The Man Who Fell to Earth

So Bryce stood up, walked around the table, placed the pen in Newton’s hand and held it while the Anthean wrote out. Thomas Jerome Newton, in a clear, steady hand.

Bryce put the check in his billfold. “Do you remember.” Newton said, “a motion picture, shown on television, called A Letter to Three Wires?”

“No.”

“Well I learned to write English longhand from a photograph of that letter, twenty years ago on Anthea. We had clear reception, from several channels, of that motion picture.”

“You have good clear handwriting.”

Newton smiled. “Of course I have. We did everything extremely well. Nothing was overlooked, and I worked very hard to become an imitation human being.” He turned his face up toward Bryce’s, as if he could actually see him. “And of course I succeeded.”

Bryce, saying nothing, returned to his seat. He felt that he should show sympathy, or something, but he felt nothing at all. So he remained quiet.

“Where will you and Betty Jo go? With the money?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to the Pacific, to Tahiti. We’ll probably take an air-conditioner with us.”

Newton was beginning to smile the moon smile, the unearthly Anthean smile, again. “And stay drunk, Nathan?”

Bryce was uneasy. “We might try that,” he said. He did not really know what he was going to do with a million dollars. People were supposed to ask themselves what they would do if someone gave them a million dollars, but he never had asked himself that. Maybe they would, indeed, go to Tahiti and stay drunk in a hut, if there were any huts in Tahiti anymore. If not, they could stay at the Tahiti Hilton.

“Well, I wish you Godspeed,” Newton said. And then, “I’m glad I could do something with the money. I have an awful lot of money.”

Bryce stood up to leave, feeling tired and a little drunk. “And there’s no chance…?”

Newton smiled up at him even more strangely than before; the mouth beneath the glasses and hat was like an awkwardly curved line in a child’s drawing of a smile. “Of course, Nathan,” he said. “Of course there’s a chance.”

“Well,” Bryce said. “I thank you for the money.”

Because of the dark glasses Bryce could not see Newton’s eyes, but it seemed to him as though Newton were looking everywhere. “Easy come, easy go, Nathan,” he said. “Easy come, easy go.” Newton began to tremble. His angular body began to lean forward and the felt hat fell silently on the table, showing his chalk-white hair. Then his Anthean head fell on to his spindly Anthean arms and Bryce saw that he was crying.

For a moment Bryce stood quiet, staring at him. Then he walked around the table and, kneeling, laid his arm across Newton’s back, and held him gently, feeling the light body trembling in his hands like the body of a delicate, fluttering, anguished bird.

The bartender had come over and when Bryce looked up the bartender said, “I’m afraid that the fellow needs help.”

“Yes,” Bryce said. “Yes, I guess he does.”