Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

McGarry said it softly. “Fifty-five. Thirty years.”

The lieutenant looked at him pityingly. He said, “Old-timer, do you want it all in a lump, all the rest of the bad news? There are several items of it. I’m no psychologist but I think maybe it’s best for you to take it now, all at once, while you can still throw into the scale against it the fact that you’re going back. Can you take it, McGarry?”

There couldn’t be anything worse than he’d learned already. The fact that thirty years of his life had already been wasted here. Sure, he could take the rest of whatever it was, as long as he was getting back to Earth, green Earth.

He stared at the violet sky, the red sun, the brown plain. He said, very quietly, “I can take it. Dish it out.”

“You’ve done wonderfully for thirty years, McGarry. You can thank God for the fact that you believed Marley’s spacer crashed on Kruger III; it was Kruger IV. You’d have never found it here, but the search, as you say, kept you—reasonably sane.” He paused a moment. His voice was gentle when he spoke again. “There isn’t anything on your shoulder, McGarry. This Dorothy is a figment of your imagination. But don’t worry about it; that particular delusion has probably kept you from cracking up completely.”

McGarry put up his hand. It touched his shoulder. Nothing else. Archer said, “My God, man, it’s marvelous that you’re otherwise okay. Thirty years alone; it’s almost a miracle. And if your one delusion persists, now that I’ve told you it is a delusion, a psychiatrist back at Carthage or on Mars can fix you up in a jiffy.”

McGarry said dully, “It doesn’t persist. It isn’t there now. I—I’m not even sure, Lieutenant, that I ever did really believe in Dorothy. I think I made her up on purpose, to talk to, so I’d remain sane except for that. She was—she was like a woman’s hand, Lieutenant. Or did I tell you that?”

“You told me. Want the rest of it now, McGarry?”

McGarry stared at him. “The rest of it? What rest can there be? I’m fifty-five instead of thirty. I’ve spent thirty years, since I was twenty-five, hunting for a spacer I’d never have found, since it’s on another planet. I’ve been crazy—in one way, but only one—most of that time. But none of that matters now that I can go back to Earth.”

Lieutenant Archer was shaking his head slowly. “Not back to Earth, old-timer. To Mars if you wish, the beautiful brown and yellow hills of Mars. Or, if you don’t mind heat, to purple Venus. But not to Earth, McGarry. Nobody lives there any more.”

“Earth is—gone? I don’t—”

“Not gone, McGarry. It’s there. But it’s black and barren, a charred ball. The war with the Arcturians, twenty years ago. They struck first, and got Earth. We got them, we won, we exterminated them, but Earth was gone before we started. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to settle for somewhere else.”

McGarry said, “No Earth.” There was no expression in his voice. No expression at all.

Archer said, “That’s the works, old-timer. But Mars isn’t so bad. You’ll get used to it. It’s the center of the solar system now, and there are three billion Earthmen on it. You’ll miss the green of Earth, sure, but it’s not so bad.” McGarry said, “No Earth.” There was no expression in his voice. No expression at all.

Archer nodded. “Glad you can take it that way, old-timer. It must be rather a jolt. Well, I guess we can get going. The tubes ought to have cooled enough by now. I’ll check and make sure.”

He stood up and started toward the little spacer.

McGarry’s sol-gun came out of its holster. McGarry shot him, and Lieutenant Archer wasn’t there any more. McGarry stood up and walked to the little spacer. He aimed the sol-gun at it and pulled the trigger. Part of the spacer was gone. Half a dozen shots and it was completely gone. Little atoms that had been the spacer and little atoms that had been Lieutenant Archer of the Space Patrol may have danced in the air, but they were invisible.

McGarry put the gun back into its holster and started walking toward the red splotch of jungle near the horizon.

He put his hand up to his shoulder and touched Dorothy and she was there, as she’d been there now for four of the five years he’d been on Kruger III. She felt, to his fingers and to his bare shoulder, like a woman’s hand.

He said, “Don’t worry, Dorothy. We’ll find it. Maybe this next jungle is the right one. And when we find it—”

He was near the edge of the jungle now, the red jungle, and a tiger came running out to meet him and eat him. A mauve tiger with six legs and a head like a barrel. McGarry aimed his sol-gun and pulled the trigger, and there was a bright green flash, brief but beautiful—oh, so beautiful—and the tiger wasn’t there any more.

McGarry chuckled softly. “Did you see that, Dorothy? That was green, the color there isn’t much of on any planet but the one we’re going to. The only green planet in the system, and it’s the one I came from. You’ll love it.”

She said, “I know I will, Mac.” Her low throaty voice was completely familiar to him, as familiar as his own; she’d always answered him. He reached up his hand and touched her as she rested on his naked shoulder. She felt like a woman’s hand.

He turned and looked back over the brown plain studded with brown bushes, the violet sky above, the crimson sun. He laughed at it. Not a mad laugh, a gentle one. It didn’t matter because soon now he’d find the spacer so he could go back to Earth.

To the green hills, the green fields, the green valleys. Once more he patted the hand upon his shoulder and spoke to it, listened to its answer.

Then, gun at ready, he entered the red jungle.

The little man with the sparse gray hair and the inconspicuous bright red suit stopped on the corner of State and Randolph to buy a micronews, a Chicago Sun-Tribune of March 21st, 1999. Nobody noticed him as he walked into the corner superdrug and took a vacant booth. He dropped a quarter into the coffee-slot and while the conveyor brought him his coffee, he glanced at the headlines on the tiny three-by-four-inch page. His eyes were unusually keen; he could read those headlines easily without artificial aid. But nothing on the first page or the second interested him; they concerned international matters, the third Venus rocket, and the latest depressing report of the ninth moon expedition. But on page three there were two stories concerning crime, and he took a tiny micrographer from his pocket and adjusted it to read the stories while he drank his coffee.

Bela Joad was the little man’s name. His right name, that is; he’d gone by so many names in so many places that only a phenomenal memory could have kept track of them all, but he had a phenomenal memory. None of those names had ever appeared in print, nor had his face or voice ever been seen or heard on the ubiquitous video. Fewer than a score of people, all of them top officials in various police bureaus, knew that Bela Joad was the greatest detective in the world.

He was not an employee of any police department, drew no salary nor expense money, and collected no rewards. It may have been that he had private means and indulged in the detection of criminals as a hobby. It may equally have been that he preyed upon the underworld even as he fought it, that he made criminals support his campaign against them. Whichever was the case, he worked for no one; he worked against crime. When a major crime or a series of major crimes interested him, he would work on it, sometimes consulting beforehand with the chief of police of the city involved, sometimes working without the chief’s knowledge until he would appear in the chief’s office and present him with the evidence that would enable him to make an arrest and obtain a conviction.