“Are you going to fight or not?” the Martian demanded.
Forrester said, “Uh, one question.”
“Vell?”
“The way you talk. I had an argument about that the other day—”
“What’s de matter with de way I talk?”
“It’s a sort of German accent, I thought, but this other Martian was Irish, and he talked the same way—”
“Irish? German?” Heinzlichen looked baffled. “Look, Forrester, on Mars we got six-hundred-millibar pressure, you understand? You lose some of de high frequencies, dat’s all. I don’t know what ‘German’ or ‘Irish’ is.”
“Say, that’s interesting!” Forrester cried. “You mean it’s not an accent, really?”
“I mean you wasted too much of my time already!” the Martian cried and leaped for his throat. And right there, in the bright midway with the ambulatory plants jolting past him and the crowds cheering and shouting, Forrester found himself fighting for his life. The Martian was not only bigger than he was, the damned skunk was stronger! Fleetingly Forrester blazed with anger: how dare the Martian be stronger? What about the supposition that light-gravity inhabitants would lose their muscle tone? Why was he not able to crush this flimsy, light-G creature with a single blow?
But he could not; the Martian was on top of him, systematically thudding his head against the paving of the midway. It was Forrester’s good fortune that the flooring was a resilient, rubber-like substance, not concrete; all the same, he was developing a headache, and his senses were spinning. And now the Martian added insult to injury. “Get up and fight!” he bawled. “Dis is no fun!”
That marked the limit of Forrester’s civilized control. He screamed in rage and surged up; the Martian went flying. Forrester was up and after him, flinging himself on top of him, a knee in the Martian’s throat; he saw the Martian’s joymaker loose by his side and caught it up—grabbed it like a club, smashed the macelike large end against the Martian’s skull. It rang like bronze. Even in his rage Forrester felt a moment’s astonishment; but clearly the close-cropped blond wig was not merely hair, it was a protective armor skullpiece. “Louse!” roared Forrester, enraged all over again; the Martian had prepared himself for this battle by wearing a helmet! He shortened his stroke and clubbed the Martian across the face. Blood spurted; teeth broke. Again and again, and the Martian tried to cry out but could not; again, again—
Behind him the voice of the attendant from the DR cart said, “All right, all right, that’s enough. I’ll take care of him now.”
Forrester rocked back on his haunches, panting hoarsely, staring at the terrible ruin he had made of the Martian’s face. He managed to gasp, “Is—is he dead?”
“They don’t come any deader,” said the DR man. “Would you move a little bit?—Thanks. All right, he’s mine now. Wait here for the copper, please; he’ll take care of filling out a report.”
What happened next for Forrester was hazy. He had a confused memory of returning to the lavatory facilities of the crawl room and getting cleaned up again, a shower, fresh clothes, a steam of reviving gases that woke him up and cleared his head. But when he was out of the room the fog returned; it was not the drain resulting from his efforts that muddled his thinking, or the aching pain in his head where Heinzie had bashed it against the pavement. It was pure psychic shock.
He had destroyed a human life.
Not really, he told himself at once. Not now. A short rest in the freezer and then he’s good as new!
But it didn’t register with him; he was still in shock—and puzzled. He could not decide: had he imagined it, or had the Martian not been fighting back?
Adne was waiting for him, with Taiko; they had seen the fight and had stayed to help him get straightened out afterward. Help him or help the Martian, Forrester thought bitterly. It probably didn’t matter to them which. Nevertheless, he was grateful for their help. Adne took him to her own home, left him there a minute, returned with the news that his apartment was ready for him again, and escorted him there. And left him with Taiko, who wanted to talk. “Nice fight, Charles. Shook you up, of course—hell, I remember my own first killing. Nothing to be ashamed of. But, listen, if you’re going to come to work for the society you’ve got to pull yourself together.”
Forrester sat up and looked at Taiko. “What the devil makes you think I want to work for the Luddites?”
“Come on, Charles. Look, take a shot of bracer, will you? That green stud, there on the handle—”
“Will you get out of here and leave me alone?”
“Oh, for sweat’s sake,” cried Taiko impatiently. “Look, you said you wanted to help out with the society’s program, right? Well, there’s no time to waste! This is the chance we’ve been waiting for, man! Everybody’s got the Sirians on their minds; they’ll be diving into the freezers so fast the teams won’t be able to handle them, and that’s when those of us who can face the world realistically will have a chance to take action. We can get rid of the machine menace once and for all if we—” Taiko hesitated and gave Forrester a thoughtful look. Then he said, “Well, never mind that part of it just yet. Are you with us or against us?”
Forrester contemplated the problem of trying to explain to Taiko that his interest in the Ned Lud Society had been only an interest in making enough money to live on, and that, when the Sirian had left him ninety-three million dollars, that interest had evaporated. It did not seem worth the effort, so he said, “I guess I’m against you.”
“Charles,” said Taiko, “you make me sick! You of all people! You, who have suffered so much from this age. Don’t you want to try to cure the evils of machine domination? Don’t you want—”
“I’ll tell you what I want,” said Forrester, rousing himself. “I want you to go away—fast!”
“You’re not yourself,” said Taiko. “Look, when you get straightened out, give me a call. I’ll be hard to reach, because— Well, never mind why. But I’ll leave a special channel for you. Because I know you, Charles, and I know that you’ll have to decide you want to end these cowardly times and give man back his— All right! I’m going!”
When the door had closed behind him, Forrester stared into space for more than an hour. Then he rolled over and went to sleep. His only regret was that sooner or later he would wake up.
Fifteen
What Forrester could not understand was why it was taking them so long to arrest him.
He began to see just why a criminal might give himself up. The waiting was hard to endure. Ten times an hour he reached for the joymaker to say, “I am the one who helped the Sirian escape. Report me to the police,” and ten times each hour he stopped himself. Not now, he said. Tomorrow, no doubt, or maybe even a few minutes from now; but not just now.
From time to time the joymaker informed him of messages—forty-five of them the first day alone. Forrester refused to accept them all. He didn’t want to see anyone until—until— Well, he didn’t want to see anyone at the moment. (He could not make up his mind at just what moment the world would so clarify itself to him that he would be willing to start living in it again; but he always knew that that time was certainly not yet.) He explored the resources of his apartment, the joymaker, and his own mind. He ate fantastic meals and drank odd foaming beverages that tasted like stale beer or celery-flavored malted milks. He listened to music and watched canned plays. He wished desperately for a deck of cards, but the joymaker did not seem to understand his description of them, and so solitaire was denied him; but he found almost the same anesthesia in reading and reading over again what scraps of written matter he had on hand. His late wife’s letter he practically memorized; his briefing manual for this century he studied until his fingers were weary from turning the pages.