NATIVE SON

Tommy Benton, on his first
visit to Earth, found the
long-anticipated wonders of
twenty-first-century New York
thrilling the first week, boring and
unhappy the second week, and at
the end of the third he was definitely
ready to go home.

The never-ending racket of traffic
was torture to his abnormally
acute ears. Increased atmospheric
pressure did funny things to his
chest and stomach. And quick
and sure-footed on Mars, he struggled
constantly against the heavy
gravity that made all his movements
clumsy and uncoordinated.

The endless canyons of towering
buildings, with their connecting
Skywalks, oppressed and smothered
him. Remembering the endless
vistas of rabbara fields beside a
canal that was like an inland sea,
homesickness flooded over him.

He hated the people who stared
at him with either open or hidden
amusement. His Aunt Bee, for
instance, who looked him up and
down with frank disapproval and
said loudly, "For Heavens sake,
Helen! Take him to a good tailor
and get those bones covered up!"

Was it his fault he was six inches
taller than Terran boys his age,
and had long, thin arms and legs?
Or that his chest was abnormally
developed to compensate for an
oxygen-thin atmosphere? I'd like
to see her, he thought fiercely,
out on the Flatlands; she'd be
gasping like a canal-fish out of
water.

Even his parents, happily riding
the social merry-go-round of Terra,
after eleven years in the Martian
flatlands, didn't seem to understand
how he felt.

"Don't you like Earth, Tommy?"
queried his mother anxiously.

"Oh ... it's all right, I guess."

"... 'A nice place to visit' ..."
said his father sardonically.

"... 'but I wouldn't live here
if they gave me the place!' ..."
said his mother, and they both
burst out laughing for no reason
that Tommy could see. Of course,
they did that lots of times at
home and Tommy laughed with
them just for the warm, secure
feeling of belonging. This time
he didn't feel like laughing.

"When are we going home?" he
repeated stubbornly.

His father pulled Tommy over
in the crook of his arm and said
gently, "Well, not right away,
son. As a matter of fact, how
would you like to stay here and
go to school?"

Tommy pulled away and looked
at him incredulously.

"I've been to school!"

"Well, yes," admitted his father.
"But only to the colony schools.
You don't want to grow up and
be an ignorant Martian sandfoot
all your life, do you?"

"Yes, I do! I want to be a Martian
sandfoot. And I want to go
home where people don't look at
me and say, 'So this is your little
Martian!'"

Benton, Sr., put his arm around
Tommy's stiffly resistant shoulders.
"Look here, old man," he
said persuasively. "I thought you
wanted to be a space engineer.
You can't do that without an education
you know. And your Aunt
Bee will take good care of you."

Tommy faced him stubbornly.
"I don't want to be any old spaceman.
I want to be a sandfoot like
old Pete. And I want to go
home."

Helen bit back a smile at the
two earnest, stubborn faces so
ridiculously alike, and hastened to
avert the gathering storm.

"Now look, fellows. Tommy's
career doesn't have to be decided
in the next five minutes ... after
all, he's only ten. He can make
up his mind later on if he wants
to be an engineer or a rabbara
farmer. Right now, he's going to
stay here and go to school ...
and I'm staying with him."

Resolutely avoiding both crestfallen
faces, Helen, having shepherded
Tommy to bed, returned to
the living room acutely conscious
of Big Tom's bleak, hurt gaze at
her back.

"Helen, you're going to make
a sissy out of the boy," he said at
last. "There isn't any reason
why he can't stay here at home
with Bee."

Helen turned to face him.

"Earth isn't home to Tommy.
And your sister Bee told him he
ought to be out playing football
with the boys instead of hanging
around the house."

"But she knows the doctor said
he'd have to take it easy for a year
till he was accustomed to the
change in gravity and air-pressure,"
he answered incredulously.

"Exactly. She also asked me,"
Helen went on grimly, "if I
thought he'd be less of a freak as
he got older."

Tom Benton swore. "Bee always
did have less sense than the
average hen," he gritted. "My
son a freak! Hell's-bells!"

Tommy, arriving at the hall
door in time to hear the tail-end
of the sentence, crept back to bed
feeling numb and dazed. So even
his father thought he was a freak.

The last few days before parting
was one of strain for all of
them. If Tommy was unnaturally
subdued, no one noticed it; his
parents were not feeling any great
impulse toward gaiety either.

They all went dutifully sight-seeing
as before; they saw the
Zoo, and went shopping on the
Skywalks, and on the last day
wound up at the great showrooms
of "Androids, Inc."

Tommy had hated them on
sight; they were at once too human
and too inhuman for comfort.
The hotel was full of them, and
most private homes had at least
one. Now they saw the great incubating
vats, and the processing
and finally the showroom where
one of the finished products was
on display as a maid, sweeping
and dusting.

"There's one that's a dead-ringer
for you, Helen. If you were a
little better looking, that is." Tommy's
dad pretended to compare
them judicially. Helen laughed,
but Tommy looked at him with a
resentfulness. Comparing his mother
to an Android....

"They say for a little extra you
can get an exact resemblance.
Maybe I'd better have one fixed
up like you to take back with me,"
Big Tom added teasingly. Then
as Helen's face clouded over, "Oh,
hon, you know I was only kidding.
Let's get out of here; this place
gives me the collywobbles. Besides,
I've got to pick up my watch."

But his mother's face was still
unhappy and Tommy glowered sullenly
at his father's back all the
way to the watch-shop.

It was a small shop, with an
inconspicuous sign down in one
corner of the window that said
only, "KRUMBEIN—watches," and
was probably the most famous
shop of its kind in the world. Every
spaceman landing on Terra
left his watch to be checked by
the dusty, little old man who was
the genius of the place. Tommy
ranged wide-eyed about the clock
and chronometer crammed interior.
He stopped fascinated before the
last case. In it was a watch ...
but, what a watch! Besides the
regulation Terran dial, it had a
second smaller dial that registered
the corresponding time on Mars.
Tommy's whole heart went out to
it in an ecstasy of longing. He
thought wistfully that if you could
know what time it was there, you
could imagine what everyone was
doing and it wouldn't seem so far
away. Haltingly, he tried to explain.

"Look, Mom," he said breathlessly.
"It's almost five o'clock
at home. Douwie will be coming
up to the barn to be fed. Gosh, do
you suppose old Pete will remember
about her?"

His mother smiled at him reassuringly.
"Of course he will,
silly. Don't forget he was the one
who caught and tamed her for
you."

Tommy gulped as he thought of
Douwie. Scarcely as tall as himself;
the big, rounded, mouselike
ears, and the flat, cloven pads
that could carry her so swiftly
over the sandy Martian flatlands.
One of the last dwindling herds of
native Martian douwies, burden-carriers
of a vanished race, she
had been Tommy's particular pride
and joy for the last three years.

Behind him, Tommy heard his
mother murmur under her breath,
"Tom ... the watch; could we?"

And his Dad regretfully, "It's
a pretty expensive toy for a
youngster, Helen. And even a
rabbara raiser's bank account has
limits."

"Of course, dear; it was silly of
me." Helen smiled a little ruefully.
"And if Mr. Krumbein has
your watch ready, we must go.
Bee and some of her friends are
coming over, and it's only a few
hours 'till you ... leave."

Big Tom squeezed her elbow
gently, understandingly, as she
blinked back quick tears. Trailing
after them, Tommy saw the little
by-play and his heart ached. The
guilt-complex building up in him
grew and deepened.

He knew he had only to say,
"Look, I don't mind staying. Aunt
Bee and I will get along swell," and
everything would be all right again.
Then the terror of this new and
complex world—as it would be
without a familiar face—swept
over him and kept him silent.

His overwrought feelings expressed
themselves in a nervously
rebelling stomach, culminating in
a disgraceful moment over the
nearest gutter. The rest of the
afternoon he spent in bed recuperating.

In the living room Aunt Bee
spoke her mind in her usual, high-pitched
voice.

"It's disgraceful, Helen. A boy
his age.... None of the Bentons
ever had nerves."

His mother's reply was inaudible,
but on the heels of his father's
deeper tones, Aunt Bee's
voice rose in rasping indignation.

"Well! I never! And from my
own brother, too. From now on
don't come to me for help with
your spoiled brat. Good-bye!"

The door slammed indignantly,
his mother chuckled, and there was
a spontaneous burst of laughter.
Tommy relaxed and lay back happily.
Anyway, that was the last of
Aunt Bee!

The next hour or two passed in
a flurry of ringing phones, people
coming and going, and last-minute
words and reminders. Then
suddenly it was time to leave. Dad
burst in for a last quick hug and a
promise to send him pictures of
Douwie and her foal, due next
month; Mother dropped a hasty
kiss on his hair and promised to
hurry back from the Spaceport.
Then Tommy was alone, with a
large, painful lump where his heart
ought to be.

The only activity was the almost
noiseless buzzing as the hotel
android ran the cleaner over the
living room. Presently even that
ceased, and Tommy lay relaxed
and inert, sleepily watching the
curtains blow in and out at the
open window. Thirty stories above
the street the noises were pleasantly
muffled and remote, and his
senses drifted aimlessly to and fro
on the tides of half-sleep.

Drowsily his mind wandered
from the hotel's android servants
... to the strictly utilitarian mechanical
monstrosity at home,
known affectionately as "Old
John" ... to the android showroom
where they had seen the one
that Dad said looked like Mother....

He jolted suddenly, sickeningly
awake. Suppose, his mind whispered
treacherously, suppose that
Dad had ordered one to take
Mom's place ... not on Mars,
but here while she returned to
Mars with him. Suppose that instead
of Mom he discovered one
of those Things ... or even worse,
suppose he went on from day to
day not even knowing....

It was a bad five minutes; he
was wet with perspiration when he
lay back on his pillows, a shaky
smile tugging at the corners of his
mouth. He had a secret defense
against the Terror. He giggled a
little at the thought of what Aunt
Bee would say if she knew.

And what had brought him back
from the edge of hysteria was the
triumphant knowledge that with
the abnormally acute hearing bred
in the thin atmosphere of Mars,
no robot ever created could hide
from him the infinitesimal ticking
of the electronic relays that gave
it life. Secure at last, his overstrung
nerves relaxed and he slid
gratefully over the edge of sleep.

He woke abruptly, groping after
some vaguely remembered
sound. A soft clicking of heels
down the hall.... Of course, his
mother back from the Spaceport!
Now she would be stopping at his
door to see if he were asleep. He
lay silently; through his eyelashes
he could see her outlined in the
soft light from the hall. She was
coming in to see if he was tucked
in. In a moment he would jump
up and startle her with a hug, as
she leaned over him. In a moment....

Screaming desperately, he was
out of bed, backing heedlessly
across the room. He was still
screaming as the low sill of the
open window caught him behind
the knees and toppled him thirty
stories to the street.

Alone in the silent room, Helen
Benton stood dazed, staring
blindly at the empty window.

Tommy's parting gift from his
father slid from her hand and lay
on the carpet, still ticking gently.

It was 9:23 on Mars.

The End

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy July 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.