ess flow. Teece sat on the edge of his hardwood chair. "If one of 'em so much as laughs, by Christ, I'll kill 'em." The men waited. The river passed quietly in the dreamful noon. "Looks like you goin' to have to hoe your own turnips, Sam," Grandpa chuckled. "I'm not bad at shootin' white folks neither." Teece didn't look at Grandpa. Grandpa turned his head away and shut up his mouth. "Hold on there!" Samuel Teece leaped off the porch. He reached up and seized the reins of a horse ridden by a tall Negro man. "You, Belter, come down off there!" "Yes, sir." Belter slid down. Teece looked him over. "Now, just what you think you're doin'?" "Well, Mr. Teece . . ." "I reckon you think you're goin', just like that song--what's the words? 'Way up in the middle of the air'; ain't _that_ it?" "Yes, sir." The Negro waited. "You recollect you owe me fifty dollars, Belter?" "Yes, sir." "You tryin' to sneak out? By God, I'll horsewhip you!" "All the excitement, and it slipped my mind, sir." "It slipped his mind." Teece gave a vicious wink at his men on the hardware porch. "God damn, mister, you know what you're goin' to do?" "No, sir." "You're stayin' here to work out that fifty bucks, or my name ain't Samuel W. Teece." He turned again to smile confidently at the men in the shade. Belter looked at the river going along the street, that dark river flowing and flowing between the shops, the dark river on wheels and horses and in dusty shoes, the dark river from which he had been snatched on his journey. He began to shiver. "Let me go, Mr. Teece. I'll send your money from up there, I promise!" "Listen, Belter." Teece grasped the man's suspenders like two harp strings, playing them now and again, contemptuously, snorting at the sky, pointing one bony finger straight at God. "Belter, you know anything about what's up there?" "What they tells me." "What they tells him! Christ! Hear that? What they tells him!" He swung the man's weight by his suspenders, idly, ever so casual, flicking a finger in the black face. "Belter, you fly up and up like a July Fourth rocket, and bang! There you are, cinders, spread all over space. Them crackpot scientists, they don't know nothin', they kill you all off!" "I don't care." "Glad to hear that. Because you know what's up on that planet Mars? There's monsters with big raw eyes like mushrooms! You seen them pictures on those future magazines you buy at the drugstore for a dime, ain't you? Well! Them monsters jump up and suck marrow from your bones!" "I don't care, don't care at all, don't care." Belter watched the parade slide by, leaving him. Sweat lay on his dark brow. He seemed about to collapse. "And it's cold up there; no air, you fall down, jerk like a fish, gaspin', dyin', stranglin', stranglin' and dyin'. You _like_ that?" "Lots of things I don't like, sir. Please, sir, let me go. I'm late." "I'll let you go when I'm _ready_ to let you go. We'll just talk here polite until I say you can leave, and you know it damn well. You want to travel, do you? Well, Mister Way up in the Middle of the Air, you get the hell home and work out that fifty bucks you owe me! Take you two months to do that!" "But if I work it out, I'll miss the rocket, sir!" "Ain't that a shame now?" Teece tried to look sad. "I give you my horse, sir." "Horse ain't legal tender. You don't move until I get my money." Teece laughed inside. He felt very warm and good. A small crowd of dark people had gathered to hear all this. Now as Belter stood, head down, trembling, an old man stepped forward. "Mister?" Teece flashed him a quick look. "Well?" "How much this man owe you, mister?" "None of your damn business!" The old man looked at Belter. "How much, son?" "Fifty dollars." The old man put out his black hands at the people around him, "There's twenty-five of you. Each give two dollars; quick now, this no time for argument." "Here, now!" cried Teece, stiffening up, tall, tall. The money appeared. The old man fingered it into his hat and gave the hat to Belter. "Son," he said, "you ain't missin' no rocket." Belter smiled into the hat. "No, sir, I guess I ain't!" Teece shouted: "You give that money back to them!" Belter bowed respectfully, handing the money over, and when Teece would not touch it he set it down in the dust at Teece's feet. "There's your money, sir," he said. "Thank you kindly." Smiling, he gained the saddle of his horse and whipped his horse along, thanking the old man, who rode with him now until they were out of sight and hearing. "Son of a bitch," whispered Teece, staring blind at the sun. "Son of a bitch." "Pick up the money, Samuel," said someone from the porch. It was happening all along the way. Little white boys, barefoot, dashed up with the news. "Them that has helps them that hasn't! And that way they _all_ get free! Seen a rich man give a poor man two hundred bucks to pay off some'un! Seen some'un else give some'un else ten bucks, five bucks, sixteen, lots of that, all over, everybody!" The white men sat with sour water in their mouths. Their eyes were almost puffed shut, as if they had been struck in their faces by wind and sand and heat. The rage was in Samuel Teece. He climbed up on the porch and glared at the passing swarms. He waved his gun. And after a while when he had to do something, he began to shout at anyone, any Negro who looked up at him. "Bang! There's another rocket out in space!" he shouted so all could hear. "Bang! By God!" The dark heads didn't flicker or pretend to hear, but their white eyes slid swiftly over and back. "Crash! All them rockets fallin'! Screamin', dyin'! Bang! God Almighty, I'm glad _I'm_ right here on old terra firma. As they says in that old joke, the more firma, the less terra! Ha, ha!" Horses clopped along, shuffling up dust. Wagons bumbled on ruined springs. "Bang!" His voice was lonely in the heat, trying to terrify the dust and the blazing sun sky. "Wham! Niggers all over space! Jerked outa rockets like so many minnows hit by a meteor, by God! Space fulla meteors. You know that? Sure! Thick as buckshot; powie! Shoot down them tin-can rockets like so many ducks, so many clay pipes! Ole sardine cans full of black cod! Bangin' like a stringa ladyfingers, bang, bang, bang! Ten thousand dead here, ten thousand there. Floatin' in space, around and around earth, ever and ever, cold and way out, Lord! You hear that, _you_ there!" Silence. The river was broad and continuous. Having entered all cotton shacks during the hour, having flooded all the valuables out, it was now carrying the clocks and the washboards, the silk bolts and curtain rods on down to some distant black sea. High tide passed. It was two o'clock. Low tide came. Soon the river was dried up, the town silent, the dust settling in a film on the stores, the seated men, the tall hot trees. Silence. The men on the porch listened. Hearing nothing, they extended their thoughts and their imaginations out and into the surrounding meadows. In the early morning the land had been filled with its usual concoctions of sound. Here and there, with stubborn persistence to custom, there had been voices singing, the honey laughter under the mimosa branches, the pickaninnies rushing in clear water laughter at the creek, movements and bendings in the fields, jokes and shouts of amusement from the shingle shacks covered with fresh green vine. Now it was as if a great wind had washed the land clean of sounds. There was nothing. Skeleton doors hung open on leather hinges. Rubber-tire swings hung in the silent air, uninhibited. The washing rocks at the river were empty, and the watermelon patches, if any, were left alone to heat their hidden liquors in the sun. Spiders started building new webs in abandoned huts; dust started to sift in from unpatched roofs in golden spicules. Here and there a fire, forgotten in the last rush, lingered and in a sudden access of strength fed upon the dry bones of some littered shack. The sound of a gentle feeding burn went up through the silenced air. The men sat on the hardware porch, not blinking or swallowing. "I can't figure why they left _now_. With things lookin' up. I mean, every day they got more rights. What they _want_, anyway? Here's the poll tax gone, and more and more states passin' anti-lynchin' bills, and all kinds of equal rights. What _more_ they want? They make almost as good money as a white man, but there they go." Far down the empty street a bicycle came. "I'll be goddamned. Teece, here comes your Silly now." The bicycle pulled up before the porch, a seventeen-year-old colored boy on it, all arms and feet and long legs and round watermelon head. He looked up at Samuel Teece and smiled. "So you got a guilty conscience and came back," said Teece. "No, sir, I just brought the bicycle." "What's wrong, couldn't get it on the rocket?" "That wasn't it, sir." "Don't tell me what it was! Get off, you're not goin' to steal my property!" He gave the boy a push. The bicycle fell. "Get inside and start cleaning the brass." "Beg pardon?" The boy's eyes widened. "You heard what I said. There's guns need unpacking there, and a crate of nails just come from Natchez--" "Mr. Teece." "And a box of hammers need fixin'--" "Mr. Teece, sir?" "You _still_ standin' there!" Teece glared. "Mr. Teece, you don't mind I take the day off," he said apologetically. "And tomorrow and day after tomorrow and the day after the day after that," said Teece. "I'm afraid so, sir." "You _should_ be afraid, boy. Come here." He marched the boy across the porch and drew a paper out of a desk. "Remember this?" "Sir?" "It's your workin' paper. You signed it, there's your X right there, ain't it? Answer me." "I didn't sign that, Mr. Teece." The boy trembled. "Anyone can make an X." "Listen to this, Silly. Contract: 'I will work for Mr. Samuel Teece two years, starting July 15, 2001, and if intending to leave will give four weeks' notice and continue working until my position is filled.' There." Teece slapped the paper, his eyes glittering. "You cause trouble, we'll take it to court." "I can't do that," wailed the boy, tears starting to roll down his face, "If I don't go today, I don't go." "I know just how you feel, Silly; yes, sir, I sympathize with you, boy. But we'll treat you good and give you good food, boy. Now you just get inside and start working and forget all about that nonsense, eh, Silly? Sure." Teece grinned and patted the boy's shoulder. The boy turned and looked at the old men sitting on the porch. He could hardly see now for his tears. "Maybe--maybe one of these gentlemen here . . ." The men looked up in the hot, uneasy shadows, looking first at the boy and then at Teece. "You meanin' to say you think a _white man_ should take your place, boy?" asked Teece coldly. Grandpa Quartermain took his red hands off his knees. He looked out at the horizon thoughtfully and said, "Teece, what about me?" "What?" "I'll take Silly's job." The porch was silent. Teece balanced himself in the air. "Grandpa," he said warningly. "Let the boy go. I'll clean the brass." "Would you, would you, really?" Silly ran over to Grandpa, laughing, tears on his cheeks, unbelieving. "Sure." "Grandpa," said Teece, "keep your damn trap outa this." "Give the kid a break, Teece." Teece walked over and seized the boy's arm. "He's mine. I'm lockin' him in the back room until tonight." "Don't, Mr. Teece!" The boy began to sob now. His crying filled the air of the porch. His eyes were tight. Far down the street an old tin Ford was choking along, approaching, a last load of colored people in it. "Here comes my family, Mr. Teece, oh please, please, oh God, please!" "Teece," said one of the other men on the porch, getting up, "let him go." Another man rose also. "That goes for me too." "And me," said another. "What's the use?" The men all talked now. "Cut it out, Teece." "Let him go." Teece felt for his gun in his pocket. He saw the men's faces. He took his hand away and left the gun in his pocket and said, "So that's how it is?" "That's how it is," someone said. Teece let the boy go. "All right. Get out." He jerked his hand back in the store. "But I hope you don't think you're gonna leave any trash behind to clutter my store." "No, sir!" "You clean everything outa your shed in back; burn it." Silly shook his head. "I'll take it with." "They won't let you put it on that damn rocket." "I'll take it with," insisted the boy softly. He rushed back through the hardware store. There were sounds of sweeping and cleaning out, and a moment later he appeared, his hands full of tops and marbles and old dusty kites and junk collected through the years. Just then the old tin Ford drove up and Silly climbed in and the door slammed. Teece stood on the porch with a bitter smile. "What you goin' to do _up there?_" "Startin' new," said Silly. "Gonna have my _own_ hardware." "God damn it, you been learnin' my trade so you could run off and use it!" "No, sir, I never thought one day _this'd_ happen, sir, but it did. I can't help it if I learned, Mr. Teece." "I suppose you got names for your rockets?" They looked at their one clock on the dashboard of the car. "Yes, sir." "Like Elijah and the Chariot, The Big Wheel and The Little Wheel, Faith, Hope, and Charity, eh?" "We got names for the ships, Mr. Teece." "God the Son and the Holy Ghost, I wouldn't wonder? Say, boy, you got one named the First Baptist Church?" "We got to leave now, Mr. Teece." Teece laughed. "You got one named Swing Low, and another named Sweet Chariot?" The car started up. "Good-by, Mr. Teece." "You got one named Roll Dem Bones?" "Good-by, mister!" "And another called Over Jordan! Ha! Well, tote that rocket, boy, lift that rocket, boy, go on, get blown up, see if I care!" The car churned off into the dust. The boy rose and cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted one last time at Teece: "Mr. Teece, Mr. Teece, what _you_ goin' to do nights from now on? What you goin' to _do_ nights, Mr. Teece?" Silence. The car faded down the road. It was gone. "What in hell did he mean?" mused Teece. "What am I goin' to do nights?" He watched the dust settle, and it suddenly came to him. He remembered nights when men drove to his house, their knees sticking up sharp and their shotguns sticking up sharper, like a carful of cranes under the night trees of summer, their eyes mean. Honking the horn and him slamming his door, a gun in his hand, laughing to himself, his heart racing like a ten-year-old's, driving off down the summer-night road, a ring of hemp rope coiled on the car floor, fresh shell boxes making every man's coat look bunchy. How many nights over the years, how many nights of the wind rushing in the car, flopping their hair over their mean eyes, roaring, as they picked a tree, a good strong tree, and rapped on a shanty door! "So _that's_ what the son of a bitch meant?" Teece leaped out into the sunlight. "Come back, you bastard! What am I goin' to do nights? Why, that lousy, insolent son of a . . ." It was a good question. He sickened and was empty. Yes. What _will_ we do nights? he thought. Now _they're_ gone, what? He was absolutely empty and numb. He pulled the pistol from his pocket, checked its load. "What you goin' to do, Sam?" someone asked. "Kill that son of a bitch." Grandpa said, "Don't get yourself heated." But Samuel Teece was gone around behind the store. A moment later he drove out the drive in his open-top car. "Anyone comin' with me?" "I'd like a drive," said Grandpa, and got up. "Anyone else?" Nobody replied. Grandpa got in and slammed the door. Samuel Teece gutted the car out in a great whorl of dust. They didn't speak as they rushed down the road under the bright sky. The heat from the dry meadows was shimmering. They stopped at a crossroad. "Which way'd they go, Grandpa?" Grandpa squinted. "Straight on ahead, I figure." They went on. Under the summer trees their car made a lonely sound. The road was empty, and as they drove along they began to notice something. Teece slowed the car and bent out, his yellow eyes fierce. "God damn it, Grandpa, you see what them bastards did?" "What?" asked Grandpa, and looked. Where they had been carefully set down and left, in neat bundles every few feet along the empty country road, were old roller skates, a bandanna full of knicknacks, some old shoes, a cartwheel, stacks of pants and coats and ancient hats, bits of oriental crystal that had once tinkled in the wind, tin cans of pink geraniums, dishes of waxed fruit, cartons of Confederate money, washtubs, scrubboards, wash lines, soap, somebody's tricycle, someone else's hedge shears, a toy wagon, a jack-in-the-box, a stained-glass window from the Negro Baptist Church, a whole set of brake rims, inner tubes, mattresses, couches, rocking chairs, jars of cold cream, hand mirrors. None of it flung down, no, but deposited gently and with feeling, with decorum, upon the dusty edges of the road, as if a whole city had walked here with hands full, at which time a great bronze trumpet had sounded, the articles had been relinquished to the quiet dust, and one and all, the inhabitants of the earth had fled straight up into the blue heavens. "Wouldn't burn them, they said," cried Teece angrily. "No, wouldn't burn them like I said, but had to take them along and leave them where they could see them for the last time, on the road, all together and whole. Them niggers think they're smart." He veered the car wildly, mile after mile, down the road, tumbling, smashing, breaking, scattering bundles of paper, jewel boxes, mirrors, chairs. "There, by damn, and _there!_" The front tire gave a whistling cry. The car spilled crazily off the road into a ditch, flinging Teece against the glass. "Son of a bitch!" He dusted himself off and stood out of the car, almost crying with rage. He looked at the silent, empty road. "We'll never catch them now, never, never." As far as he could see there was nothing but bundles and stacks and more bundles neatly placed like little abandoned shrines in the late day, in the warm-blowing wind. Teece and Grandpa came walking tiredly back to the hardware store an hour later. The men were still sitting there, listening, and watching the sky. Just as Teece sat down and eased his tight shoes off someone cried, "Look!" "I'll be _damned_ if I will," said Teece. But the others looked. And they saw the golden bobbins rising in the sky, far away. Leaving flame behind, they vanished. In the cotton fields the wind blew idly among the snow dusters. In still farther meadows the watermelons lay, unfingerprinted, striped like tortoise cats lying in the sun. The men on the porch sat down, looked at each other, looked at the yellow rope piled neat on the store shelves, glanced at the gun shells glinting shiny brass in their cartons, saw the silver pistols and long black metal shotguns hung high and quiet in the shadows. Somebody put a straw in his mouth, Someone else drew a figure in the dust. Finally Samuel Teece held his empty shoe up in triumph, turned it over, stared at it, and said, "Did you notice? Right up to the very last, by God, he said 'Mister'!" 2004-05: THE NAMING OF NAMES They came to the strange blue lands and put their names upon the lands. Here was Hinkston Creek and Lustig Corners and Black River and Driscoll Forest and Peregrine Mountain and Wilder Town, all the names of people and the things that the people did. Here was the place where Martians killed the first Earth Men, and it was Red Town and had to do with blood. And here where the second expedition was destroyed, and it was named Second Try, and each of the other places where the rocket men had set down their fiery caldrons to burn the land, the names were left like cinders, and of course there was a Spender Hill and a Nathaniel York Town. . . . The old Martian names were names of water and air and hills. They were the names of snows that emptied south in stone canals to fill the empty seas. And the names of sealed and buried sorcerers and towers and obeisks. And the rockets struck at the names like hammers, breaking away the marble into shale, shattering the crockery milestones that named the old towns, in the rubble of which great pylons were plunged with new names: IRON TOWN, STEEL TOWN, ALUMINUM CITY, ELECTRIC VILLAGE, CORN TOWN, GRAIN VILLA, DETROIT II, all the mechanical names and the metal names from Earth. And after the towns were built and named, the graveyards were built and named, too: Green Hill, Moss Town, Boot Hill, Bide a Wee; and the first dead went into their graves. But after everything was pinned down and neat and in its place, when everything was safe and certain, when the towns were well enough fixed and the loneliness was at a minimum, then the sophisticates came in from Earth. They came on parties and vacations, on little shopping trips for trinkets and photographs and the "atmosphere"; they came to study and apply sociological laws; they came with stars and badges and rules and regulations, bringing some of the red tape that had rawled across Earth like an alien weed, and letting it grow on Mars wherever it could take root. They began to plan people's lives and libraries; they began to instruct and push about the very people who had come to Mars to get away from being instructed and ruled and pushed about. And it was inevitable that some of these people pushed back. . . . April 2005: USHER II "'During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback. through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. . . .'" Mr. William Stendahl paused in his quotation. There, upon a low black hill, stood the House, its cornerstone bearing the inscription 2005 A.D. Mr. Bigelow, the architect, said, "It's completed. Here's the key, Mr. Stendahl." The two men stood together silently in the quiet autumn afternoon. Blueprints rustled on the raven grass at their feet. "The House of Usher," said Mr. Stendahl with pleasure. "Planned, built, bought, paid for. Wouldn't Mr. Poe be _delighted?_" Mr. Bigelow squinted. "Is it everything you wanted, sir?" "Yes!" "Is the color right? Is it _desolate_ and _terrible?_" "_Very_ desolate, _very_ terrible!" "The walls are--_bleak?_" "Amazingly so!" "The tarn, is it 'black and lurid' enough?" "Most incredibly black and lurid." "And the sedge--we've dyed it, you know--is it the proper gray and ebon?" "Hideous!" Mr. Bigelow consulted his architectural plans. From these he quoted in part: "Does the whole structure cause an 'iciness, a sickening of the heart, a dreariness of thought'? The House, the lake, the land, Mr. Stendahl?" "Mr. Bigelow, it's worth every penny! My God, it's beautiful!" "Thank you. I had to work in total ignorance. Thank the Lord you had your own private rockets or we'd never have been allowed to bring most of the equipment through. You notice, it's always twilight here, this land, always October, barren, sterile, dead. It took a bit of doing. We killed everything. Ten thousand tons of DDT. Not a snake, frog, or Martian fly left! Twilight always, Mr. Stendahl; I'm proud of that. There are machines, hidden, which blot out the sun. It's always properly 'dreary.'" Stendahl drank it in, the dreariness, the oppression, the fetid vapors, the whole "atmosphere," so delicately contrived and fitted. And that House! That crumbling horror, that evil lake, the fungi, the extensive decay! Plastic or otherwise, who could guess? He looked at the autumn sky. Somewhere above, beyond, far off, was the sun. Somewhere it was the month of April on the planet Mars, a yellow month with a blue sky. Somewhere above, the rockets burned down to civilize a beautifully dead planet. The sound of their screaming passage was muffled by this dim, soundproofed world, this ancient autumn world. "Now that my job's done," said Mr. Bigelow uneasily, "I feel free to ask what you're going to do with all this." "With Usher? Haven't you guessed?" "No." "Does the name Usher mean nothing to you?" "Nothing." "Well, what about _this_ name: Edgar Allan Poe?" Mr. Bigelow shook his head. "Of course." Stendahl snorted delicately, a combination of dismay and contempt. "How could I expect you to know blessed Mr. Poe? He died a long while ago, before Lincoln. All of his books were burned in the Great Fire. That's thirty years ago--1975." "Ah," said Mr. Bigelow wisely. "One of _those!_" "Yes, one of those, Bigelow. He and Lovecraft and Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce and all the tales of terror and fantasy and horror and, for that matter, tales of the future were burned. Heartlessly. They passed a law. Oh, it started very small. In 1950 and '60 it was a grain of sand. They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religions prejudice, union pressures; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves." "I see." "Afraid of the word 'politics' (which eventually became a synonym for Communism among the more reactionary elements, so I hear, and it was worth your life to use the word!), and with a screw tightened here, a bolt fastened there, a push, a pull, a yank, art and literature were soon like a great twine of taffy strung about, being twisted in braids and tied in knots and thrown in all directions, until there was no more resiliency and no more savor to it. Then the film cameras chopped short and the theaters turned dark. and the print presses trickled down from a great Niagara of reading matter to a mere innocuous dripping of 'pure' material. Oh, the word 'escape' was radical, too, I tell you!" "Was it?" "It was! Every man, they said, must face reality. Must face the Here and Now! Everything that was _not_ so must go. All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be shot in mid-air. So they lined them up against a library wall one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 1975; they lined them up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing!--and shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after (for of course it was a fact that _nobody_ lived happily ever after!), and Once Upon A Time became No More! And they spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma and shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball! The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curiouser,' and they gave the Looking Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster away!" He clenched his fists. Lord, how immediate it was! His face was red and he was gasping for breath. As for Mr. Bigelow, he was astounded at this long explosion. He blinked and at last said, "Sorry. Don't know what you're talking about. Just names to me. From what I hear, the Burning was a good thing." "Get out!" screamed Stendahl. "You've done your job, now let me alone, you idiot!" Mr. Bigelow summoned his carpenters and went away. Mr. Stendahl stood alone before his House. "Listen here," he said to the unseen rockets. "I came to Mars to get away from you Clean-Minded people, but you're flocking in thicker every day, like flies to offal. So I'm going to show you. I'm going to teach you a fine lesson for what you did to Mr. Poe on Earth. As of this day, beware. The House of Usher is open for business!" He pushed a fist at the sky. The rocket landed. A man stepped out jauntily. He glanced at the House, and his gray eyes were displeased and vexed. He strode across the moat to confront the small man there. "Your name Stendahl?" "Yes." "I'm Garrett, Investigator of Moral Climates." "So you finally got to Mars, you Moral Climate people? I wondered when you'd appear." "We arrived last week. We'll soon have things as neat and tidy as Earth." The man waved an identification card irritably toward the House. "Suppose you tell me about that place, Stendahl?" "It's a haunted castle, if you like." "I don't like. Stendahl, I _don't_ like. The sound of that word 'haunted.'" "Simple enough. In this year of our Lord 2005 I have built a mechanical sanctuary. In it copper bats fly on electronic beams, brass rats scuttle in plastic cellars, robot skeletons dance; robot vampires, harlequins, wolves, and white phantoms, compounded of chemical and ingenuity, live here." "That's what I was afraid of," said Garrett, smiling quietly. "I'm afraid we're going to have to tear your place down." "I knew you'd come out as soon as you discovered what went on." "I'd have come sooner, but we at Moral Climates wanted to be sure of your intentions before we moved in. We can have the Dismantlers and Burning Crew here by supper. By midnight your place will be razed to the cellar. Mr. Stendahl, I consider you somewhat of a fool, sir. Spending hard-earned money on a folly. Why, it must have cost you three million dollars--" "Four million! But, Mr. Garrett, I inherited twenty-five million when very young. I can afford to throw it about. Seems a dreadful shame, though, to have the House finished only an hour and have you race out with your Dismantlers. Couldn't you possibly let me play with my Toy for just, well, twenty-four hours?" "You know the law. Strict to the letter. No books, no houses, nothing to be produced which in any way suggests ghosts, vampires, fairies, or any creature of the imagination." "You'll be burning Babbitts next!" "You've caused us a lot of trouble, Mr. Stendahl. It's in the record. Twenty years ago. On Earth. You and your library." "Yes, me and my library. And a few others like me. Oh, Poe's been forgotten for many years now, and Oz and the other creatures. But I had my little cache. We had our libraries, a few private citizens, until you sent your men around with torches and incinerators and tore my fifty thousand books up and burned them. Just as you put a stake through the heart of Halloween and told your film producers that if they made anything at all they would have to make and remake Earnest Hemingway. My God, how many times have I seen _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ done! Thirty different versions. All realistic. Oh, realism! Oh, here, oh, now, oh hell!" "It doesn't pay to be bitter!" "Mr. Garrett, you must turn in a full report, mustn't you?" "Yes." "Then, for curiosity's sake, you'd better come in and look around. It'll take only a minute." "All right. Lead the way. And no tricks. I've a gun with me." The door to the House of Usher creaked wide. A moist wind issued forth. There was an immense sighing and moaning, like a subterranean bellows breathing in the lost catacombs. A rat pranced across the floor stones. Garrett, crying out, gave it a kick. It fell over, the rat did, and from its nylon fur streamed an incredible horde of metal fleas. "Amazing!" Garrett bent to see. An old witch sat in a niche, quivering her wax hands over some orange-and-blue tarot cards. She jerked her head and hissed through her toothless mouth at Garrett, tapping her greasy cards. "Death!" she cried. "Now _that's_ the sort of thing I mean," said Garrett. "Deplorable!" "I'll let you burn her personally." "Will you, really?" Garrett was pleased. Then he frowned. "I must say you're taking this all so well." "It was enough just to be able to create this place. To be able to say I did it. To say I nurtured a medieval atmosphere in a modern, incredulous world." "I've a somewhat reluctant admiration for your genius myself, sir." Garrett watched a mist drift by, whispering and whispering, shaped like a beautiful and nebulous woman. Down a moist corridor a machine whirled. Like the stuff from a cotton-candy centrifuge, mists sprang up and floated, murmuring, in the silent halls. An ape appeared out of nowhere. "Hold on!" cried Garrett. "Don't be afraid," Stendahl tapped the animal's black chest. "A robot. Copper skeleton and all, like the witch. See?" He stroked the fur, and under it metal tubing came to light. "Yes." Garrett put out a timid hand to pet the thing. "But why, Mr. Stendahl, why all _this?_ What obsessed you?" "Bureaucracy, Mr. Garrett. But I haven't time to explain. The government will discover soon enough." He nodded to the ape. "All right. _Now_." The ape killed Mr. Garrett. "Are we almost ready, Pikes?" Pikes looked up from the table. "Yes, sir." "You've done a splendid job." "Well, I'm paid for it, Mr. Stendahl," said Pikes softly as he lifted the plastic eyelid of the robot and inserted the glass eyeball to fasten the rubberoid muscles neatly. "There." "The spitting image of Mr. Garrett." "What do we do with him, sir?" Pikes nodded at the slab where the real Mr. Garrett lay dead. "Better burn him, Pikes. We wouldn't want two Mr. Gasretts, would we?" Pikes wheeled Mr. Garrett to the brick incinerator. "Goodby." He pushed Mr. Garrett in and slammed the door. Stendahl confronted the robot Garrett. "You have your orders, Garrett?" "Yes, sir." The robot sat up. "I'm to return to Moral Climates. I'll file a complementary report. Delay action for at least forty-eight hours. Say I'm investigating more fully." "Right, Garrett. Good-by." The robot hurried out to Garrett's rocket, got in, and flew away. Stendahl turned. "Now, Pikes, we send the remainder of the invitations for tonight. I think we'll have a jolly time, don't you?" "Considering we waited twenty years, quite jolly!" They winked at each other. Seven o'clock. Stendahl studied his watch. Almost time. He twirled the sherry glass in his hand. He sat quietly. Above him, among the oaken beams, the bats, their delicate copper bodies hidden under rubber flesh, blinked at him and shrieked. He raised his glass to them. "To our success." Then he leaned back, closed his eyes, and considered the entire affair. How he would savor this in his old age. This paying back of the antiseptic government for its literary terrors and conflagrations. Oh, how the anger and hatred had grown in him through the years. Oh, how the plan had taken a slow shape in his numbed mind, until that day three years ago when he had met Pikes. Ah yes, Pikes. Pikes with the bitterness in him as deep as a black, charred well of green acid. Who was Pikes? Only the greatest of them all! Pikes, the man of ten thousand faces, a fury, a smoke, a blue fog, a white rain, a bat, a gargoyle, a monster, that was Pikes! Better than Lon Chaney, the father? Stendabi ruminated. Night after night he had watched Chaney in the old, old films. Yes, better than Chaney. Better than that other ancient mummer? What was his name? Karloff? Far better! Lugosi? The comparison was odious! No, there was only one Pikes, and he was a man stripped of his fantasies now, no place on Earth to go, no one to show off to. Forbidden even to perform for himself before a mirror! Poor impossible, defeated Pikes! How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, dutching them in coils and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with the senseless anger. So what more natural than they would one day talk over endless coffeepots into innumerable midnights, and out of all the talk and the bitter brewings would come-- the House of Usher. A great church bell rang. The guests were arriving. Smiling he went to greet them. Full grown without memory, the robots waited. In green silks the color of forest pools, in silks the color of frog and fern, they waited. In yellow hair the color of the sun and sand, the robots waited. Oiled, with tube bones cu