He sprinkled it on his desk blotter: a small filtering powder of yellow-red rust.
He sat staring at it for a moment. Then he picked up the phone. "Mathews," he said, "get off the line, quick." There was a click of someone hanging up and then he dialed another call. "Hello, Guard Station, listen, there's a man coming past you any minute now, you know him, name of Sergeant Hollis, stop him, shoot him down, kill him if necessary, don't ask any questions, kill the son of a bitch, you heard me, this is the Official talking! Yes, kill him, you hear!"
"But, sir," said a bewildered voice on the other end of the line. "I can't, I just can't. . .."
"What do you mean you can't, God damn it!"
"Because ..." The voice faded away. You could hear the guard breathing into the phone a mile away.
The Official shook the phone. "Listen to me, listen, get your gun ready!"
"I can't shoot anyone," said the guard.
The Official sank back in his chair. He sat blinking for half a minute, gasping.
Out there even now—he didn't have to look, no one had to tell him—the hangars were dusting down in soft red rust, and the airplanes were blowing away on a brown-rust wind into nothingness, and the tanks were sinking, sinking slowly into the hot asphalt roads, like dinosaurs (isn't that what the man had said?) sinking into primordial tar pits. Trucks were blowing away into ocher puffs of smoke, their drivers dumped by the road, with only the tires left running on the highways.
"Sir . . ." said the guard, who was seeing all this, far away. "Oh, God .. ."
"Listen, listen!" screamed the Official. "Go after him, get him, with your hands, choke him, with your fists, beat him, use your feet, kick his ribs in, kick him to death, do anything, but get that man. I'll be right outl" He hung up the phone.
By instinct he jerked open the bottom desk drawer to get his service pistol. A pile of brown rust filled the new leather holster. He swore and leaped up.
On the way out of the office he grabbed a chair. It's wood, he thought. Good old-fashioned wood, good old-fashioned maple. He hurled it against the wall twice, and it broke. Then he seized one of the legs, clenched it hard in his fist, his face bursting red, the breath snorting in his nostrils, his mouth wide. He struck the palm of his hand with the leg of the chair, testing it. "All right, God damn it, come on!" he cried.
He rushed out, yelling, and slammed the door.
The Messiah
"We all have that special dream when we are young," said Bishop Kelly.
The others at the table murmured, nodded.
"There is no Christian boy," the Bishop continued, "who does not some night wonder: am I Him? Is this the Second Coming at long last, and am I It? What, what, oh, what, dear God, if I were Jesus? How grand!"
The Priests, the Ministers, and the one lonely Rabbi laughed gently, remembering things from their own childhoods, their own wild dreams, and being great fools.
"I suppose," said the young Priest, Father Niven, "that Jewish boys imagine themselves Moses?"
"No, no, my dear friend," said Rabbi Niftier. "The Messiah! The Messiah!"
More quiet laughter, from all.
"Of course," said Father Niven out of his fresh pink-and-cream face, "how stupid of me. Christ wasn't the Messiah, was he? And your people are still waiting for Him to arrive. Strange. Oh, the ambiguities."
"And nothing more ambiguous than this." Bishop Kelly rose to escort them all out onto a terrace which had a view of the Martian hills, the ancient Martian towns, the old highways, the rivers of dust, and Earth, sixty million miles away, shining with a clear light in this alien sky.
"Did we ever in our wildest dreams," said the Reverend Smith, "imagine that one day each of us would have a Baptist Church, a St. Mary's Chapel, a Mount Sinai Synagogue here, here on Mars?"
The answer was no, no, softly, from them all.
Their quiet was interrupted by another voice which moved among them. Father Niven, as they stood at the balustrade, had tuned his transistor radio to check the hour. News was being broadcast from the small new American-Martian wilderness colony below. They listened:
"—rumored near the town. This is the first Martian reported in our community this year. Citizens are urged to respect any such visitor. If—"
Father Niven shut the news off.
"Our elusive congregation," sighed the Reverend Smith. "I must confess, I came to Mars not only to work with Christians, but hoping to invite one Martian to Sunday supper, to learn of his theologies, his needs."
"We are still too new to them," said Father Lips-comb. "In another year or so I think they will understand we're not buffalo hunters in search of pelts. Still, it is hard to keep one's curiosity in hand. After all, our Mariner photographs indicated no life whatsoever here. Yet life there is, very mysterious and half-resembling the human."
"Half, Your Eminence?" The Rabbi mused over his coffee. "I feel they are even more human than ourselves. They have let us come in. They have hidden in the hills, coming among us only on occasion, we guess, disguised as Earthmen—"
"Do you really believe they have telepathic powers, then, and hypnotic abilities which allow them to walk in .our towns, fooling us with masks and visions, and none of us the wiser?"
"I do so believe."
"Then this," said the Bishop, handing around brandies and creme-de-menthes, "is a true evening of frustrations. Martians who will not reveal themselves so as to be Saved by Us the Enlightened—"
Many smiles at this.
"—and Second Comings of Christ delayed for several thousand years. How long must we wait, O Lord?"
"As for myself," said young Father Niven, "I never wished to be Christ, the Second Coming. I just always wanted, with all my heart, to meet Him. Ever since I was eight I have thought on that. It might well be the first reason I became a priest."
"To have the inside track just in case He ever did arrive again?" suggested the Rabbi, kindly.
The young Priest grinned and nodded. The others felt the urge to reach and touch him, for he had touched some vague small sweet nerve in each. They felt immensely gentle.
"With your permission, Rabbi, gentlemen," said Bishop Kelly, raising his glass. "To the First Coming of the Messiah, or the Second Coming of Christ. May they be more than some ancient, some foolish dreams."
They drank and were quiet.
The Bishop blew his nose and wiped his eyes.