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The Tails of Alleymanderous
and Other Odd Tales
The Tails of Alleymanderous
1:17 am
. . . You close your eyes and when you open them, you discover that you are sitting in a chair on the front porch. Alleymanderous is nearby, still dressed in a spacesuit. "Dream," he says. His voice crackles as if coming from a two-way radio.
"Dream what?" you ask.
"Dream of the way it could be."
You laugh. "Good try, cat," you say. "Good try. The dream ended in the 70s when Vice-President Spiro Agnew said we could be on Mars in 1986 and was either laughed at or told to shut up. Hard to say which."
But Alleymanderous stands on his hind legs, sitting as a rabbit might, puts his paw up and, pointing to the sky, says again, "Dream."
"Dream?" you ask. "The dream is dead, cat. The dream is -- " A weird feeling comes over you and you shake your head. "What --" You close your eyes tight and then you feel a crushing force and a rough shaking. Just when you think you can't stand it any more, you open your eyes and looking down, you see you, too, are dressed in a space suit. Nearby, Alleymanderous has already removed his helmet and without really thinking how, you reach up and remove yours. A door opens to another compartment.
"Enjoy the ride?" asks Alleymanderous.
"Whew," you respond. "Space flight? Lift off?"
"Yup," says Alleymanderous. "You didn't get sick."
You shake your head. "Actually, I don't remember much."
"Just as well," says Alleymanderous. "Can be a messy ride."
You both step through the doorway, and before you, a vast window and the scene is that of the Earth below, all blue and white and brown with land masses and water and clouds. Then, looking up, you see directly ahead and not far away, two vast arms of what appears to be a space station, extending outward from a central hub. And not far away, and also looking out the window, a painter, painting the view of the Earth below. He turns.
"Like it?" he asks.
Alleymanderous, still holding his specially-designed space helmet, looks to the painter, then at you, to whom he points. "Convince him."
You look to the painter. The art looks familiar -- "Uh --" you begin. "Not Chesley Bonestell --"
He smiles. "I know, I'm supposed to be dead, but --"
You look to his art. " -- uh --" you say.
He points. "Where we are, is 1955. My art has always been considered very realistic. Photo-realism is the term used."
You look around. "-- uh --" you say again, " -- uh -- sure the hell is."
He returns to his painting. "My art ran in Colliers Magazine, 1954-1955. The public couldn't handle the art and articles on space exploration and called me, Willey Ley, and Werner Von Braun, 'space cowboys'. People couldn't believe space travel could or would happen." He looks back up, a sad smile on his round face. "If the political will had been there, we would have been first in space, not the Soviets. And all that you see here would have been up and running between 1965 and 1975."
Alleymanderous sighs, sits on a stool bolted to the floor and looks out the window, feet up against the wall, suit-encased tail twitching. "-- and Mars by 1986 --"
"Sooner," says Bonstell, "much sooner. 1976, at the latest."
Alleymanderous nods. "Mars base in the early 80s."
Bonstell holds up a painting, Saturn as Seen from Titan.
You nod. "I've seen that. It was in the Astronomy section of the Encyclopedia Americana I had when I was growing up. I used to stare at those pictures and dream --"
Alleymanderous looks at you. "So you did dream."
You nod. "But I knew it was a dream."
"Even when we landed on the moon?"
You nod. "Sure. We beat the Russians, but then we had Viet Nam -- and when Vice President Agnew said we could be on Mars --"
You watch. Chesley Bonstell puts his hands to his face. "It didn't happen as I dreamed it -- did it?" he whispers.
You sigh. "No, it did not -- and it's probably not going to for a very, very long time -- we live in a time of wars, wars, never ending, never ceasing wars --"
Abruptly, his picture changes; the oils begin to run, then around you, the walls begin to sag, to melt, the plastiglass in the windows begins to bulge outward. Instantly, Alleymanderous snaps on his helmet, as do you. Then both of you are blown out the suddenly ruptured window, blown out a long, long ways away, and you watch the nearly completed Mars ship sag and melt and then dissolve, as does the wheel of the space station and the Bonstell-designed rockets and rocket cruisers. All melt, and then it's as if they become like taffy -- pulling apart, becoming unglued, then just evaporating.
And you start falling, falling toward Earth.
"Whose fault?" you hear in your earphones.
"I don't know," you say. "Ignorance? Bad PR job? Space as entertainment? Contest? Not a glorious new frontier? Viet Nam?"
"A pity," says Alleymanderous, "where it could have taken --" then, surrounded by plasma, you are out of radio contact and in the searing light, you see nothing. You are glad that the suit you wear seems to have remarkable properties, like, not burning up. And somewhere, at about 10,000 feet up, your parachutes pop open. And you both land. Somewhere.
Taking off your helmet, you are struck by how corrosive the air, how hot it is. "Alleymanderous," you say, "Alleymanderous -- where are we?"
Alleymanderous, having landed just a few yards away, looks at some sort of readout device on his right paw. "Just a minute," he says, then, "solar radiation is intense, no ozone, it's one hundred fifteen degrees and we are at --" he looks at his readout, this way, that, as if trying to make sense of it, "not far from Nome, Alaska."
Not far away, a bright light erupts, the ground shakes, "Whoa," says Alleymanderous, "sure looks like a bomb to me." You dive for cover in what appears to be a bomb crater, and feel a wave of heat pass overhead. In a few minutes, you look up, around.
"Nothing growing," you say.
"Yup." says Alleymanderous, and he sits on his haunches, looking away.
"There is still --" you gulp, "Isn't there still -- this doesn't have to be the future," you say, and you can't help but hear the pleading in your voice.
But Alleymanderous doesn't answer.
And you begin to feel incredibly ill.
Alleymanderous looks to you, eyes filled with what you guess to be pity. Finally he says, "Why the dreams of what could be get so easily replaced by the nightmare of what is --" and he shakes his head. On the horizon, sudden, staccato, searing white lights and the ground shakes, shakes again, again and again. . .
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