quietly, “Well, Mr. Newton, what are your plans?”

He smiled. “They’re very simple. I want to make as much money as possible. As quickly as possible.”

There was no expression on the lawyer’s face, but his voice was wry. “Your simplicity has elegance. Mr. Newton, he said. “How much money did you have in mind?”

Newton gazed distractedly at the expensive objets d’art in the room. “How much can we make in, say, five years?

Farnsworth looked at him a moment, and then stood up. He waddled tiredly over to the bookshelf and began turning some small knobs there until speakers, hidden somewhere in the room, began playing violin music. Newton did not recognize the melody; but it was quiet and complex. Then, adjusting the dials, Farnsworth said, “That depends on two things.”

“Yes?”

“First, how fairly do you want to play, Mr. Newton?”

Newton refocused his attention on Farnsworth. “Completely fairly,” he said. “Legally.”

“I see.” Farnsworth could not seem to get the treble control adjusted to suit him. “Well then, second; what will my share be?”

“Ten percent of the net profits. Five percent of all corporate holdings.”

Abruptly, Farnsworth took his fingers off the amplifier controls. He returned slowly to his chair. Then he smiled faintly. “All right, Mr. Newton,” he said. “I think I can give you a net worth of… three hundred million dollars, within five years.”

Newton thought for a moment about this. Then he said, “That won’t be enough.”

Farnsworth stared at him for a long minute, his eyebrows high, before he said, “Not enough for what , Mr. Newton?”

Newton’s eyes hardened. “For a… research project. A very expensive one.”

“I’ll warrant it is.”

“Suppose,” the tall man said, “that I could provide you with a petroleum refining process about fifteen percent more efficient than any now in use? Would that bring your figure up to five hundred million?”

“Could your… process be set up within a year?”

Newton nodded. “Within a year it could be outproducing the Standard Oil Company—to whom, I suppose, we might lease it.”

Farnsworth was staring again. Finally he said. “We’ll start drawing up the papers tomorrow.”

“Good.” Newton rose stiffly from his chair. “We can talk about the arrangements in more detail then. There are, really, only two important considerations; that you get the money honestly, and that I be required to have little contact with anyone but you.”

His bedroom was upstairs, and for a moment he thought he would not be able to climb the stairway. But he made it, a step at a time, while Farnsworth climbed beside him, saying nothing. Then, after he had shown him to his room, the lawyer looked at him and said, “You’re an unusual man. Mr. Newton. Do you mind if I ask where you are from?”

The question came as a complete surprise, but he kept his composure. “Not at all,” he said, “I’m from Kentucky, Mr. Farnsworth.”

The lawyer’s eyebrows rose only slightly. “I see,” he said. Then he turned and walked ponderously away down the hall, which was floored with marble and caused his footsteps to echo….

His room was high-ceilinged and ornately furnished. He noticed a television set built into the wall in such a way that it could be viewed from his bed and he smiled tiredly on seeing it—he would have to watch it sometime, to see how their reception compared with that on Anthea. And it would be amusing to see some of the shows again. He had always liked the Westerns, even though the quiz programs and the Sunday “educational” shows had provided his staff at home with most of the information that he had memorized. He had not seen a television show in… how long had the trip taken? …four months. And he had been on earth two months—getting money, studying the disease germs, studying the food and water, perfecting his accent, reading the newspapers, preparing himself for the critical interview with Farnsworth.

He looked out the window at the brighter light of morning, at the pale blue sky. Somewhere in the sky, possibly directly where he was looking, was Anthea. A cold place, dying, but one for which he could be homesick; a place where there were people whom he loved, people whom he would not see again for a very long time…. But he would see them again.

He closed the curtains at the window, and then, gently, eased his tired, aching body into bed. Somehow all of the excitement seemed gone, and he was placid and calm. He fell asleep within a few minutes.

Afternoon sunlight woke him, and even though it hurt his eyes with its brilliance—for the curtains at the window were translucent—he awoke feeling rested and pleasant. Possibly it was the softness of the bed compared with those in the obscure hotels where he had been staying, and possibly it was relief at the success of last night. He lay in bed, thinking, for several minutes and then got up and went into the bathroom. There was an electric razor laid out for him, together with soap, washcloth, and towel. He smiled at this; Antheans did not have beards. He turned the lavatory tap on and watched it for a moment, fascinated as ever with the sight of all that water. Then he washed his face, not using the soap—for it was irritating to his skin—but using a cream from a jar in his briefcase. Then he took his usual pills, changed his clothes, and went downstairs to begin earning a half billion dollars….

That evening, after six hours of talking and planning, he stood for a long time on the balcony outside his room, enjoying the cool air and looking at the black sky. The stars and the planets seemed strange, shimmering in the heavy atmosphere, and he enjoyed staring at them, in their unfamiliar positions. But he knew little of astronomy, and the patterns were confusing to him—except for those of the Big Dipper and a few minor constellations. Finally he returned to his room. It would have been pleasant to know which one was Anthea; but he could not tell….

On an unseasonably warm spring afternoon, Professor Nathan Bryce, walking up the stairs to his fourth-floor apartment, discovered a roll of caps on the third-floor landing. Remembering the last afternoon’s loud banging of cap guns in the hallways, he picked this up with the intention of flushing it down the toilet when he reached his apartment. It had taken him a moment to recognize the little roll, for it was bright yellow. When he was a boy, caps had always been red, a peculiar rust shade, and that had always seemed the right color for caps and firecrackers, and that kind of thing. But apparently they were making yellow ones now, as they made pink refrigerators and yellow aluminum drinking glasses, and other such incongruous wonders. He continued up the stairs, perspiring, thinking now of some of the chemical subtleties that went into even the making of yellow spun-aluminum drinking glasses. He speculated that the cave men who drank from their cupped and calloused hands might have done perfectly well for themselves without all the complex learning in chemical engineering—that ungodly, sophisticated knowledge of molecular behavior and of commercial processes—which he, Nathan Bryce, was paid to know and to publish research papers about.