The Man Who Fell to Earth

Newton sat erect in his chair, looking at him, his white hair gleaming in the light from the chandelier. He was smiling; but his entire body ached. After a while he picked up his glass and began to sip the water that for all of his long life had been the most precious of all things at his home. He sipped slowly and watched Farnsworth read, and the tension he had felt, the carefully concealed anxiety that this utterly strange office in this still strange world had given him, the fright that this fat human, with his bulging jowls, his taut-skinned head and his little, porcine eyes, had made him feel, began to leave him. He knew now that he had this man; he had come to the right place….

* * *

More than two hours passed before Farnsworth looked up from the papers. During that time he drank three glasses of whiskey. His eyes were pink at the corners. He blinked at Newton, at first hardly seeing him and then focusing on him, his small eyes wide.

“Well?” Newton said, still smiling.

The fat man took a breath, then shook his head as if trying to clear his mind. When he spoke, his voice was soft, hesitant, extremely cautious. “I don’t understand them all.” he said. “Only a few. A few. I don’t understand optics — or photographic films.” He looked back to the papers in his hand, as if making sure they were still there. “I’m a lawyer, Mr. Newton,” he said. “I’m a lawyer.” And then, suddenly, his voice came alive, trembling and strong, his fat body and his tiny eyes intent, alert. “But I know electronics. And I know dyes. I think I understand your… amplifier and I think I understand your television, and…” He paused for a moment, blinking. “My God, I think they can be manufactured the way you say they can.” He let out his breath, slowly. “They look convincing, Mr. Newton. I think they will work.”

Newton was still smiling at him. “They will work. All of them.”

Farnsworth took out a cigarette and lit it, calming himself. “I’ll have to check them. The metals, the circuits…” And then, suddenly, interrupting himself, the cigarette clutched between his fat fingers, “Good God, man, do you know what all of this means? Do you know that you have nine basic — that’s basic patents here.” He raised one paper in a pudgy hand, “Here in just the video transmission and in that little rectifier? And… do you know what that means?”

Newton’s expression did not change. “Yes. I know what it means,” he said.

Farnsworth inhaled slowly from his cigarette. “If you’re right, Mr. Newton,” he said, his voice becoming calmer now, “if you’re right you can have RCA, Eastman Kodak. My Lord, you can have Du Pont. Do you know what you have here?”

Newton stared hard at him. “I know what I have here,” he said.

* * *

It took them six hours to drive to Farnsworth’s country home. Newton tried to keep up their conversation for part of the time, bracing himself in the corner of the limousine’s back seat, but the heavy accelerations of the car were too blindingly painful to his body, already overloaded with the pull of a gravitation that he knew it would take him years to become used to, and he was forced to tell the lawyer that he was very tired and needed to rest. Then he closed his eyes, let the cushioned back of the seat bear his weight as much as possible, and withstood the pain as well as he could. The air in the car was very warm to him, too — the temperature of their hottest days at home.

Eventually, as they passed beyond the edge of the city, the chauffeur’s driving became more steady, and the painful jerks of stopping and starting began to subside. He glanced a few times at Farnsworth. The lawyer was not dozing. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees, still shuffling through the papers that Newton had given him, his little eyes bright, intense.

The house was an immense place, isolated in a great wooded area. The building and the trees seemed wet, glistening dimly in the gray morning light that was much like the light of midday of Anthea. It was refreshing to his over-sensitive eyes. He liked the woods, the quiet sense of life in them, and the glistening moisture — the sense of water and of fruitfulness that this earth overflowed with, even down to the continual trilling and chirping sounds of the insects. It would be an endless source of delight compared to his own world, with the dryness, the emptiness, the soundlessness of the broad, empty deserts between the almost deserted cities where the only sound was the whining of the cold and endless wind that voiced the agony of his own, dying people….

A servant, sleepy-eyed and wearing a bathrobe, met them at the door. Farnsworth dismissed the man with an order for coffee, and then shouted after him that he must have a room prepared for his guest and that he would receive no telephone calls for at least three days. Then Farnsworth led him into the library.