The Man Who Fell to Earth

He turned the switch off. At the bottom of the record card was printed: RECORDED BY “THE THIRD RENAISSANCE,” TWENTY-THREE SULLIVAN STREET, NEW YORK….

The “third renaissance” was in a loft. It’s office staff consisted solely of one person, a dapper young black with an enormous mustache. This person was, fortunately, in an expansive mood when Bryce dropped into his office, and he readily explained that “the visitor” of the record was a rich nut named Tom something-or-other who lived someplace-or-other in the Village. This nut, it seemed, had approached the recording outfit himself and had underwritten the cost of making and distributing the record. He might be found at a coffee-and-booze house around the corner, a place called The Key and Chain….

The Key and Chain was a relic of the old coffeehouses that had gone out in the seventies. Along with a few others it had managed to survive by installing a bar and selling cheap liquor. There were no bongo drums and no announcements of poetry readings — their era had passed away a long time before — but there were amateurish paintings on the walls, cheap wooden tables placed at random around the room, and what few customers there were studiously dressed like bums. Thomas Jerome Newton was not among them.

Bryce ordered himself a whiskey and soda at the bar and drank it slowly, resolved to wait for at least several hours. But he had only begun his second drink when Newton came in. At first Bryce did not recognize him. Newton was slightly stooped and he walked more heavily than before. He had on his usual dark glasses, but now he carried a white cane, and he was wearing, of all absurdities, a gray fedora hat. A fat uniformed nurse led him by the arm. She took him to an isolated table in the back of the room, seated him, and left. Newton faced toward the bar and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Elbert.” And the bartender said, “I’ll be right with you, dad.” Then the bartender opened a bottle of Gordon’s gin, put it on a tray with a bottle of Angostura bitters and a glass, and carried the tray over to Newton’s table. Newton produced a bill from his shirt pocket, handed it to him, smiled vaguely, and said, “Keep the change.”

Bryce watched him intently from the bar while he groped for the glass, found it, and poured himself a half tumbler full of gin, and added to this a generous dash of bitters. He used no ice and did not stir the drink but began sipping it immediately. Abruptly Bryce began to wonder, almost in panic, what he was going to say to Newton, now that he’d found him. Could he rush over from the bar, clutching his whiskey and soda, and say, “I’ve changed my mind in the past year. I want the Antheans to take over, after all. I’ve been reading the newspapers, and now I want the Antheans to take over.” It all seemed so ridiculous now that he was actually with the Anthean again — and Newton seemed, now, like such a pathetic creature. That shocking conversation in Chicago seemed to have taken place in a dream, or on another planet.

He stared at the Anthean for what seemed a long time, remembering the last time he had seen the Project, Newton’s ferry boat, beneath the Air Force plane that had carried him, together with Betty Jo and fifty others, from the site in Kentucky.

For a moment, thinking about this, he almost forgot where he was. He remembered that fine big absurd ship they had all been building down in Kentucky, remembered the pleasure he had taken in his work on it, the way he had, for a time, been so absorbed in solving those problems of metals and ceramics, of temperature and pressure, that he had felt his life was actually involved in something important, something worthwhile. Probably by now parts of the ship were beginning to rust — if the FBI hadn’t already sealed the whole thing in thermoplastic and sent it off to be filed in the basement of the Pentagon. But whatever had happened, it certainly would not have been the first means of possible salvation to get the official treatment.

Then, in the mood that this line of thinking had put him in, he thought what the hell, stood up, walked over to Newton’s table, sat down and said, his voice calm and deliberate, “Hello, Mr. Newton.”

Newton’s voice seemed equally calm. “Nathan Bryce?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Newton finished the drink in his hand. “I’m glad you came. I thought that maybe you would come.”

For some reason the tone of Newton’s voice, possibly the casual unconcern in it, rattled Bryce. He found himself suddenly feeling awkward. “I found your record,” he said. “The poems.”

Newton smiled dimly. “Yes? How did you like them?”

“Not very much.” He had been trying for boldness in saying that, but felt as though he only managed to be pettish. He cleared his throat. “Why did you make it, anyway?”