Beyond My Window
By R. F. Marazas
Letter to General Harrison from Oliver Hazard Perry, United States Brig Niagara, off the Western Sisters :
“We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”
Beyond my window, the sands of Mars shift like some great restless beast disturbed in sleep. Something undefined nags at me. Not the whiplash storm that greeted us at touchdown, keeping us prisoners for twenty-six hours listening to the sand pound in sheets against the hull. Not the eerie, deathlike, non-movement after the storm that makes a silence you don’t need to hear because you can see it. This is something else, unreal. Something. How can you define it when you have no reference? I’d never heard anything like the sand pounding the hull, never heard a silence like this one that followed. So how am I supposed to define this other something?
My eyes are gritty, leaking tears a dull gray color. My nose and mouth leak too, a steady drip. I’ve been staring at the patches of coppery sand. One minute the sand builds a chain of hills miles away, the next it reappears within twenty yards of the ship in grotesque shapes that seem alive. Staring is useless. The sand keeps changing, but I only see the result.
My skin is clammy, with a shiny slickness that no amount of wiping will stop. My clothes cling to me like damp tissue paper. Touching surfaces leave my splotched oily fingerprints in strange pop-art patterns. I can’t wipe those away either.
So there it is, simple enough: my life is slowly draining away. When it stops, I’ll be dead.
I know, I know, got to get hold of myself.
Go figure. After all those years of working my tail off, eyes on that one goal, impressing the hell out of my superiors and the bureaucrats, not only do I see my name on the flight list—was it a misprint?—but right there at the top. My mission! My command!
So what do I do? Dream.
#
Well dammit, I told them about it, or at least hinted enough, during our sessions. They’re supposed to be the experts. The clown with the Dali mustache should have raised a red flag instead of sitting there with that smug look, surrounded by his microtapes and profiles and behavior manuals. Should have recognized the signs—what signs?—I was a granite face, giving away nothing. Should he have grounded me, I’d have climbed over his desk and strangled him.
Smug bastard. His mustache curved up and inward, twin stingers poised to stab his nose. Fingertips steepled, barely touching, in awe of each other. The programmed smile, curled upward, mimicking the mustache.
“So. Captain. In command of the first Mars probe. Feeling emotional up top?” Always an economy of monotoned words.
“Yes, sir.”
“You seem unsure. Tell me.”
“Tell you, sir?”
“You can’t find words. Try. Your halting words, my probing keys. With them, we’ll unlock the doors.” He waved a dismissive hand and tapped a shiny fingernail against the recorder. “We’ve already unlocked all your doors, true? The entire profile is right here. Ergo, whatever your words, the corresponding keys exist.”
I took a careful breath, kept my face granite, and neutered my voice.
"A few dreams, sir. Incomplete thoughts spoken by three black robed, hooded creatures yelling, ‘If God wanted man to know the mysteries of space, He’d have…’, or a cartoon character grinning at me and saying, ‘We have met the enemy and…’. I wake up with the strong feeling that I’m supposed to complete the phrases.”
My voice died and I stared, fiercely indignant, at the supercilious arch of eyebrows.
“Captain, I understand you have a hobby.”
“Yes sir.” What the hell?
“We encourage this. Space program pressures need release. Safety valve. Do you dabble in historical nostalgia or trivia? I hear you were somewhat of a wunderkind when you were young, won prizes on quiz shows, eh?”
I nodded stupidly, anxiously. Would he force me to surrender my collection of old magazines, comic books, and records?
“Now. Simple, non-critical problem. Inconvenient to you, but not critical. And it has an answer.”
I leaned forward.
“To relieve your tremendous pressures, you subconsciously use your hobby to escape. Your hobby’s lighter aspects mingle with your mission’s serious aspects. Minor conflict of opposing thoughts, nothing more. A simple clash between fantasy and reality. Easily resolved once you’re out there in the great void.”
For a long while, we both sat waiting. He wanted my thanks for his perception. I wanted an answer. Simultaneously, we turned cool.
“That’s it?”
“Captain, are you requesting that you be relieved of command?”
He had me there. Had me right where he wanted me.
And now something else had me here.
#
I stare at the transmitter, willing it to span the great void, and turn knobs with infinite hairline precision until my fingers ache. In answer, the wasp is buzzing, the mosquito drones, they crackle. Martian wasps? Space mosquitoes? A crackle of unknown language?
I must decide: stay with the ship or form a search party of one. A good captain is supposed to go down with his ship, but that seems rather farfetched now. The captain’s ship is incapacitated, incommunicado, and unlikely to go down or in any other direction. The others should touch down in what, nine more days? The best bet seems to be to get out there, and get some data to prepare them for—
If I see one more of my slimy fingerprints I’ll scream. Decision duly made, duly logged.
So damned absurd. We know all there is to know about Mars. No little green men with yellow saucer eyes, no wisps of blue smoke that speak through telepathy. No indescribable monsters or intelligent plants. Sparse vegetation, thin air, empty canals, storms. Your average unexplored planet.
And that sinister red sand that shifts its hulk when your back is turned. Nothing unexpected.
So what happened to my crew—Major Denby, Captain Sparr, Doc Mellors? First men on Mars, gone four hours, headset intercom snuffed out. Follow-up search team of Major Lime, Captain Planer. Three hours overdue, no contact. Captain Argood, Lieutenant Talansky, gone. And no partner for the skipper because Childress never made it to Mars. The flight burst his heart with joy. Childress, wherever you are, drifting slow and lazy toward the sun, perhaps you are the luckiest of us all.
I glance at the porthole. Earth is sliding from sight against the lower left arc. No eclipse, no death in darkness. Stop acting like some scared kid.
Leaning forward, I see the sand flat straight across to the horizon. It looked that way when the others left before it followed their bulky figures that finally became specks blended into the sand.
A shiver jolts up my spine.
Angrily I punch the airlock control auto-button and move toward the hatch. The button must have activated me too because I trudge fifty yards before I remember to turn back to face the impact of where I am and what I’ve done. The ship is there, dully one-dimensional, a cutout rocket ship from a children’s magazine glued to a starkly black backdrop.
And I’m the kid. This is my wildest dream come true, only hey, this is real. Mars! I’m an Earthman, a human being and ship’s captain, and I’m standing on the surface of Mars. On Mars! And I almost forgot to savor the moment, the way I used to make an ice cream cone last. Too many things on my mind, like missing crews and subconscious warnings and hooded figures and fragmented phrases.
Okay, okay. The moment is savored in my mind’s log. Time to shove philosophy and romanticism aside. Time for the business of survival and detection. Trudge on, traveler.
I move away in the general direction of my lost crew. There is sand. There is silence. Yes. Unlike any other silence I’ve ever felt. Felt? Strange way to describe it. I think about the tree in the forest. Nobody around to hear the sound the tree makes when it falls, so if nobody hears the sound, does the sound exist? A step further. If I fall now and I can’t hear the sound, and nobody else hears the sound, does the sound I make exist? If I make a sound that doesn’t exist, does that mean that I don’t exist?
Oh, Captain, the clown with the Dali mustache would have a field day with that one.
I veer right, following the moving mounds of sand. I’m not tired; all my body processes have accelerated despite the feeling of walking in slow motion on a treadmill. A fine, humming pitch flows from inside me. I flip on the headset.
“Denby, Lime?” A movement to the left, over there?
“Doc? Do you read me, Sparr?” Was that a voice? An echo? “Come in, Planer. Come in, Talansky. Argood?” Come in somebody, anybody. “Dammit, Childress are you out there!”
No, no Captain, you keep forgetting, Childress is out there all right but not within reach. Perhaps we’re all out of reach somewhere out there.
I tilt my head back to gaze up into the black. It brings a smothering sensation, this blackness. So immense, so limitless. How can Man cope with this?
Oh, God—Crazily I look around, flinching in the expectation of hearing a voice thundering through a sudden gap in the blackness: “Yes?”
You cannot fool with that name out there. No matter what the academy skeptics tell you, this is His turf. I have a bizarre vision of myself on my knees, arms outstretched in pleading frustration, yelling, “Why me, God?”
And the gigantic hand, finger-pointing. “Because you bug Me, little man!”
We’re all little men, so tread softly until you know the lay of the land. Tough break. My academy training is shot to hell because right now I’m a believer and I don’t intend to rile the gods or God or whatever it is that spins out this blackness.
Definite movement this time, caught in my peripheral vision. To my left, something angles in a wide arc toward me. I follow, my eyes hurting from squinting and skimming across the sand. “Clear your mind’s silly memory banks, this is serious. Headset on.” An echo of my tense voice calls to the figure. Yes, yes, a figure; this is no sand witchery. He is suited up, angling toward me in a hesitant, teasing walk, circling.
He? Are you sure? Now let’s not get carried away. Has to be one of the crew. There are no Martians. Nothing lives on this planet except a few minor organisms. He’s a man, fellow crewman. Acting rather strangely, but we’ll explain that soon. Won’t we?
He’s closer. I can see that his suit is just like mine. Naturally. Funny thing though, the lettering and markings are distorted, or maybe faded or…flawed. As if that particular suit didn’t pass quality control inspection. A kink in the assembly line, and out pops a dud.
Feeling stupid but somehow dead-certain it’s the only way to communicate, I raise my hand slowly in greeting. He stops, shimmering against black space and red sand. I’m trapped in a photographer’s darkroom. But he’s not trapped, moving closer in that jerky motion. Finally, I manage to shake off the hypnosis of the stark colors.
I lean forward and peer inside his face shield. And see me, distorted.
Despite all my training, I’m shaken. They never told us what to do when confronted with our images while strolling on an alien planet. This scene might as well be suspended. Nothing exists but my mind. Mind pure and simple, right here, filled with endless accumulated blurbs of trivia. An infinity of trivia, running wild. Okay mind, go ahead, trivia yourself out of this one.
Wait a minute. Those underwater divers on Earth—spend too much time down there too deep and they suffer from the rapture of the deep, right? Hallucinations, suspension. So I’m suffering from a rapture of deep space.
My pure and simple mind accepts that. I peer again at the figure, in control now. I recall a story I once read about a man who meets his image.
“Are you my Secret Sharer?” I call through the headset.
I take a closer look. It’s indeed my face but not a mirror image. It’s misshapen and grotesque like the portrait of the beautiful young man in another story.
“Are you my Dorian Gray?”
I hear the hysteria in my voice now. Perhaps that triggers my body to lurch forward. Up to this point, we’ve both been cautious, and wary, each poised for flight. But my panic has committed me to make a sudden move. I’ve made it and my cracked, distorted reflection, the timing slightly behind that of the original, makes an equally aggressive move. The circle is completed and now must go on and on.
All right, mind, you blew it! Nothing left to do but run back because that—whatever it is—is no longer willing to stand and analyze.
Across the bleak Martian landscape I go, overwhelmed by the deepest loneliness I’ve ever known. Over my shoulder I see him following, not gaining, not falling back. Has my face ever looked like that? Have my features ever been so distorted? It’s all there in that other face: anger, hatred, lust, greed.… One massive, cancerous sore pulsing with the effort to erupt in horrible violence. I jolt myself with another backward glance. Move faster before it catches up!
Hunter and hunted in a slow-motion nightmare. The adrenaline pile drives my weary body. Perhaps it short-circuits my mind too because the bits of trivia keep caroming around in there.
I swear loudly. What a damn fool time for nostalgia, right now, when I have to get back and log a warning for the others. They must be warned. And my head is a solid buzz. I could power the ship right off this planet with the force in my skull.
Up the ladder, punch the airlock control button.
Got to warn them: This is what happened to my crew.
My Secret Sharer, or my Dorian Gray, is coming. Got to explain it, explain to those who follow. What do I say to make them understand? A time warp, a space warp, a trick of lighting peculiar only to Mars. Or a microbe, a virus, or a gaseous agent that causes hallucinations. Explain in their terms. Something, anything reasonable, because there’s no other way to explain what I believe.
It’s climbing the ladder.
I’m through the airlock, ripping my helmet away, switching on the log, sweating despite climate control, and bending close to the speaker.
Time warp, space warp, mosquitoes, something their scientific minds can work with, grasp, and analyze. They won’t comprehend philosophy or intuition or religion or history or…sudden blinding insight into man’s dark soul.
The airlock door swings wide.
God, has my face ever looked like that?
Now I remember. My completed trivia phrase, a paraphrase, a takeoff on a famous statement from American history. It presents itself like a cartoon character, some kind of animal, both funny and sad in his satiric pose. I remember what he said!
I open my mouth, leaning closer to avoid misunderstanding, even though I know that no one will understand. There is ragged breathing in my ears and no time to determine whether it’s his or mine.
I speak very slowly and very, very clearly.
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
~~~