Уолтер Тевис - The Man Who Fell to Earth

Bryce pulled a box from his pocket, and set it on Canutti’s desk. “Have you seen this new film?” he said.

Canutti picked it up in his soft, uncalloused hand, and looked at it for a moment, puzzled. “Worldcolor? Yes, I’ve used it, Nate.” He set it down, with a kind of finality. “It’s a darn good film. Self-developing.”

“Do you know how it works?”

Canutti drew speculatively on his pipe, which was unlit. “No, Nate. Can’t say as I do. Like any other film, I guess. Only a little more… sophisticated.” He smiled at his pleasantry.

“Not exactly.” Bryce reached over and picked up the box, weighing it in his hand, and watching Canutti’s bland face. “I ran some tests on it, and was pretty thoroughly startled. You know, the best color films have three separate emulsions, one for each primary. Well, this one has no emulsion at all.”

Canutti raised his eyebrows. You’d better look surprised, you idiot , Bryce thought. Taking the pipe from his mouth Canutti said, “Sounds impossible. Where’s the photosensitivity?”

“Apparently in the base. And it seems to be done with barium salts—only God would know how. Crystalline barium salts in a random dispersion. And,” he drew a breath, “the developer is gaseous—in a little pod under the canister lid. I’ve tried to find what’s in it and all I can be certain of is potassium nitrate, some peroxide, and something that, so help me, acted like cobalt. And it’s all mildly radioactive, which may explain something, although I’m not certain what.”

Canutti gave him the long pause that his little lecture, in all politeness, required. Then he said, “Sounds wild, Nate. Where do they make it?”

“There’s a factory in Kentucky. But they’re incorporated in New York, as near as I can find out. No stock listed on the exchange.”

Canutti, listening, adopted a serious expression; probably, Bryce thought, the one he reserved for solemn occasions, like being admitted to a new country club. “I see. Well, this is tricky, isn’t it?”

Tricky? What in hell did that mean? Of course it was tricky. It was impossible. “Yes, it’s tricky. That’s what I wanted to ask you about.” He hesitated a moment, reluctant to ask a favor of this pompous little extrovert. “I’d like to follow it up, find out how the devil it works. I wonder if I could use one of the big research labs down in the basement—at least during the time between semesters. And I could use a student assistant, if there’s one available.”

Canutti had leaned far back in his plastic-covered chair during the middle of this speech, as though Bryce had physically pushed him down into the soft and billowy foam cushions. “The labs are all being used, Nate,” he said. “You know we’ve got more industrial and military projects now than we can handle. Why don’t you write the company that makes the film and query them?”

He tried to keep his voice level: “I’ve already written them. They don’t answer their mail. Nobody knows anything about them. There’s nothing about them in the journals—not even in American Photochemistry .” He stopped a minute. “Look, all I need is a lab, Professor Canutti… I can do without the assistant.”

“Walt. Walt Canutti. But the labs are full, Nate. Coordinator Johnson would have me by the ruddy ears if I—”

“Look… Walt… This is basic research. Johnson is always giving speeches about basic research, isn’t he? The backbone of science. All we appear to be doing here is developing cheaper ways to make insecticides, and perfecting gas bombs.”

Canutti raised his eyebrows, his chubby body still sunk in cushioning foam. “We don’t make a habit of talking about our military projects that way, Nate. Our applied tactical research is—”

“All right. All right.” He fought his voice back down, trying to make it sound normal. “Killing people is basic, I suppose. Part of the nation’s life, too. But this film…”

Canutti flushed at the sarcasm. “Look. Nate.” he said, “what you want to do is diddle with a commercial process. And, moreover, one that already works just fine. Why blow your top over it? So the film’s a little unusual. All the better.”

“My God.” he said, “this film is more than unusual. You can see that. You’re a chemist—a better chemist than I am. Can’t you see the techniques this thing implies? My Lord, barium salts and a gaseous developer!” He suddenly remembered the roll of film still in his hand, and held it out as if it were a snake, or a holy relic. “It’s as if we were… as if we were cave men, scratching fleas out of our armpits, and one of us found a… a roll of toy caps…” And then, in an instant, it struck him like a physical blow in the chest and, pausing in his speech a second he thought, Good holy God—that roll of caps ! “…and threw them in the fire. Think of the tradition, the technical tradition, that went into making a strip of paper with little gunpowder pods in a neat row, so that we could hear the little pop, pop, pop! Or if you gave an ancient Roman a wrist-watch, and he knew what a sundial was…” He didn’t finish the comparison, thinking now of that roll of caps, how they had gone off so loudly, had not smelt of gunpowder at all.

Canutti smiled coldly. “Well, Nate, you’re very eloquent. But I wouldn’t get so worked up over a thing that some hot research team thought up.” He tried to sound humorous, to joke away the disagreement. “I doubt we’ve been visited by men of the future. Not, at least, to sell us camera film.”

Bryce stood up, clenching the film box in his hand. He spoke softly. “Hot research team, the devil! And for all I know—the way this film doesn’t use a single chemical technique from over a hundred years of development in photography—this process might be extraterrestrial. Or there’s a genius hiding somewhere in Kentucky who’s going to be selling us perpetual motion machines next week.” Abruptly, he turned, sick of the interview, and began walking toward the door.

Like a mother calling after a child who leaves in a tantrum, Canutti said. “I wouldn’t talk about extraterrestrial too much, Nate. Of course, I understand what you mean….”

“Of course you do,” Bryce said, leaving.

He went directly home on the afternoon monorail, and began looking—or, rather, listening—for small boys with cap guns.

Five minutes after he left the airport he realized that he had made a serious mistake. He should not have attempted to come this far south in the summer time, no matter how necessary it was. He could have sent Farnsworth, sent someone, to buy property, to make arrangements. The temperature was over ninety and, being physically unable to perspire, his body having been designed for temperatures in the forties, he was sick almost to unconsciousness in the back seat of the airport limousine that drove him, grinding his still gravity-sensitive body against its hard cushions, into downtown Louisville.

But, in more than two years on earth and with the ten years of physical conditioning he had undergone before leaving Anthea, he was able to endure the pain and keep himself, by force of will, grimly, although confusedly, conscious. He was able to get from the limousine into the hotel lobby, and from the lobby up the elevator—relieved that it was a smooth-running, slow elevator—and into his third-floor room, where he fell on the bed the moment the bellboy had left him to himself. After a moment he managed to get to the air-conditioner and set it for very cold. Then he fell back on the bed. It was a good air-conditioner; it was based on a group of patents he had leased to the company that made it. In a short while the room became sufficiently comfortable for him, but he left the machine on, thankful that his contribution to the science of refrigeration had managed to make the ugly little boxes, so necessary to him, noiseless.