The old man wiped off the windshield of the small truck.
“Not bad.”
“How do you like Mars, Pop?”
“Fine.
Always something new.
I made up my mind when I came here last year I wouldn’t expect nothing, nor ask nothing, nor be surprised at nothing.
We’ve got to forget Earth and how things were.
We’ve got to look at what we’re in here, and how different it is.
I get a hell of a lot of fun out of just the weather here.
It’s Martian weather.
Hot as hell daytimes, cold as hell nights.
I get a big kick out of the different flowers and different rain.
I came to Mars to retire and I wanted to retire in a place where everything is different.
An old man needs to have things different.
Young people don’t want to talk to him, other old people bore hell out of him.
So I thought the best thing for me is a place so different that all you got to do is open your eyes and you’re entertained.
I got this gas station.
If business picks up too much, I’ll move on back to some other old highway that’s not so busy, where I can earn just enough to live on and still have time to feel the different things here.”
“You got the right idea, Pop,” said Tomas, his brown hands idly on the wheel.
He was feeling good.
He had been working in one of the new colonies for ten days straight and now he had two days off and was on his way to a party.
“I’m not surprised at anything any more,” said the old man.
“I’m just looking.
I’m just experiencing.
If you can’t take Mars for what she is, you might as well go back to Earth.
Everything’s crazy up here, the soil, the air, the canals, the natives (I never saw any yet, but I hear they’re around), the clocks.
Even my clock acts funny.
Even time is crazy up here.
Sometimes I feel I’m here all by myself, no one else on the whole damn planet.
I’d take bets on it.
Sometimes I feel about eight years old, my body squeezed up and everything else tall.
Jesus, it’s just the place for an old man.
Keeps me alert and keeps me happy.
You know what Mars is?
It’s like a thing I got for Christmas seventy years ago — don’t know if you ever had one — they called them kaleidoscopes, bits of crystal and cloth and beads and pretty junk. You held it up to the sunlight and looked in through at it, and it took your breath away.
All the patterns!
Well, that’s Mars.
Enjoy it. Don’t ask it to be nothing else but what it is.
Jesus, you know that highway right there, built by the Martians, is over sixteen centuries old and still in good condition?
That’s one dollar and fifty cents, thanks and good night.”
Tomas drove off down the ancient highway, laughing quietly.
It was a long road going into darkness and hills and he held to the wheel, now and again reaching into his lunch bucket and taking out a piece of candy.
He had been driving steadily for an hour, with no other car on the road, no light, just the road going under, the hum, the roar, and Mars out there, so quiet.
Mars was always quiet, but quieter tonight than any other.
The deserts and empty seas swung by him, and the mountains against the stars.
There was a smell of Time in the air tonight.
He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind.
There was a thought.
What did Time smell like?
Like dust and clocks and people.