The Second Fredric Brown Megapack. Fredric Brown
him.
“I suppose you’ll think I’m crazy,” he said. “And maybe you’ll be right, but—I don’t understand it myself. The bartender thinks I’m crazy, I guess. Listen are you a doctor?”
“Not exactly,” I told him. “Call me a consulting psychologist.”
“Do you think I’m insane?”
I said, “Most people who are don’t admit they might be. But I haven’t heard your story yet.”
He took a draught of the beer and put the glass down again, but kept his hands tightly around the glass, possibly to keep them from shaking.
He said, “I’m a Martian. The last one. All the others are dead. I saw their bodies only two hours ago.”
“You were on Mars only two hours ago? How did you get here?”
“I don’t know. That’s the horrible thing. I don’t know. All I know is that the others were dead, their bodies starting to rot. It was awful. There were a hundred million of us, and now I’m the last one.”
“A hundred million. That’s the population of Mars?”
“About that. A little over, maybe. But that was the population. They’re all dead now, except me. I looked in three cities, the three biggest ones. I was in Skar, and when I found all the people dead there, I took a targan—there was no one to stop me—and flew it to Undanel. I’d never flown one before, but the controls were simple. Everyone in Undanel was dead, too. I refueled and flew on. I flew low and watched and there was no one alive. I flew to Zandar, the biggest city—over three million people. And all of them were dead and starting to rot. It was horrible, I tell you. Horrible. I can’t get over the shock of it.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“You can’t. Of course it was a dying world, anyway; we didn’t have more than another dozen generations left to us, you understand. Two centuries ago, we numbered three billion—most of them starving. It was the kryl, the disease that came from the desert wind and that our scientists couldn’t cure. In two centuries it reduced us to one-thirtieth of our number and it still kept on.”
“Your people died, then, of this—kryl?”
“No. When a Martian dies of kryl, he withers. The corpses I saw were not withered.” He shuddered and drank the rest of his beer. I saw that I’d neglected mine and downed it. I raised two fingers at Barney, who was watching our way and looking worried.
My Martian went on talking. “We tried to develop space travel, but we couldn’t. We thought some of us might escape the kryl, if we came to Earth or to other worlds. We tried, but we failed. We couldn’t even get to Deimos or Phobos, our moons.”
“You didn’t develop space travel? Then how—”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, and I tell you it’s driving me wild. I don’t know how I got here. I’m Yangan Dal, a Martian. And I’m here, in this body. It’s driving me wild, I tell you.”
Barney came with the beers. He looked worried enough, so I waited until he was out of hearing before I asked, “In this body? Do you mean—”
“Of course. This isn’t I, this body I’m in. You don’t think Martians would look exactly like humans, do you? I’m three feet tall, weigh what would be about twenty pounds here on Earth. I have four arms with six-fingered hands. This body I’m in—it frightens me. I don’t understand it, any more than I know how I got here.”
“Or how you happen to talk English? Or can you account for that?”
“Well—in a way I can. This body; its name is Howard Wilcox. It’s a bookkeeper. It’s married to a female of this species. It works at a place called the Humbert Lamp Company. I’ve got all its memories and I can do everything it could do; I know everything it knew, or knows. In a sense, I am Howard Wilcox. I’ve got stuff in my pockets to prove it. But it doesn’t make sense, because I’m Yangan Dal, and I’m a Martian. I’ve even got this body’s tastes. I like beer. And if I think about this body’s wife, I—well, I love her.”
I stared at him and pulled out my cigarettes, held out the package to him. “Smoke?”
“This body—Howard Wilcox—doesn’t smoke. Thanks, though. And let me buy us another round of beers. There’s money in these pockets.”
I signaled Barney.
“When did this happen? You say only two hours ago? Did you ever suspect before then that you were a Martian?”
“Suspect? I was a Martian. What time is it?”
I looked at Barney’s clock. “A little after nine.”
“Then it’s a little longer than I thought. Three and a half hours. It would have been half past five when I found myself in this body, because it was going home from work then, and from its memories I know it had left work half an hour before then, at five.”
“And did you—it—go home?”
“No, I was too confused. It wasn’t my home. I’m a Martian. Don’t you understand that? Well, I don’t blame you if you don’t, because I don’t, either. But I walked. And I—I mean Howard Wilcox—got thirsty and he—I—” He stopped and started over again. “This body got thirsty and I stopped in here for a drink. After two or three beers, I thought maybe the bartender there could give me some advice and I started talking to him.”
I leaned forward across the table. “Listen, Howard,” I said, “you were due home for dinner. You’re making your wife worry like anything about you unless you phoned her. Did you?”
“Did I—Of course not. I’m not Howard Wilcox.” But a new type of worry came into his face.
“You’d better phone her,” I said. “What’s there to lose? Whether you are Yangan Dal or Howard Wilcox, there’s a woman sitting home worrying about you or him. Be kind enough to phone her. Do you know the number?”
“Of course. It’s my own—I mean it’s Howard Wilcox’s—”
“Quit tying yourself into grammatical knots and go make that phone call. Don’t worry about thinking up a story yet; you’re too confused. Just tell her you’ll explain when you get home, but that you’re all right.”
He got up like a man in a daze and headed for the phone booth.
I went over to the bar and had another quickie, straight.
Barney said, “Is he—uh—”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “There’s something about it I still don’t get.” I got back to the booth.
He was grinning weakly. He said, “She sounded madder than hoptoads. If I—if Howard Wilcox does go home, his story had better be good.” He took a gulp of beer. “Better than Yangan Dal’s story, anyway.” He was getting more human by the moment.
But then he was back into it again. He stared at me. “I maybe should have told you how it happened from the beginning. I was shut up in a room on Mars. In the city of Skar. I don’t know why they put me there, but they did. I was locked in. And then for a long time they didn’t bring me food, and I got so hungry that I worked a stone loose from the floor and started to scrape my way through the door. I was starving. It took me three days—Martian days, about six Earth days—to get through, and I staggered around until I found the food quarters of the building I was in. There was no one there and I ate. And then—”
“Go on,” I said. “I’m listening.”
“I went out of the building and everyone was lying in the open, in the streets, dead. Rotting.” He put his hands over his eyes. “I looked in some houses, other buildings. I don’t know why or what I was looking for, but nobody had died indoors. Everybody was lying dead in the open, and none of the bodies were withered, so it wasn’t kryl that killed