A Princess of Earth Read online

  "Why did you come back from Mars, then?” I asked.

  "It was not an act of volition.” He paused, as if remembering. “The first time it happened, I thought the Almighty must be testing me as He had tested Job. I spent ten long years here before I could return."

  "And you never once questioned if it had really happened?"

  "The ancient cities, the dead sea bottoms, the battles, the fierce green-skinned warriors, I could have imagined them. But I could never have imagined my love for my princess; it remained with me every minute of every day—the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin, the scent of her hair. No, I could not have invented that."

  "It must have been a comfort during your exile,” I said.

  "A comfort and a torture,” he replied. “To look up in the sky every day and know that she and the son I had never seen were so unthinkably far away."

  "But you never doubted?"

  "Never,” he said. “I still remember the last words I wrote: ‘I believe that they are waiting for me, and something tells me I shall soon know.’”

  "True or not, at least you could believe it,” I said. “You didn't watch your princess die in front of you."

  He stared at me, as if trying to decide what to say next. Finally he spoke. “I have died many times, and if Providence wills it, I shall die again tomorrow."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Only my consciousness can traverse the void between worlds,” he said. “My body remains behind, a lifeless hulk."

  "And it doesn't decay or rot, it just waits for you to return?” I said sarcastically.

  "I can't explain it,” he said. “I can only take advantage of it."

  "And this is supposed to comfort me—that a madman who thinks he's John Carter is hinting that my Lisa might somehow be alive on Mars?"

  "It would comfort me,” he said.

  "Yeah, but you're crazy."

  "Is it crazy to think she might have done what I did?"

  "Absolutely,” I said.

  "If you had a terminal disease, would it be crazy to seek out every quack in the world who thought he could cure it rather than to sit around passively waiting to die?"

  "So now you're a quack instead of a madman?"

  "No,” he said. “I'm just a man who is less afraid of death than of losing his princess."

  "Bully for you,” I said. “I've already lost mine."

  "For ten months. I lost mine for ten years."

  "There's a difference,” I pointed out. “Mine's dead; yours wasn't."

  "There's another difference,” he replied. “I had the courage to find mine."

  "Mine isn't lost. I know exactly where she is."

  He shook his head. “You know where the unimportant part of her is."

  I sighed deeply. “I'd settle for your madness if I had your faith."

  "You don't need faith. You only need the courage to believe, not that something is true, but that it is possible."

  "Courage is for Warlords,” I replied, “not for sixty-four-year-old widowers."

  "Every man has untapped wells of courage,” he said. “Maybe your princess is not on Barsoom. Maybe there is no Barsoom, and I am every bit as crazy as you think I am. Are you really content to accept things as they are, or have you the courage to hope that I'm right?"

  "Of course I hope you're right,” I said irritably. “So what?"

  "Hope leads to belief, and belief leads to action."

  "It leads to the funny farm."

  He looked at me, a sad expression on his face. “Was your princess perfect?"

  "In every way,” I said promptly.

  "And did she love you?"

  I saw his next question coming, but I couldn't help answering him. “Yes."

  "Could a perfect princess have loved a coward or a madman?” he said.

  "Enough!” I snapped. “It's been hard enough staying sane these last ten months. Then you come along and make the alternative sound too attractive. I can't spend the rest of my life thinking that I'll somehow find a way to see her again!"

  "Why not?"

  At first I thought he was kidding. Then I saw that he wasn't.

  "Aside from the fact that it's crazy, if I bought into it I wouldn't accomplish a damned thing."

  "What are you accomplishing now?” he asked.

  "Nothing,” I admitted, suddenly deflated. “I get up each morning and all I do is wait for the day to drag to a close so I can go to sleep and not see her face in front of me until I wake up again."

  "And you consider this the rational behavior of a sane man?"

  "Of a realistic man,” I replied. “She's gone and she's not coming back."

  "Reality is greatly overrated,” he responded. “A realist sees silicon; a madman sees a machine that can think. A realist sees bread mold; a madman sees a drug that miraculously cures infection. A realist looks at the stars and asks, why bother? A madman looks at those same stars and asks, why not bother?” He paused and stared intently at me. “A realist would say, my princess is dead. A madman would say, John Carter found a way to overcome death, so why couldn't she?"

  "I wish I could say that."

  "But?” he said.

  "I'm not a madman."

  "I feel very sorry for you."

  "I don't feel sorry for you,” I replied.

  "Oh? What do you feel?"

  "Envy,” I said. “They'll come by tonight or tomorrow or the next day to pick you up and take you back to wherever you wandered off from, and you will believe just as devoutly then as you do now. You'll know beyond any doubt that your princess is waiting for you. You'll spend your every waking moment trying to escape, trying to get back to Barsoom. You'll have belief and hope and purpose, which is a pretty impressive triumvirate. I wish I had any one of them."

  "They're not unattainable."

  "Maybe not to Warlords, but they are to aging widowers with bad knees and worse blood pressure,” I said, getting to my feet. He looked at me curiously. “I've had enough craziness for one night,” I told him. “I'm going to bed. You can sleep on the sofa if you want, but if I were you I'd leave before they came looking for me. If you go to the basement you'll find some clothes and an old pair of boots you can have, and you can take my coat from the hall closet."

  "Thank you for your hospitality,” he said as I walked to the staircase. “I'm sorry to have brought back painful memories of your princess."

  "I cherish my memories,” I replied. “Only the present is painful."

  I climbed the stairs and lay down on the bed, still dressed, and fell asleep to visions of Lisa alive and smiling, as I did every night.

  When I awoke in the morning and went downstairs he was gone. At first I thought he'd taken my advice and gotten a head start on his keepers—but then I looked out the window and saw him, right where I'd spotted him the night before.

  He was face-down in the snow, his arms stretched out in front of him, naked as the day he was born. I knew before I checked for a pulse that he was dead. I wish I could say that he had a happy smile on his face, but he didn't; he looked as cold and uncomfortable as when I'd first found him.

  I called the police, who showed up within the hour and took him away. They told me they had no reports of any nutcases escaping from the local asylum.

  I checked in with them a few times in the next week. They simply couldn't identify him. His fingerprints and DNA weren't on file anywhere, and he didn't match any missing persons descriptions. I'm not sure when they closed the file on him, but nobody showed up to claim the body and they finally planted him, with no name on his headstone, in the same cemetery where Lisa was buried.

  I visited Lisa every day, as usual, and I started visiting John's grave as well. I don't know why. He'd gotten me thinking crazy, uncomfortable thoughts that I couldn't shake, blurring the line between wishes and possibilities, and I resented it. More to the point, I resented him: he died with the absolute knowledge that he would soon see his princess, while I lived with the
absolute knowledge that I would never again see mine.

  I couldn't help wondering which of us was truly the sane one—the one who made reality conform by the sheer force of his belief, or the one who settled for old memories because he lacked the courage to try to create new ones.

  As the days passed I found myself dwelling more and more on what John had said, turning it over in my mind again and again—and then, on February 13, I read an item in the newspaper that tomorrow Mars would be closer to Earth than at any time in the next sixteen years.

  I turned my computer on for the first time in months and verified the item on a couple of internet news services. I thought about it for awhile, and about John, and about Lisa. Then I phoned the Salvation Army and left a message on their answering device, giving them my address and telling them that I would leave the house unlocked and they were welcome to everything in it—clothes, food, furniture, anything they wanted.

  I've spent the past three hours writing these words, so that whoever reads them will know that what I am about to do I am doing willingly, even joyfully, and that far from giving in to depression I am, at long last, yielding to hope.

  It's almost three in the morning. The snow stopped falling at midnight, the sky is clear, and Mars should come into view at any moment now. A few minutes ago I gathered my favorite photos of Lisa; they're lined up on the desk right beside me, and she seems more beautiful than ever.

  Very soon I'll take off my clothes, fold them neatly on my desk chair, and walk out into the yard. Then it's just a matter of spotting what I'm looking for. Is it Mars? Barsoom? Something else? It makes no difference. Only a realist sees things as they are, and it was John who showed me the limitations of reality—and how could someone as perfect as my princess not transcend those limitations?

  I believe she is waiting for me, and something tells me I shall soon know.

  —THE END—

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