Ray Bradbury - S is for Space

“Somebody looking for me?”

Stunned, Rockwell turned. He saw the expression on Hartley’s face, heard McGuire choke with surprise. The three of them spoke one word together, as if given their cue:

“Smith.”

Smith exhaled cigarette smoke. His face was red-pink as he had been sunburnt, his eyes were a glittering blue. He was barefoot and his nude body was attired in one of Rockwell’s old robes.

“Would you mind telling me where I am? What have I been doing for the last three or four months? Is this a—hospital or isn’t it?”

Dismay slammed Rockwell’s mind, hard. He swallowed.

“Hello. I. That is—Don’t you remember—anything?”

Smith displayed his fingertips. “I recall turning green, if that’s what you mean. Beyond that—nothing.” He raked his pink hand through his nut-brown hair with the vigor of a creature newborn and glad to breathe again.

Rockwell slumped back against the wall. He raised his hands, with shock, to his eyes, and shook his head. Not believing what he saw he said, “What time did you come out of the chrysalis?”

“What time did I come out of—what?”

Rockwell took him down the hall to the next room and pointed to the table.

“I don’t see what you mean,” said Smith, frankly sincere. “I found myself standing in this room half an hour ago, stark naked.”

“That’s all?” said McGuire, hopefully. He seemed relieved.

Rockwell explained the origin of the chrysalis on the table.

Smith frowned. “That’s ridiculous. Who are you?”

Rockwell introduced the others.

Smith scowled at Hartley. “When I first was sick you came, didn’t you. I remember. At the radiations plant. But this is silly. What disease was it?”

Hartley’s cheek muscles were taut wire. “No disease. Don’t you know anything about it?”

“I find myself with strange people in a strange sanitarium. I find myself naked in a room with a man sleeping on a cot. I walk around the sanitarium, hungry. I go to the kitchen, find food, eat, hear excited voices, and then am accused of emerging from a chrysalis. What am I supposed to think? Thanks, by the way, for this robe, for food, and the cigarette I borrowed. I didn’t want to wake you at first, Mr. Rockwell. I didn’t know who you were and you looked dead tired.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” Rockwell wouldn’t let himself believe it. Everything was crumbling. With every word Smith spoke, his hopes were pulled apart like the crumpled chrysalis. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. Strong. Remarkable, when you consider how long I was under.”

“Very remarkable,” said Hartley.

“You can imagine how I felt when I saw the calendar. All those months—crack—gone. I wondered what I’d been doing all that time.”

“So have we.”

McGuire laughed. “Oh, leave him alone, Hartley. Just because you hated him—”

“Hated?” Smith’s brows went up. “Me? Why?”

“Here. This is why!” Hartley thrust his fingers out. “Your damned radiations. Night after night sitting by you in your laboratory. What can I do about it?”

“Hartley,” warned Rockwell. “Sit down. Be quiet.”

“I won’t sit down and I won’t be quiet! Are you both fooled by this imitation of a man, this pink fellow who’s carrying on the greatest hoax in history? If you had any sense you’d destroy Smith before he escapes!”

Rockwell apologized for Hartley’s outburst.

Smith shook his head. “No, let him talk. What’s this about?”

“You know already!” shouted Hartley, angrily. “You’ve lain there for months, listening, planning. You can’t fool me. You’ve got Rockwell bluffed, disappointed. He expected you to be a superman. Maybe you are. But whatever you are, you’re not Smith any more. Not any more. It’s just another of your misdirections. We weren’t supposed to know all about you, and the world shouldn’t know about you. You could kill us, easily, but you’d prefer to stay and convince us that you’re normal. That’s the best way. You could have escaped a few minutes ago, but that would have left the seeds of suspicion behind. Instead, you waited, to convince us that you’re normal.”

“He is normal,” complained McGuire.

“No he’s not. His mind’s different. He’s clever.”

“Give him word association tests then,” said McGuire.

“He’s too clever for that, too.”

“It’s very simple, then. We take blood tests, listen to his heart, and inject serums into him.”

Smith looked dubious. “I feel like an experiment, but if you really want to. This is silly.”

That shocked Hartley. He looked at Rockwell. “Get the hypos,” he said.

Rockwell got the hypos, thinking. Now, maybe after all, Smith was a superman. His blood. That superblood. Its ability to kill germs. His heartbeat. His breathing. Maybe Smith was a superman and didn’t know it. Yes. Yes, maybe—

Rockwell drew blood from Smith and slid it under a microscope. His shoulders sagged. It was normal blood. When you dropped germs into it the germs took a normal length of time to die. The blood was no longer super-germicidal. The x-liquid, too, was gone. Rockwell sighed miserably. Smith’s temperature was normal. So was his pulse. His sensory and nervous system responded according to rule.

“Well, that takes care of that,” said Rockwell, softly.

Hartley sank into a chair, eyes widened, holding his head between bony fingers. He exhaled. “I’m sorry. I guess my—mind—it just imagined things. The months were so long. Night after night. I got obsessed, and afraid. I’ve made a fool out of myself. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He stared at his green fingers. “But what about myself?”

Smith said, “I recovered. You’ll recover, too, I guess. I can sympathize with you. But it wasn’t bad … I don’t really recall anything.”

Hartley relaxed. “But—yes I guess you’re right. I don’t like the idea of my body getting hard, but it can’t be helped. I’ll be all right.”

Rockwell was sick. The tremendous letdown was too much for him. The intense drive, the eagerness, the hunger and curiosity, the fire, had all sunk within him. So this was the man from the chrysalis? The same man who had gone in. All this waiting and wondering for nothing.

He gulped a breath of air, tried to steady his innermost, racing thoughts. Turmoil. This pink-cheeked, fresh-voiced man who sat before him smoking calmly, was no more than a man who had suffered some partial skin petrification, and whose glands had gone wild from radiation, but, nevertheless, just a man now and nothing more. Rockwell’s mind, his overimaginative, fantastic mind had seized upon each facet of the illness and built it into a perfect organism of wishful thinking. Rockwell was deeply shocked, deeply stirred and disappointed.

The question of Smith’s living without food, his pure blood, low temperature, and the other evidences of superiority were now fragments of a strange illness. An illness and nothing more. Something that was over, down and gone and left nothing behind but brittle scraps on a sunlit tabletop. There’d be a chance to watch Hartley now, if his illness progressed, and report the new sickness to the medical world.

But Rockwell didn’t care about illness. He cared about perfection. And that perfection had been split and ripped and torn and it was gone. His dream was gone. His super-creature was gone. He didn’t care if the whole world went hard, green, brittle-mad now.

Smith was shaking hands all around. “I’d better get back to Los Angeles. Important work for me to do at the plant. I have my old job waiting for me. Sorry I can’t stay on. You understand.”

“You should stay on and rest a few days, at least,” said Rockwell. He hated to see the last wisp of his dream vanish.