Free The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis Page B

difficulty in falling into a deep sleep, pleasantly filled with undisturbing dreams.

9
    They flew over the mountains, but the little plane was so stable, the pilot so expert, that there was no pitching, almost no sensation of movement. They flew over Harlan, Kentucky, a drab city sprawled loosely in the foothills, and then over vast, barren fields and down into a valley. Bryce, a glass of whiskey in his hand, saw the distant gleam of a lake, its static surface shining like a new and rich coin; and then they dipped lower, losing sight of the lake, and landed on a broad, new strip of concrete that sat at the flat bottom of the valley, amid broom straw and upturned red clay, like a wild Euclidian diagram drawn there with gray chalk by some geometrically minded god.
    Bryce stepped from the plane into the thumping din of earthmoving machinery, the confusion of khaki-shirted men, red-faced in the summer heat, shouting hoarsely at one another, in the process of building unidentifiable buildings. There were machinery sheds, some kind of huge concrete platform, a row of barracks. For a moment, having left the quiet and coolness of the smooth, air-conditioned plane—Thomas Jerome Newton’s personal plane, sent to Louisville for him—he was bewildered, made dizzy by heat and noise, by all this feverish and unexplained activity.
    A young man, rugged looking as a cigarette advertisement, stepped up to him. The man wore a pith helmet; his rolled-up sleeves displayed an abundance of tanned, youthful muscle; he looked exactly like a hero of one of those half-forgotten boys’ novels that had, at a dimly remembered time of aspiring adolescence, made him, Bryce, dedicated to becoming an engineer—a chemical engineer, a man of science and of action. He did not smile at the young man, thinking of his own paunch, his graying hair, and the taste of whiskey in his mouth; but he nodded his head in recognition.
    The man held out a hand. “You’re Professor Bryce?”
    He took the hand, expecting an affectedly firm grip, pleased to receive a gentle one. “Professor no more,” he said, “but I’m Bryce.”
    “Good. Good. I’m Hopkins. Foreman.” The man’s friendliness seemed doglike, as if he were pleading for approval. “What do you think of it all, Doctor Bryce?” He gestured toward the rows of buildings going up. Just beyond them was a tall tower, apparently a broadcasting antenna of some kind.
    Bryce cleared his throat. “I don’t know.” He started to ask what they were making here, but decided that his ignorance would be embarrassing. Why hadn’t that fat buffoon, Farnsworth, told him what he was being hired for? “Is Mr. Newton expecting me?” he said aloud, not looking at the man.
    “Sure. Sure.” Suddenly showing efficiency, the young man hustled him around to the other side of the plane, where a small monorail car, obscured before, sat atop a dully gleaming track that snaked away into the hills at the side of the valley like a thin, silvery pencil line. Hopkins slid the door back, revealing polished leather upholstery and a satisfyingly dark interior. “This’ll have you up at the house in five minutes.”
    “The house? How far is it?”
    “About four miles. I’ll call ahead and Brinnarde’ll meet you. Brinnarde’s Mr. Newton’s secretary; he’ll probably do the interviewing”
    Bryce hesitated before getting into the car. “Won’t I meet Mr. Newton?” The thought upset him; after these two years, not to meet the man who invented Worldcolor, who operated the biggest oil refineries in Texas, who had developed three-D television, reusable photo negatives, the ATF process in dye-transfer—the man who was either the world’s most original inventive genius, or an extraterrestrial.
    The young man frowned. “I doubt it. I’ve been here six months and I’ve never seen him, except from behind the window of that car you’re getting into. About once a week he comes down here in it, to look things over, I guess.