There had not been any gold found, of course, and now, for the most part, the mining shacks so hastily thrown up were only fever scars of a sickness long gone and little remembered. A few of the houses were still occupied, like the one into which the Martian boy had just disappeared.
So his mother had taught him the William Tell Overture, had she? That tickling thought made me chuckle as I stood before the ramshackle building. And then, suddenly, I stopped chuckling and began to think, instead, of something quite astonishing:
How had it been possible for her to teach, and for him to whistle?
All Martians are as tone-deaf as a bucket of lead.
I went up three slab steps and rapped loudly on the weather-beaten door.
The woman who faced me may have been as young as twenty-two, but she didn't look it. That shocked look, which comes with the first realization that youth has slipped quietly away downstream in the middle of the night, and left nothing but frightening rocks of middle age to show cold and gray in the hard light of dawn, was like the validation stamp of Time itself in her wide, wise eyes. And her voice wasn't young any more, either.
"Well? And what did I do now?"
"I beg your pardon?" I said.
"You're Mobile Security, aren't you? Or is that badge you're wearing just something to cover a hole in your shirt?"