The Exile
Blame Wikipedia for this, even through the article for the story doesn’t exist anymore. It never occurred to me before I read it, but if a man is so good at telepathic hypnotism he can give his subject full sensory hallucinations, he can probably fake his own death. And dammit, the ending of that story depressed the hell out of me. So here it is, my unnecessary sequel to The Visitor.
I’m very sorry Mr. Bradbury.
Title: The Exile
Source: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Rating: PG
Word count: 3800
A man sits by the shore of a dead sea and dies.
His death runs into his mouth and nose, killing him by degrees, smothering him in his own plasma. He sits weakly by the dead sea, waiting for a breeze that will never come, that hasn’t come in a thousand years. He sips weak coffee from an aluminum mug, too tired to do anything but boil old filters. His name is Saul Williams and he is waiting to die; it has been many months in coming but he knows it’s coming.
He is alone.
The sun is broiling the Martian landscape, baking the red bones of the soil that run through land lying fallow and untilled, glaring down on the man named Saul and the other unlucky souls exiled to Mars to die slowly.
He has not moved in hours, days, in hopes that he will sprout roots and grow into the land, become another growing thing in the desolate ground. The soil is loose and silty and drifts red against his tent, red as if the entire planet is given over to rust. Saul’s mouth is full of rust. He spits. He must do this once in a while or choke. He drowns on dry land, but slowly. That is his curse.
Once he felt longing for the rich loam of Earth. Once he felt a terrible sickness, an ungodly craving for trees, creeks, cars, sights, smells, Earth. He had killed for it. Now it was an effort to even stir from the shallow dish he’d scooped out with his body, days of writhing lamely in his sleep, reaching out but never touching, crying endlessly until rust spotted his pillow.
New York was dead. It had been kept in his mind, dormant, until it had arrived one day, fresh and young and scrubbed clean, only to fall down and die in the sand for good. Taxis dissolving into a powdery yellow dust, asphalt drifting back into Martian soil once more. Leonard Mark falling with a bullet, his magician eyes seeing nothing ever, ever again.
Saul rolled over onto his side, overturning his cup and sending a thin dark river spooling out over the sand, dividing and scattering like mercury until it gave up and sank into submission. There was a thin, muddy grave to show where it had been. Saul scraped loose earth over it.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if something grew here, Saul reflected. Any and all supplies came on you with the rocket. Each man was generously loaded, far too much to last a greedy man past death, but it was about more than just fresh food. There was no green, no shade, no smells. The small spears of bronze grass were odorless, tasteless, and refused to grow in big enough clumps, as if the grass itself was ashamed to be with the dying men.
The Martian Earth sucked all the sights and smells into itself eventually. A man was rarely lucky enough to die when there were strong and able men to scrape a hole in the earth for you. Saul could name one in eight months. When you died, if you died, you lay on the sand while the air sucked the moisture out of you, the sand eating up your memories and the memories of your body. In a few days you could’ve spent a lifetime in the Valley of the Kings behind a wall of limestone and gold leaf. You were a lightweight trunk on the sand, a brittle hollow interlaced with white bone, a child’s failed idea for a kite. Mars took New York out of you and gave nothing back.
Saul drew a map in the sand with his finger. Here was Broadway, and here was Madison, and between them- no, no, that was all wrong, didn’t he know where the park went? He rubbed it smooth and flat and started again.
Here was the empire state building, here was the theatre he’d gone to see his last play in, Grace looking lovely in her blue dress, five weeks to the diagnosis and transport and being cut off from everything ever and Grace looked lovely and oblivious as tears slid down her smooth cheeks and she wept and applauded at the performance but he couldn’t see-
The exile sank to his knees by the shore of the dead sea, sobbing. He did this about once a day, every day.
Eventually night came and he was spared the sight of the shore, dying men dotting it like plague abscesses, and a fire was kindled and lit.
Here he was cozy and useful. He fed the fire with twigs and kept it from going out, blowing on it occasionally. There was only a great dome of night stretching over his head and off forever in every direction. Gone were the prisoners in their rusty nests, the shore was dotted with cheery fireflies that twinkled benignly and meant him no harm. There was coffee and beans and though the food wasn’t great it was good and warm, and he could forget a bit of his great longing.
He was camping out in the Adirondacks, in a while he’d get out steak and sausages and roast them sizzling over the fire, and he’d retire to his sleeping bag to wake up warm and contented, to drift and paddle in the glass-clear water and fish for nothing in particular. If he held his head just right, he could trick a microscopic portion of himself into believing it.
A twig snapped. Saul opened his eyes. There was no one nearby, nothing around him except the velvet night. He heard the fire popping, that was all. This was not the Adirondacks, there was no forest floor to warn him of intruders, he was surrounded on all sides by sand that held a footprint less than an hour and all of his neighbors were sick men. He was alone.
The fire popped again. Nothing sat across from him, breathing quietly so as not to alert him. It was his imagination acting up as it often did, projecting what he wanted on the empty air around him. He was alone.
A small wind came forth like a sigh to caress his cheek. Another twig popped. Saul smiled and wrapped his blanket around himself.
“Hello, Leonard,” he said to the empty air in front of him.
Something rustled. Something sneezed. The empty sky in front of him dissolved into an eighteen-year-old blond, blue-eyed figment of his imagination. The figment smiled cheekily at him and rubbed its hands together.
“Well hello yourself, friend,” he said. The smile pushed his hollowed-out cheeks back into their original soft rounds, though it couldn’t bring back their pinkness. The boy had old eyes, ancient eyes, and he rubbed his hands together constantly as if they would never be warm again.
Saul nodded amiably and poured himself some coffee, strong and brown and rich. He gestured to his guest, who held his palms out helplessly. Saul had no second cup; he hadn’t felt the need for company since that day and had skipped it like a stone across the sea bed, watched it skim like a bird until the distance swallowed it up.
He was silent and drank his coffee carefully, savoring it more than he had in months. His guest was nervous and fidgeted, his gaze roaming from the tent to Saul to the night and back to the tent, his fingers formed into knots.
“I hate to be forward, but I have to wonder what’s become of our interlopers?” Mark asked with a mock casualty. Saul took his time before answering.
“Dunno. Haven’t really spoken to them in a while.” He took another sip and felt it roll down his throat, hot and satisfying. The corners of the younger man’s mouth worked as if rehearsing a speech, his eyes held Saul coldly in their pupils.
“Fine,” he spat, “I was hoping to avoid another shotgun marriage, thanks awfully.”
Saul nodded passively.
“Oh, I doubt that’ll happen again, bit of temporary insanity is all,” he said, never once turning his gaze from the dead shore flickering with light.
“Temporary insanity?”
“Umm-hmm. I bet they’ll be down there if you turn and just kept walking. They’ll be waiting for you, a little weak but there just the same.”
Seconds ticked by slowly. His guest made no move to get up.
“They’ll be happy to see you,” he droned on, “I don’t doubt that. Oh, I think some of them might still have it in them to give trouble, a few of them can find rocks or guns or maybe even just fists, but they’re tired, and they’re weak, like I said. Probably only too happy to trade some candy bars for a night at the fair, or a spin in a Cadillac, or even just a swim. Go on, Mark, your public’s waiting.”
Leonard Mark sat still and silent, fire dancing sphinx-like in his eyes. Saul ran out of coffee and set his cup down, fingers knitting together comfortably. For a long time neither man spoke. Then:
“I thought you’d be happy to see me, Williams. I thought you’d be grateful to have New York back… after all, you wanted it bad enough once that you’d kill for it.”
Saul felt heat rising in the back of his neck. He tamped it down.
“Oh sure,” he said lightly, which took effort, “I’m happy to see you, Leonard Mark, happy and grateful you came to me and not the others. You know how I get. Why, it’s as if New York rose from the ashes and cuddled me into her bosom once more,” he ended with dripping acid, finally looking at Leonard.
The young man was bent forward, hands out, pleading, “Saul-”
“Leonard Mark,” Saul pronounced with relish, “the mental marvel. The wonder of the unnatural world. The wizard of mind and senses who spends his time creeping around tents at midnight, scaring people half to death.” Mark flinched.
“I didn’t think-”
“Leonard Mark the charlatan. You thought that was pretty funny, didn’t you, making us all think you were dead?” Saul dashed more coffee into his cup, scalding his fingers. “What fun it must be, tricking people who’ve run out of hope and pity, a bunch of desperate prisoners who’d give their left arm for just a taste of home again! ‘How clever I am’ you thought, ‘to make such fun with these stupid old men, stupid-” his voice cracked, “stupid and desperate and lonely and dying. Leonard Mark, the cleverest dead man on Mars.”
The fire crackled, merrily inappropriate. Mark winced.
“I suppose I deserve that for my little…charade,” he began. Saul snorted but said nothing. “You have no idea, do you, the kind of pressure that puts on a human being, to perform, to make everyone happy-”
Saul laughed incredulously. “You want to talk about pressure? Damn you! Stay here for six months, blood filling up your lungs, and then talk to me about pressure. You didn’t need to make us happy!” he roared, astonished to find tears on his face, “you just needed to help us see home! Home! Couldn’t you see that?!”
Leonard Mark stared carefully at him now; Saul caught the faintest ghost of a wisp of Grace’s perfume. Oh no, he would not be caught like that.
“If you would only let me,” Mark stated carefully, “if you’d let me in-”
“’Oh dear, oh darling, won’t you take me back?” Saul laughed, much more bitter this time.
“I’ll give you New York! I’ll give you Greenwater and Paris and Moscow and wherever else you choose!” Leonard Mark cried out, a drop of sweat winding down his face.
“Forget it,” Saul shook his head and poked the fire. “I’m past wanting now. I’m too old and too tired to want to remember. What does memory bring? Pain, that’s what. Pain and sickness and loneliness a mile wide and deep. I don’t want you anymore, Leonard. I divorce you. In pace requiescat.” He made a mock cross with his poker, a thin stick burned round at the end. Leonard Mark watched him desperately.
“You don’t understand,” he whispered, “you don’t understand and I can’t make you understand.”
“That’s right,” Saul nodded, “I’ll be seeing you around, I guess.”
Neither made any move away from the fire.
Saul leaned back and smoked a cigarette stitched together from dog ends. He peered at his visitor from beneath lids and through smoke, cold and remote. The young man had convinced Saul of his death so easily, why come back now? Why? Surely a man tough enough to stay silent around his potential murderers could eke out his own living, taking from the stores of sicker men. Why now?
Saul smiled a little and flicked an ash. He knew why.
“So,” he breathed, smoke wreathing his words, “what’s it like, being invisible?”
He’d hit the nail on the head. Mark gave him a stricken look, hunching into himself. He had aged and grown smaller, alone on the shore. Saul almost pitied him.
“I can make it all for you, Saul, I can! Just let me-”
“Let you what?” Saul blew a filmy dragon of smoke that kinked and drifted until it died in the fire. “Let you in? Let you get my hopes up again and you can dash them because it’s always funnier the second time? You peeked on the others, didn’t you, saw how weak and feeble they are, how most of them can’t even raise their heads anymore. And then you thought of Saul, poor Saul, all alone with his memories and you thought ‘hey, there’s a star I can hitch my wagon to!” In the silence he heard Mark’s breathing. “Am I right sweetheart?”
Mark stood up, hands gripping each other, wrestling like pale pythons, writhing in supplication. “Saul.” He whispered the name like a prayer. The young man moved around the fire, eyes intent on Saul’s face. He knelt in front of the older man, his face old and tired and frightened but somehow still too young to die breathing in his own blood.
Saul Williams squirmed a little, uncomfortable with the younger man being so close, too close, he could make out the fringe of colorless hair that wasn’t quite yet a mustache on his upper lip.
“Leonard, go.”
Leonard Mark bowed his head, shoulders shaking, no, no.
“Go find someone else, I’m not-”
“-without you.”
“What?” Saul hadn’t heard the first part of the sentence. Mark looked up at him, red-eyed, struggling to form the words.
“Not without you,” he whispered, hands creeping up to grip feebly on his knees, “can’t do it without you.”
“Can’t do what? Leonard, make sense!”
“I can’t- I can’t- it won’t come without you, do you understand?” He bowed forward again and began to cry in earnest, a wretched sobbing sound that made Saul cringe and curl away.
In that instant, Leonard Mark changed back from a sorcerer into an eighteen-year-old boy.
Saul understood. He understood now. Leonard Mark, the mental marvel, could not summon Earth for himself. His hypnotic eyes saw everything but themselves, and he must realize in the back of his head that he couldn’t fool himself into tasting and seeing Earth. Saul felt his hatred evaporate.
How long had he walked among the men before the realization came crashing down, that terrible, lonely knowledge they had all received upon first news of infection? He could hear Grace sobbing, her curls bouncing, as the doctor told him the diagnosis, Grace never once meeting his eyes.
They had all been shunned. The dead men and Leonard Mark the marvel. To be invisible even to the invisible was too much, too much for another human.
“Mark,” he called softly. A fit of hitching breaths answered him. “Mark. Come here if you’re done feeling sorry for yourself.”
The younger man looked up at him from the fire, all hollow eyes and misery. Gingerly, as if dipping a toe into scalding water, Leonard crossed the distance separating them. He stopped just short of Saul, hunger and fear and a desperate hope squirming in his face.
Saul opened his rusty blanket, arms stretching like wings. “Come,” he said, “you’re cold.”
The young man looked at him with uncertainty, dread, but did as he was told. Saul felt himself elbowed in several places by the scrabbling youth, but waited patiently for him to settle. Leonard’s head tucked neatly under his chin, and Saul found that the blanket just barely covered the two of them. The wispy fire crackled and nearly blew out, starved for oxygen. Together, the two men were warm.
Finally Saul spoke: “it will be different, this time.”
“Yes it will, I promise it will.” Saul knew the boy was merely agreeing out of fear, and that he must try to get his point home.
“No, let me rephrase that. We’ll be different. I won’t be selfish this time, Leonard, and neither will you. I’m not going to hide you, I won’t try to take you all for myself and I won’t treat you like an object. That was my mistake, I realize that.”
“If you just give me something, just once in a while, I can-” Saul cut off the boy’s muffled reply before it could tempt him back to the darkness.
“No, Leonard, this is no partnership. This isn’t business relations; you’re doing this because you can, and because you want to. You’re a human being, not something that winds up and works, and I’m going to treat you like one.” He heard the boy’s breath hitch again and knew he’d struck the right nerve.
“I bet you’re not used to that. At home, did anyone notice Leonard Mark, the man? Did anyone ever look past the cardboard cutouts to the man propping them up, sweating his life out to give them dreams? I don’t think they did, by the look of you. You’re starving, Leonard. You were starving when you came here, and you thought you could treat us like your customers back on Earth.” Earth. The word turned to ash in his mouth.
The boy’s head jolted up in a blind panic. “No! I didn’t meant to-”
Saul gripped the frightened boy, he had hit close to home after all.
“Don’t be sorry, Leonard, and calm down. I don’t think you even notice anymore. You’ve been doing this your whole life, haven’t you? You give people the mental mickey and they give you whatever you want, never tell you “no”. It’s easier, easier than slogging through life like the rest of us. You know what they call people like you, Leonard, people who use their bodies to make a living?”
Leonard’s white face twisted with agony in the firelight.
“Well, I’m going to tell you no. I’m not going to give you anything, and neither are those men down there, I’ll make sure of it. You’re not a service, Leonard, you’re a man, a living, breathing human being, just like the rest of us.” Saul stopped because he felt a rush of fluid coming on.
He had not talked so long in a while, his rusty lungs leaked and blood clotted his speech. Saul coughed violently, sputtering, choking on rust. Leonard Mark sprang into action, hoisting him upright and hitting his back with an open palm. Saul’s fit subsided and he sat weakly down again in front of the embers. Mark fetched the cup and pressed it urgently into his shaking hands; Saul drank and felt the shivering subside.
Mark held Saul’s hands around the warmth of the coffee, staring at Saul’s face. It was a long time before anyone spoke.
“…You were wrong,” Mark said, “about why I chose you. You think I don’t care. I don’t, not really…but you…you talked to me, gave me things, you wanted to keep me with you so bad and I thought-” his voice broke and he dropped his hands from Saul’s.
The fire was dead. Along the valley, all the fires were twinkling out. Fireflies didn’t live long in this place. Nothing good did. But while it lasted, it was worth the effort.
“You stay with me, Leonard, and I’ll stay with you. Any more than that I can’t promise you.”
“I suppose-” Leonard halted. “I suppose that’s fair.”
“No, Leonard, it isn’t fair. Nothing on Mars is fair. But it’s…” he searched for the word. “It’s right. As right as I can make it.”
Leonard chuckled and took the proffered cup from Saul, drinking long and deep like a tribute. By feeble starlight Saul saw the bones in his fingers, the gray already streaking his hair. Nothing good lasted on Mars. In a year, maybe less, there would be no Leonard Mark. Hope would atomize and sink back into the Martian soil; the men who arrived would die never knowing hope or comfort. The desert would eat up their lives like all the rest.
But Leonard Mark was here, now, and for a while hope would be easy.
“It’s 21:00 Earth time, son,” Saul said, “let’s hit the hay.”
Saul stretched his thin body out on the Martian sand, wrapping his blanket Indian-style about him. He lay quietly for a moment, the air uncertain. Then, hesitatingly, Leonard joined him, allowed himself to be enfolded in the rusty fabric. Saul felt the young man breathe beside him, heard the shuddery beginnings of a cough. For one brief, painful instant he saw Leonard Mark’s future and then it was gone.
Tomorrow they would visit the other dead men, pour water on their heads and watch them uncurls like ferns in the dry Martian sun. Tomorrow Saul would allow himself to laugh and think of the past, tomorrow it would not hurt when he thought of Earth. Tomorrow the Martians would meet on the dry sea bed and live again.
And even if Leonard Mark became invisible again in the night Saul felt him shift restlessly, heard him murmur in his sleep, knew he was there as he caught whiffs of Grace’s perfume in the night.
Two exiles slept by the shore of a dead sea and dreamed.