To change the subject, Norm Schein said, “Too bad we can’t translate ourselves tonight, get out the good old Perky Pat layout one final time. Barney might enjoy it. He could at least see what he’s voted to give up.” Meaningfully, he gazed from one of them to the next, pinning each down. “Now come on… surely one of you has some Can-D you’ve held back, stuffed in a crack in the wall or under the septic tank for a rainy year. Aw, come on; be generous to the new citizen; show him you’re not–”
“Okay,” Helen Morris burst in, flushed with sullen resentment. “I have a little, enough for three-quarters of an hour. But that’s absolutely all, and suppose that Chew-Z isn’t ready for distribution in our area yet?”
“Get your Can-D,” Norm said. As she departed he said, “And don’t worry; Chew-Z is here. Today when I was picking up a sack of salt from that last UN drop I ran into one of their pushers. He gave me his card.” He displayed the card. “All we need do is light a common strontium nitrate flare at 7:30 P.M. and they’ll be down from their satellite–”
“Satellite!” Everyone squawked in amazement. “Then,” Fran said excitedly, “it must be UN-sanctioned. Or do they have a layout and the disc jockeys on the satellite advertise their new mins?”
“I don’t know, yet,” Norm admitted. “I mean, at this point there’s a lot of confusion. Wait’ll the dust settles.”
“Here on Mars,” Sam Regan said hollowly, “it’ll never settle.”
They sat in a circle. Before them the Perky Pat layout, complete and elaborate, beckoned; they all felt its pull, and Norm Schein reflected that this was a sentimental occasion because they would never be doing this again… unless, of course, they did it–made use of the layout–with Chew-Z. How would that work out? he wondered. Interesting…
He had a feeling, unaccountably, that it would not be the same.
And–they might not like the difference.
“You understand,” Sam Regan said to the new member Barney Mayerson, “that we’re going to spend the translated period listening to and watching Pat’s new Great Books animator–you know, the device they’ve just brought out on Terra… you’re surely more familiar with it than we are, Barney, so maybe you ought to explain it to us.”
Barney, dutifully, said, “You insert one of the Great Books, for instance Moby Dick, into the reservoid. Then you set the controls for long or short. Then for funny version, or same-as-book or sad version. Then you set the style-indicator as to which classic Great Artist you want the book animated like. Dali, Bacon, Picasso… the medium-priced Great Books animator is set up to render in cartoon form the styles of a dozen system-famous artists; you specify which ones you want when you originally buy the thing. And there are options you can add later that provide even more.”
“Terrific,” Norm Schein said, radiating enthusiasm. “So what you get is a whole evening’s entertainment, say sad version in the style of Jack Wright of like for instance Vanity Fair. Wow!”
Sighing, Fran said dreamily, “How it must have resounded in your soul, Barney, to have lived so recently on Terra. You seem to carry the vibrations with you still.”
“Heck, we get it all,” Norm said, “when we’re translated.” Impatiently he reached for the undersize supply of Can-D. “Let’s start.” Taking his own slice he chewed with vigor. “The Great Book I’m going to turn into a full-length funny cartoon version in the style of De Chirico will be–” He pondered. “IJm, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.”
“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?”