The Man Who Fell to Earth Read online

  Farnsworth was a lawyer; he had an eye for detail. He saw instantly that there was something odd about the aspirin box. It was a common object, obviously a box of Bayer aspirin; but there was something about it that was wrong. And something was not right about the way that Newton was sipping the water, slowly, careful not to spill a drop—as if it were precious. And the water had clouded from one aspirin; that seemed wrong. He would have to try it with an aspirin later, when the man was gone, and see what happened.

  Before the maid left, Newton asked her to take his briefcase to Farnsworth. When she had gone he took a last, loving sip and set his glass, still nearly full, beside him on the table. “There are some things in the briefcase I’d like you to read.”

  Farnsworth opened the bag, found a thick sheaf of papers and pulled them out on to his lap. The paper, he noticed immediately, had an unusual feel. Extremely thin, it was hard and yet flexible. The top sheet consisted mostly of chemical formulas neatly printed in bluish ink. He shuffled through the rest; circuit diagrams, charts, and schematic drawings of what appeared to be plant equipment. Tools and dies. At a glance, some of the formulas seemed familiar. He looked up. “Electronics?”

  “Yes. Partly. You are familiar with that kind of equipment?”

  Farnsworth did not answer. If the other man knew anything about him at all, he knew that he had fought half a dozen battles, as leader of a group of nearly forty lawyers, for the corporate life of one of the largest electronics-parts manufacturing combines in the world. He began reading the papers….

  ***

  Newton sat erect in his chair, looking at him, his white hair gleaming in the light from the chandelier. He was smiling; but his entire body ached. After a while he picked up his glass and began to sip the water that for all of his long life had been the most precious of all things at his home. He sipped slowly and watched Farnsworth read, and the tension he had felt, the carefully concealed anxiety that this utterly strange office in this still strange world had given him, the fright that this fat human, with his bulging jowls, his taut-skinned head and his little, porcine eyes, had made him feel, began to leave him. He knew now that he had this man; he had come to the right place….

  ***

  More than two hours passed before Farnsworth looked up from the papers. During that time he drank three glasses of whiskey. His eyes were pink at the corners. He blinked at Newton, at first hardly seeing him and then focusing on him, his small eyes wide.

  “Well?” Newton said, still smiling.

  The fat man took a breath, then shook his head as if trying to clear his mind. When he spoke, his voice was soft, hesitant, extremely cautious. “I don’t understand them all.” he said. “Only a few. A few. I don’t understand optics—or photographic films.” He looked back to the papers in his hand, as if making sure they were still there. “I’m a lawyer, Mr. Newton,” he said. “I’m a lawyer.” And then, suddenly, his voice came alive, trembling and strong, his fat body and his tiny eyes intent, alert. “But I know electronics. And I know dyes. I think I understand your… amplifier and I think I understand your television, and…” He paused for a moment, blinking. “My God, I think they can be manufactured the way you say they can.” He let out his breath, slowly. “They look convincing, Mr. Newton. I think they will work.”

  Newton was still smiling at him. “They will work. All of them.”

  Farnsworth took out a cigarette and lit it, calming himself. “I’ll have to check them. The metals, the circuits…” And then, suddenly, interrupting himself, the cigarette clutched between his fat fingers, “Good God, man, do you know what all of this means? Do you know that you have nine basic—that’s basic patents here.” He raised one paper in a pudgy hand, “Here in just the video transmission and in that little rectifier? And… do you know what that means?”

  Newton’s expression did not change. “Yes. I know what it means,” he said.

  Farnsworth inhaled slowly from his cigarette. “If you’re right, Mr. Newton,” he said, his voice becoming calmer now, “if you’re right you can have RCA, Eastman Kodak. My Lord, you can have Du Pont. Do you know what you have here?”

  Newton stared hard at him. “I know what I have here,” he said.

  ***

  It took them six hours to drive to Farnsworth’s country home. Newton tried to keep up their conversation for part of the time, bracing himself in the corner of the limousine’s back seat, but the heavy accelerations of the car were too blindingly painful to his body, already overloaded with the pull of a gravitation that he knew it would take him years to become used to, and he was forced to tell the lawyer that he was very tired and needed to rest. Then he closed his eyes, let the cushioned back of the seat bear his weight as much as possible, and withstood the pain as well as he could. The air in the car was very warm to him, too—the temperature of their hottest days at home.

  Eventually, as they passed beyond the edge of the city, the chauffeur’s driving became more steady, and the painful jerks of stopping and starting began to subside. He glanced a few times at Farnsworth. The lawyer was not dozing. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees, still shuffling through the papers that Newton had given him, his little eyes bright, intense.

  The house was an immense place, isolated in a great wooded area. The building and the trees seemed wet, glistening dimly in the gray morning light that was much like the light of midday of Anthea. It was refreshing to his over-sensitive eyes. He liked the woods, the quiet sense of life in them, and the glistening moisture—the sense of water and of fruitfulness that this earth overflowed with, even down to the continual trilling and chirping sounds of the insects. It would be an endless source of delight compared to his own world, with the dryness, the emptiness, the soundlessness of the broad, empty deserts between the almost deserted cities where the only sound was the whining of the cold and endless wind that voiced the agony of his own, dying people….

  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.”<
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  “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….

  3

  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.

  By the time he reached his apartment he had forgotten the caps. There were too many other things to be thought of. Still sitting where it had sat for the past six weeks, on one side of his big, scarred oak desk, was a disordered pile of student papers, horrible to contemplate. Next to the desk was an ancient, gray-painted steam radiator, an anachronism in these days of electrical heating, and on its venerable ironwork cover was stacked a disorderly, menacing pile of student lab notebooks. These were piled so high that the little Lasansky print that hung well clear of the radiator was almost completely covered by them. Only a pair of heavy-lidded eyes showed—the eyes, possibly, of a weary god of science, peering in mute anguish over laboratory reports. Professor Bryce, being a man given to a peculiar kind of wry whimsy, thought of this. He also noted the fact that the little print—it was the bearded face of a man—one of the few worthwhile things he had encountered in three years in this midwestern town, was now impossible to see because of the work of his, Bryce’s, students.

  On the uncluttered side of his desk his typewriter sat like another mundane god—a boorish, trivial, over-demanding god—still holding the seventeenth page of a paper on the effects of ionizing radiations upon polyester resins, a paper unsought, unhonored and one that would probably always remain unfinished. Bryce’s gaze met this sullen disarray; the scattered paper sheets like a fallen, bombed-out city of card houses, the endless, frighteningly neat student solutions of oxidation-reduction equations and of the industrial preparations of unlovely acids; the equally dull, dull paper on polyester resins. He stared at these things, his hands in the pocket of his coat, for a full thirty seconds, in black dismay. Then, since it was hot in the room, he pulled off his coat, threw it on the gold brocade couch, reached under his shirt to scratch his belly, and walked into the kitchen and began making coffee. The sink was littered with dirty retorts, beakers and small jars, together with the breakfast dishes, one of them smeared with egg yolk. Looking at this impossi
ble confusion he felt for a moment like screaming with despair; but he did not. He merely stood for a minute and then said, softly, aloud. “Bryce, you’re a damn mess.” Then he found a reasonably clean beaker, rinsed it out, filled it with powdered coffee and hot tap water, stirred it with a lab thermometer, and drank it up, staring over the beaker at the big, expensive Brueghel print of The Fall of Icarus that hung on the wall above the white stove. A fine picture. It was a picture that he had once loved but was now merely used to. The pleasure it gave him now was only intellectual—he liked the color, the forms, the things a dilettante likes—and he knew perfectly well that was supposed to be a bad sign and furthermore that the feeling had much to do with the unhappy pile of papers surrounding his desk in the next room. Finishing the coffee, he quoted, in a soft, ritualistic voice, without any particular expression or feeling, the lines from Auden’s poem about the painting.

  …the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

  Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

  Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

  He set the beaker down, unrinsed, on the stove. Then he rolled up his sleeves, took off his tie, and began filling the sink with hot water, watching the detergent foam bubble up under the pressure from the faucet like a multicelled living thing, the compound eye of a huge albino insect. Then he began putting glassware through the foam, into the hot water beneath it. He found the dishwashing sponge and began working. He had to start somewhere….

  Four hours later he had collected a small stack of graded term papers and began fumbling in his pocket for a rubber band to fasten them into a bundle. It was then he discovered the roll of caps. He pulled it from his pocket, held it in the palm of his hand for a moment, and then grinned foolishly. He hadn’t shot a cap for thirty years—not since, at some time of ancient, pimply innocence, he had gone from cap guns and A Child’s Garden of Verses to the giant, official-looking Chem-Craft set that had been given him by his grandfather as a direct prod from Fate. Suddenly he found himself wishing he had a cap gun; he felt that, here, in his empty apartment, he would like to shoot the caps off, one by one. And then he remembered how, once, God knew how many years ago, he had wondered what would happen if you set a whole roll of caps afire—a delightful, radical idea. But he had never tried it. Well, there was no better time. He got up, smiling wearily, and went into the kitchen. He set the roll of caps on a sheet of copper gauze, put the sheet on a tripod stand, poured a little alcohol from an alcohol lamp on them, muttering pedantically, “Positive ignition,” took a wood splinter from a stack, lit it with his cigarette lighter, and then cautiously touched off the caps. He was surprised and pleased by the results; expecting only an irregular series of little phrrt sounds and some gray gunsmoke, he got instead, while the roll danced madly on the wire gauze, a fine confusion of loud, satisfying bangs. Strangely, no smoke rose from the black residue. He bent and sniffed the little black mass that was left. No odor at all. That was odd. My God, he thought, how fast things happen! Some other poor fool of a chemist had found a substitute for gunpowder already. He wondered briefly what it could be and then shrugged. Maybe he’d look into it some time. But he missed the smell of gunpowder—a fine, pungent smell. He looked at his watch. Seven-thirty. Outside the windows was spring twilight. It was past supper-time. He went into the bathroom, washed his hands and face, shaking his head at his own gray haggardness in the mirror. Then he picked up his coat from the couch, put it on and went out. Vaguely, walking downstairs, he scanned the steps for another roll of caps, but there was none.