“Very witty,” Helen Morris said cuttingly. “I was going to suggest Augustine’s Confessions in the style of Lichtenstein—funny, of course.”
“I mean it! Imagine: the surrealistic perspective, deserted, ruined buildings with Done columns lying on their sides, hollow heads—”
“Everybody else better get chewing,” Fran advised, taking her slice, “so we’ll be in synch.”
Barney accepted his. The end of the old, he reflected as he chewed; I’m participating in what, for this particular hovel, is the final night, and in its place comes what? If Leo is right it will be intolerably worse, in fact no comparison. Of course, Leo is scarcely disinterested. But he is evolved. And wise.
Minned objects which in the past I judged favorably, he realized. I’ll in a moment be immersed in a world composed of them, reduced to their dimension. And, unlike the other hovelists, I can compare my experience of this layout with what I so recently left behind.
And fairly soon, he realized soberly, I will be required to do the same with Chew-Z.
“You’re going to discover it’s an odd sensation,” Norm Schein said to him, “to find yourself inhabiting a body with three other fellas; we all have to agree on what we want the body to do, or anyhow a dominant majority has to form, otherwise we’re just plain stuck.”
“That happens,” Tod Morris said. “Half the time, in fact.”
One by one the rest of them began to chew their slices of Can-D; Barney Mayerson was the last and most reluctant. Aw hell, he thought all at once, and strode across the room to a basin; there he spat out the half-chewed Can-D without having swallowed it.
The others, seated at the Perky Pat layout, had already collapsed into a coma and none of them now paid any attention to him. He was, for all intents and purposes, suddenly alone. The hovel for a time was his.
He wandered about, aware of the silence.
I just can’t do it, he realized. Can’t take the damn stuff like the rest of them do. At least not yet.
A bell sounded.
Someone was at the hovel entrance, requesting permission to enter; it was up to him to admit them. So he made his way in ascent, hoping he was doing the proper thing, hoping that it was not one of the UN’s periodic raids; there would not be much he could do to keep them from discovering the other hovelists inert at their layout and, flagrante delicto, Can-D users.
Lantern in hand, at the ground-level entrance, stood a young woman wearing a bulky heat-retention suit and clearly unaccustomed to it; she looked enormously comfortable. “Hello, Mr. Mayerson,” she said. “Remember me? I tracked you down because I’m just terribly lonely. May I come in?” It was Anne Hawthorne; surprised, he stared at her. “Or are you busy? I could come back another time.” She half-turned, starting away.
“I can see,” he said, “that Mars has been quite some shock to you.”
“It’s a sin on my part,” Anne said, “but I already hate it; I really do—I know I should adopt a patient attitude of acceptance and all that, but—” She flashed the lantern at the landscape beyond the hovel and in a quavering, despairing voice said, “All I want to do now is find some way to get back to Earth; I don’t want to convert anybody or change anything, I just want to get away from here.” She added morosely, “But I know I can’t. So I thought instead I’d visit you. See?”
Taking her by the hand he led her down the ramp and to the compartment which had been assigned to him as his living quarters.
“Where’re your co-hovelists?” She looked about alertly.
“Out.”
“Outside?” She opened the door to the communal room, and saw the lot of them slumped at the layout. “Oh, out that way. But not you.” She shut the door, frowning, obviously perplexed. “You amaze me. I’d have gladly accepted some Can-D, tonight, the way I feel. Look how well you’re standing up under it, compared with me. I’m so – inadequate.”
Barney said, “Maybe I have more of a purpose here than you.”
“I had plenty of purpose.” She removed her bulky suit and seated herself as he began fixing coffee for the two of them. “The people in my hovel—it’s half a mile to the north of this one—are out, too, the same way. Did you know I was so close? Would you have looked me up?”
“Sure I would have.” He found plastic, insipidly styled cups and saucers, laid them on the foldaway table, and produced the equally foldaway chairs. “Maybe,” he said, “God doesn’t extend as far as Mars. Maybe when we left Terra—”
“Nonsense,” Anne said sharply, rousing herself.
“I thought that would succeed in getting you angry.”
“Of course it does. He’s everywhere. Even here.” She glanced at his partially unpacked possessions, the suitcases and sealed cartons. “You didn’t bring very much, did you? Most of mine’s still on the way, on an autonomic transport.” Strolling over, she stood studying a pile of paperback books. “De Imitatione Christi,” she said in amazement. “You’re reading Thomas á Kempis? This is a great and wonderful book.”
“I bought it,” he said, “but never read it.”
“Did you try? I bet you didn’t.” She opened it at random and read to herself, her lips moving. “Think the least gift that he giveth is great; and the most despisable things take as special gifts and as great tokens of love.’ That would include life here on Mars, wouldn’t it? This despisable life, shut up in these—hovels. Well-named, aren’t they? Why in the name of God—” She turned to him, appealing to him. “Couldn’t it be a finite period here, and then we could go home?”
Barney said, “A colony, by definition, has to be permanent. Think of Roanoke Island.”
“Yes.” Anne nodded. “I have been. I wish Mars was one big Roanoke Island, with everyone going home.”
“To be slowly cooked.”
“We can evolve, as the rich do; it could be done on a mass basis.” She put down the á Kempis book abruptly. “But I don’t want that, either; a chitinous shell and the rest. Isn’t there any answer, Mr. Mayerson? You know, Neo-Christians are taught to believe they’re travelers in a foreign land. Wayfaring strangers. Now we really are; Earth is ceasing to become our natural world, and certainly this never will be. We’ve got no world left!” She stared at him, her nostrils flaring. “No home at all!”
“Well,” he said uncomfortably, “there’s always Can-D and Chew-Z.”
“Do you have any?”
“No.”
She nodded. “Back to Thomas á Kempis, then.” But she did not pick the book up again; instead she stood head-down, lost in dreary meditation. “I know what’s going to happen, Mr. Mayerson. Barney. I’m not going to convert anyone to Neo-American Christianity; instead they’ll convert me to Can-D and Chew-Z and whatever other vice is current, here, whatever escape presents itself. Sex. They’re terribly promiscuous here on Mars, you know; everyone goes to bed with everyone else. I’ll even try that; in fact I’m ready for it right now—I just can’t stand the way things are… did you get a really good look at the surface before nightfall?”
“Yes.” It hadn’t upset him that much, seeing the half abandoned gardens and fully abandoned equipment, the great heaps of rotting supplies. He knew from edu-tapes that the frontier was always like that, even on Earth; Alaska had been like that until recent times and so, except for the actual resort towns, was Antarctica right now.
Anne Hawthorne said, “Those hovelists in the other room at their layout. Suppose we lifted Perky Pat entirely from the board and smashed it to bits? What would become of them?”
“They’d go on with their fantasy.” It was established, now; the props were no longer necessary as foci. “Why would you want to do that?” It had a decided sadistic quality to it and he was surprised; the girl had not struck him that way at first meeting.