"Wilhelm, Kate - Mrs Bagley Goes to Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

* * * *
"Mom, I told you! We have to pay today! It's for our graduation party, over at the shore!"
Joey held out his hand and Mrs. Bagley walked around it, carrying dishes to the sink.
"I got seven calls today," Mr. Bagley said, dipping his doughnut into his coffee. "I can't make them all by bus."
Mrs. Bagley went to the bedroom to get her purse. Joey followed, his hand still out, jiggling the car keys with his other hand. She caught the keys and dropped them into her pocket. "Ask your father," she said.
"He ain't got no money."
"I get paid today. I have to go to the bank after work."
"Hey! How'm I supposed to get to school?"
"Walk."
Mr. Bagley read the paper and dunked his doughnut. Joey turned toward him, shrugged, and left the house, slamming the door. "I ain't going to school today!"
"Why'd you take his keys?"
"They aren't his. They are mine. I'm paying for the car, insurance, everything, and I'm the one who rides the bus. Not today."
"What are you mad about anyway? Because I got all them calls to make? That make you mad?"
Mrs. Bagley returned to the bedroom and took off her coat; she began to throw things out of her drawer onto the bed. She would need all her underwear, all her knee hose, no curlers. They didn't curl their hair on Mars.
"What in hell are you doing?"
"I'm going to Mars," Mrs. Bagley said. "I told you."
"You're crazy. Put that stuff away. You'll be late."
"Goodbye," Mrs. Bagley said. "I don't know how long I'll be away.
"You hear me? Put that stuff away."
Mrs. Bagley sat on the edge of the bed and presently Mr. Bagley said, "I've got to go. You sick or something? Call in sick. You got the time coming to you."
She didn't answer and after a moment he left for work. Mrs. Bagley finished packing, turned off the lights and the stove and left also.
At the plant she parked in the visitor section when she picked up her check. She went to the bank and withdrew a hundred dollars and cashed her check. Altogether she now had a little over two hundred dollars, enough, she hoped, to permit her to buy a little souvenir or two. In order not to be a burden on the flight people, she went to a supermarket and bought a few provisions for the trip -- canned apple juice, some instant coffee, cheese, crackers and several candy bars. Satisfied, she drove toward Lincoln Tunnel and New Jersey.
* * * *
It was almost dark when she pulled off the interstate and ate her crackers and cheese. She should have asked directions, she realized, but she had been so certain that she knew the way. As if she had glimpsed a map, or had gone before, she recognized the route as she reached various turns, but it would be comforting to have a map. She drank the apple juice, and with the food and drink, her certainty returned and she started to drive again.
Somewhere a ship was standing in moonlight, waiting. Somewhere the flight attendants were glancing at their watches, hoping she would not delay them too much.
She turned at Kittatinny Mountain and there on the side of the road was her guide, waving to her. When he opened the car door, the overhead light came on and he hesitated, glanced in the back seat, then back down the road she had just driven.
"It's all right," she said. "I've been expecting you." Not really him, she told herself, someone. "You do know the way, don't you?"
He got in, but kept very close to the door, pressing against it with his back in such a way that he could look at her, out the back window, back to her. "Way to where?"
"To the ship."
She hoped he wouldn't sense her disappointment in his appearance. But of course, they would look like everyone else, or their lives would be endangered.
"I've always known I'd get to go," Mrs. Bagley said. "I used to read about space and Mars, all that, when I was a girl, and once I stood out on the sidewalk and crossed my arms and tried wishing myself up, but nothing happened." The road was narrow and unmarked and she was driving slowly, braking for curves, pulling over as far as she could whenever a car approached. There was little traffic. Woods grew close to the road on both sides here, and the farm house lights were far apart. The road started to climb and she slowed more.
"You turn right up there," the guide said. He had stopped looking out the rear window, was watching her. This road was even narrower and no light at all showed.
"I suppose you were excited when you found that you were coming to Earth," Mrs. Bagley said. "It is a surprise, in a way, but not really. It's like finding something you lost a long time ago, but always felt would turn up again."
"You turn again soon," he said. "Left." He leaned forward, watching the road. "Now."
This was hardly more than a trail. Mrs. Bagley concentrated on driving. There were water-filled holes that reflected her headlights and she couldn't guess bow deep they were.
"Stop," her guide said, and his voice seemed changed, deeper and thicker.
Mrs. Bagley stopped and turned off the engine, switched off the lights. She could see nothing beyond the car, could only see the outline of the man against the darkness outside, could see something gleam briefly.
"Now don't you start yelling or nothing ... "
But she wasn't listening to him. "Look!" she cried. "Look at it! It's beautiful. Come on! They're waiting." She pushed the door open and jumped out, ran toward the ship.
* * * *
On Mars they allowed her to rest several minutes before they began tests to see what occupation would be suitable for her. She soon found herself installed before a machine that heat-seamed plastic to make covers for tanks, or buses, or something. The plastic was red; she operated the machine with her elbow, and the operator across from her was not Dolores.
She listened to the tongue-twisting monologue of not/Dolores until the coffee break, and then she told her supervisor she was returning to Earth.
They were sorry to lose her, they said sibilantly, but they understood. It must be very difficult to be the only Earthman on Mars. They never did understand she was a female: all Earth persons looked alike to them. "You are born," they said. "You ingest food, defecate, mature, reproduce, grow old and die. All of you alike."
Mrs. Bagley shook her head. "Your sources are wrong," she said. "Women, females, ladies, one half the population or even a little bit more don't defecate. You won't find that in your sources. They go to the little girls' room, or the powder room, or ladies' room. They freshen up, or wash their hands, or fix their make-up, but they never shit."
The Martians, hissing with bewilderment over this incomprehensible difference between the male and female organisms of the Earth species, returned to their sources. They saw Mrs. Bagley off regretfully, she thought, but did not attempt to detain her. They even returned the price of her ticket since she had not stayed the seventy-two-hour trial period.
The ship landed on the spot where she had embarked, and she stood for a short time looking at the discarded body of her former guide. It was clever of them to assume a human form and then abandon it this way, making it look like a dreadful accident, or even a homicide. No one would bother to probe deeply into the death of a bum found with a knife in his heart.
She backed out the lane carefully, made her turn and retraced her drive back home. Mr. Bagley was reading the Sunday papers when she entered the apartment.
"How's your sister?" he asked, not looking up. "I haven't seen her."
"You ain't kidding me. You think I don't know where you been? Where else would you go?" He folded the paper and started on the comics.
"Did you call her?"