AUGUST 1999
Whoever was knocking at the door didn’t want to stop.
Mrs Ttt threw the door open. ‘Well?’
‘You speak English!’ The man standing there was astounded.
‘I speak what I speak,’ she said.
‘It’s wonderful English!’ The man was in uniform. There were three men with him, in a great hurry, all smiling, all dirty.
‘What do you want?’ demanded Mrs Ttt.
‘You are a Martian!’ The man smiled. ‘The word is not familiar to you certainly. It’s an Earth expression.’ He nodded at his men. ‘We are from Earth. I’m Captain Williams. We’ve landed on Mars within the hour. Here we are, the Second Expedition! There was a First Expedition, but we don’t know what happened to it. But here we are, anyway. And you are the first Martian we’ve met!’
‘Martian?’ Her eyebrows went up.
‘What I mean to say is, you live on the fourth planet from the sun. Correct?’
‘Elementary,’ she snapped, eyeing them.
‘And we’ – he pressed his chubby pink hand to his chest – ‘we are from Earth. Right, men?’
‘Right, sir!’ A chorus.
‘This is the planet Tyrr,’ she said, ‘if you want to use the proper name.’
‘Tyrr, Tyrr.’ The captain laughed exhaustedly. ‘What a fine name! But, my good woman, how is it you speak such perfect English?’
‘I’m not speaking, I’m thinking,’ she said. ‘Telepathy! Good day!’ And she slammed the door.
A moment later there was that dreadful man knocking again.
She whipped the door open. ‘What now?’ she wondered.
The man was still there, trying to smile, looking bewildered. He put out his hands. ‘I don’t think you understand—’
‘What?’ she snapped.
The man gazed at her in surprise. ‘We’re from Earth!’
‘I haven’t time,’ she said. ‘I’ve a lot of cooking today and there’s cleaning and sewing and all. You evidently wish to see Mr Ttt; he’s upstairs in his study.’
‘Yes,’ said the Earth Man confusedly, blinking. ‘By all means, let us see Mr Ttt.’
‘He’s busy.’ She slammed the door again.
This time the knock on the door was most impertinently loud.
‘See here!’ cried the man when the door was thrust open again. He jumped in as if to surprise her. ‘This is no way to treat visitors!’
‘All over my clean floor!’ she cried. ‘Mud! Get out! If you come in my house, wash your boots first.’
The man looked in dismay at his muddy boots. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is no time for trivialities. I think,’ he said, ‘we should be celebrating.’ He looked at her for a long time as if looking might make her understand.
‘If you’ve made my crystal buns fall in the oven,’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ll hit you with a piece of wood!’ She peered into a little hot oven. She came back, red, steamy-faced. Her eyes were sharp yellow, her skin was soft brown, she was thin and quick as an insect. Her voice was metallic and sharp. ‘Wait here. I’ll see if I can let you have a moment with Mr Ttt. What was your business?’
The man swore luridly, as if she’d hit his hand with a hammer. ‘Tell him we’re from Earth and it’s never been done before!’
‘What hasn’t?’ She put her brown hand up. ‘Never mind. I’ll be back.’
The sound of her feet fluttered through the stone house.
Outside, the immense blue Martian sky was hot and still as warm deep sea-water. The Martian desert lay broiling like a prehistoric mud-pot, waves of heat rising and shimmering. There was a small rocket-ship reclining upon a hilltop nearby. Large footprints came from the rocket to the door of this stone house.
Now there was a sound of quarrelling voices upstairs. The men within the door stared at one another, shifting on their boots, twiddling their fingers, and holding on to their hip-belts. A mans voice shouted upstairs. The woman’s voice replied. After fifteen minutes the Earth Men began walking in and out of the kitchen door, with nothing to do.
‘Cigarette?’ said one of the men.
Somebody got out a packet and they lit up. They puffed low streams of pale white smoke. They adjusted their uniforms, fixed their collars. The voices upstairs continued to mutter and chant. The leader of the men looked at his watch.
‘Twenty-five minutes,’ he said. ‘I wonder what they’re up to up there.’ He went to a window and looked out.
‘Hot day,’ said one of the men.
‘Yeah,’ said someone else in the slow warm time of early afternoon. The voices had faded to a murmur and were now silent. There was not a sound in the house. All the men could hear was their own breathing.
An hour of silence passed. ‘I hope we didn’t cause any trouble,’ said the captain. He went and peered into the living-room.
Mrs Ttt was there, watering some flowers that grew in the centre of the room.
‘I knew I had forgotten something,’ she said when she saw the captain. She walked out to the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry.’ She handed him a slip of paper. ‘Mr Ttt is much too busy.’ She turned to her cooking. ‘Anyway, it’s not Mr Ttt you want to see; it’s Mr Aaa. Take that paper over to the next farm, by the blue canal, and Mr Aaa’ll advise you about whatever it is you want to know.’
‘We don’t want to know anything,’ objected the captain, pouting out his thick lips. ‘We already know it.’
‘You have the paper, what more do you want?’ she asked him straight off. And she would say no more.
‘Well,’ said the captain, reluctant to go. He stood as if waiting for something. He looked like a child staring at an empty Christmas tree. ‘Well,’ he said again. ‘Come on, men.’
The four men stepped out into the hot, silent day.
Half an hour later, Mr Aaa, seated in his library sipping a bit of electric fire from a metal cup, heard the voices outside in the stone causeway. He leaned over the windowsill and gazed at the four uniformed men who squinted up at him.
‘Are you Mr Aaa?’ they called.
