One Martian Afternoon Read online

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  _She was sweet, gentle, kind--a sort of Martian OldMother Hubbard. But when she went to her cupboard ..._

  ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON

  By Tom Leahy

  Illustrated by BRUSH

  The clod burst in a cloud of red sand and the little Martian sand dogducked quickly into his burrow. Marilou threw another at the aperture inthe ground and then ran over and with the inside of her foot she scrapedsand into it until it was filled to the surface. She started to leave,but stopped.

  The little fellow might choke to death, she thought, it wasn't his faultshe had to live on Mars. Satisfied that the future of something wasdependent on her whim, she dug the sand from the hole. His little yelloweyes peered out at her.

  "Go on an' live," she said magnanimously.

  She got up and brushed the sand from her knees and dress, and walkedslowly down the red road.

  The noon sun was relentless; nowhere was there relief from it. Marilousquinted and shaded her eyes with her hand. She looked in the sky forone of those infrequent Martian rain clouds, but the deep blue was onlyoccasionally spotted by fragile white puffs. Like the sun, they had noregard for her, either. They were too concerned with moving toward thedistant mountains, there to cling momentarily to the peaks and thencontinue on their endless route.

  Marilou dabbed the moisture from her forehead with the hem of her dress."I know one thing," she mumbled. "When I grow up, I'll get to Earth an'never come back to Mars, no matter what!"

  She broke into a defiant, cadenced step.

  "An' I won't care whether you an' Mommy like it or not!" she declaredaloud, sticking out her chin at an imaginary father before her.

  Before she realized it, a tiny, lime-washed stone house appeared not ahundred yards ahead of her. That was the odd thing about the Martianmidday; something small and miles away would suddenly become large andvery near as you approached it.

  The heat waves did it, her father had told her. "Really?" she hadreplied, and--_you think you know so doggone much_, she had thought.

  * * * * *

  "Aunt Twylee!" She broke into a run. By the Joshua trees, through thestone gateway she ran, and with a leap she lit like a young frog on theporch. "Hi, Aunt Twylee!" she said breathlessly.

  An ancient Martian woman sat in a rocking chair in the shade of theporch. She held a bowl of purple river apples in her lap. Herpapyrus-like hands moved quickly as she shaved the skin from one. In amatter of seconds it was peeled. She looked up over her bifocals at thepanting Marilou.

  "Gracious, child, you shouldn't run like that this time of day," shesaid. "You Earth children aren't used to our Martian heat. It'll makeyou sick if you run too much."

  "I don't care! I hate Mars! Sometimes I wish I could just get good an'sick, so's I'd get to go home!"

  "Marilou, you _are_ a little tyrant!" Aunt Twylee laughed.

  "Watcha' doin', Aunt Twylee?" Marilou asked, getting up from her frogposture and coming near the old Martian lady's chair.

  "Oh, peeling apples, dear. I'm going to make a cobbler this afternoon."She dropped the last apple, peeled, into the bowl. "There, done. Wouldyou like a little cool apple juice, Marilou?"

  "Sure--you betcha! Hey, could I watch you make the cobbler, Aunt Twylee,could I? Mommy can't make it for anything--it tastes like glue. Maybe,if I could see how you do it, maybe I could show her. Do you think?"

  "Now, Marilou, your mother must be a wonderful cook to have raised sucha healthy little girl. I'm sure there's nothing she could learn fromme," Aunt Twylee said as she arose. "Let's go inside and have thatapple juice."

  The kitchen was dark and cool, and filled with the odors of thewonderful edibles the old Martian had created on and in the Earth-madestove. She opened the Earth-made refrigerator that stood in the cornerand withdrew an Earth-made bottle filled with Martian apple juice.

  Marilou jumped up on the table and sat cross-legged.

  "Here, dear." Aunt Twylee handed her a glass of the icy liquid.

  "Ummm, thanks," Marilou said, and gulped down half the contents. "Thattastes dreamy, Aunt Twylee."

  The little girl watched the old Martian as she lit the oven and gatheredthe necessary ingredients for the cobbler. As she bent over to get abowl from the shelf beneath Marilou's perch, her hair brushed againstthe child's knee. Her hair was soft, soft and white as a puppy's, softand white like the down from a dandelion. She smiled at Marilou. Shealways smiled; her pencil-thin mouth was a perpetual arc.

  Marilou drained the glass. "Aunt Twylee--is it true what my daddy saysabout the Martians?"

  "True? How can I say, dear? I don't know what he said."

  "Well, I mean, that when us Earth people came, you Martians did inf ...infan ..."

  "Infanticide?" Aunt Twylee interrupted, rolling the dough on the board alittle flatter, a little faster.

  "Yes, that's it--killed babies," Marilou said, and took an apple fromthe bowl. "My daddy says you were real primitive, an' killed your babiesfor some silly religious reason. I think that's awful! How could it bereligious? God couldn't like to have little babies killed!" She took abig bite of the apple; the juice ran from the corners of her mouth.

  "Your daddy is a very intelligent man, Marilou, but he's partiallywrong. It is true--but not for religious reasons. It was a necessity.You must remember, dear, Mars is very arid--sterile--unable to sustainmany living things. It _was_ awful, but it was the only way we knew tocontrol the population."

  * * * * *

  Marilou looked down her button nose as she picked a brown spot from theapple. "Hmmph, I'll tell 'im he's wrong," she said. "He thinks he knowsso damn much!"

  "Marilou!" Aunt Twylee exclaimed as she looked over her glasses. "Asweet child like you shouldn't use such language!"

  Marilou giggled and popped the remaining portion of the apple in hermouth.

  "Do your parents know where you are, child?" Aunt Twylee asked, as shetook the bowl from Marilou's hands. She began dicing the apples into adough-lined casserole.

  "No, they don't," Marilou replied. She sprayed the air with littleparticles of apple as she talked. "Everybody's gone to the hills to lookfor the boys."

  "The boys?" Aunt Twylee stopped her work and looked at the little girl.

  "Yes--Jimmy an' Eddie an' some of the others disappeared from thesettlement this morning. The men're afraid they've run off to th' hillsan' the renegades got 'em."

  "Gracious," Aunt Twylee said; her brow knitted into a criss-cross ofwrinkles.

  "Oh, I know those dopes. They're prob'ly down at th' canals--fishin' orsomep'n."

  "Just the same, your mother will be frantic, dear. You should have toldher where you were going."

  "I don't care," Marilou said with unadulterated honesty. "She'll be allright when I get home."

  Aunt Twylee shook her head and clucked her tongue.

  "Can I have another glass? Please?"

  The old lady poured the glass full again. And then she sprinkled sugardown among the apple cubes in the casserole and covered them with ablanket of dough. She cut an uneven circle of half moons in it and putit in the oven. "There--all ready to bake, Marilou," she sighed.

  "It looks real yummy, Aunt Twylee."

  "Well, I certainly hope it turns out good, dear," she said, wiping herforehead with her apron. She looked out the open back door. Thelandscape was beginning to gray as heavier clouds moved down from themountains and pressed the afternoon heat closer, more oppressively tothe ground. "My, it's getting hot. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if wedidn't get a little rain this afternoon, Marilou." She turned back tothe
little girl. "Tell me some more about your daddy, dear. We Martianscertainly owe a lot to men like your father."

  "That's what he says too. He says, you Martians would have died outin a few years, if we hadn't come here. We're so much more civi ...civili ..."

  "Civilized?"

  "Yeah. He says, we were so much more 'civ-ilized' than you that we savedyour lives when we came here with all our modern stuff."

  "Well, that's true enough, dear. Just look at that wonderful Earthstove," Aunt Twylee said, and laughed. "We wouldn't be able to bake anapple cobbler like that without it, would we?"

  * * * * *

  A rumble of thunder shouldered through the crowded hot air.

  "No. He says, you Martians are kinda likeable, but you can't be trusted.He's nuts! _I_ like you Martians!"

  "Thank you, child, but everyone's entitled to his own opinion. Don'tjudge your daddy too severely," Aunt Twylee said as she scraped spilledsugar from the table and put little bits of it on her tongue.

  "He says that you'd bite th' hand that feeds you. He says, we broughtall these keen things to Mars, an' that if you got th' chance, you'dkill all of us!"

  "Gracious," said Aunt Twylee as she speared scraps of dough with thepoint of her long paring knife.

  "He's a dope!" Marilou said.

  Aunt Twylee opened the oven and peeked in at the cobbler. The aroma ofthe simmering apples rushed out and filled the room.

  "Could I have some cobbler when it's done?" Marilou asked, her mouthfilling with saliva.

  "I'm afraid not, child. It's getting rather late."

  The thunder rumbled again--a little closer, a little louder.

  The old lady washed the blade of the knife in the sink. "Tell me more ofwhat your father says, dear," she said as she adjusted the bifocals onher thin nose and ran her thumb along the length of the knife's blade.

  "Oh, nothin' much more. He just says that you'd kill us if you had th'chance. That's the way the inferior races always act, he says. They wantto kill th' people that help 'em, 'cause they resent 'em."

  "Very interesting."

  "Well, it isn't so, is it, Aunt Twylee?"

  The room was filled with blinding blue-white light, and the walls quakedat the sound of a monstrous thunderclap.

  The old Martian glanced nervously at the clock on the wall. "My, it _is_getting late," she said as she fondled the knife in her hands.

  "You Martians wouldn't do anything like that, would you?"

  "You want the truth, don't you, dear?" Aunt Twylee asked, smiling, asshe walked to the table where Marilou sat.

  "'Course I do, Aunt Twylee," she said.

  Her scream was answered and smothered by the horrendous roar of thethunder, and the piercing hiss of the rain that fell in sheets. In greatvolumes of water, it fell, as though the heavens were attempting to washthe sins of man from the universe and into non-existence in the voidbeyond the void.

  * * * * *

  Marilou lay beside the other children. Aunt Twylee smiled at them,closed the bedroom door and returned to the kitchen.

  The storm had moved on; the thunder was the faint grumbling of apacified old man. What water fell was a monotonous trickle from theeaves of the lime-washed stone house. Aunt Twylee washed the blood fromthe knife and wiped it dry on her apron. She opened the oven and tookout the browned cobbler. Sweet apple juice bubbled to the surfacethrough the half moons and burst in delights of sugary aroma. The sunbroke through the thinning edge of the thunderhead.

  Aunt Twylee brushed a lock of her feathery white hair from her moistcheek. "Gracious," she said, "I must tidy up a bit before the otherscome."

  THE END

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from _If Worlds of Science Fiction_ July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.