I Sing the Body Electric (13 page)

There was a round of applause, not from the canary boys, but from the men lined up at the bar who had been spelled. Finn saw his own hands out clapping on the air, and put them down. The others saw their own hands and dropped them.

But Timulty summed it up, “God, if you only had a brogue! What a teller of tales you would make.”

“Many thanks, many thanks,” said David Snell-Orkney.

“All of which brings us around to the point of the story,” Finn said. “I mean, well, about that Queen and the King and all.”

“The point is,” said Snell-Orkney, “that we have not seen a leaf fall in five years. We hardly know a cloud when we see it. We have not felt snow in ten years, or hardly a drop of rain. Our story is the reverse. We must have rain or we'll perish, right, chums?”

“Oh, yes, right,” said all five, in a sweet chirruping.

“We have followed summer around the world for six or seven years. We have lived in Jamaica and Nassau and Port-au-Prince and Calcutta, and Madagascar and Bali and Taormina but finally just today we said we must go north, we must have cold again. We didn't quite know what we were looking for, but we found it in St. Stephen's Green.”

“The
mysterious
thing?” Nolan burst out. “I mean—”

“Your friend here will tell you,” said the tall man.

“
Our
friend? You mean—Garrity?”

Everyone looked at Garrity.

“As I was going to say,” said Garrity, “when I came in the door. They was in the park standing there…
watching the leaves turn colors
.”

“Is that
all?
” said Nolan, dismayed.

“It seemed sufficient unto the moment,” said Snell-Orkney.

“
Are
the leaves changing color up at St. Stephen's?” asked Kilpatrick.

“Do you know,” said Timulty numbly, “it's been twenty years since I
looked
.”

“The most beautiful sight in all the world,” said David Snell-Orkney, “lies up in the midst of St. Stephen's this very hour.”

“He speaks deep,” murmured Nolan.

“The drinks are on me,” said David Snell-Orkney.

“He's touched
bottom
,” said MaGuire.

“Champagne all around!”

“Don't mind if I do!” said everyone.

And not ten minutes later they were all up at the park, together.

And well now, as Timulty said years after, did you ever see as many damned leaves on a tree as there was on the first tree just inside the gate at St. Stephen's Green? No! cried all. And what, though, about the
second
tree? Well, that had a
billion
leaves on it. And the more they looked the more they saw it was a wonder. And Nolan went around craning his neck so hard he fell over on his back and had to be helped up by two or three others, and there were general exhalations of awe and proclamations of devout inspiration as to the fact that as far as they could remember there had never
been
any goddamn leaves on the trees to begin with, but now they were there! Or if they had been there they had
never
had any color, or if they
had
had color, well, it was so long ago … Ah, what the hell, shut up, said everyone, and look!

Which is exactly what Nolan and Timulty and Kelly and Kilpatrick and Garrity and Snell-Orkney and his friends did for the rest of the declining afternoon. For a fact, autumn had taken the country, and the bright flags were out by the millions through the park.

Which is exactly where Father Leary found them.

But before he could say anything, three out of the six summer invaders asked him if he would hear their confessions.

And next thing you know with a look of great pain and alarm the father was taking Snell-Orkney & Co. back to see the stained glass at the church and the way the apse was put together by a master architect, and they liked his church so much and said so out loud again and again
that he cut way down on their Hail Marys and the rigamaroles that went with.

But the top of the entire day was when one of the young-old boy-men back at the pub asked what would it be? Should he sing “Mother Machree” or “My Buddy”?

Arguments followed, and with polls taken and results announced, he sang
both
.

He had a dear voice, all said, eyes melting bright. A sweet high clear voice.

And as Nolan put it, “He wouldn't make much of a son. But there's a great daughter there somewhere!”

And all said “aye” to that.

And suddenly it was time to leave.

“But great God!” said Finn, “you just arrived!”

“We found what we came for, there's no need to stay,” announced the tall sad happy old young man. “It's back to the hothouse with the flowers … or they wilt overnight. We never stay. We are always flying and jumping and running. We are always on the move.”

The airport being fogged-in, there was nothing for it but the birds cage themselves on the Dun Laoghaire boat bound for England, and there was nothing for it but the inhabitants of Finn's should be down at the dock to watch them pull away in the middle of the evening. There they stood, all six, on the top deck, waving their thin hands down, and there stood Timulty and Nolan and Garrity and the rest waving their thick hands up. And as the boat hooted and pulled away the keeper-of-the-birds nodded once, and winged his right hand on the air and all sang forth: “
As I was walking through Dublin City, about the hour of twelve at night, I saw a maid, so fair was she … combing her hair by candelight
.”

“Jesus,” said Timulty, “do you
hear?
”

“Sopranos, every
one
of them!” cried Nolan.

“Not Irish sopranos, but real
real
sopranos,” said Kelly. “Damn, why didn't they
say?
If we'd known, we'd have had a good hour of
that
out of them before the boat.”

Timulty nodded and added, listening to the music float over the waters. “Strange. Strange. I hate to see them go. Think. Think. For a hundred years or more people have said we had none. But now they have returned, if but for a little time.”

“We had none of
what?
” asked Garrity. “And
what
returned?”

“Why,” said Timulty, “the fairies, of course, the fairies that once lived in Ireland, and live here no more, but who came this day and changed our weather, and there they go again, who once stayed all the while.”

“Ah, shut up!” cried Kilpatrick. “And listen!”

And listen they did, nine men on the end of a dock as the boat sailed out and the voices sang and the fog came in and they did not move for a long time until the boat was far gone and the voices faded like a scent of papaya on the mist.

By the time they walked back to Finn's it had begun to rain.

W
hat made the old poem run in his mind he could not guess, but run it did:

He stopped. What next? Ah, yes…

Again he paused. How did the thing end? Wait—

He took a breath and finished:

He sat silently.

He sat, a man eighty years old. He sat in an empty room in an empty house on an empty street in an empty town on the empty planet Mars.

He sat as he had sat now for fifty years, waiting.

On the table in front of him lay a telephone that had not rung for a long, long time.

It trembled now with some secret preparation. Perhaps that trembling had summoned forth the poem…

His nostrils twitched. His eyes flared wide.

The phone shivered ever so softly.

He leaned forward, staring at it.

The phone…
rang
.

He leapt up and back, the chair fell to the floor. He cried out: cried out:

“No!”

The phone rang again.

“No!”

He wanted to reach out, he did reach out and knock the thing off the table. It fell out of the cradle at the exact moment of its third ring.

“No … oh, no, no,” he said softly, hands covering his chest, head wagging, the telephone at his feet. “It can't be … can't be…”

For after all, he was alone in a room in an empty house in an empty town on the planet Mars where no one was alive, only he lived, he was King of the Barren Hill…

And yet…

“…Barton…”

Someone called his name.

No. Some thing buzzed and made a noise of crickets and cicadas in far desertlands.

Barton? he thought. Why … why that's
me!

He hadn't heard anyone say his name in so long he had quite forgot. He was not one for ambling about calling himself by name. He had never—

“Barton,” said the phone. “Barton. Barton. Barton.”

“Shut up!!” he cried.

And kicked the receiver and bent sweating, panting, to put the phone back on its cradle.

No sooner did he do this than the damned thing rang again.

This time he made a fist around it, squeezed it, as if to throttle the sound, but at last, seeing his knuckles burn color away to whiteness, let go and picked up the receiver.

“Barton,” said a far voice, a billion miles away.

He waited until his heart had beat another three times and then said:

“Barton here.” he said.

“Well, well,” said the voice, only a million miles away now. “Do you know who this is?”

“Christ.” said the old man. “The first call I've had in half a lifetime, and we play games.”

“Sorry. How stupid of me. Of course you wouldn't recognize your own voice on the telephone. No one ever does. We are accustomed, all of us, to hearing our voice conducted through the bones of our head. Barton, this is Barton.”

“What?”

“Who did you think it was?” said the voice. “A rocket captain? Did you think someone had come to rescue you?”

“No.”

“What's the date?”

“July 20, 2097.”

“Good Lord. Fifty years! Have you been sitting there
that
long waiting for a rocket to come from Earth?”

The old man nodded.

“Now, old man, do you know who I am?”

“Yes.” He trembled. “I remember. We are one. I am Emil Barton and you are Emil Barton.”

“With one difference. You're eighty, I'm only twenty. All of life before me!”

The old man began to laugh and then to cry. He sat holding the phone like a lost and silly child in his fingers. The conversation was impossible, and should not be continued, yet he went on with it. When he got hold of himself he held the phone close and said, “You there! Listen, oh God. if I could warn you! How can I? You're only a voice. If I could show you how lonely the years are. End it, kill yourself! Don't wait! If you knew what it is to change from the thing you are to the thing that is me, today, here, now, at
this
end.”

“Impossible!” The voice of the young Barton laughed, far away. “I've no way to tell if you ever get this call. This is all mechanical. You're talking to a transcription, no more. This is 2037. Sixty years in
your past. Today, the atom war started on Earth. All colonials were called home from Mars, by rocket. I got left behind!”

“I remember.” whispered the old man.

“Alone on Mars.” laughed the young voice. “A month, a year, who cares? There are foods and books. In my spare time I've made transcription libraries of ten thousand words, responses, my voice, connected to phone relays. In later months I'll call, have someone to talk with.”

“Yes.”

“Sixty years from now my own tapes will ring me up. I don't really think I'll be here on Mars that long, it's just a beautifully ironic idea of mine, something to pass the time. Is that really you. Barton? Is that really
me?
”

Tears fell from the old man's eyes. “Yes.”

“I've made a thousand Bartons, tapes, sensitive to all questions, in one thousand Martian towns. An army of Bartons over Mars, while I wait for the rockets to return.”

“Fool.” The old man shook his head, wearily. “You waited sixty years. You grew old waiting, always alone. And now you've become me and you're still alone in the empty cities.”

“Don't expect my sympathy. You're like a stranger, off in another country. I can't be sad. I'm alive when I make these tapes. And you're alive when you hear them. Both of us, to the other, incomprehensible. Neither can warn the other, even though both respond, one to the other, one automatically, the other warmly and humanly. I'm human now. You're human later. It's insane. I can't cry, because not knowing the future I can only be optimistic. These hidden tapes can only react to a certain number of stimuli from you. Can you ask a dead man to weep?”

“Stop it!” cried the old man. He felt the familiar seizures of pain. Nausea moved through him, and blackness. “Oh God, but you were heartless. Go away!”

“Were, old man? I
am
. As long as the tapes glide on, as long as spindles and hidden electronic eyes read and select and convert words to send to you, I'll be young and cruel. I'll go on being young and cruel long after you're dead. Good-bye.”

“Wait!” cried the old man.

Click
.

Barton sat holding the silent phone a long time. His heart gave him intense pain.

What insanity it had been. In his youth how silly, how inspired, those first secluded years, fixing the telephonic brains, the tapes, the circuits, scheduling calls on time relays:

The phone bell.

“Morning, Barton. This is Barton. Seven o'clock. Rise and shine!”

Again!

“Barton? Barton calling. You're to go to Mars Town at noon. Install a telephonic brain. Thought I'd remind you.”

“Thanks.”

The bell!

“Barton? Barton. Have lunch with me? The Rocket Inn?”

“Right.”

“See you. So long!”

Brrrrinnnnng!

“That you, B.? Thought I'd cheer you. Firm chin, and all that. The rescue rocket might come tomorrow, to save us.”

“Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.”

Click.

But the years had burned into smoke. Barton had muted the insidious phones and their clever, clever repartee. They were to call him only after he was eighty, if he still lived. And now today, the phone ringing, the past breathing in his ear, whispering, remembering.

The phone!

He let it ring.

I don't have to answer it, he thought.

The bell!

There's no one there at all, he thought.

The ringing!

It's like talking to yourself, he thought. But different. Oh God, how different.

He felt his hands lift the phone.

“Hello, old Barton, this is young Barton. I'm twenty-one today! In the last year I've put voice-brains in two hundred more towns. I've populated Mars with Bartons!”

“Yes.” The old man remembered those nights six decades ago. rushing over blue hills and into iron valleys, with a truckful of machinery, whistling, happy. Another telephone, another relay. Something to do. Something clever and wonderful and sad. Hidden voices. Hidden, hidden. In those young days when death was not death, time was not time, old age a faint echo from the long cavern of years ahead. That young idiot, that sadistic fool, never thinking someday he might reap this harvest.

“Last night,” said Barton, aged twenty-one. “I sat alone in a movie theater in an empty town. I played an old Laurel and Hardy. God, how I laughed.”

“Yes.”

“I got an idea. I recorded my voice one thousand times on one tape. Broadcast from the town, it sounds like a thousand people. A comforting
noise, the noise of a crowd. I fixed it so doors slam in town, children sing, music boxes play, all by clockworks. If I don't look out the window, if I just listen, it's all right. But if I look, it spoils the illusion. I guess I'm getting lonely.”

The old man said, “That was your first sign.”

“What?”

“The first time you admitted you were lonely.”

“I've experimented with smells. As I walk the empty streets, the smell of bacon, eggs, ham, fillets, come from the houses. All done with hidden machines.”

“Madness.”

“Self-protection!”

“I'm tired.” Abruptly, the old man hung up. It was too much. The past drowning him…

Swaying, he moved down the tower stairs to the streets of the town.

The town was dark. No longer did red neons burn, music play, or cooking smells linger. Long ago he had abandoned the fantasy of the mechanical lie. Listen! Are those footsteps? Smell! Isn't that strawberry pie! He had stopped it all.

He moved to the canal where the stars shone in the quivering waters.

Underwater, in row after fishlike row, rusting, were the robot population of Mars he had constructed over the years, and, in a wild realization of his own insane inadequacy, had commanded to march, one two three four! into the canal deeps, plunging, bubbling like sunken bottles. He had killed them and shown no remorse.

Faintly a phone rang in a lightless cottage.

He walked on. The phone ceased.

Another cottage ahead rang its bell as if it knew of his passing. He began to run. The ringing stayed behind. Only to be taken up by a ringing from now this house—now that, now here, there! He darted on. Another phone!

“All right!” he shrieked, exhausted. “I'm coming!”

“Hello, Barton.”

“What do you want!”

“I'm lonely. I only live when I speak. So I must speak. You can't shut me up forever.”

“Leave me atone!” said the old man, in horror. “Oh, my heart!”

“This is Barton, age twenty-four. Another couple of years gone. Waiting. A little lonelier. I've read
War and Peace
, drunk sherry, run restaurants with myself as waiter, cook, entertainer. Tonight, I star in a film at the Tivoli—Emil Barton in
Love's Labor Lost
, playing all the parts, some with wigs!”

“Stop calling me—or I'll kill you!”

“You can't kill me. You'll have to find me, first!”

“I'll find you!”

“You've forgotten where you hid me. I'm everywhere, in boxes, houses, cables, towers, underground! Go ahead, try! What'll you call it? Telecide? Suicide? Jealous, are you? Jealous of me here, only twenty-four, bright-eyed, strong, young. All right, old man, it's war! Between us. Between me! A whole regiment of us, all ages from against you, the real one. Go ahead, declare war!”

“I'll kill you!”

Click. Silence.

He threw the phone out the window.

In the midnight cold, the automobile moved in deep valleys. Under Barton's feet on the floorboard were revolvers, rifles, dynamite. The roar of the car was in his thin, tired bones.

I'll find them, he thought, and destroy all of them. Oh, God, how can he do this to me?

He stopped the car. A strange town lay under the late moons. There was no wind.

He held the rifle in his cold hands. He peered at the poles, the towers, the boxes. Where was this town's voice hidden? That tower? Or that one there! So many years ago. He turned his head now this way, now that, wildly.