LITMIR.BIZ

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oohing and ahing over the lines in my palm.

      “Nai!” she’d said, her voice warbling as it deepened (they’re always so cheery, these soothsayers), “Such interesting intersections thou hast here, such curious crossings. Malista, thou art, how do you say? Moiraios, the destined one, thou art….” Then she’d looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time, her black eyes growing very large and very wide, and she’d suddenly released me, pulling back with a flutter. “I…no! Here! You take back your money. Go away from me!”

      She’d thrown some bills on the table, more actually than Becky had paid her, and gathering her skirts together, had pushed her chair aside and bolted the room. Harrumph indeed!

      “Well, I’ll be,” Becky’d said.

      Suddenly I came back to myself.

      “You do remember her,” she said, tilting her head.

      “How could I ever forget?” I sighed.

      “Anyway, she sent me this book, inscribed ‘To the one who showed me the way,’ so I’m just getting around to reading it now. It’s really not bad. I don’t believe all of it, of course, but it sure does make you think.”

      “I think I’m going back to the landing site,” I said. “Want to join me?”

      “No, I probably need to uncover our joint destiny.”

      I was laughing along with her as I exited the door.

      When I returned to the field that afternoon, I couldn’t park anywhere near the pit. Dozens of cars now lined the shoulder of the dirt path closest to the impact site, and the road had now been cordoned off by the local police. Since this was Marin County, a fair number of motorcycles and bicycles were also in evidence. The crowd numbered, I suppose, several hundred individuals, including some young women, whom I thanked under my breath for decorating the scenery. Mindon waved at me from the other side of the hole, one arm wrapped around a delicate delight. I joined him.

      “This is, uh, Barbie,” he said, introducing his companion.

      “Hiiii!” came the girlish gurgle.

      “Hi yourself,” I said. “What’s happening, Mindon-Man?”

      (I was one of the very few individuals in the whole wide world who knew that Mindon had adopted his name from a nineteenth-century Burmese king, Mindon Min. His real name was Gorace Alonzo Styles, Ph.D.—and he hated it, he absolutely despised it, he utterly loathed his name. I asked him once why he’d never changed it legally, and he said something about an inheritance owed him by his Great-Uncle Gorace—“Liz”—who was rich and stuffy and would cut him off immediately without a red cent if he ever dared such a step. He wanted the money, honey, and that’s the whole truth of it.)

      “Not a hell of a lot,” he said.

      It was almost hot for December. Not a cloud in the sky, not a hint of wind. The only shade was provided by a few scattered pine and live-oak trees. The burnt brush had blackened the field for several hundred yards in either direction, and was still giving off occasional puffs of smoke where embers had nested in some downed tree limbs. One of the ever-present Chicano vendor-vans was selling ice cream bars and soda and hotdogs and chips off to one side, making, I’m certain, a whole week’s worth of income in just one day, and playing a tinny version of “Für Elise” over and over again. I could have strangled him.

      What a reception for the Martian probe! All the worst elements of humanity were represented here—and perhaps even a few of its best.

      The rim was the domain of Owen, Mindon, and a tall, blond, middle-aged fellow with glasses whom I learned afterwards was Hastings Johnson-Carson, an astronomer at Berkeley. He had several workers with him armed with spades and picks. J.C., as we called him, stood on the end of the ship like a naval captain, imperiously giving orders in his nasally, needling voice, his pudgy crimson face streaming with perspiration. All he lacked was a sailor’s cap. Something seemed to be irritating him, and it was probably Mindon, who was still claiming the meteorite as his own, and that he should therefore be the only person consulted concerning its disposition.

      A large portion of the artifact had now been uncovered, but its lower section yet remained buried in the soil. Mindon pulled me aside and asked me to get help from City Hall.

      “Look, that damned interloper is going to steal this thing from me. We’re within the Novato city limits. The Mayor has authority over the site, if he chooses to exercise it. See if you can get him to intervene, OK?”

      I promised to do what I could.

      Min wanted a rail erected to keep the people back, and especially to remove “certain” individuals from the site. He said that he could still hear noises within the probe, but no one had been able to break the thing open yet, thank God! The casing seemed impervious to ordinary tools.

      It was a little past four, and I knew City Hall closed at five. I walked to my car and drove to the Art Deco-style building that had housed the facility since the 1940s. I asked to see Mayor Cory.

      “What do ya want, Smith?” the man said, chewing on a pretzel stick like some old cigar.

      I told him that there was a safety issue involved: with all the people milling around the pit, that someone might get hurt, and that he didn’t want the city to be sued for lack of proper preventive measures on the part of the local government.

      That got his attention.

      He immediately phoned the Chief of Police, and ordered him to restore order to the site, pushing back everyone to a safe distance.

      Then I went home to Becky and shared a dinner of cold sandwiches and canned fruit, before returning to the place that marked the beginning of the Martian hegemony on Earth.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      O SUCH COMPANIONS

      O heaven! That such companions thou’dst unfold.

      —William Shakespeare

      Alex Smith, 24 December, Mars Year i

      Novato, California, Planet Earth

      By the time we reached the site again, the sun was starting to set. The crowd was larger now. The police were trying to bring some order to the situation, but they were too few to control the area effectively. Something was beginning to happen in and around the landing site itself.

      Then I heard J.C.’s voice booming: “Back! Come on, get back, folks! Officer, push these people out of the way!”

      But the cops had no more effect than anyone else.

      Then someone came running towards me.

      “It’s moving!” he shouted as he ran by. “Hey, people, it’s moving!”

      We tried to get a better view, but there were too many onlookers in the way.

      “Someone fell in the pit!” a man shouted.

      “C’mon, watch out!”

      “What’s happening out there?”

      “Jesus H. Christ!”

      The crowd ebbed and swayed a bit and somehow Becky and I managed to elbow through. I heard a peculiar humming sound emanating from the hole.

      “Alex!” Min said when he saw me. “Keep these blasted idiots out of the way. We don’t know what’s inside the damned thing yet.”

      A young woman wearing cut-off jeans—no one I recognized—stood on top of the ship and then tried to climb her way out.

      But the “egg” suddenly began separating from its shell, peeling away from itself at the top, and then unfolding section by section into the protective lid that covered the thing. Someone banged against me and I almost fell forward into the hole. As I cursed the slob who’d rammed me in the back with his elbow, the canopy caromed off with a clunk. Becky grabbed my waist.

      “Alex?!”

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