Tag: ray bradbury

The October Game (full text) Ray Bradbury

The October Game || Ray Bradbury

He put the gun back into the bureau drawer and shut the drawer.

No, not that way.

Louise wouldn’t suffer.

It was very important that this thing have, above all duration. Duration through imagination.

How to prolong the suffering?

How, first of all, to bring it about?

Well. The man standing before the bedroom mirror carefully fitted his cuff-links together.

He paused long enough to hear the children run by swiftly on the street below, outside this warm two-storey house, like so many grey mice the children, like so many leaves.

By the sound of the children you knew the calendar day.

By their screams you knew what evening it was.

You knew it was very late in the year.

October.

The last day of October, with white bone masks and cut pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle wax.

No.

Things hadn’t been right for some time.

October didn’t help any.

If anything it made things worse.

He adjusted his black bow-tie.

If this were spring, he nodded slowly, quietly, emotionlessly, at his image in the mirror, then there might be a chance.

But tonight all the world was burning down into ruin.

There was no green spring, none of the freshness, none of the promise.

There was a soft running in the hall.

“That’s Marion”, he told himself. “My little one”.

All eight quiet years of her.

Never a word. Just her luminous grey eyes and her wondering little mouth.

His daughter had been in and out all evening, trying on various masks, asking him which was most terrifying, most horrible. They had both finally decided on the skeleton mask.

It was “just awful!” It would “scare the beans” from people!

Again he caught the long look of thought and deliberation he gave himself in the mirror.

He had never liked October.

Ever since he first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother’s house many years ago and heard the wind and sway the empty trees.

It has made him cry, without a reason.

And a little of that sadness returned each year to him.

It always went away with spring.

But, it was different tonight.

There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years.

There would be no spring.

He had been crying quietly all evening.

It did not show, not a vestige of it, on his face.

It was all hidden somewhere and it wouldn’t stop.

A rich syrupy smell of sweets filled the bustling house.

Louise had laid out apples in new skins of toffee; there were vast bowls of punch fresh-mixed, stringed apples in each door, scooped, vented pumpkins peering triangularly from each cold window.

There was a water tub in the centre of the living room, waiting, with a sack of apples nearby, for dunking to begin.

All that was needed was the catalyst, the inpouring of children, to start the apples bobbing, the stringed apples to penduluming in the crowded doors, the sweets to vanish, the halls to echo with fright or delight, it was all the same.

Now, the house was silent with preparation.

And just a little more than that.

Louise had managed to be in every other room save the room he was in today.

It was her very fine way of intimating, Oh look Mich, see how busy I am! So busy that when you walk into a room I’m in there’s always something I need to do in another room!

Just see how I dash about!

For a while he had played a little game with her, a nasty childish game.

When she was in the kitchen then he came to the kitchen saying, “I need a glass of water.”

After a moment, he standing, drinking water, she like a crystal witch over the caramel brew bubbling like a prehistoric mudpot on the stove, she said, “Oh, I must light the pumpkins!” and she rushed to the living room to make the pumpkins smile with light.

He came after, smiling, “I must get my pipe.”

“Oh, the cider!” she had cried, running to the dining room.

“I’ll check the cider,” he had said.

But when he tried following she ran to the bathroom and locked the door.

He stood outside the bathroom door, laughing strangely and senselessly, his pipe gone cold in his mouth, and then, tired of the game, but stubborn, he waited another five minutes.

There was not a sound from the bath.

And lest she enjoy in any way knowing that he waited outside, irritated, he suddenly jerked about and walked upstairs, whistling merrily.

At the top of the stairs he had waited.

Finally he had heard the bathroom door unlatch and she had come out and life below-stairs and resumed, as life in a jungle must resume once a terror has passed on away and the antelope return to their spring.

Now, as he finished his bow-tie and put his dark coat there was a mouserustle in the hall.

Marion appeared in the door, all skeletons in her disguise. “How do I look, Papa?”

“Fine!”

From under the mask, blonde hair showed.

From the skull sockets small blue eyes smiled.

He sighed.

Marion and Louise, the two silent denouncers of his virility, his dark power. 

alchemy had there been in Louise that took the dark of a dark man and bleached the dark brown eyes and black hair and washed and bleached the ingrown baby all during the period before birth until the child was born, Marion, blonde, blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked?

Sometimes he suspected that Louise had conceived the child as an idea, completely asexual, an immaculate conception of contemptuous mind and cell.

As a firm rebuke to him she had produced a child in her own image, and, to top it, she had somehow fixed the doctor so he shook his head and said, “Sorry, Mr. Wilder, your wife will never have another child.

This is the last one.” “And I wanted a boy,” Mich had said eight years ago.

He almost bent to take hold of Marion now, in her skull mask.

He felt an inexplicable rush of pity for her, because she had never had a father’s love, only the crushing, holding love of a loveless mother.

But most of all he pitied himself, that somehow he had not made the most of a bad birth, enjoyed his daughter for herself, regardless of her not being dark and a son and like himself.

Somewhere he had missed out.

Other things being equal, he would have loved the child.

But Louise hadn’t wanted a child, anyway, in the first place.

She had been frightened of the idea of birth.

He had forced the child on her, and from that night, all through the year until the agony of the birth itself, Louise had lived in another part of the house.

She had expected to die with the forced child.

It had been very easy for Louise to hate this husband who so wanted a son that he gave his only wife over to the mortuary. But — Louise had lived.

And in triumph!

Her eyes, the day he came to the hospital, were cold. I’m alive they said.

And I have a blonde daughter! Just look!

And when he had put out a hand to touch, the mother had turned away to conspire with her new pink daughter-child — away from that dark forcing murderer.

It had all been so beautifully ironic.

His selfishness deserved it. But now it was October again.

There had been other Octobers and when he thought of the long winter he had been filled with horror year after year to think of the endless months mortared into the house by an insane fall of snow, trapped with a woman and child, neither of whom loved him, for months on end.

During the eight years there had been respites.

In spring and summer you got out, walked, picnicked; these were desperate solutions to the desperate problem of a hated man.

But, in winter, the hikes and picnics and escapes fell away with leaves.

Life, like a tree, stood empty, the fruit picked, the sap run to earth.

Yes, you invited people in, but people were hard to get in winter with blizzards and all.

Once he had been clever enough to save for a Florida trip.

They had gone south.

He had walked in the open.

But now, the eighth winter coming, he knew things were finally at an end.

He simply could not wear this one through.

There was an acid walled off in him that slowly had eaten through tissue and bone over the years, and now, tonight, it would reach the wild explosive in him and all would be over!

There was a mad ringing of the bell below.

In the hall, Louise went to see. Marion, without a word, ran down to greet the first arrivals.

There were shouts and hilarity.

He walked to the top of the stairs.

Louise was below, taking wraps.

She was tall and slender and blonde to the point of whiteness, laughing down upon the new children.

He hesitated. What was all this? The years? The boredom of living? Where had it gone wrong?

Certainly not with the birth of the child alone.

But it had been a symbol of all their tensions, he imagined. His jealousies and his business failures and all the rotten rest of it.

Why didn’t he just turn, pack a suitcase, and leave? No. Not without hurting Louise as much as she had hurt him.

It was simple as that.

Divorce wouldn’t hurt her at all. It would simply be an end to numb indecision. If he thought divorce would give her pleasure in any way he would stay married the rest of his life to her, for damned spite.

No he must hurt her. F

igure some way, perhaps, to take Marion away from her, legally. Yes. That was it. That would hurt most of all.

To take Marion away. “Hello down there!”

He descended the stairs beaming. Louise didn’t look up. “Hi, Mr Wilder!” The children shouted, waved, as he came down.

By ten o’clock the doorbell had stopped ringing, the apples were bitten from stringed doors, the pink faces were wiped dry from the apple bobbling, napkins were smeared with toffee and punch, and he, the husband, with pleasant efficiency had taken over.

He took the party right out of Louise’s hands.

He ran about talking to the twenty children and the twelve parents who had come and were happy with the special spiked cider he had fixed them.

He supervised pin the tail on the donkey, spin the bottle, musical chairs, and all the rest, amid fits of shouting laughter.

Then, in the triangular-eyed pumpkin shine, all house lights out, he cried, “Hush! Follow me!” tiptoeing towards the cellar.

The parents, on the outer periphery of the costumed riot, commented to each other, nodding at the clever husband, speaking to the lucky wife.

How well he got on with children, they said. The children, crowded after the husband, squealing.

“The cellar!” he cried. “The tomb of the witch!”

More squealing. He made a mock shiver. “Abandon hope all ye who enter here!”

The parents chuckled.

One by one the children slid down a slide which Mich had fixed up from lengths of table-section, into the dark cellar. He hissed and shouted ghastly utterances after them. A wonderful wailing filled dark pumpkin-lighted house. Everybody talked at once. Everybody but Marion.

She had gone through all the party with a minimum of sound or talk; it was all inside her, all the excitement and joy.

What a little troll, he thought.

With a shut mouth and shiny eyes she had watched her own party, like so many serpentines thrown before her. Now, the parents.

With laughing reluctance they slid down the short incline, uproarious, while little Marion stood by, always wanting to see it all, to be last.

Louise went down without help. He moved to aid her, but she was gone even before he bent. The upper house was empty and silent in the candle-shine. Marion stood by the slide.

“Here we go,” he said, and picked her up. They sat in a vast circle in the cellar. Warmth came from the distant bulk of the furnace.

The chairs stood in a long line along each wall, twenty squealing children, twelve rustling relatives, alternatively spaced, with Louise down at the far end, Mich up at this end, near the stairs.

He peered but saw nothing. They had all grouped to their chairs, catch-as-you-can in the blackness. The entire programme from here on was to be enacted in the dark, he as Mr. Interlocutor.

There was a child scampering, a smell of damp cement, and the sound of the wind out in the October stars. “Now!” cried the husband in the dark cellar.

“Quiet!” Everybody settled. The room was black black.

Not a light, not a shine, not a glint of an eye. A scraping of crockery, a metal rattle. “The witch is dead,” intoned the husband. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” said the children.

“The witch is dead, she has been killed, and here is the knife she was killed with.”

He handed over the knife. It was passed from hand to hand, down and around the circle, with chuckles and little odd cries and comments from the adults.

“The witch is dead, and this is her head,” whispered the husband, and handed an item to the nearest person.

“Oh, I know how this game is played,” some child cried, happily, in the dark. “He gets some old chicken innards from the icebox and hands them around and says, ‘These are her innards!’

And he makes a clay head and passes it for her head, and passes a soup bone for her arm. And he takes a marble and says, ‘This is her eye!’ And he takes some corn and says, ‘This is her teeth!’ And he takes a sack of plum pudding and gives that and says, ‘This is her stomach!’ I know how this is played!” “Hush, you’ll spoil everything,” some girl said. “The witch came to harm, and this is her arm,” said Mich. “Eeeeeeeeeeee!”

The items were passed and passed, like hot potatoes, around the cirle. Some children screamed, wouldn’t touch them.

Some ran from their chairs to stand in the centre of the cellar until the grisly items had passed.

“Aw, it’s only chicken insides,” scoffed a boy. “Come back, Helen!” Shot from hand to hand, with small scream after scream, the items went down, down, to be followed by another and another.

“The witch cut apart, and this is her heart,” said the husband.

Six or seven items moving at once through the laughing, trembling dark. Louise spoke up. “Marion, don’t be afraid; it’s only play.”

Marion didn’t say anything. “Marion?” asked Louise. “Are you afraid?” Marion didn’t speak. “She’s all right,” said the husband.

“She’s not afraid.”

On and on the passing, the screams, the hilarity. The autumn wind sighed about the house. And he, the husband stood at the head of the dark cellar, intoning the words, handing out the items. “Marion?” asked Louise again, from far across the cellar.

Everybody was talking. “Marion?” called Louise.

Everybody quieted. “Marion, answer me, are you afraid?”

Marion didn’t answer.

The husband stood there, at the bottom of the cellar steps.

Louise called “Marion, are you there?”

No answer.

The room was silent.

“Where’s Marion?” called Louise.

“She was here”, said a boy. “Maybe she’s upstairs.”

“Marion!”

No answer.

It was quiet.

Louise cried out, “Marion, Marion!”

“Turn on the lights,” said one of the adults.

The items stopped passing.

The children and adults sat with the witch’s items in their hands.

“No.” Louise gasped.

There was a scraping of her chair, wildly, in the dark.

“No. Don’t turn on the lights, oh, God, God, God, don’t turn them on, please, don’t turn on the lights, don’t!”

Louise was shrieking now.

The entire cellar froze with the scream.

Nobody moved.

Everyone sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with the smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, “I’ll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can’t find her.”

Then ……

…some idiot turned on the lights.

The Third Expedition by Ray Bradbury (with thoughts on the tunnel of light)

Imagine that you died. And there, as you are leaving your body, you are welcomed with long dead friends, and relatives. They welcome you, and it is a joyous time. They take you by the hand and lead you towards the bright tunnel of light.

Would you go with them?

This is a story that ponders that question.

…

Without a doubt one of the Bradbury stories that has made the biggest impression on me. It’s about strategy.

And horror.

The story is taken from Bradbury’s amazing The Martian Chronicles, a collection of short stories strung together to tell the story of what happens when human beings try to colonize Mars.

In this particular tale, an expedition from Earth to Mars encounters a town that seems eerily, yet comfortingly, familiar to them. It’s even populated by long-lost relatives and family.

But, of course, it doesn’t have a happy ending.

The Third Expedition by Ray Bradbury

The ship came down from space. It came from the stars and

the black velocities, and the shining movements, and the silent

gulfs of space. It was a new ship; it had fire in its body and

men in its metal cells, and it moved with a clean silence,

fiery and warm. In it were seventeen men, induding a captain.

The crowd at the Ohio field had shouted and waved their hands

up into the sunlight, and the rocket had bloomed out great

flowers of heat and color and run away into space on the

_third_ voyage to Mars!

Now it was decelerating with metal efficiency in the

upper Martian atmospheres. It was still a thing of beauty

and strength. It had moved in the midnight waters of space like

a pale sea leviathan; it had passed the ancient moon and thrown

itself onward into one nothingness following another. The men

within it had been battered, thrown about, sickened, made well

again, each in his turn. One man had died, but now the

remaining sixteen, with their eyes clear in their heads and

their faces pressed to the thick glass ports, watched Mars

swing up under them.

“Mars!” cried Navigator Lustig.

“Good old Mars!” said Samuel Hinkston, archaeologist.

“Well,” said Captain John Black.

The rocket landed on a lawn of green grass. Outside, upon

this lawn, stood an iron deer. Further up on the green stood

a tall brown Victorian house, quiet in the sunlight, all

covered with scrolls and rococo, its windows made of blue and

pink and yellow and green colored glass. Upon the porch were

hairy geraniums and an old swing which was hooked into the

porch ceiling and which now swung back and forth, back and

forth, in a little breeze. At the summit of the house was a

cupola with diamond leaded-glass windows and a dunce-cap roof!

Through the front window you could see a piece of music

titled “Beautiful Ohio” sitting on the music rest.

Around the rocket in four directions spread the little

town, green and motionless in the Martian spring. There were

white houses and red brick ones, and tall elm trees blowing in

the wind, and tall maples and horse chestnuts. And church

steeples with golden bells silent in them.

The rocket men looked out and saw this. Then they looked

at one another and then they looked out again. They held to

each other’s elbows, suddenly unable to breathe, it seemed,

Their faces grew pale.

“I’ll be damned,” whispered Lustig, rubbing his face with

his numb fingers. “I’ll be damned.”

“It just can’t be,” said Samuel Hinkston.

“Lord,” said Captain John Black.

There was a call from the chemist. “Sir, the atmosphere

is thin for breathing. But there’s enough oxygen. It’s safe.”

“Then we’ll go out,” said Lustig.

“Hold on,” said Captain John Black. “How do we know what

this is?”

“It’s a small town with thin but breathable air in it,

sir.”

“And it’s a small town the like of Earth towns,” said

Hinkston, the archaeologist “Incredible. It can’t be, but it

_is_.”

Captain John Black looked at him idly. “Do you think that

the civilizations of two planets can progress at the same rate

and evolve in the same way, Hinkston?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, sir.”

Captain Black stood by the port. “Look out there.

The geraniums. A specialized plant. That specific variety has

only been known on Earth for fifty years. Think of the

thousands of years it takes to evolve plants. Then tell me if

it is logical that the Martians should have: one, leaded-glass

windows; two, cupolas; three, porch swings; four, an instrument

that looks like a piano and probably is a piano; and five, if

you look closely through this telescopic lens here, is it

logical that a Martian composer would have published a piece

of music titled, strangely enough, ‘Beautiful Ohio’? All of

which means that we have an Ohio River on Mars!”

“Captain Williams, of course!” cried Hinkston,

“What?”

“Captain Williams and his crew of three men! Or Nathaniel

York and his partner. That would explain it!”

“That would explain absolutely nothing. As far as we’ve

been able to figure, the York expedition exploded the day

it reached Mars, killing York and his partner. As for Williams

and his three men, their ship exploded the second day after

their arrival. At least the pulsations from their radios ceased

at that time, so we figure that if the men were alive after

that they’d have contacted us. And anyway, the York expedition

was only a year ago, while Captain Williams and his men landed

here some time during last August. Theorizing that they are

still alive, could they, even with the help of a brilliant

Martian race, have built such a town as this and _aged_ it in

so short a time? Look at that town out there; why, it’s been

standing here for the last seventy years. Look at the wood on

the porch newel; look at the trees, a century old, all of them!

No, this isn’t York’s work or Williams’. It’s something else.

I don’t like it. And I’m not leaving the ship until I know what

it is.”

“For that matter,” said Lustig, nodding, “Williams and his

men, as well as York, landed on the _opposite_ side of Mars.

We were very careful to land on _this_ side.”

“An excellent point. Just in case a hostile local tribe

of Martians killed off York and Williams, we have instructions

to land in a further region, to forestall a recurrence of such

a disaster. So here we are, as far as we know, in a land

that Williams and York never saw.”

“Damn it,” said Hinkston, “I want to get out into this

town, sir, with your permission. It may be there are similar

thought patterns, civilization graphs on every planet in our

sun system. We may be on the threshold of the greatest

psychological and metaphysical discovery of our age!”

“I’m willing to wait a moment,” said Captain John Black.

“It may be, sir, that we’re looking upon a phenomenon

that, for the first time, would absolutely prove the existence

of God, sir.”

“There are many people who are of good faith without such

proof, Mr. Hinkston.”

“I’m one myself, sir. But certainly a town like this could

not occur without divine intervention. The _detail_. It fills

me with such feelings that I don’t know whether to laugh or

cry.”

“Do neither, then, until we know what we’re up against.”

“Up against?” Lustig broke in. “Against nothing, Captain.

It’s a good, quiet green town, a lot like the old-fashioned one

I was born in. I like the looks of it.”

“When were you born, Lustig?”

“Nineteen-fifty, sir.”

“And you, Hinkston?”

“Nineteen fifty-five, sir. Grinnell, Iowa. And this looks

like home to me.”

“Hinkston, Lustig, I could be either of your fathers. I’m

just eighty years old. Born in 1920 in Illinois, and through

the grace of God and a science that, in the last fifty years,

knows how to make _some_ old men young again, here I am on

Mars, not any more tired than the rest of you, but infinitely

more suspicious. This town out here looks very peaceful and

cool, and so much like Green Bluff, Illinois, that it frightens

me. It’s too _much_ like Green Bluff.” He turned to the

radioman. “Radio Earth. Tell them we’ve landed. That’s all.

Tell them we’ll radio a full report tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Black looked out the rocket port with his face

that should have been the face of a man eighty but seemed like

the face of a man in his fortieth year. “Tell you what we’ll

do, Lustig; you and I and Hinkston’ll look the town over. The

other men’ll stay aboard. If anything happens they can get the

hell out. A loss of three men’s better than a whole ship.

If something bad happens, our crew can warn the next rocket.

That’s Captain Wilder’s rocket, I think, due to be ready to

take off next Christmas. if there’s something hostile about

Mars we certainly want the next rocket to be well armed.”

“So are we. We’ve got a regular arsenal with us.”

“Tell the men to stand by the guns then. Come on,

Lustig, Hinkston.”

The three men walked together down through the levels of

the ship.

It was a beautiful spring day. A robin sat on a blossoming

apple tree and sang continuously. Showers of petal snow sifted

down when the wind touched the green branches, and the blossom

scent drifted upon the air. Somewhere in the town someone

was playing the piano and the music came and went, came and

went, softly, drowsily. The song was “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Somewhere else a phonograph, scratchy and faded, was hissing

out a record of “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’,” sung by Harry

Lauder.

The three men stood outside the ship. They sucked and

gasped at the thin, thin air and moved slowly so as not to

tire themselves.

Now the phonograph record being played was:

“_Oh, give me a June night

The moonlight and you_ . . .”

Lustig began to tremble. Samuel Hinkston did likewise.

The sky was serene and quiet, and somewhere a stream of

water ran through the cool caverns and tree shadings of a

ravine. Somewhere a horse and wagon trotted and rolled by,

bumping.

“Sir,” said Samuel Hinkston, “it must be, it _has_ to be,

that rocket travel to Mars began in the years before the first

World War!”

“No.”

“How else can you explain these houses, the iron deer,

the pianos, the music?” Hinkston took the captain’s elbow

persuasively and looked into the captain’s face. “Say that

there were people in the year 1905 who hated war and got

together with some scientists in secret and built a rocket and

came out here to Mars–”

“No, no, Hinkston.”

“Why not? The world was a different world in 1905; they

could have kept it a secret much more easily.”

“But a complex thing like a rocket, no, you couldn’t keep

it secret.”

“And they came up here to live, and naturally the houses

they built were similar to Earth houses because they brought

the culture with them.”

“And they’ve lived here all these years?” said the

captain.

“In peace and quiet, yes. Maybe they made a few trips,

enough to bring enough people here for one small town, and

then stopped for fear of being discovered. That’s why this town

seems so old-fashioned. I don’t see a thing, myself, older than

the year 1927, do you? Or maybe, sir, rocket travel is older

than we think. Perhaps it started in some part of the world

centuries ago and was kept secret by the small number of men

who came to Mars with only occasional visits to Earth over

the centuries.”

“You make it sound almost reasonable.”

“It has to be. We’ve the proof here before us; all we have

to do is find some people and verify it.”

Their boots were deadened of all sound in the thick green

grass. It smelled from a fresh mowing. In spite of himself,

Captain John Black felt a great peace come over him. It had

been thirty years since he had been in a small town, and the

buzzing of spring bees on the air lulled and quieted him, and

the fresh look of things was a balm to the soul.

They set foot upon the porch. Hollow echoes sounded from

under the boards as they walked to the screen door. Inside they

could see a bead curtain hung across the hall entry, and a

crystal chandelier and a Maxfield Parrish painting framed on

one wall over a comfortable Morris chair. The house smelled

old, and of the attic, and infinitely comfortable. You could

hear the tinkle of ice in a lemonade pitcher. In a distant

kitchen, because of the heat of the day, someone was preparing

a cold lunch. Someone was humming under her breath, high and

sweet.

Captain John Black rang the bell.

Footsteps, dainty and thin, came along the hall, and

a kind-faced lady of some forty years, dressed in a sort of

dress you might expect in the year 1909, peered out at them.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Beg your pardon,” said Captain Black uncertainly. “But

we’re looking for–that is, could you help us–” He stopped.

She looked out at him with dark, wondering eyes.

“If you’re selling something–” she began.

“No, wait!” he cried. “What town is this?”

She looked him up and down. “What do you mean, what town

is it? How could you be in a town and not know the name?”

The captain looked as if he wanted to go sit under a shady

apple tree. “We’re strangers here. We want to know how this

town got here and how you got here.”

“Are you census takers?”

“No.”

“Everyone knows,” she said, “this town was built in 1868.

Is this a game?”

“No, not a game!” cried the captain. “We’re from Earth.”

“Out of the _ground_, do you mean?” she wondered.

“No, we came from the third planet, Earth, in a ship. And

we’ve landed here on the fourth planet, Mars–”

“This,” explained the woman, as if she were addressing

a child, “is Green Bluff, Illinois, on the continent of

America, surrounded by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on a

place called the world, or, sometimes, the Earth. Go away

now. Goodby.”

She trotted down the hall, running her fingers through

the beaded curtains.

The three men looked at one another.

“Let’s knock the screen door in,” said Lustig.

“We can’t do that. This is private property. Good God!”

They went to sit down on the porch step.

“Did it ever strike you, Hinkston, that perhaps we

got ourselves somehow, in some way, off track, and by accident

came back and landed on Earth?”

“How could we have done that?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. Oh God, let me think.”

Hinkston said, “But we checked every mile of the way.

Our chronometers said so many miles. We went past the Moon and

out into space, and here we are. I’m _positive_ we’re on Mars.”

Lustig said, “But suppose, by accident, in space, in time,

we got lost in the dimensions and landed on an Earth that is

thirty or forty years ago.”

“Oh, go away, Lustig!”

Lustig went to the door, rang the bell, and called into

the cool dim rooms: “What year is this?”

“Nineteen twenty-six, of course,” said the lady, sitting

in a rocking chair, taking a sip of her lemonade.

“Did you hear that?” Lustig turned wildly to the others.

“Nineteen twenty-six! We _have_ gone back in time! This _is_

Earth!”

Lustig sat down, and the three men let the wonder and

terror of the thought afflict them. Their hands stirred

fitfully on their knees. The captain said, “I didn’t ask for

a thing like this. It scares the hell out of me. How can a

thing like this happen? I wish we’d brought Einstein with us.”

“Will anyone in this town believe us?” said Hinkston. “Are

we playing with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn’t

we just take off and go home?”

“No. Not until we try another house.”

They walked three houses down to a little white cottage

under an oak tree. “I like to be as logical as I can be,” said

the captain. “And I don’t believe we’ve put our finger on it

yet. Suppose, Hinkston, as you originally suggested, that

rocket travel occurred years ago? And when the Earth people

lived here a number of years they began to get homesick for

Earth. First a mild neurosis about it, then a full-fledged

psychosis. Then threatened insanity. What would you do as

a psychiatrist if faced with such a problem?”

Hinkston thought “Well, I think I’d rearrange the

civilization on Mars so it resembled Earth more and more each

day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every

road, and every lake, and even an ocean, I’d do so. Then by

some vast crowd hypnosis I’d convince everyone in a town this

size that this really _was_ Earth, not Mars at all.”

“Good enough, Hinkston. I think we’re on the right track

now. That woman in that house back there just _thinks_ she’s

living on Earth. It protects her sanity. She and all the others

in this town are the patients of the greatest experiment

in migration and hypnosis you will ever lay eyes on in your

life.”

“That’s _it_, sir!” cried Lustig.

“Right!” said Hinkston.

“Well.” The captain sighed. “Now we’ve got somewhere. I

feel better. It’s all a bit more logical. That talk about time

and going back and forth and traveling through time turns

my stomach upside down. But _this_ way–” The captain smiled.

“Well, well, it looks as if we’ll be fairly popular here.”

“Or will we?” said Lustig. “After all, like the Pilgrims,

these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won’t be

too happy to see us. Maybe they’ll try to drive us out or kill

us.”

“We have superior weapons. This next house now. Up we go.”

But they had hardly crossed the lawn when Lustig stopped

and looked off across the town, down the quiet, dreaming

afternoon street. “Sir,” he said.

“What is it, Lustig?”

“Oh, sir, _sir_, what I _see_–” said Lustig, and he began

to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and shaking, and his face

was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if at

any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked

down the street and began to run, stumbling awkwardly, falling,

picking himself up, and running on. “Look, look!”

“Don’t let him get away!” The captain broke into a run.

Now Lustig was running swiftly, shouting. He turned into

a yard halfway down the shady street and leaped up upon the

porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof.

He was beating at the door, hollering and crying, when

Hinkston and the captain ran up behind him. They were all

gasping and wheezing, exhausted from their run in the thin

air. “Grandma! Grandpa!” cried Lustig.

Two old people stood in the doorway.

“David!” their voices piped, and they rushed out to

embrace and pat him on the back and move around him. “David,

oh, David, it’s been so many years! How you’ve grown, boy; how

big you are, boy. Oh, David boy, how are you?”

“Grandma, Grandpa!” sobbed David Lustig. “You look fine,

fine!” He held them, turned them, kissed them, hugged them,

cried on them, held them out again, blinking at the little

old people. The sun was in the sky, the wind blew, the grass

was green, the screen door stood wide.

“Come in, boy, come in. There’s iced tea for you, fresh,

lots of it!”

“I’ve got friends here.” Lustig turned and waved at the

captain and Hinkston frantically, laughing. “Captain, come on

up.”

“Howdy,” said the old people. “Come in. Any friends of

David’s are our friends too. Don’t stand there!”

In the living room of the old house it was cool, and

a grandfather clock ticked high and long and bronzed in one

corner. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls

filled with books and a rug cut in a thick rose pattern, and

iced tea in the hand, sweating, and cool on the thirsty tongue.

“Here’s to our health.” Grandma tipped her glass to

her porcelain teeth.

“How long you been here, Grandma?” said Lustig.

“Ever since we died,” she said tartly.

“Ever since you what?” Captain John Black set down his

glass.

“Oh yes.” Lustig nodded. “They’ve been dead thirty years.”

“And you sit there calmly!” shouted the captain.

“Tush.” The old woman winked glitteringly. “Who are you

to question what happens? Here we are. What’s life, anyway? Who

does what for why and where? All we know is here we are, alive

again, and no questions asked. A second chance.” She toddled

over and held out her thin wrist. “Feel.” The captain felt.

“Solid, ain’t it?” she asked. He nodded. “Well, then,” she

said triumphantly, “why go around questioning?”

“Well,” said the captain, “it’s simply that we never

thought we’d find a thing like this on Mars.”

“And now you’ve found it. I dare say there’s lots on every

planet that’ll show you God’s infinite ways.”

“Is this Heaven?” asked Hinkston.

“Nonsense, no. It’s a world and we get a second chance.

Nobody told us why. But then nobody told us why we were on

Earth, either. That other Earth, I mean. The one you came from.

How do we know there wasn’t _another_ before _that_ one?”

“A good question,” said the captain.

Lustig kept smiling at his grandparents. “Gosh, it’s good

to see you. Gosh, it’s good.”

The captain stood up and slapped his hand on his leg in

a casual fashion. “We’ve got to be going. Thank you for the

drinks.”

“You’ll be back, of course,” said the old people. “For

supper tonight?”

“We’ll try to make it, thanks. There’s so much to be done.

My men are waiting for me back at the rocket and–”

He stopped. He looked toward the door, startled.

Far away in the sunlight there was a sound of voices,

a shouting and a great hello.

“What’s that?” asked Hinkston,

“We’ll soon find out.” And Captain John Black was out the

front door abruptly, running across the green lawn into the

street of the Martian town.

He stood looking at the rocket. The ports were open and

his crew was streaming out, waving their hands. A crowd of

people had gathered, and in and through and among these people

the members of the crew were hurrying, talking, laughing,

shaking hands. People did little dances. People swarmed. The

rocket lay empty and abandoned.

A brass band exploded in the sunlight, flinging off a gay

tune from upraised tubas and trumpets. There was a bang of

drums and a shrill of fifes. Little girls with golden hair

jumped up and down. Little boys shouted, “Hooray!” Fat men

passed around ten-cent cigars. The town mayor made a speech.

Then each member of the crew, with a mother on one arm, a

father or sister on the other, was spirited off down the street

into little cottages or big mansions.

“Stop!” cried Captain Black.

The doors slammed shut.

The heat rose in the clear spring sky, and all was silent.

The brass band banged off around a corner, leaving the rocket

to shine and dazzle alone in the sunlight

“Abandoned!” said the captain. “They abandoned the ship,

they did! I’ll have their skins, by God! They had orders!”

“Sir,” said Lustig, “don’t be too hard on them. Those were

all old relatives and friends.”

“That’s no exuse!”

“Think how they felt, Captain, seeing familiar faces

outside the ship!”

“They had their orders, damn it!”

“But how would you have felt, Captain?”

“I would have obeyed orders–” The captain’s mouth

remained open.

Striding along the sidewalk under the Martian sun, tall,

smiling, eyes amazingly clear and blue, came a young man of

some twenty-six years. “John!” the man called out, and broke

into a trot.

“What?” Captain John Black swayed.

“John, you old son of a bitch!”

The man ran up and gripped his hand and slapped him on

the back.

“It’s you,” said Captain Black.

“Of course, who’d you _think_ it was?”

“Edward!” The captain appealed now to Lustig and Hinkston,

holding the stranger’s hand. “This is my brother Edward. Ed,

meet my men, Lustig, Hinkston! My brother!”

They tugged at each other’s hands and arms and then

finally embraced.

“Ed!”

“John, you bum, you!”

“You’re looking fine, Ed, but, Ed, what _is_ this? You

haven’t changed over the years. You died, I remember, when you

were twenty-six and I was nineteen. Good God, so many years

ago, and here you are and, Lord, what goes on?”

“Mom’s waiting,” said Edward Black, grinning.

“Mom?”

“And Dad too.”

“Dad?” The captain almost fell as if he had been hit by

a mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and without co.ordination.

“Mom and Dad alive? Where?”

“At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue.”

“The old house.” The captain stared in delighted amaze.

“Did you hear that, Lustig, Hinkston?”

Hinkston was gone. He had seen his own house down the

street and was running for it. Lustig was laughing. “You

see, Captain, what happened to everyone on the rocket? They

couldn’t help themselves.”

“Yes. Yes.” The captain shut his eyes. “When I open my

eyes you’ll be gone.” He blinked. “You’re still there. God, Ed,

but you look _fine!_”

“Come on, lunch’s waiting. I told Mom.”

Lustig said, “Sir, I’ll be with my grandfolks if you need

me.”

“What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then.”

Edward seized his arm and marched him. “There’s the

house. Remember it?”

“Hell! Bet I can beat you to the front porch!”

They ran. The trees roared over Captain Black’s head; the

earth roared under his feet. He saw the golden figure of Edward

Black pull ahead of him in the amazing dream of reality. He saw

the house rush forward, the screen door swing wide. “Beat you!”

cried Edward. “I’m an old man,” panted the captain, “and you’re

still young. But then, you _always_ beat me, I remember!”

In the doorway, Mom, pink, plump, and bright. Behind

her, pepper-gray, Dad, his pipe in his hand.

“Mom, Dad!”

He ran up the steps like a child to meet them.

It was a fine long afternoon. They finished a late lunch

and they sat in the parlor and he told them all about his

rocket and they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just

the same and Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted

it thoughtfully in his old fashion. There was a big turkey

dinner at night and time flowing on. When the drumsticks were

sucked clean and lay brittle upon the plates, the captain

leaned back and exhaled his deep satisfaction, Night was in all

the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of

pink light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down

the street came sounds of music, pianos playing, doors slammng.

Mom put a record on the victrola, and she and Captain John

Black had a dance. She was wearing the same perfume he

remembered from the summer when she and Dad had been killed in

the train accident. She was very real in his arms as they

danced lightly to the music. “It’s not every day,” she said,

“you get a second chance to live.”

“I’ll wake in the morning,” said the captain. “And I’ll be

in my rocket, in space, and all this will be gone.”

“No, don’t think that,” she cried softly. “Don’t question.

God’s good to us. Let’s be happy.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

The record ended in a circular hissing.

“You’re tired, Son.” Dad pointed with his pipe. “Your

old bedroom’s waiting for you, brass bed and all.”

“But I should report my men in.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, I don’t know. No reason, I guess. No, none at

all. They’re all eating or in bed. A good night’s sleep won’t

hurt them.”

“Good night, Son.” Mom kissed his cheek. “It’s good to

have you home.”

“It’s good to _be_ home.”

He left the land of cigar smoke and perfume and books

and gentle light and ascended the stairs, talking, talking

with Edward. Edward pushed a door open, and there was the

yellow brass bed and the old semaphore banners from college and

a very musty raccoon coat which he stroked with muted

affection. “It’s too much,” said the captain. “I’m numb and

I’m tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I’d been

out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an

umbrella or a coat. I’m soaked to the skin with emotion.”

Edward slapped wide the snowy linens and flounced the

pillows. He slid the window up and let the night-blooming

jasmine float in. There was moonlight and the sound of distant

dancing and whispering.

“So this is Mars,” said the captain, undressing.

“This is it.” Edward undressed in idle, leisurely moves,

drawing his shirt off over his head, revealing golden shoulders

and the good muscular neck.

The lights were out; they were in bed, side by side, as in

the days how many decades ago? The captain lolled and was

flourished by the scent of jasmine pushing the lace curtains

out upon the dark air of the room. Among the trees, upon a

lawn, someone had cranked up a portable phonograph and now it

was playing softly, “Always.”

The thought of Marilyn came to his mind.

“Is Marilyn here?”

His brother, lying straight out in the moonlight from

the window, waited and then said, “Yes. She’s out of town.

But she’ll be here in the morning.”

The captain shut his eyes. “I want to see Marilyn very

much.”

The room was square and quiet except for their breathing.

“Good night, Ed.”

A pause. “Good night, John.”

He lay peacefully, letting his thoughts float. For the

first time the stress of the day was moved aside; he could

think logically now, It had all been emotion. The bands

playing, the familiar faces. But now . . .

How? he wondered. How was all this made? And why? For

what purpose? Out of the goodness of some divine intervention?

Was God, then, really that thoughtful of his children? How and

why and what for?

He considered the various theories advanced in the first

heat of the afternoon by Hinkston and Lustig. He let all kinds

of new theories drop in lazy pebbles down through his mind,

turning, throwing out dull flashes of light. Mom. Dad. Edward.

Mars. Earth. Mars. Martians.

Who had lived here a thousand years ago on Mars? Martians?

Or had this always been the way it was today?

Martians. He repeated the word idly, inwardly.

He laughed out loud almost. He had the most ridiculous

theory quite suddenly. It gave him a kind of chill. It was

really nothing to consider, of course. Highly improbable.

Silly. Forget it. Ridiculous.

But, he thought, just _suppose_ . . . Just suppose, now,

that there were Martians living on Mars and they saw our ship

coming and saw us inside our ship and hated us, Suppose, now,

just for the hell of it, that they wanted to destroy us,

as invaders, as unwanted ones, and they wanted to do it in a

very clever way, so that we would be taken off guard. Well,

what would the best weapon be that a Martian could use against

Earth Men with atomic weapons?

The answer was interesting. Telepathy, hypnosis, memory,

and imagination.

Suppose all of these houses aren’t real at all, this bed

not real, but only figments of my own imagination, given

substance by telepathy and hypnosis through the Martians,

thought Captain John Black. Suppose these houses are really

some _other_ shape, a Martian shape, but, by playing on my

desires and wants, these Martians have made this seem like my

old home town, my old house, to lull me out of my suspicions.

What better way to fool a man, using his own mother and father

as bait?

And this town, so old, from the year 1926, long before

_any_ of my men were born. From a year when I was six years old

and there _were_ records of Harry Lauder, and Maxfield Parrish

paintings _still_ hanging, and bead curtains, and “Beautiful

Ohio,” and turn-of-the-century architecture. What if the

Martians took the memories of a town _exclusively_ from _my_

mind? They say childhood memories are the clearest. And after

they built the town from my mind, they populated it with

the most-loved people from all the minds of the people on

the rocket!

And suppose those two people in the next room, asleep, are

not my mother and father at all, But two Martians, incredibly

brilliant, with the ability to keep me under this dreaming

hypnosis all of the time.

And that brass band today? What a startlingly wonderful

plan it would be. First, fool Lustig, then Hinkston, then

gather a crowd; and all the men in the rocket, seeing mothers,

aunts, uncles, sweethearts, dead ten, twenty wears ago,

naturally, disregarding orders, rush out and abandon ship. What

more natural? What more unsuspecting? What more simple? A

man doesn’t ask too many questions when his mother is soddenly

brought back to life; he’s much too happy. And here we all

are tonight, in various houses, in various beds, with no

weapons to protect us, and the rocket lies in the moonlight,

empty. And wouldn’t it be horrible and terrifying to discover

that all of this was part of some great clever plan by the

Martians to divide and conquer us, and kill us? Sometime during

the night, perhaps, my brother here on this bed will change

form, melt, shift, and become another thing, a terrible thing,

a Martian. It would be very simple for him just to turn over in

bed and put a knife into my heart. And in all those other

houses down the street, a dozen other brothers or fathers

suddenly melting away and taking knives and doing things to

the unsuspecting, sleeping men of Earth. . . .

His hands were shaking under the covers. His body was

cold. Suddenly it was not a theory. Suddenly he was very

afraid.

He lifted himself in bed and listened. The night was very

quiet The music had stopped. The wind had died. His brother

lay sleeping beside him.

Carefully he lifted the covers, rolled them back. He

slipped from bed and was walking softly across the room when

his brother’s voice said, “Where are you going?”

“What?”

His brother’s voice was quite cold. “I said, where do you

think you’re going?”

“For a drink of water.”

“But you’re not thirsty.”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

Captain John Black broke and ran across the room. He

screamed. He screamed twice.

He never reached the door.

In the morning the brass band played a mournful dirge.

From every house in the street came little solemn processions

bearing long boxes, and along the sun-filled street, weeping,

came the grandmas and mothers and sisters and brothers and

uncles and fathers, walking to the churchyard, where there were

new holes freshly dug and new tombstones installed. Sixteen

holes in all, and sixteen tombstones.

The mayor made a little sad speech, his face sometimes

looking like the mayor, sometimes looking like something else.

Mother and Father Black were there, with Brother Edward,

and they cried, their faces melting now from a familiar face

into something else.

Grandpa and Grandma Lustig were there, weeping, their

faces shifting like wax, shimmering as all things shimmer on a

hot day.

The coffins were lowered. Someone murmured about “the

unexpected and sudden deaths of sixteen fine men during the

night–”

Earth pounded down on the coffin lids.

The brass band, playing “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,”

marched and slammed back into town, and everyone took the day

off.

The End

Conclusion

And this is only the beginning.

Who knows what greatness, and strange mysteries lie in the future ahead of you?

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my Ray Bradbury Index here…

Ray Bradbury

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The Concrete Mixer by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

The following in one of Ray Bradbury’s short stories. It is titled “The Cement Mixer”. “The Concrete Mixer” is one of his earlier stories. It was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories in April 1949. In the story, a warlike race of Martians plans their glorious conquest of Earth but one of them, Ettil Vrye, foresaw defeat. He was given his choice of joining the Legion of War —or burning his beloved instead!

The Concrete Mixer

HE LISTENED to the dry-grass rustle of the old witches’ voices beneath his open
window:
‘Ettil, the coward! Ettil, the refuser! Ettil, who will not wage the glorious
war of Mars against Earth!’
‘Speak on, witches!’ he cried.
The voices dropped to a murmur like that of water in the long canals under the
Martian sky.
‘Ettil, the father of a son who must grow up in the shadow of this horrid
knowledge!’ said the old wrinkled women. They knocked their sly-eyed heads
gently together. ‘Shame, shame!’
His wife was crying on the other side of the room. Her tears were as rain,
numerous and cool on the tiles. ‘Oh, Ettil, how can you think this way?’
Ettil laid aside his metal book which, at his beckoning, had been singing him a
story all morning from its thin golden-wired frame.
‘I’ve tried to explain,’ he said. ‘This is a foolish thing, Mars invading Earth.
We’ll be destroyed, utterly.’

…

Outside, a banging, crashing boom, a surge of brass, a drum, a cry, marching
feet, pennants and songs. Through the stone sheets the army, fire weapons to
shoulder, stamped. Children skipped after. Old women waved dirty flags.
‘I shall remain on Mars and read a book,’ said Ettil. A blunt knock on the door.
Tylla answered. Father-in-law stormed in. ‘What’s this I hear about my
son-in-law? A traitor?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘You’re not fighting in the Martian Army?’
‘No, Father.’
‘Gods!’ The old father turned very red. ‘A plague on your name! You’ll be shot.’
‘Shoot me, then, and have it over.’
‘Who ever heard of a Martian not invading? Who!’
‘Nobody. It is, I admit, quite incredible.’
‘Incredible,’ husked the witch voices under the window.
‘Father, can’t you reason with him?’ demanded Tylla.
‘Reason with a dung heap,’ cried Father, eyes blazing. He came and stood over
Ettil. ‘Bands playing, a fine day, women weeping, children jumping, everything
right, men marching bravely, and you sit here! Oh, shame!’
‘Shame,’ sobbed the faraway voices in the hedge.
‘Get the devil out of my house with your inane chatter,’ said Ettil, exploding.
‘Take your medals and your drums and run!’

…

He shoved Father-in-law past a screaming wife, only to have the door thrown wide at this moment, as a military detail entered.
A voice shouted, ‘Ettil Vrye?’
‘Yes!’
‘You are under arrest!’

…

‘Good-by, my dear wife. I am off to the wars with these fools!’ shouted Ettil,
dragged through the door by the men in bronze mesh.
‘Good-by, good-by,’ said the town witches, fading away. . . .

…

The cell was neat and clean. Without a book, Ettil was nervous. He gripped the
bars and watched the rockets shoot up into the night air. The stars were cold
and numerous; they seemed to scatter when every rocket blasted up among them.
‘Fools,’ whispered Ettil. ‘Fools!’

…

The cell door opened. One man with a kind of vehicle entered, full of books;
books here, there, everywhere in the chambers of the vehicle. Behind him the
Military Assignor loomed.
‘Ettil Vrye, we want to know why you had these illegal Earth books in your
house. These copies of Wonder Stories, Scientific Tales, Fantastic Stories.
Explain.’ The man gripped Ettil’s wrist.

…

Ettil shook him free. ‘If you’re going to shoot me, shoot me. That literature,
from Earth, is the very reason why I won’t try to invade them. It’s the reason
why your invasion will fail.’
‘How so?’ The assignor scowled and turned to the yellowed magazines.
‘Pick any copy,’ said Ettil. ‘Any one at all. Nine out of ten stories in the
years 1929, ’30 to ’50, Earth calendar, have every Martian invasion successfully
invading Earth.’
‘Ah!’ The assignor smiled, nodded.

…

‘And then,’ said Ettil, ‘failing.’
‘That’s treason! Owning such literature!’
‘So be it, if you wish. But let me draw a few conclusions. Invariably, each
invasion is thwarted by a young man, usually lean, usually Irish, usually alone,
named Mick or Rick or Jick or Bannon, who destroys the Martians.’
‘You don’t believe that!’
‘No, I don’t believe Earthmen can actually do that’no. But they have a
background, understand, Assignor, of generations of children reading just such
fiction, absorbing it. They have nothing but a literature of invasions
successfully thwarted. Can you say the same for Martian literature?’
‘Well”’
‘No.’
‘I guess not.’

…

‘You know not. We never wrote stories of such a fantastic nature. Now we rebel,
we attack, and we shall die.’
‘I don’t see your reasoning on that. Where does this tie in with the magazine
stories?’
‘Morale. A big thing. The Earthmen know they can’t fail. It is in them like
blood beating in their veins. They cannot fail. They will repel each invasion,
no matter how well organized. Their youth of reading just such fiction as this
has given them a faith we cannot equal. We Martians? We are uncertain; we know that we might fail. Our morale is low, in spite of the banged drums and tooted horns.’
‘I won’t listen to this treason,’ cried the assignor. ‘This fiction will be burned, as you will be, within the next ten minutes. You have a choice, Ettil Vrye. Join the Legion of War, or burn.’

…

‘It is a choice of deaths. I choose to burn.’

…

‘Men!’
He was hustled out into the courtyard. There he saw his carefully hoarded
reading matter set to the torch. A special pit was prepared, with oil five feet
deep in it. This, with a great thunder, was set afire. Into this, in a minute,
he would be pushed.
On the far side of the courtyard, in shadow, he noticed the solemn figure of his
son standing alone, his great yellow eyes luminous with sorrow and fear. He did
not put out his hand or speak, but only looked at his father like some dying
animal, a wordless animal seeking rescue.
Ettil looked at the flaming pit. He felt the rough hands seize him, strip him,
push him forward to the hot perimeter of death. Only then did Ettil swallow and
cry out, ‘Wait!’
The assignor’s face, bright with the orange fire, pushed forward in the
trembling air. ‘What is it?’

…

‘I will join the Legion of War,’ replied Ettil.
‘Good! Release him!’
The hands fell away.
As he turned he saw his son standing far across the court, waiting. His son was
not smiling, only waiting.

…

In the sky a bronze rocket leaped across the stars, ablaze. . . .

…

‘And now we bid good-by to these stalwart warriors,’ said the assignor. The band
thumped and the wind blew a fine sweet rain of tears gently upon the sweating
army. The children cavorted. In the chaos Ettil saw his wife weeping with pride,
his son solemn and silent at her side.
They marched into the ship, everybody laughing and brave. They buckled
themselves into their spiderwebs. All through the tense ship the spiderwebs were
filled with lounging, lazy men. They chewed on bits of food and waited. A great
lid slammed shut. A valve hissed.
‘Off to Earth and destruction,’ whispered Ettil.
‘What?’ asked someone.
‘Off to glorious victory,’ said Ettil, grimacing.
The rocket jumped.

…

Space, thought Ettil. Here we are banging across black inks and pink lights of
space in a brass kettle. Here we are, a celebratory rocket heaved out to fill
the Earthmen’s eyes with fear flames as they look up to the sky. What is it
like, being far, far away from your home, your wife, your child, here and now?
He tried to analyze his trembling. It was like tying your most secret inward
working organs to Mars and then jumping out a million miles. Your heart was
still on Mars, pumping, glowing. Your brain was still on Mars, thinking,
crenulated, like an abandoned torch. Your stomach was still on Mars, somnolent,
trying to digest the final dinner. Your lungs were still in the cool blue wine
air of Mars, a soft folded bellows screaming for release, one part of you
longing for the rest.
For here you were, a meshless, cogless automaton, a body upon which officials
had performed clinical autopsy and left all of you that counted back upon the
empty seas and strewn over the darkened hills. Here you were, bottle-empty,
fireless, chill, with only your hands to give death to Earthmen. A pair of hands
is all you are now, he thought in cold remoteness.
Here you lie in the tremendous web. Others are about you, but they are
whole’whole hearts and bodies. But all of you that lives is back there walking
the desolate seas in evening winds. This thing here, this cold clay thing, is
already dead.

…

‘Attack stations, attack stations, attack!’
‘Ready, ready, ready!’
‘Up!’
‘Out of the webs, quick!’

…

Ettil moved. Somewhere before him his two cold hands moved.
How swift it has all been, he thought. A year ago one Earth rocket reached Mars.
Our scientists, with their incredible telepathic ability, copied it; our
workers, with their incredible plants, reproduced it a hundredfold. No other
Earth ship has reached Mars since then, and yet we know their language
perfectly, all of us. We know their culture, their logic. And we shall pay the
price of our brilliance.
‘Guns on the ready!’
‘Right!’
‘Sights!’
‘Reading by miles?’
‘Ten thousand!’
‘Attack!’

…

A humming silence. A silence of insects throbbing in the walls of the rocket.
The insect singing of tiny bobbins and levers and whirls of wheels. Silence of
waiting men. Silence of glands emitting the slow steady pulse of sweat under
arm, on brow, under staring pale eyes!
‘Wait! Ready!’
Ettil hung onto his sanity with his fingernails, hung hard and long.
Silence, silence, silence. Waiting.
Teeee-e-ee!
‘What’s that?’
‘Earth radio!’
‘Cut them in!’
‘They’re trying to reach us, call us. Cut them in!’
Eee-e-e!
‘Here they are! Listen!’

…

‘Calling Martian invasion fleet!’
The listening silence, the insect hum pulling back to let the sharp Earth voice
crack in upon the rooms of waiting men.
‘This is Earth calling. This is William Sommers, president of the Association of
United American Producers!’
Ettil held tight to his station, bent forward, eyes shut.
‘Welcome to Earth.’
‘What?’ the men in the rocket roared. ‘What did he say?’
‘Yes, welcome to Earth.’
‘It’s a trick!’

…

Ettil shivered, opened his eyes to stare in bewilderment at the unseen voice
from the ceiling source.
‘Welcome! Welcome to green, industrial Earth!’ declared the friendly voice.
‘With open arms we welcome you, to turn a bloody invasion into a time of
friendships that will last through all of Time.’
‘A trick!’
‘Hush, listen!’
‘Many years ago we of Earth renounced war, destroyed our atom bombs. Now,
unprepared as we are, there is nothing for us but to welcome you. The planet is
yours. We ask only mercy from you good and merciful invaders.’

…

‘It can’t be true!’ a voice whispered.
‘It must be a trick!’
‘Land and be welcomed, all of you,’ said Mr. William Sommers of Earth. ‘Land
anywhere. Earth is yours; we are all brothers!’
Ettil began to laugh. Everyone in the room turned to see him. The other Martians
blinked. ‘He’s gone mad!’
He did not stop laughing until they hit him.

…

The tiny fat man in the center of the hot rocket tarmac at Green Town,
California, jerked out a clean white handkerchief and touched it to his wet
brow. He squinted blindly from the fresh plank platform at the fifty thousand
people restrained behind a fence of policemen, arm to arm. Everybody looked at
the sky.
‘There they are!’
A gasp.
‘No, just sea gulls!’
A disappointed grumble.
‘I’m beginning to think it would have been better to have declared war on them,’
whispered the mayor. ‘Then we could all go home.’
‘Sh-h!’ said his wife.
‘There!’ The crowd roared.
Out of the sun came the Martian rockets.
‘Everybody ready?’ The mayor glanced nervously about.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Miss California 1965.
‘Yes,’ said Miss America 1940, who had come rushing up at the last minute as a
substitute for Miss America 1966, who was ill at home.
‘Yes siree,’ said Mr. Biggest Grapefruit in San Fernando Valley 1956, eagerly.
‘Ready, band?’
The band poised its brass like so many guns.
‘Ready!’
The rockets landed. ‘Go!’
The band played ‘California, Here I Come’ ten times. From noon until one o’clock
the mayor made a speech, shaking his hands in the direction of the silent,
apprehensive rockets.

…

At one-fifteen the seals of the rockets opened
The band played ‘Oh, You Golden State’ three times.
Ettil and fifty other Martians leaped out, guns at the ready.
The mayor ran forward with the key to Earth in his hands.
The band played ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,’ and a full chorus of singers
imported from Long Beach sang different words to it, something about ‘Martians
Are Coming to Town.’
Seeing no weapons about, the Martians relaxed, but kept their guns out.
From one-thirty until two-fifteen the mayor made the same speech over for the
benefit of the Martians.
At two-thirty Miss America of 1940 volunteered to kiss all the Martians if they
lined up.
At two-thirty and ten seconds the band played ‘How Do You Do, Everybody,’ to
cover up the confusion caused by Miss America’s suggestion.
At two thirty-five Mr. Biggest Grapefruit presented the Martians with a two-ton
truck full of grapefruit.
At two thirty-seven the mayor gave them all free passes to the Elite and
Majestic theaters, combining this gesture with another speech which lasted until
after three.
The band played, and the fifty thousand people sang, ‘For They Are Jolly Good
Fellows.’
It was over at four o’clock.

…

Ettil sat down in the shadow of the rocket, two of his fellows with him. ‘So
this is Earth!’
‘I say kill the filthy rats,’ said one Martian. ‘I don’t trust them. They’re
sneaky. What’s their motive for treating us this way?’ He held up a box of
something that rustled. ‘What’s this stuff they gave me? A sample, they said.’
He read the label. BLIX, the new sudsy soap.
The crowd had drifted about, was mingling with the Martians like a carnival
throng. Everywhere was the buzzing murmur of people fingering the rockets,
asking questions.

…

Ettil was cold. He was beginning to tremble even more now. ‘Don’t you feel it?’
he whispered. ‘The tenseness, the evilness of all this. Something’s going to
happen to us. They have some plan. Something subtle and horrible. They’re going
to do something to us’I know.’
‘I say kill every one of them!’
‘How can you kill people who call you ‘pal’ and ‘buddy’?’ asked another Martian.
Ettil shook his head. ‘They’re sincere. And yet I feel as if we were in a big
acid vat melting away, away. I’m frightened.’ He put his mind out to touch among
the crowd. ‘Yes, they’re really friendly, hail-fellows-well-met (one of their
terms). One huge mass of common men, loving dogs and cats and Martians equally.
And yet’ and yet”’
The band played ‘Roll Out the Barrel.’ Free beer was being distributed through
the courtesy of Hagenback Beer, Fresno, California.

…

The sickness came.
The men poured out fountains of slush from their mouths. The sound of sickness
filled the land.
Gagging, Ettil sat beneath a sycamore tree. ‘A plot, a plot’a horrible plot,’ he
groaned, holding his stomach.
‘What did you eat?’ The assignor stood over him.
‘Something that they called popcorn,’ groaned Ettil.
‘And?’
‘And some sort of long meat on a bun, and some yellow liquid in an iced vat, and
some sort of fish and something called pastrami,’ sighed Ettil, eyelids
flickering.
The moans of the Martian invaders sounded all about.
‘Kill the plotting snakes!’ somebody cried weakly.
‘Hold on,’ said the assignor. ‘It’s merely hospitality. They overdid it. Up on
your feet now, men. Into the town. We’ve got to place small garrisons of men
about to make sure all is well. Other ships are landing in other cities. We’ve
our job to do here.’
The men gained their feet and stood blinking stupidly about.
‘Forward, march!’
One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! . . .

…

The white stores of the little town lay dreaming in shimmering heat. Heat
emanated from everything’poles, concrete, metal, awnings, roofs, tar
paper’everything.
The sound of Martian feet sounded on the asphalt.
‘Careful, men!’ whispered the assignor. They walked past a beauty shop.
From inside, a furtive giggle. ‘Look!’
A coppery head bobbed and vanished like a doll in the window. A blue eye glinted
and winked at a keyhole.
‘It’s a plot,’ whispered Ettil. ‘A plot, I tell you!’
The odors of perfume were fanned out on the summer air by the whirling vents of
the grottoes where the women hid like undersea creatures, under electric cones,
their hair curled into wild whorls and peaks, their eyes shrewd and glassy,
animal and sly, their mouths painted a neon red. Fans were whirring, the
perfumed wind issuing upon the stillness, moving among green trees, creeping
among the amazed Martians.
‘For God’s sake!’ screamed Ettil, his nerves suddenly breaking loose. ‘Let’s get
in our rockets’go home! They’ll get us! Those horrid things in there. See them?
Those evil undersea things, those women in their cool little caverns of
artificial rock!’
‘Shut up!’
Look at them in there, he thought, drifting their dresses like cool green gills
over their pillar legs. He shouted.
‘Someone shut his mouth!’
‘They’ll rush out on us, hurling chocolate boxes and copies of Kleig Love and
Holly Pick-ture, shrieking with their red greasy mouths! Inundate us with
banality, destroy our sensibilities! Look at them, being electrocuted by
devices, their voices like hums and chants and murmurs! Do you dare go in
there?’
‘Why not?’ asked the other Martians.
‘They’ll fry you, bleach you, change you! Crack you, flake you away until you’re
nothing but a husband, a working man, the one with the money who pays so they
can come sit in there devouring their evil chocolates! Do you think you could
control them?’
‘Yes, by the gods!’
From a distance a voice drifted, a high and shrill voice, a woman’s voice
saying, ‘Ain’t that middle one there cute?’
‘Martians ain’t so bad after all. Gee, they’re just men,’ said another, fading.
‘Hey, there. Yoo-hoo! Martians! Hey!’
Yelling, Ettil ran. . . .

…

He sat in a park and trembled steadily. He remembered what he had seen. Looking up at the dark night sky, he felt so far from home, so deserted. Even now, as he sat among the still trees, in the distance he could see Martian warriors walking the streets with the Earth women, vanishing into the phantom darknesses of the little emotion palaces to hear the ghastly sounds of white things moving on gray screens, with little frizz-haired women beside them, wads of gelatinous gum working in their jaws, other wads under the seats, hardening with the fossil imprints of the women’s tiny cat teeth forever imbedded therein. The cave of winds’the cinema.
‘Hello.’
He jerked his head in terror.
A woman sat on the bench beside him, chewing gum lazily. ‘Don’t run off; I don’t
bite,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Like to go to the pictures?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Aw, come on,’ she said. ‘Everybody else is.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Is that all you do in this world?’
‘All? Ain’t that enough?’ Her blue eyes widened suspiciously. ‘What you want me
to do’sit home, read a book? Ha, ha! That’s rich.’

…

Ettil stared at her a moment before asking a question.
‘Do you do anything else?’ he asked.
‘Ride in cars. You got a car? You oughta get you a big new convertible Podler
Six. Gee, they’re fancy! Any man with a Podler Six can go out with any gal, you
bet!’ she said, blinking at him. ‘I bet you got all kinds of money’you come from
Mars and all. I bet if you really wanted you could get a Podler Six and travel
everywhere.’
‘To the show maybe?’
‘What’s wrong with ‘at?’
‘Nothing’ nothing.’

…

‘You know what you talk like, mister?’ she said. ‘A Communist! Yes, sir, that’s
the kinda talk nobody stands for, by gosh. Nothing wrong with our little old
system. We was good enough to let you Martians invade, and we never raised even our bitty finger, did we?’
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to understand,’ said Ettil. ‘Why did you let us?’
”Cause we’re bighearted, mister; that’s why! Just remember that, bighearted.’
She walked off to look for someone else.

…

Gathering courage to himself, Ettil began to write a letter to his wife, moving
the pen carefully over the paper on his knee.
‘Dear Tylla”’
But again he was interrupted. A small-little-girl-of-an-old-woman, with a pale
round wrinkled little face, shook her tambourine in front of his nose, forcing
him to glance up.
‘Brother,’ she cried, eyes blazing. ‘Have you been saved?’
‘Am I in danger?’ Ettil dropped his pen, jumping.
‘Terrible danger!’ she wailed, clanking her tambourine, gazing at the sky. ‘You
need to be saved, brother, in the worst way!’
‘I’m inclined to agree,’ he said, trembling.
‘We saved lots already today. I saved three myself, of you Mars people. Ain’t
that nice?’ She grinned at him.
‘I guess so.’
She was acutely suspicious. She leaned forward with her secret whisper.
‘Brother,’ she wanted to know, ‘you been baptized?’
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered back.
‘You don’t know?’ she cried, flinging up hand and tambourine.
‘Is it like being shot?’ he asked.
‘Brother,’ she said, ‘you are in a bad and sinful condition. I blame it on your
ignorant bringing up. I bet those schools on Mars are terrible’don’t teach you
no truth at all. Just a pack of made-up lies. Brother, you got to be baptized if
you want to be happy.’
‘Will it make me happy even in this world here?’ he said. ‘Don’t ask for
everything on your platter,’ she said. ‘Be satisfied with a wrinkled pea, for
there’s another world we’re all going to that’s better than this one.’

…

‘I know that world,’ he said.
‘It’s peaceful,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘There’s quiet,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘There’s milk and honey flowing.’
‘Why, yes,’ he said.
‘And everybody’s laughing.’
‘I can see it now,’ he said.
‘A better world,’ she said.
‘Far better,’ he said. ‘Yes, Mars is a great planet.’

…

‘Mister,’ she said, tightening up and almost flinging the tambourine in his
face, ‘you been joking with me?’
‘Why, no.’ He was embarrassed and bewildered. ‘I thought you were talking
about”’
‘Not about mean old nasty Mars, I tell you, mister! It’s your type that is going
to boil for years, and suffer and break out in black pimples and be tortured”’
‘I must admit Earth isn’t very nice. You’ve described it beautifully.’
‘Mister, you’re funning me again!’ she cried angrily.
‘No, no’please. I plead ignorance.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re a heathen, and heathens are improper. Here’s a paper.
Come to this address tomorrow night and be baptized and be happy. We shouts and we stomps and we talk in voices, so if you want to hear our all-cornet,
all-brass band, you come, won’t you now?’
‘I’ll try,’ he said hesitantly.
Down the street she went, patting her tambourine, singing at the top of her
voice, ‘Happy Am I, I’m Always Happy.’

…

Dazed, Ettil returned to his letter.
‘Dear Tylla: To think that in my na’vet’ I imagined that the Earthmen would have
to counterattack with guns and bombs. No, no. I was sadly wrong. There is no
Rick or Mick or Jick or Bannon’those lever fellows who save worlds. No.
‘There are blond robots with pink rubber bodies, real, but somehow unreal, alive
but somehow automatic in all responses, living in caves all of their lives.
Their derri’res are incredible in girth. Their eyes are fixed and motionless
from an endless time of staring at picture screens. The only muscles they have
occur in their jaws from their ceaseless chewing of gum.
‘And it is not only these, my dear Tylla, but the entire civilization into which
we have been dropped like a shovelful of seeds into a large concrete mixer.
Nothing of us will survive. We will be killed not by the gun but by the
glad-hand. We will be destroyed not by the rocket but by the automobile . . .’

…

Somebody screamed. A crash, another crash. Silence.
Ettil leaped up from his letter. Outside, on the street two ears had crashed.
One full of Martians, another with Earthmen. Ettil returned to his letter:
‘Dear, dear Tylla, a few statistics if you will allow. Forty-five thousand
people killed every year on this continent of America; made into jelly right in
the can, as it were, in the automobiles. Red blood jelly, with white marrow
bones like sudden thoughts, ridiculous horror thoughts, transfixed in the
immutable jelly. The cars roll up in tight neat sardine rolls’all sauce, all
silence.
‘Blood manure for green buzzing summer flies, all over the highways. Faces made into Halloween masks by sudden stops. Halloween is one of their holidays. I think they worship the automobile on that night’something to do with death,
anyway.
‘You look out your window and see two people lying atop each other in friendly
fashion who, a moment ago, had never met before, dead. I foresee our army
mashed, diseased, trapped in cinemas by witches and gum. Sometime in the next
day I shall try to escape back to Mars before it is too late.
‘Somewhere on Earth tonight, my Tylla, there is a Man with a Lever, which, when
he pulls it, Will Save the World. The man is now unemployed. His switch gathers
dust. He himself plays pinochle.
‘The women of this evil planet are drowning us in a tide of banal
sentimentality, misplaced romance, and one last fling before the makers of
glycerin boil them down for usage. Good night, Tylla. Wish me well, for I shall
probably die trying to escape. My love to our child.’
Weeping silently, he folded the letter and reminded himself to mail it later at
the rocket post.

…

He left the park. What was there to do? Escape? But how? Return to the post late
tonight, steal one of the rockets alone and go back to Mars? Would it be
possible? He shook his head. He was much too confused.
All that he really knew was that if he stayed here he would soon be the property
of a lot of things that buzzed and snorted and hissed, that gave off fumes or
stenches. In six months he would be the owner of a large pink, trained ulcer, a
blood pressure of algebraic dimensions, a myopia this side of blindness, and
nightmares as deep as oceans and infested with improbable lengths of dream
intestines through which he must violently force his way each night. No, no.
He looked at the haunted faces of the Earthmen drifting violently along in their
mechanical death boxes. Soon’yes, very soon’they would invent an auto with six
silver handles on it!
‘Hey, there!’
An auto horn. A large long hearse of a car, black and ominous pulled to the
curb. A man leaned out.
‘You a Martian?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just the man I gotta see. Hop in quick’the chance of a lifetime. Hop in. Take
you to a real nice joint where we can talk. Come on’don’t stand there.’
As if hypnotized, Ettil opened the door of the car, got in.
They drove off.
‘What’ll it be, E.V.? How about a manhattan? Two manhattans, waiter. Okay, E.V.
This is my treat. This is on me and Big Studios! Don’t even touch your wallet.
Pleased to meet you, E.V. My name’s R. R. Van Plank. Maybe you hearda me? No?
Well, shake anyhow.’
Ettil felt his hand massaged and dropped. They were in a dark hole with music
and waiters drifting about. Two drinks were set down. It had all happened so
swiftly. Now Van Plank, hands crossed on his chest, was surveying his Martian
discovery.
‘What I want you for, E.V., is this. It’s the most magnanimous idea I ever got
in my life. I don’t know how it came to me, just in a flash. I was sitting home
tonight and I thought to myself, My God, what a picture it would make! Invasion
of Earth by Mars. So what I got to do? I got to find an adviser for the film. So
I climbed in my car and found you and here we are. Drink up! Here’s to your
health and our future. Skoal!’
‘But”’ said Ettil.
‘Now, I know, you’ll want money. Well, we got plenty of that. Besides, I got a
li’l black book full of peaches I can lend you.’
‘I don’t like most of your Earth fruit and”’
‘You’re a card, mac, really. Well, here’s how I get the picture in my
mind’listen.’ He leaned forward excitedly. ‘We got a flash scene of the Martians
at a big powwow, drummin’ drums, gettin’ stewed on Mars. In the background are
huge silver cities”’
‘But that’s not the way Martian cities are”’
‘We got to have color, kid. Color. Let your pappy fix this. Anyway, there are
all the Martians doing a dance around a fire”’
‘We don’t dance around fires”’
‘In this film you got a fire and you dance,’ declared Van Plank, eyes shut,
proud of his certainty. He nodded, dreaming it over on his tongue. ‘Then we got
a beautiful Martian woman, tall and blond.’
‘Martian women are dark”’
‘Look, I don’t see how we’re going to be happy, E.V. By the way, son, you ought
to change your name. What was it again?’
‘Ettil.’
‘That’s a woman’s name. I’ll give you a better one. Call you Joe. Okay, Joe. As
I was saying, our Martian women are gonna be blond, because, see, just because.
Or else your poppa won’t be happy. You got any suggestions?’
‘I thought that”’
‘And another thing we gotta have is a scene, very tearful, where the Martian
woman saves the whole ship of Martian men from dying when a meteor or something hits the ship. That’ll make a whackeroo of a scene. You know, I’m glad I found you, Joe. You’re going to have a good deal with us, I tell you.’
Ettil reached out and held the man’s wrist tight. ‘Just a minute. There’s
something I want to ask you.’
‘Sure, Joe, shoot.’
‘Why are you being so nice to us? We invade your planet, and you welcome
us’everybody’like long-lost children. Why?’
‘They sure grow ’em green on Mars, don’t they? You’re a na’ve-type guy’I can see
from way over here. Mac, look at it this way. We’re all Little People, ain’t
we?’ He waved a small tan hand garnished with emeralds.
‘We’re all common as dirt, ain’t we? Well, here on Earth, we’re proud of that.
This is the century of the Common Man, Bill, and we’re proud we’re small. Billy,
you’re looking at a planet full of Saroyans. Yes, sir. A great big fat family of
friendly Saroyans’everybody loving everybody. We understand you Martians, Joe,
and we know why you invaded Earth. We know how lonely you were up on that little cold planet Mars, how you envied us our cities”’
‘Our civilization is much older than yours”’
‘Please, Joe, you make me unhappy when you interrupt. Let me finish my theory
and then you talk all you want. As I was saying, you was lonely up there, and
down you came to see our cities and our women and all, and we welcomed you in, because you’re our brothers, Common Men like all of us.
‘And then, as a kind of side incident, Roscoe, there’s a certain little small
profit to be had from this invasion. I mean for instance this picture I plan,
which will net us, neat, a billion dollars, I bet. Next week we start putting
out a special Martian doll at thirty bucks a throw. Think of the millions there.
I also got a contract to make a Martian game to sell for five bucks. There’s all
sorts of angles.’
‘I see,’ said Ettil, drawing back.
‘And then of course there’s that whole nice new market. Think of all the
depilatories and gum and shoeshine we can sell to you Martians.’
‘Wait. Another question.’
‘Shoot.’
‘What’s your first name? What’s the R.R. stand for?’
‘Richard Robert.’
Ettil looked at the ceiling. ‘Do they sometimes, perhaps, on occasion, once in a
while, by accident, call you ‘Rick?’
‘How’d you guess, mac? Rick, sure.’
Ettil sighed and began to laugh and laugh. He put out his hand. ‘So you’re Rick?
Rick! So you’re Rick!’
‘What’s the joke, laughing boy? Let Poppa in!’
‘You wouldn’t understand’a private joke. Ha, ha!’ Tears ran down his cheeks and
into his open mouth. He pounded the table again and again. ‘So you’re Rick. Oh,
how different, how funny. No bulging muscles, no lean jaw, no gun. Only a wallet
full of money and an emerald ring and a big middle!’
‘Hey, watch the language! I may not be no Apollo, but”’
‘Shake hands, Rick. I’ve wanted to meet you. You’re the man who’ll conquer Mars,
with cocktail shakers and foot arches and poker chips and riding crops and
leather boots and checkered caps and rum collinses.’
‘I’m only a humble businessman,’ said Van Plank, eyes slyly down. ‘I do my work
and take my humble little piece of money pie. But, as I was saying, Mort, I been
thinking of the market on Mars for Uncle Wiggily games and Dick Tracy comics;
all new. A big wide field never even heard of cartoons, right? Right! So we just
toss a great big bunch of stuff on the Martians’ heads. They’ll fight for it,
kid, fight! Who wouldn’t, for perfumes and Paris dresses and Oshkosh overalls,
eh? And nice new shoes”’
‘We don’t wear shoes.’
‘What have I got here?’ R.R. asked of the ceiling. ‘A planet full of Okies?
Look, Joe, we’ll take care of that. We’ll shame everyone into wearing shoes.
Then we sell them the polish!’
‘Oh.’
He slapped Ettil’s. arm. ‘Is it a deal? Will you be technical director on my
film? You’ll get two hundred a week to start, a five-hundred top. What you say?’
‘I’m sick,’ said Ettil. He had drunk the manhattan and was now turning blue.
‘Say, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would do that to you. Let’s get some fresh
air.’

…

In the open air Ettil felt better. He swayed. ‘So that’s why Earth took us in?’
‘Sure, son. Any time an Earthman can turn an honest dollar, watch him steam. The customer is always right. No hard feelings. Here’s my card. Be at the studio in
Hollywood tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. They’ll show you your office. I’ll
arrive at eleven and see you then. Be sure you get there at nine o’clock. It’s a
strict rule.’
‘Why?’
‘Gallagher, you’re a queer oyster, but I love you. Good night. Happy invasion!’
The car drove off.

…

Ettil blinked after it, incredulous. Then, rubbing his brow with the palm of his
hand, he walked slowly along the street toward the rocket port.
‘Well, what are you going to do?’ he asked himself, aloud. The rockets lay
gleaming in the moonlight silent. From the city came the sounds of distant
revelry. In the medical compound an extreme case of nervous breakdown was being tended to: a young Martian who, by his screams, had seen too much, drunk too much, heard too many songs on the little red-and-yellow boxes in the drinking places, and had been chased around innumerable tables by a large elephant-like woman. He kept murmuring:
‘Can’t breathe . . . crushed, trapped.’
The sobbing faded. Ettil came out of the shadows and moved on across a wide
avenue toward the ships. Far over, he could see the guards lying about
drunkenly. He listened. From the vast city came the faint sounds of cars and
music and sirens. And he imagined other sounds too: the insidious whir of malt
machines stirring malts to fatten the warriors and make them lazy and forgetful,
the narcotic voices of the cinema caverns lulling and lulling the Martians fast,
fast into a slumber through which, all of their remaining lives, they would
sleepwalk.
A year from now, how many Martians dead of cirrhosis of the liver, bad kidneys,
high blood pressure, suicide?
He stood in the middle of the empty avenue. Two blocks away a car was rushing
toward him.
He had a choice: stay here, take the studio job, report for work each morning as
adviser on a picture, and, in time, come to agree with the producer that, yes
indeed, there were massacres on Mars; yes, the women were tall and blond; yes,
there were tribal dances and sacrifices; yes, yes, yes. Or he could walk over
and get into a rocket ship and, alone, return to Mars.
‘But what about next year?’ he said.
The Blue Canal Night Club brought to Mars. The Ancient City Gambling Casino,
Built Right Inside. Yes, Right Inside a Real Martian Ancient City! Neons, racing
forms blowing in the old cities, picnic lunches in the ancestral graveyards’all
of it, all of it.
But not quite yet. In a few days he could be home. Tylla would be waiting with
their son, and then for the last few years of gentle life he might sit with his
wife in the blowing weather on the edge of the canal reading his good, gentle
books, sipping a rare and light wine, talking and living out their short time
until the neon bewilderment fell from the sky.
And then perhaps he and Tylla might move into the blue mountains and hide for
another year or two until the tourists came to snap their cameras and say how
quaint things were.

…

He knew just what he would say to Tylla. ‘War is a bad thing, but peace can be a
living horror.’
He stood in the middle of the wide avenue.
Turning, it was with no surprise that he saw a car bearing down upon him, a car
full of screaming children. These boys and girls, none older than sixteen, were
swerving and ricocheting their open-top car down the avenue. He saw them point at him and yell. He heard the motor roar louder. The car sped forward at sixty miles an hour.
He began to run.
Yes, yes, he thought tiredly, with the car upon him, how strange, how sad. It
sounds so much like . . . a concrete mixer.

The End

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The long years by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

This is a nice story by Ray Bradbury. It takes you to a point in time. It’s about being alone. I do hope that you appreciate this story like I do. It’s a great story that takes place on Mars. This is in PDF format for easy reading.

The long years

Ray Bradbury

 

Conclusion

It’s a very short story.

I think that this story stands alone on it’s own merits.

Loneliness is an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation. Loneliness is also described as social pain—a psychological mechanism which motivates individuals to seek social connections. It is often associated with an unwanted lack of connection and intimacy. Loneliness overlaps and yet is distinct from solitude. Solitude is simply the state of being apart from others; not everyone who experiences solitude feels lonely. As a subjective emotion, loneliness can be felt even when surrounded by other people; one who feels lonely, is lonely. The causes of loneliness are varied. They include social, mental, emotional, and environmental factors. 

- Wikipedia

Today’s society insists that we communicate via e-mail and social media. But face to face, in depth human to human contact is what we require. Accept that fact and do everything in your power to make sure that you are never, ever alone. Your strength is your community.

Never forget that.

 

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There will come the soft rains by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

This is a nice story by Ray Bradbury. It takes you to a point in time. It’s about a life after the insanity of mad kings and corrupt politicians. I do hope that you appreciate this story like I do.

Especially since it takes place in America in the year 2026…

There will come the soft rains

Ray Bradbury

 

Conclusion

It’s a very short story.

I think that this story stands alone on it’s own merits.

People have forgotten. The American leadership has forgotten what a cold war was, and the threat of any day having your complete life turned upside down by nuclear war. This week, America is going to base it’s nuclear SLBM missile subs in Australia, and Australia agrees to host the systems.

Jesus!

This kind of nuclear-war level posturing is dangerous. On one hand Biden says that “America doesn’t want war”, on the other hand, it was one year after it launched three lethal bio-weapons strains on China. And is placing nuclear weapons in the QUAD that rings the Chinese mainland.

Do they think that the rest of the world is as ignorant as the dumbed-down Americans are?

I guess so.

The United States is a run-away train and it ain’t stopping or slowing down for shit. The final crash is going to be spectacular, and horrific at the same time. This story here describes that aftermath.

Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” tells the story of a house that has survived a nuclear blast in the year 2026. The house has automated systems, not unlike a modern-day smart home. Each day, the house makes the beds, cooks dinner, and throws out the trash—despite the fact that its owners have died.

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The Luggage Store by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

This is a nice story by Ray Bradbury. As I reread this story, I couldn’t help but relive the “news” that enters my feeds on a daily basis. It sounds so familiar. It’s just hard to believe that this story was written in the 1950’s. I do hope that you appreciate this story like I do.

THE LUGGAGE STORE

Ray Bradbury

 

It  was   a   very  remote  thing,  when  the  luggage-store

proprietor heard  the  news  on the night radio, received all the

way from  Earth  on  a  light-sound beam. The proprietor felt how

remote it was.

There was going to be a war on Earth.

…

      He went out to peer into the sky.

Yes,  there   it   was.   Earth,  in  the  evening  heavens,

following the  sun  into  the  hills.  The words on the radio and

that green star were one and the same.

“I don’t believe it,” said the proprietor.

“It’s because  you’re  not  there,”  said  Father Peregrine,

who had stopped by to pass the time of evening.

“What do you mean, Father?”

“It’s like  when  I  was  a boy,” said Father Peregrine. “We

heard about  wars  in  China.  But we never believed them. It was

too  far   away.  And  there  were  too  many  people  dying.  It

was impossible.  Even  when  we saw the motion pictures we didn’t

believe it.  Well,  that’s how it is now. Earth is China. It’s so

far away  it’s  unbelievable.  It’s not here. You can’t touch it.

You can’t  even  see  it.  All  you  see  is  a  green light. Two

billion people  living  on  that  light?  Unbelievable!  War?  We

don’t hear the explosions.”

“We will,”  said  the  proprietor.  “I  keep  thinking about

all those  people  that  were  going  to  come to Mars this week.

What was  it?  A  hundred  thousand  or  so coming up in the next

month or so. What about _them_ if the war starts?”

“I imagine they’ll turn back. They’ll be needed on Earth.”

“Well,” said  the  proprietor,  “I’d  better  get my luggage

dusted off.  I  got  a  feeling  there’ll be a rush sale here any

time.”

“Do you  think  everyone  now  on Mars will go back to Earth

if this _is_ the Big War we’ve all been expecting for years?”

“It’s a  funny  thing,  Father, but yes, I think we’ll _all_

go  back.   I   know,   we   came   up  here  to  get  away  from

things–politics,  the   atom   bomb,   war,   pressure   groups,

prejudice, laws–I  know.  But  it’s  still  home there. You wait

and see.  When  the  first  bomb  drops  on America the people up

here’ll start  thinking.  They  haven’t  been  here  long enough.

A couple  years  is  all.  If  they’d been here forty years, it’d

be different,  but  they  got  relatives  down  there,  and their

home towns.  Me,  I  can’t  believe  in  Earth  any more; I can’t

imagine it  much.  But  I’m  old.  I don’t count. I might stay on

here.”

“I doubt it.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right.”

They  stood   on  the  porch  watching  the  stars.  Finally

Father Peregrine  pulled  some  money  from his pocket and handed

it to  the  proprietor.  “Come  to think of it, you’d better give

me a new valise. My old one’s in pretty bad condition. . . .”

The End

Conclusion

It’s a very short story.

Do you really think that if you were living off in a far away nation, and war broke out on American soil, that you would leave and return to America?

I don’t.

I’m in China. America is thrashing and snarling. It is going bat-shit-crazy and the LAST thing that I want to do is return to that cesspool of greedy ignorant psychopathic monsters.

Never the less, this story was written at a different time, in a different place, and the values reflected in this story has long since disappeared from the world. It’s all gone like whispers and vapor.

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Time in Thy Flight by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

This is a nice story by Ray Bradbury. I like it because it reminds me of the treasures of being a kid in the 1960’s / 1970’s. There things that our communities and parents provided for us that are now seemingly absent in America today. But in those days were simply precious treasures. Ray Bradbury captures these ideas and images so well.

Time in Thy Flight

A wind blew the long years away past their hot faces.

The Time Machine stopped.

“Nineteen hundred and twenty-eight,” said Janet. The two boys looked past her.

Mr. Fields stirred. “Remember, you’re here to observe the behavior of these ancient people. Be inquisitive, be intelligent, observe.”

“Yes,” said the girl and the two boys in crisp khaki uniforms. They wore identical haircuts, had identical wristwatches, sandals, and coloring of hair, eyes, teeth, and skin, though they were not related.

“Shh!” said Mr. Fields.

They looked out at a little Illinois town in the spring of the year. A cool mist lay on the early morning streets.

Far down the street a small boy came running in the last light of the marble-cream moon. Somewhere a great clock struck 5 A.M. far away.

Leaving tennis-shoe prints softly in the quiet lawns, the boy stepped near the invisible Time Machine and cried up to a high dark house window.

The house window opened. Another boy crept down the roof to the ground. The two boys ran off with banana-filled mouths into the dark cold morning.

“Follow them,” whispered Mr. Fields. “Study their life patterns.

Quick!”

Janet and William and Robert ran on the cold pavements of spring, visible now, through the slumbering town, through a park. All about, lights flickered, doors clicked, and other children rushed alone or in gasping pairs down a hill to some gleaming blue tracks.

“Here it comes!” The children milled about before dawn. Far down the shining tracks a small light grew seconds later into steaming thunder.

“What is it?” screamed Janet.

“A train, silly, you’ve seen pictures of them!” shouted Robert.

And as the Time Children watched, from the train stepped gigantic gray elephants, steaming the pavements with their mighty waters, lifting question-mark nozzles to the cold morning sky. Cumbrous wagons rolled from the long freight flats, red and gold. Lions roared and paced in boxed darkness.

“Why— this must be a—circus!” Janet trembled.

“You think so? Whatever happened to them?”

“Like Christmas, I guess. Just vanished, long ago.”

Janet looked around. “Oh, it’s awful, isn’t it.”

The boys stood numbed. “It sure is.”

Men shouted in the first faint gleam of dawn. Sleeping cars drew up, dazed faces blinked out at the children. Horses clattered like a great fall of stones on the pavement.

Mr. Fields was suddenly behind the children. “Disgusting, barbaric, keeping animals in cages. If I’d known this was here, I’d never let you come see. This is a terrible ritual.”

“Oh, yes.” But Janet’s eyes were puzzled. “And yet, you know, it’s like a nest of maggots. I want to study it.”

“I don’t know,” said Robert, his eyes darting, his fingers trembling.

“It’s pretty crazy. We might try writing a thesis on it if Mr. Fields says it’s all right …”

Mr. Fields nodded. “I’m glad you’re digging in here, finding motives, studying this horror. All right—we’ll see the circus this afternoon.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Janet.

The Time Machine hummed.

“So that was a circus,” said Janet, solemnly.

The trombone circus died in their ears. The last thing they saw was candy-pink trapeze people whirling while baking powder clowns shrieked and bounded.

“You must admit psychovision’s better,” said Robert slowly.

“All those nasty animal smells, the excitement.” Janet blinked. “That’s bad for children, isn’t it? And those older people seated with the children.

Mothers, fathers, they called them. Oh, that was strange.”

Mr. Fields put some marks in his class grading book.

Janet shook her head numbly. “I want to see it all again. I’ve missed the motives somewhere. I want to make that run across town again in the early morning. The cold air on my face—the sidewalk under my feet—the circus train coming in. Was it the air and the early hour that made the children get up and run to see the train come in? I want to retrace the entire pattern.

Why should they be excited? I feel I’ve missed out on the answer.”

“They all smiled so much,” said William.

“Manic-depressives,” said Robert.

“What are summer vacations? I heard them talk about it.” Janet looked at Mr. Fields.

“They spent their summers racing about like idiots, beating each other up,” replied Mr. Fields seriously.

“I’ll take our State Engineered summers of work for children anytime,” said Robert, looking at nothing, his voice faint.

The Time Machine stopped again.

“The Fourth of July,” announced Mr. Fields. “Nineteen hundred and twenty-eight. An ancient holiday when people blew each other’s fingers off.”

They stood before the same house on the same street but on a soft summer evening. Fire wheels hissed, on front porches laughing children tossed things out that went bang!

“Don’t run!” cried Mr. Fields. “It’s not war, don’t be afraid!”

But Janet’s and Robert’s and William’s faces were pink, now blue, now white with fountains of soft fire.

“We’re all right,” said Janet, standing very still.

“Happily,” announced Mr. Fields, “they prohibited fireworks a century ago, did away with the whole messy explosion.”

Children did fairy dances, weaving their names and destinies on the dark summer air with white sparklers.

“I’d like to do that,” said Janet, softly. “Write my name on the air.

See? I’d like that.”

“What?” Mr. Fields hadn’t been listening.

“Nothing,” said Janet.

“Bang!” whispered William and Robert, standing under the soft summer trees, in shadow, watching, watching the red, white, and green fires on the beautiful summer night lawns. “Bang!”

October.

The Time Machine paused for the last time, an hour later in the month of burning leaves. People bustled into dim houses carrying pumpkins and corn shocks. Skeletons danced, bats flew, candles flamed, apples swung in empty doorways.

“Halloween,” said Mr. Fields. “The acme of horror. This was the age of superstition, you know. Later they banned the Grimm Brothers, ghosts, skeletons, and all that claptrap. You children, thank God, were raised in an antiseptic world of no shadows or ghosts. You had decent holidays like William C. Chatterton’s Birthday, Work Day, and Machine Day.”

They walked by the same house in the empty October night, peering in at the triangle-eyed pumpkins, the masks leering in black attics and damp cellars. Now, inside the house, some party children squatted telling stories, laughing!

“I want to be inside with them,” said Janet at last.

“Sociologically, of course,” said the boys.

“No,” she said.

“What?” asked Mr. Fields.

“No, I just want to be inside, I just want to stay here, I want to see it all and be here and never be anywhere else, I want firecrackers and pumpkins and circuses, I want Christmases and Valentines and Fourths, like we’ve seen.”

“This is getting out of hand …” Mr. Fields started to say.

But suddenly Janet was gone. “Robert, William, come on!” She ran.

The boys leaped after her.

“Hold on!” shouted Mr. Fields. “Robert! William, I’ve got you!” He seized the last boy, but the other escaped. “Janet, Robert—come back here!

You’ll never pass into the seventh grade!

You’ll fail, Janet, Bob— Bob! ”

An October wind blew wildly down the street, vanishing with the children off among moaning trees.

William twisted and kicked.

“No, not you, too, William, you’re coming home with me. We’ll teach those other two a lesson they won’t forget. So they want to stay in the past, do they?” Mr. Fields shouted so everyone could hear. “All right, Janet, Bob, stay in this horror, in this chaos! In a few weeks you’ll come sniveling back here to me. But I’ll be gone! I’m leaving you here to go mad in this world!”

He hurried William to the Time Machine. The boy was sobbing.

“Don’t make me come back here on any more Field Excursions ever again, please, Mr. Fields, please—”

“Shut up!”

Almost instantly the Time Machine whisked away toward the future, toward the underground hive cities, the metal buildings, the metal flowers, the metal lawns.

“Good-bye, Janet, Bob!”

A great cold October wind blew through the town like water. And when it had ceased blowing it had carried all the children, whether invited or uninvited, masked or unmasked, to the doors of houses which closed upon them. There was not a running child anywhere in the night. The wind whined away in the bare treetops.

And inside the big house, in the candlelight, someone was pouring cold apple cider all around, to everyone, no matter who they were.

 

The End

Conclusion

This story takes me back to a time when things were simpler and reminds me of how precious the moments were that we possessed. Don’t let the preciousness of the moments that you have today slip from your hands.

Whether it is the 1950’s or the 1990’s, or even today. Treasure what you have now. For it is all fleeting….

Treasure what you have now.

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Pillar of Fire by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

This is a nice story by Ray Bradbury. Three hundred years after his death, William Lantry awakes from his coffin. One thing is very clear to him – this sterile world without superstition, fear, or imagination must be destroyed. Ray Bradbury was one of the best-known writers of our time. He was a master storyteller, a champion of creative freedom, and a space-age visionary.

Pillar of Fire

I

He came out of the earth, hating. Hate was his father; hate was his mother.

It was good to walk again. It was good to leap up out of the earth, off of your back, and stretch your cramped arms violently and try to take a deep breath!

He tried. He cried out.

He couldn’t breathe. He flung his arms over his face and tried to breathe. It was impossible. He walked on the earth, he came out of the earth.

But he was dead. He couldn’t breathe. He could take air into his mouth and force it half down his throat, with withered moves of long-dormant muscles, wildly, wildly! And with this little air he could shout and cry! He wanted to have tears, but he couldn’t make them come, either. All he knew was that he was standing upright, he was dead, he shouldn’t be walking! He couldn’t breathe and yet he stood.

The smells of the world were all about him. Frustratedly, he tried to smell the smells of autumn. Autumn was burning the land down into ruin. All across the country the ruins of summer lay; vast forests bloomed with flame, tumbled down timber on empty, unleafed timber. The smoke of the burning was rich, blue, and invisible.

He stood in the graveyard, hating. He walked through the world and yet could not taste nor smell of it. He heard, yes. The wind roared on his newly opened ears. But he was dead. Even though he walked he knew he was dead and should expect not too much of himself or this hateful living world.

He touched the tombstone over his own empty grave. He knew his own name again. It was a good job of carving.

WILLIAM LANTRY

That’s what the gravestone said.

His fingers trembled on the cool stone surface.

BORN 1898—DIED 1933

Born again…?

What year? He glared at the sky and the midnight autumnal stars moving in slow illuminations across the windy black. He read the tiltings of centuries in those stars. Orion thus and so, Aurega here! and where Taurus?

There!

His eyes narrowed. His lips spelled out the year:

“2349.”

An odd number. Like a school sum. They used to say a man couldn’t encompass any number over a hundred. After that it was all so damned abstract there was no use counting. This was the year 2349! A numeral, a sum. And here he was, a man who had lain in his hateful dark coffin, hating to be buried, hating the living people above who lived and lived and lived, hating them for all the centuries, until today, now, born out of hatred, he stood by his own freshly excavated grave, the smell of raw earth in the air, perhaps, but he could not smell it!

“I,” he said, addressing a poplar tree that was shaken by the wind, “am an anachronism.” He smiled faintly.

He looked at the graveyard. It was cold and empty. All of the stones had been ripped up and piled like so many flat bricks, one atop another, in the far corner by the wrought iron fence. This had been going on for two endless weeks. In his deep secret coffin he had heard the heartless, wild stirring as the men jabbed the earth with cold spades and tore out the coffins and carried away the withered ancient bodies to be burned. Twisting with fear in his coffin, he had waited for them to come to him.

Today they had arrived at his coffin. But—late. They had dug down to within an inch of the lid. Five o’clock bell, time for quitting. Home to supper.

The workers had gone off. Tomorrow they would finish the job, they said, shrugging into their coats.

Silence had come to the emptied tombyard.

Carefully, quietly, with a soft rattling of sod, the coffin lid had lifted.

William Lantry stood trembling now, in the last cemetery on Earth.

“Remember?” he asked himself, looking at the raw earth. “Remember those stories of that last man on Earth? Those stories of men wandering in ruins, alone? Well, you, William Lantry, are a switch on the old story. Do you know that? You are the last dead man in the whole world!”

There were no more dead people. Nowhere in any land was there a dead person. Impossible! Lantry did not smile at this. No, not impossible at all in this foolish, sterile, unimaginative, antiseptic age of cleansings and scientific methods! People died, oh my God, yes. But— dead people?

Corpses? They didn’t exist!

What happened to dead people?

The graveyard was on a hill. William Lantry walked through the dark burning night until he reached the edge of the graveyard and looked down upon the new town of Salem. It was all illumination, all color. Rocket ships cut fire above it, crossing the sky to all the far ports of Earth.

In his grave the new violence of this future world had driven down and seeped into William Lantry. He had been bathed in it for years. He knew all about it, with a hating dead man’s knowledge of such things.

Most important of all, he knew what these fools did with dead men.

He lifted his eyes. In the center of the town a massive stone finger pointed at the stars. It was three hundred feet high and fifty feet across. There was a wide entrance and a drive in front of it.

In the town, theoretically, thought William Lantry, say you have a dying man. In a moment he will be dead. What happens? No sooner is his pulse cold when a certificate is flourished, made out, his relatives pack him into a car-beetle and drive him swiftly to—

The Incinerator!

That functional finger, that Pillar of Fire pointing at the stars.

Incinerator. A functional, terrible name. But truth is truth in this future world.

Like a stick of kindling your Mr. Dead Man is shot into the furnace.

Flume!

William Lantry looked at the top of the gigantic pistol shoving at the stars. A small pennant of smoke issued from the top.

There’s where your dead people go.

“Take care of yourself, William Lantry,” he murmured. “You’re the last one, the rare item, the last dead man. All the other graveyards of Earth have been blasted up. This is the last graveyard and you’re the last dead man from the centuries. These people don’t believe in having dead people about, much less walking dead people. Everything that can’t be used goes up like a matchstick. Superstitions right along with it!”

He looked at the town. All right, he thought, quietly, I hate you. You hate me, or you would if you knew I existed. You don’t believe in such things as vampires or ghosts. Labels without referents, you cry! You snort. All right, snort! Frankly, I don’t believe in you, either! I don’t like you! You and your Incinerators.

He trembled. How very close it had been. Day after day they had hauled out the other dead ones, burned them like so much kindling. An edict had been broadcast around the world. He had heard the digging men talk as they worked!

“I guess it’s a good idea, this cleaning up the graveyards,” said one of the men.

“Guess so,” said another. “Grisly custom. Can you imagine? Being buried, I mean! Unhealthy! All them germs!”

“Sort of a shame. Romantic, kind of. I mean, leaving just this one graveyard untouched all these centuries. The other graveyards were cleaned out, what year was it, Jim?”

“About 2260, I think. Yeah, that was it, 2260, almost a hundred years ago. But some Salem Committee, they got on their high horse and they said,

‘Look here, let’s have just one graveyard left, to remind us of the customs of the barbarians.’ And the government scratched its head, thunk it over, and said, ‘Okay. Salem it is. But all other graveyards go, you understand, all!’”

“And away they went,” said Jim.

“Sure, they sucked out ’em with fire and steam shovels and rocket-cleaners. If they knew a man was buried in a cow pasture, they fixed him!

Evacuated them, they did. Sort of cruel, I say.”

“I hate to sound old-fashioned,but still there were a lot of tourists came here every year, just to see what a real graveyard was like.”

“Right. We had nearly a million people in the last three years visiting.

A good revenue. But—a government order is an order. The government says no more morbidity, so flush her out we do! Here we go. Hand me that spade, Bill.”

William Lantry stood in the autumn wind, on the hill. It was good to walk again, to feel the wind and to hear the leaves scuttling like mice on the road ahead of him. It was good to see the bitter cold stars almost blown away by the wind.

It was even good to know fear again.

For fear rose in him now, and he could not put it away. The very fact that he was walking made him an enemy. And there was not another friend, another dead man, in all of the world, to whom one could turn for help or consolation. It was the whole melodramatic living world against one. William Lantry. It was the whole vampire-disbelieving, body-burning, graveyard-annihilating world against a man in a dark suit on a dark autumn hill. He put out his pale cold hands into the city illumination. You have pulled the tombstones, like teeth, from the yard, he thought. Now I will find some way to push your Incinerators down into rubble. I will make dead people again, and I will make friends in so doing. I cannot be alone and lonely. I must start manufacturing friends very soon. Tonight.

“War is declared,” he said, and laughed. It was pretty silly, one man declaring war on an entire world.

The world did not answer back. A rocket crossed the sky on a rush of flame, like an Incinerator taking wing.

Footsteps. Lantry hastened to the edge of the cemetery. The diggers, coming back to finish up their work? No. Just someone, a man, walking by.

As the man came abreast the cemetery gate, Lantry stepped swiftly out. “Good evening,” said the man, smiling.

Lantry struck the man in the face. The man fell. Lantry bent quietly down and hit the man a killing blow across the neck with the side of his hand.

Dragging the body back into shadow, he stripped it and changed clothes with it. It wouldn’t do for a fellow to go wandering about this future world with ancient clothing on. He found a small pocket knife in the man’s coat; not much of a knife, but enough if you knew how to handle it properly.

He knew how.

He rolled the body down into one of the already opened and exhumed graves. In a minute he had shoveled dirt down upon it, just enough to hide it.

There was little chance of it being found. They wouldn’t dig the same grave twice.

He adjusted himself in his new loose-fitting metallic suit. Fine, fine.

Hating. William Lantry walked down into town, to do battle with the Earth.

II

The Incinerator was open. It never closed. There was a wide entrance, all lighted up with hidden illumination, there was a helicopter landing table and a beetle drive. The town itself was dying down after another day of the dynamo. The lights were going dim, and the only quiet, lighted spot in the town now was the Incinerator. God, what a practical name, what an unromantic name.

William Lantry entered the wide, well-lighted door. It was an entrance, really; there were no doors to open or shut. People could go in and out, summer or winter, the inside was always warm. Warm from the fire that rushed whispering up the high round flue to where the whirlers, the propellors, the air jets pushed the leafy gray ashes on away for a ten-mile ride down the sky.

There was the warmth of the bakery here. The halls were floored with rubber parquet. You couldn’t make a noise if you wanted to. Music played in hidden throats somewhere. Not music of death at all, but music of life and the way the sun lived inside the Incinerator; or the sun’s brother, anyway. You could hear the flame floating inside the heavy brick wall.

William Lantry descended a ramp. Behind him he heard a whisper and turned in time to see a beetle stop before the entranceway. A bell rang. The music, as if at a signal, rose to ecstatic heights. There was joy in it.

From the beetle, which opened from the rear, some attendants stepped carrying a golden box. It was six feet long and there were sun symbols on it.

From another beetle the relatives of the man in the box stepped and followed as the attendants took the golden box down a ramp to a kind of altar. On the side of the altar were the words, “WE THAT WERE BORN OF THE SUN RETURN TO THE SUN.” The golden box was deposited upon the altar, the music leaped upward, the Guardian of this place spoke only a few words, then the attendants picked up the golden box, walked to a transparent wall, a safety lock, also transparent, and opened it. The box was shoved into the glass slot.

A moment later an inner lock opened, the box was injected into the interior of the flue, and vanished instantly in quick flame.

The attendants walked away. The relatives without a word turned and walked out. The music played.

William Lantry approached the glass fire lock. He peered through the wall at the vast, glowing never-ceasing heart of the Incinerator. It burned steadily, without a flicker, singing to itself peacefully. It was so solid it was like a golden river flowing up out of the earth toward the sky. Anything you put into the river was borne upward, vanished.

Lantry felt again his unreasoning hatred of this thing, this monster, cleansing fire.

A man stood at his elbow. “May I help you, sir?”

“What?” Lantry turned abruptly. “What did you say?”

“May I be of service?”

“I—that is—” Lantry looked quickly at the ramp and the door. His hands trembled at his sides. “I’ve never been in here before.”

“Never?” The Attendant was surprised.

That had been the wrong thing to say, Lantry realized. But it was said, nevertheless. “I mean,” he said. “Not really. I mean, when you’re a child, somehow, you don’t pay attention. I suddenly realized tonight that I didn’t really know the Incinerator.”

The Attendant smiled. “We never know anything, do we, really? I’ll be glad to show you around.”

“Oh, no. Never mind. It—it’s a wonderful place.”

“Yes, it is.” The Attendant took pride in it. “One of the finest in the world, I think.”

“I—” Lantry felt he must explain further. “I haven’t had many relatives die on me since I was a child. In fact, none. So, you see I haven’t been here for many years.”

“I see.” The Attendant’s face seemed to darken somewhat.

What’ve I said now, thought Lantry. What in God’s name is wrong?

What’ve I done? If I’m not careful I’ll get myself shoved right into that monstrous firetrap. What’s wrong with this fellow’s face? He seems to be giving me more than the usual going-over.

“You wouldn’t be one of the men who’ve just returned from Mars, would you?” asked the Attendant.

“No. Why do you ask?”

“No matter.” The Attendant began to walk off. “If you want to know anything, just ask me.”

“Just one thing,” said Lantry.

“What’s that?”

“This.”

Lantry dealt him a stunning blow across the neck.

He had watched the fire-trap operator with expert eyes. Now, with the sagging body in his arms, he touched the button that opened the warm outer lock, placed the body in, heard the music rise, and saw the inner lock open.

The body shot out into the river of fire. The music softened.

“Well done, Lantry, well done.”

Barely an instant later another Attendant entered the room. Lantry was caught with an expression of pleased excitement on his face. The Attendant looked around as if expecting to find someone, then he walked toward Lantry.

“May I help you?”

“Just looking,” said Lantry.

“Rather late at night,” said the Attendant.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

That was the wrong answer, too. Everybody slept in this world.

Nobody had insomnia. If you did you simply turned on a hypnoray, and, sixty seconds later, you were snoring. Oh, he was just full of wrong answers. First he had made the fatal error of saying he had never been in the Incinerator before, when he knew that all children were brought here on tours, every year, from the time they were four, to instill the idea of the clean fire death and the Incinerator in their minds. Death was a bright fire, death was warmth and the sun. It was not a dark, shadowed thing. That was important in their education.

And he, pale, thoughtless fool, had immediately gabbled out his ignorance.

And another thing, this paleness of his. He looked at his hands and realized with growing terror that a pale man also was nonexistent in this world. They would suspect his paleness. That was why the first attendant had asked, “Are you one of those men newly returned from Mars?” Here, now, this new Attendant was clean and bright as a copper penny, his cheeks red with health and energy. Lantry hid his pale hands in his pockets. But he was finally aware of the searching the Attendant did on his face.

“I mean to say,” said Lantry, “I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to think.”

“Was there a service held here a moment ago?” asked the Attendant, looking about.

“I don’t know, I just came in.”

“I thought I heard the fire lock open and shut.”

“I don’t know,” said Lantry.

The man pressed a wall button. “Anderson?”

A voice replied. “Yes.”

“Locate Saul for me, will you?”

“I’ll ring the corridors.” A pause. “Can’t find him.”

“Thanks.” The Attendant was puzzled. He was beginning to make little sniffing motions with his nose. “Do you— smell anything?”

Lantry sniffed. “No. Why?”

“I smell something.”

Lantry took hold of the knife in his pocket. He waited.

“I remember once when I was a kid,” said the man. “And we found a cow lying dead in the field. It had been there two days in the hot sun. That’s what this smell is. I wonder what it’s from?”

“Oh, I know what it is,” said Lantry quietly. He held out his hand.

“Here.”

“What?”

“Me, of course.”

“You?”

“Dead several hundred years.”

“You’re an odd joker.” The Attendant was puzzled.

“Very.” Lantry took out the knife. “Do you know what this is?”

“A knife.”

“Do you ever use knives on people any more?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean—killing them, with knives or guns or poison?”

“You are an odd joker!” The man giggled awkwardly.

“I’m going to kill you,” said Lantry.

“Nobody kills anybody,” said the man.

“Not any more they don’t. But they used to, in the old days.”

“I know they did.”

“This will be the first murder in three hundred years. I just killed your friend. I just shoved him into the fire lock.”

That remark had the desired effect. It numbed the man so completely, it shocked him so thoroughly with its illogical aspects that Lantry had time to walk forward. He put the knife against the man’s chest. “I’m going to kill you.”

“That’s silly,” said the man, numbly. “People don’t do that.”

“Like this,” said Lantry. “You see?”

The knife slid into the chest. The man stared at it for a moment.

Lantry caught the falling body.

III

The Salem flue exploded at six that morning. The great fire chimney shattered into ten thousand parts and flung itself into the earth and into the sky and into the houses of the sleeping people. There was fire and sound, more fire than autumn made burning in the hills.

William Lantry was five miles away at the time of the explosion. He saw the town ignited by the great spreading cremation of it. And he shook his head and laughed a little bit and clapped his hands smartly together.

Relatively simple. You walked around killing people who didn’t believe in murder, had only heard of it indirectly as some dim gone custom of the old barbarian races. You walked into the control room of the Incinerator and said, “How do you work this Incinerator?” and the control man told you, because everybody told the truth in this world of the future, nobody lied, there was no reason to lie, there was no danger to lie against. There was only one criminal in the world, and nobody knew HE existed yet.

Oh, it was an incredibly beautiful setup. The Control Man had told him just how the Incinerator worked, what pressure gauges controlled the flood of fire gases going up the flue, what levers were adjusted or readjusted.

He and Lantry had had quite a talk. It was an easy, free world. People trusted people. A moment later Lantry had shoved a knife in the Control Man also and set the pressure gauges for an overload to occur half an hour later, and walked out of the Incinerator halls, whistling.

Now even the sky was palled with the vast black cloud of the explosion.

“This is only the first,” said Lantry, looking at the sky. “I’ll tear all the others down before they even suspect there’s an unethical man loose in their society. They can’t account for a variable like me. I’m beyond their understanding. I’m incomprehensible, impossible, therefore I do not exist. My God, I can kill hundreds of thousands of them before they even realize murder is out in the world again. I can make it look like an accident each time. Why, the idea is so huge, it’s unbelievable!”

The fire burned the town. He sat under a tree for a long time, until morning. Then, he found a cave in the hills, and went in, to sleep.

He awoke at sunset with a sudden dream of fire. He saw himself pushed into the flue, cut into sections by flame, burned away to nothing. He sat up on the cave floor, laughing at himself. He had an idea.

He walked down into the town and stepped into an audio booth. He dialed OPERATOR. “Give me the Police Department,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?” said the operator.

He tried again. “The Law Force,” he said.

“I will connect you with the Peace Control,” she said, at last.

A little fear began ticking inside him like a tiny watch. Suppose the operator recognized the term Police Department as an anachronism, took his audio number, and sent someone out to investigate? No, she wouldn’t do that.

Why should she suspect? Paranoids were nonexistent in this civilization.

“Yes, the Peace Control,” he said.

A buzz. A man’s voice answered. “Peace Control. Stephens speaking.”

“Give me the Homicide Detail,” said Lantry, smiling.

“The what? ”

“Who investigates murders?”

“I beg your pardon, what are you talking about?”

“Wrong number.” Lantry hung up, chuckling. Ye gods, there was no such a thing as a Homicide Detail. There were no murders, therefore they needed no detectives. Perfect, perfect!

The audio rang back. Lantry hesitated, then answered.

“Say,” said the voice on the phone. “Who are you?”

“The man just left who called,” said Lantry, and hung up again.

He ran. They would recognize his voice and perhaps send someone out to check. People didn’t lie. He had just lied. They knew his voice. He had lied. Anybody who lied needed a psychiatrist. They would come to pick him up to see why he was lying. For no other reason. They suspected him of nothing else. Therefore—he must run.

Oh, how very carefully he must act from now on. He knew nothing of this world, this odd straight truthful ethical world. Simply by looking pale you were suspect. Simply by not sleeping nights you were suspect. Simply by not bathing, by smelling like a—dead cow?—you were suspect. Anything.

He must go to a library. But that was dangerous, too. What were libraries like today? Did they have books or did they have film spools which projected books on a screen? Or did people have libraries at home, thus eliminating the necessity of keeping large main libraries?

He decided to chance it. His use of archaic terms might well make him suspect again, but now it was very important he learn all that could be learned of this foul world into which he had come again. He stopped a man on the street. “Which way to the library?”

The man was not surprised. “Two blocks east, one block north.”

“Thank you.”

Simple as that.

He walked into the library a few minutes later.

“May I help you?”

He looked at the librarian. May I help you, may I help you. What a world of helpful people! “I’d like to ‘have’ Edgar Allan Poe.” His verb was carefully chosen. He didn’t say ‘read.’ He was too afraid that books were passé, that printing itself was a lost art. Maybe all ‘books’ today were in the form of fully delineated three-dimensional motion pictures. How in blazes could you make a motion picture out of Socrates, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud?

“What was that name again?”

“Edgar Allan Poe.”

“There is no such author listed in our files.”

“Will you please check?”

She checked. “Oh, yes. There’s a red mark on the file card. He was one of the authors in the Great Burning of 2265.

“How ignorant of me.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “Have you heard much of him?”

“He had some interesting barbarian ideas on death,” said Lantry.

“Horrible ones,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Ghastly.”

“Yes. Ghastly. Abominable, in fact. Good thing he was burned.

Unclean. By the way, do you have any of Lovecraft?”

“Is that a sex book?”

Lantry exploded with laughter. “No, no. It’s a man.”

She riffled the file. “He was burned, too. Along with Poe.”

“I suppose that applies to Machen and a man named Derleth and one named Ambrose Bierce, also?”

“Yes.” She shut the file cabinet. “All burned. And good riddance.” She gave him an odd warm look of interest. “I bet you’ve just come back from Mars.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There was another explorer in here yesterday. He’d just made the Mars hop and return. He was interested in supernatural literature, also. It seems there are actually ‘tombs’ on Mars.”

“What are ‘tombs’?” Lantry was learning to keep his mouth closed.

“You know, those things they once buried people in.”

“Barbarian custom. Ghastly!”

“Isn’t it? Well, seeing the Martian tombs made this young explorer curious. He came and asked if we had any of those authors you mentioned. Of course we haven’t even a smitch of their stuff.” She looked at his pale face.

“You are one of the Martian rocket men, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Got back on the ship the other day.”

“The other young man’s name was Burke.”

“Of course. Burke! Good friend of mine!”

“Sorry I can’t help you. You’d best get yourself some vitamin shots and some sun lamps. You look terrible, Mr.—?”

“Lantry. I’ll be good. Thanks ever so much. See you next Hallows’

Eve!”

“Aren’t you the clever one.” She laughed. “If there were a Hallows’

Eve, I’d make it a date.”

“But they burned that, too,” he said.

“Oh, they burned everything,” she said. “Good night.”

“Good night.” And he went on out.

Oh, how carefully he was balanced in this world! Like some kind of dark gyroscope, whirling with never a murmur, a very silent man. As he walked along the eight o’clock evening street he noticed with particular interest that there was not an unusual amount of lights about. There were the usual street lights at each corner, but the blocks themselves were only faintly illuminated. Could it be that these remarkable people were not afraid of the dark? Incredible nonsense! Every one was afraid of the dark. Even he himself had been afraid, as a child. It was as natural as eating.

A little boy ran by on pelting feet, followed by six others. They yelled and shouted and rolled on the dark cool October lawn, in the leaves. Lantry looked on for several minutes before addressing himself to one of the small boys who was for a moment taking a respite, gathering his breath into his small lungs, as a boy might blow to refill a punctured paper bag.

“Here, now,” said Lantry. “You’ll wear yourself out.”

“Sure,” said the boy.

“Could you tell me,” said the man, “why there are no street lights in the middle of the blocks?”

“Why?” asked the boy.

“I’m a teacher, I thought I’d test your knowledge,” said Lantry.

“Well,” said the boy, “you don’t need lights in the middle of the block, that’s why.”

“But it gets rather dark,” said Lantry.

“So?” said the boy.

“Aren’t you afraid?” asked Lantry.

“Of what?” asked the boy.

“The dark,” said Lantry.

“Ho ho,” said the boy. “Why should I be?”

“Well,” said Lantry. “It’s black, it’s dark. And after all, street lights were invented to take away the dark and take away fear.”

“That’s silly. Street lights were made so you could see where you were walking. Outside of that there’s nothing.”

“You miss the whole point—” said Lantry. “Do you mean to say you would sit in the middle of an empty lot all night and not be afraid?”

“Of what?”

“Of what, of what, of what, you little ninny! Of the dark!”

“Ho ho.”

“Would you go out in the hills and stay all night in the dark?”

“Sure.”

“Would you stay in a deserted house alone?”

“Sure.”

“And not be afraid?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a liar!”

“Don’t you call me nasty names!” shouted the boy. Liar was the improper noun, indeed. It seemed to be the worst thing you could call a person.

Lantry was completely furious with the little monster. “Look,” he insisted. “Look into my eyes …”

The boy looked.

Lantry bared his teeth slightly. He put out his hands, making a clawlike gesture. He leered and gesticulated and wrinkled his face into a terrible mask of horror.

“Ho ho,” said the boy. “You’re funny.”

“What did you say?”

“You’re funny. Do it again. Hey, gang, c’mere! This man does funny things!”

“Never mind.”

“Do it again, sir.”

“Never mind, never mind. Good night!” Lantry ran off.

“Good night, sir. And mind the dark, sir!” called the little boy.

Of all the stupidity, of all the rank, gross, crawling, jelly-mouthed stupidity! He had never seen the like of it in his life! Bringing the children up without so much as an ounce of imagination! Where was the fun in being children if you didn’t imagine things?

He stopped running. He slowed and for the first time began to appraise himself. He ran his hand over his face and bit his fingers and found that he himself was standing midway in the block and he felt uncomfortable. He moved up to the street corner where there was a glowing lantern. “That’s better,” he said, holding his hands out like a man to an open warm fire.

He listened. There was not a sound except the night breathing of the crickets. Finally there was a fire-hush as a rocket swept the sky. It was the sound a torch might make brandished gently on the dark air.

He listened to himself and for the first time he realized what there was so peculiar to himself. There was not a sound in him. The little nostril and lung noises were absent. His lungs did not take nor give oxygen or carbon dioxide; they did not move. The hairs in his nostrils did not quiver with warm combing air. That faint purling whisper of breathing did not sound in his nose.

Strange. Funny. A noise you never heard when you were alive, the breath that fed your body, and yet, once dead, oh how you missed it!

The only other time you ever heard it was on deep dreamless awake nights when you wakened and listened and heard first your nose taking and gently poking out the air, and then the dull deep dim red thunder of the blood in your temples, in your eardrums, in your throat, in your aching wrists, in your warm loins, in your chest. All of those little rhythms, gone. The wrist beat gone, the throat pulse gone, the chest vibration gone. The sound of the blood coming up down around and through, up down around and through.

Now it was like listening to a statue.

And yet he lived. Or, rather, moved about. And how was this done, over and above scientific explanations, theories, doubts?

By one thing, and one thing alone.

Hatred.

Hatred was a blood in him, it went up down around and through, up down around and through. It was a heart in him, not beating, true, but warm.

He was—what? Resentment. Envy. They said he could not lie any longer in his coffin in the cemetery. He had wanted to. He had never had any particular desire to get up and walk around. It had been enough, all these centuries, to lie in the deep box and feel but not feel the ticking of the million insect watches in the earth around, the moves of worms like so many deep thoughts in the soil.

But then they had come and said, “Out you go and into the furnace!”

And that is the worst thing you can say to any man. You cannot tell him what to do. If you say you are dead, he will want not to be dead. If you say there are no such things as vampires, by God, that man will try to be one just for spite. If you say a dead man cannot walk, he will test his limbs. If you say murder is no longer occurring, he will make it occur. He was, in toto, all the impossible things. They had given birth to him with their practices and ignorances. Oh, how wrong they were. They needed to be shown. He would show them! Sun is good, so is night, there is nothing wrong with dark, they said.

Dark is horror, he shouted, silently, facing the little houses. It is meant for contrast. You must fear, you hear! That has always been the way of this world. You destroyers of Edgar Allan Poe and fine big-worded Lovecraft, you burner of Halloween masks and destroyer of pumpkin jack-o-lanterns! I will make night what it once was, the thing against which man built all his lanterned cities and his many children!

As if in answer to this, a rocket, flying low, trailing a long rakish feather of flame. It made Lantry flinch and draw back.

IV

It was but ten miles to the little town of Science Port. He made it by dawn, walking. But even this was not good. At four in the morning a silver beetle pulled up on the road beside him.

“Hello,” called the man inside.

“Hello,” said Lantry, wearily.

“Why are you walking?” asked the man.

“I’m going to Science Port.”

“Why don’t you ride?”

“I like to walk.”

“Nobody likes to walk. Are you sick? May I give you a ride?”

“Thanks, but I like to walk.”

The man hesitated, then closed the beetle door. “Good night.”

When the beetle was gone over the hill, Lantry retreated into a nearby forest. A world full of bungling, helping people. By God, you couldn’t even walk without being accused of sickness. That meant only one thing. He must not walk any longer, he had to ride. He should have accepted that fellow’s offer.

The rest of the night he walked far enough off the highway so that if a beetle rushed by he had time to vanish in the underbrush. At dawn he crept into an empty dry water drain and closed his eyes.

The dream was as perfect as a rimed snowflake.

He saw the graveyard where he had lain deep and ripe over the centuries. He heard the early morning footsteps of the laborers returning to finish their work.

“Would you mind passing me the shovel, Jim?”

“Here you go.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!”

“What’s up?”

“Look here. We didn’t finish last night, did we?”

“No.”

There was one more coffin, wasn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, here it is, and open!”

“You’ve got the wrong hole.”

“What’s the name say on the gravestone?”

“Lantry. William Lantry.”

“That’s him, that’s the one! Gone!”

“What could have happened to it?”

“How do I know. The body was here last night.”

“We can’t be sure, we didn’t look.”

“God man, people don’t bury empty coffins. He was in his box. Now he isn’t.”

“Maybe this box was empty.”

“Nonsense. Smell that smell? He was here all right.”

A pause.

“Nobody would have taken the body, would they?”

“What for?”

“A curiosity, perhaps.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. People just don’t steal. Nobody steals.”

“Well, then, there’s only one solution.”

“And?”

“He got up and walked away.”

A pause. In the dark dream, Lantry expected to hear laughter. There was none. Instead, the voice of the grave-digger, after a thoughtful pause, said, “Yes. That’s it, indeed. He got up and walked away.”

“That’s interesting to think about,” said the other.

“Isn’t it, though!”

Silence.

Lantry awoke. It had all been a dream, but, how realistic. How strangely the two men had carried on. But not unnaturally, oh, no. That was exactly how you expected men of the future to talk. Men of the future. Lantry grinned wryly. That was an anachronism for you. This was the future. This was happening now. It wasn’t three hundred years from now, it was now, not then, or any other time. This wasn’t the twentieth century. Oh, how calmly those two men in the dream had said, “He got up and walked away.” “—

interesting to think about.” “Isn’t it, though?” With never a quaver in their voices. With not so much as a glance over their shoulders or a tremble of spade in hand. But, of course, with their perfectly honest, logical minds, there was but one explanation; certainly nobody had stolen the corpse. “Nobody steals.” The corpse had simply got up and walked off. The corpse was the only one who could have possibly moved the corpse. By the few casual slow words of the gravediggers Lantry knew what they were thinking. Here was a man that had lain in suspended animation, not really dead, for hundreds of years. The jarring about, the activity, had brought him back.

Everyone had heard of those little green toads that are sealed for centuries inside mud rocks or in ice patties, alive, alive oh! And how when scientists chipped them out and warmed them like marbles in their hands the little toads leapt about and frisked and blinked. Then it was only logical that the gravediggers think of William Lantry in like fashion.

But what if the various parts were fitted together in the next day or so?

If the vanished body and the shattered, exploded Incinerator were connected?

What if this fellow named Burke, who had returned pale from Mars, went to the library again and said to the young woman he wanted some books and she said, “Oh, your friend Lantry was in the other day.” And he’d say, ‘Lantry who? Don’t know anyone by that name.’ And she’d say, “Oh, he lied.” And people in this time didn’t lie. So it would all form and coalesce, item by item, bit by bit. A pale man who was pale and shouldn’t be pale had lied and people don’t lie, and a walking man on a lonely country road had walked and people don’t walk any more, and a body was missing from a cemetery, and the Incinerator had blown up and and and—

They would come after him. They would find him. He would be easy to find. He walked. He lied. He was pale. They would find him and take him and stick him through the open fire lock of the nearest Burner and that would be your Mr. William Lantry, like a Fourth of July set-piece!

There was only one thing to be done efficiently and completely. He arose in violent moves. His lips were wide and his dark eyes were flared and there was a trembling and burning all through him. He must kill and kill and kill and kill and kill. He must make his enemies into friends, into people like himself who walked but shouldn’t walk, who were pale in a land of pinks. He must kill and then kill and then kill again. He must make bodies and dead people and corpses. He must destroy Incinerator after Flue after Burner after Incinerator. Explosion on explosion. Death on death. Then, when the Incinerators were all in thrown ruin, and the hastily established morgues were jammed with the bodies of people shattered by the explosion, then he would begin his making of friends, his enrollment of the dead in his own cause.

Before they traced and found and killed him, they must be killed themselves. So far he was safe. He could kill and they would not kill back.

People simply do not go around killing. That was his safety margin. He climbed out of the abandoned drain, stood in the road.

He took the knife from his pocket and hailed the next beetle.

It was like the Fourth of July! The biggest firecracker of them all. The Science Port Incinerator split down the middle and flew apart. It made a thousand small explosions that ended with a greater one. It fell upon the town and crushed houses and burned trees. It woke people from sleep and then put them to sleep again, forever, an instant later.

William Lantry, sitting in a beetle that was not his own, tuned idly to a station on the audio dial. The collapse of the Incinerator had killed some four hundred people. Many had been caught in flattened houses, others struck by flying metal. A temporary morgue was being set up at—

An address was given.

Lantry noted it with a pad and pencil.

He could go on this way, he thought, from town to town, from country to country, destroying the Burners, the Pillars of Fire, until the whole clean magnificent framework of flame and cauterization was tumbled. He made a fair estimate—each explosion averaged five hundred dead. You could work that up to a hundred thousand in no time.

He pressed the floor stud on the beetle. Smiling, he drove off through the dark streets of the city.

The city coroner had requisitioned an old warehouse. From midnight until four in the morning the gray beetles hissed down the rain-shiny streets, turned in, and the bodies were laid out on the cold concrete floors, with white sheets over them. It was a continuous flow until about four-thirty, then it stopped. There were about two hundred bodies there, white and cold.

The bodies were left alone; nobody stayed behind to tend them. There was no use tending the dead; it was a useless procedure; the dead could take care of themselves.

About five o’clock, with a touch of dawn in the east, the first trickle of relatives arrived to identify their sons or their fathers or their mothers or their uncles. The people moved quickly into the warehouse, made the identification, moved quickly out again. By six o’clock, with the sky still lighter in the east, this trickle had passed on, also.

William Lantry walked across the wide wet street and entered the warehouse.

He held a piece of blue chalk in one hand.

He walked by the coroner who stood in the entranceway talking to two others. “… drive the bodies to the Incinerator in Mellin Town, tomorrow …”

The voices faded.

Lantry moved, his feet echoing faintly on the cool concrete. A wave of sourceless relief came to him as he walked among the shrouded figures. He was among his own. And—better than that! He had created these! He had made them dead! He had procured for himself a vast number of recumbent friends!

Was the coroner watching? Lantry turned his head. No. The warehouse was calm and quiet and shadowed in the dark morning. The coroner was walking away now; across the street, with his two attendants; a beetle had drawn up on the other side of the street, and the coroner was going over to talk with whoever was in the beetle.

William Lantry stood and made a blue chalk pentagram on the floor by each of the bodies. He moved swiftly, swiftly, without a sound, without blinking. In a few minutes, glancing up now and then to see if the coroner was still busy, he had chalked the floor by a hundred bodies. He straightened up and put the chalk in his pocket.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, now is the time …

Lying in the earth, over the centuries, the processes and thoughts of passing peoples and passing times had seeped down to him, slowly, as into a deep-buried sponge. From some death-memory in him now, ironically, repeatedly, a black typewriter clacked out black even lines of pertinent words: Now is the time for all good men, for all good men, to come to the aid of—

William Lantry.

Other words—

Arise my love, and come away—

The quick brown fox jumped over … Paraphrase it. The quick risen body jumped over the tumbled Incinerator…

Lazarus, come forth from the tomb …

He knew the right words. He need only speak them as they had been spoken over the centuries. He need only gesture with his hands and speak the words, the dark words that would cause these bodies to quiver, rise and walk!

And when they had risen he would take them through the town, they would kill others, and the others would rise and walk. By the end of the day there would be thousands of good friends, walking with him. And what of the naïve, living people of this year, this day, this hour? They would be completely unprepared for it. They would go down to defeat because they would not be expecting war of any sort. They wouldn’t believe it possible, it would all be over before they could convince themselves that such an illogical thing could happen.

He lifted his hands. His lips moved. He said the words. He began in a chanting whisper and then raised his voice, louder. He said the words again and again. His eyes were closed tightly. His body swayed. He spoke faster and faster. He began to move forward among the bodies. The dark words flowed from his mouth. He was enchanted with his own formulae. He stooped and made further blue symbols on the concrete, in the fashion of long-dead sorcerers, smiling, confident. Any moment now the first tremor of the still bodies, any moment now the rising, the leaping up of the cold ones!

His hands lifted in the air. His head nodded. He spoke, he spoke, he spoke. He gestured. He talked loudly over the bodies, his eyes flaring, his body tensed. “Now!” he cried, violently. “Rise, all of you!”

Nothing happened.

“Rise!” he screamed, with a terrible torment in his voice.

The sheets lay in white blue-shadow folds over the silent bodies.

“Hear me, and act!” he shouted.

Far away, on the street, a beetle hissed along.

Again, again, again he shouted, pleaded. He got down by each body and asked of it his particular violent favor. No reply. He strode wildly between the even white rows, flinging his arms up, stooping again and again to make blue symbols!

Lantry was very pale. He licked his lips. “Come on, get up,” he said.

“They have, they always have, for a thousand years. When you make a mark

—so! and speak a word—so! they always rise! Why not now, why not you!

Come on, come on, before they come back!”

The warehouse went up into shadow. There were steel beams across and down. In it, under the roof, there was not a sound, except the raving of a lonely man.

Lantry stopped.

Through the wide doors of the warehouse he caught a glimpse of the last cold stars of morning.

This was the year 2349.

His eyes grew cold and his hands fell to his sides. He did not move.

Once upon a time people shuddered when they heard the wind about the house, once people raised crucifixes and wolfbane, and believed in walking dead and bats and loping white wolves. And as long as they believed, then so long did the dead, the bats, the loping wolves exist. The mind gave birth and reality to them.

But …

He looked at the white sheeted bodies.

These people did not believe.

They had never believed. They would never believe. They had never imagined that the dead might walk. The dead went up flues in flame. They had never heard superstition, never trembled or shuddered or doubted in the dark. Walking dead people could not exist, they were illogical. This was the year 2349, man, after all!

Therefore, these people could not rise, could not walk again. They were dead and flat and cold. Nothing, chalk, imprecation, superstition, could wind them up and set them walking. They were dead and knew they were dead!

He was alone.

There were live people in the world who moved and drove beetles and drank quiet drinks in little dimly illumined bars by country roads, and kissed women and talked much good talk all day and every day.

But he was not alive.

Friction gave him what little warmth he possessed.

There were two hundred dead people here in this warehouse now, cold upon the floor. The first dead people in a hundred years who were allowed to be corpses for an extra hour or more. The first not to be immediately trundled to the Incinerator and lit like so much phosphorus.

He should be happy with them, among them.

He was not.

They were completely dead. They did not know nor believe in walking once the heart had paused and stilled itself. They were deader than dead ever was.

He was indeed alone, more alone than any man had ever been. He felt the chill of his aloneness moving up into his chest, strangling him quietly.

William Lantry turned suddenly and gasped.

While he had stood there, someone had entered the warehouse. A tall man with white hair, wearing a light weight tan overcoat and no hat. How long the man had been nearby there was no telling.

There was no reason to stay here. Lantry turned and started to walk slowly out. He looked hastily at the man as he passed and the man with the white hair looked back at him, curiously. Had he heard? The imprecations, the pleadings, the shoutings? Did he suspect? Lantry slowed his walk. Had this man seen him make the blue chalk marks? But then, would he interpret them as symbols of an ancient superstition? Probably not.

Reaching the door, Lantry paused. For a moment he did not want to do anything but lie down and be coldly, really dead again and be carried silently down the street to some distant burning flue and there dispatched in ash and whispering fire. If he was indeed alone and there was no chance to collect an army to his cause, what, then, existed as a reason for going on? Killing? Yes, he’d kill a few thousand more. But that wasn’t enough. You can only do so much of that before they drag you down.

He looked at the cold sky.

A rocket went across the black heaven, trailing fire.

Mars burned red among a million stars.

Mars. The library. The librarian. Talk. Returning rocket men. Tombs.

Lantry almost gave a shout. He restrained his hand, which wanted so much to reach up into the sky and touch Mars. Lovely red star on the sky.

Good star that gave him sudden new hope. If he had a living heart now it would be thrashing wildly, and sweat would be breaking out of him and his pulses would be stammering, and tears would be in his eyes!

He would go down to wherever the rockets sprang up into space. He would go to Mars, one way or another. He would go to the Martian tombs.

There, there were bodies, he would bet his last hatred on it, that would rise and walk and work with him! Theirs was an ancientculture, much different from that of Earth, patterned on the Egyptian, if what the librarian had said was true. And the Egyptian—what a crucible of dark superstition and midnight terror that culture had been. Mars it was, then. Beautiful Mars!

But he must not attract attention to himself. He must move carefully.

He wanted to run, yes, to get away, but that would be the worst possible move he could make. The man with the white hair was glancing at Lantry from time to time, in the entranceway. There were too many people about. If anything happened he would be outnumbered. So far he had taken on only one man at a time.

Lantry forced himself to stop and stand on the steps before the warehouse. The man with the white hair came on onto the steps also and stood, looking at the sky. He looked as if he was going to speak at any moment. He fumbled in his pockets and took out a packet of cigarettes.

V

They stood outside the morgue together, the tall, pink, white-haired man, and Lantry, hands in their pockets. It was a cool night with a white shell of a moon that washed a house here, a road there, and farther on, parts of a river.

“Cigarette?” The man offered Lantry one.

“Thanks.”

They lit up together. The man glanced at Lantry’s mouth. “Cool night.”

“Cool.”

They shifted their feet. “Terrible accident.”

“Terrible.”

“So many dead.”

“So many.”

Lantry felt himself some sort of delicate weight upon a scale. The other man did not seem to be looking at him, but rather listening and feeling toward him. There was a feathery balance here that made for vast discomfort.

He wanted to move away and get out from under this balancing, weighing.

The tall white-haired man said, “My name’s McClure.”

“Did you have any friends inside?” asked Lantry.

“No. A casual acquaintance. Awful accident.”

“Awful.”

They balanced each other. A beetle hissed by on the road with its seventeen tires whirling quietly. The moon showed a little town farther over in the black hills.

“I say,” said the man McClure.

“Yes.”

“Could you answer me a question?”

“Be glad to.” He loosened the knife in his coat pocket, ready.

“Is your name Lantry?” asked the man at last.

“Yes.”

“William Lantry?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re the man who came out of the Salem graveyard day before yesterday, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord, I’m glad to meet you, Lantry! We’ve been trying to find you for the past twenty-four hours!”

The man seized his hand, pumped it, slapped him on the back.

“What, what?” said Lantry.

“Good Lord, man, why did you run off? Do you realize what an instance this is? We want to talk to you!”

McClure was smiling, glowing. Another handshake, another slap. “I thought it was you!”

The man is mad, thought Lantry. Absolutely mad. Here I’ve toppled his incinerators, killed people, and he’s shaking my hand. Mad, mad!

“Will you come along to the Hall?” said the man, taking his elbow.

“Wh-what hall?” Lantry stepped back.

“The Science Hall, of course. It isn’t every year we get a real case of suspended animation. In small animals, yes, but in a man, hardly! Will you come?”

“What’s the act!” demanded Lantry, glaring. “What’s all this talk.”

“My dear fellow, what do you mean?” the man was stunned.

“Never mind. Is that the only reason you want to see me?”

“What other reason would there be, Mr. Lantry? You don’t know how glad I am to see you!” He almost did a little dance. “I suspected. When we were in there together. You being so pale and all. And then the way you smoked your cigarette, something about it, and a lot of other things, all subliminal. But it is you, isn’t it, it is you!”

“It is I. William Lantry.” Dryly.

“Good fellow! Come along!”

The beetle moved swiftly through the dawn streets. McClure talked rapidly.

Lantry sat, listening, astounded. Here was this fool, McClure, playing his cards for him! Here was this stupid scientist, or whatever, accepting him not as a suspicious baggage, a murderous item. Oh no! Quite the contrary!

Only as a suspended animation case was he considered! Not as a dangerous man at all. Far from it!

“Of course,” cried McClure, grinning. “You didn’t know where to go, whom to turn to. It was all quite incredible to you.”

“Yes.”

“I had a feeling you’d be there at the morgue tonight,” said McClure, happily.

“Oh?” Lantry stiffened.

“Yes. Can’t explain it. But you, how shall I put it? Ancient Americans? You had funny ideas on death. And you were among the dead so long, I felt you’d be drawn back by the accident, by the morgue and all. It’s not very logical. Silly, in fact. It’s just a feeling. I hate feelings but there it was. I came on a, I guess you’d call it a hunch, wouldn’t you?”

“You might call it that.”

“And there you were!”

“There I was,” said Lantry.

“Are you hungry?”

“I’ve eaten.”

“How did you get around?”

“I hitchhiked.”

“You what? ”

“People gave me rides on the road.”

“Remarkable.”

“I imagine it sounds that way.” He looked at the passing houses. “So this is the era of space travel, is it?”

“Oh, we’ve been traveling to Mars for some forty years now.”

“Amazing. And those big funnels, those towers in the middle of every town?”

“Those. Haven’t you heard? The Incinerators. Oh, of course, they hadn’t anything of that sort in your time. Had some bad luck with them. An explosion in Salem and one here, all in a forty-eight-hour period. You looked as if you were going to speak; what is it?”

“I was thinking,” said Lantry. “How fortunate I got out of my coffin when I did. I might well have been thrown into one of your Incinerators and burned up.”

“Quite.”

Lantry toyed with the dials on the beetle dash. He wouldn’t go to Mars. His plans were changed. If this fool simply refused to recognize an act of violence when he stumbled upon it, then let him be a fool. If they didn’t connect the two explosions with a man from the tomb, all well and good. Let them go on deluding themselves. If they couldn’t imagine someone being mean and nasty and murderous, heaven help them. He rubbed his hands with satisfaction. No, no Martian trip for you, as yet, Lantry lad. First, we’ll see what can be done boring from the inside. Plenty of time. The Incinerators can wait an extra week or so. One has to be subtle, you know. Any more immediate explosions might cause quite a ripple of thought.

McClure was gabbling wildly on.

“Of course, you don’t have to be examined immediately. You’ll want a rest. I’ll put you up at my place.”

“Thanks. I don’t feel up to being probed and pulled. Plenty of time in a week or so.”

They drew up before a house and climbed out.

“You want to sleep, naturally.”

“I’ve been asleep for centuries. Be glad to stay awake. I’m not a bit tired.”

“Good.” McClure let them into the house. He headed for the drink bar.

“A drink will fix us up.”

“You have one,” said Lantry. “Later for me. I just want to sit down.”

“By all means sit.” McClure mixed himself a drink. He looked around the room, looked at Lantry, paused for a moment with the drink in his hand, tilted his head to one side, and put his tongue in his cheek. Then he shrugged and stirred the drink. He walked slowly to a chair and sat, sipping the drink quietly. He seemed to be listening for something. “There are cigarettes on the table,” he said.

“Thanks.” Lantry took one and lit it and smoked it. He did not speak for some time.

Lantry thought, I’m taking this all too easily. Maybe I should kill and run. He’s the only one that has found me, yet. Perhaps this is all a trap.

Perhaps we’re simply sitting here waiting for the police. Or whatever in blazes they use for police these days. He looked at McClure. No. They weren’t waiting for police. They were waiting for something else.

McClure didn’t speak. He looked at Lantry’s face and he looked at Lantry’s hands. He looked at Lantry’s chest a long time, with easy quietness.

He sipped his drink. He looked at Lantry’s feet.

Finally he said, “Where’d you get the clothing?”

“I asked someone for clothes and they gave these things to me. Darned nice of them.”

“You’ll find that’s how we are in this world. All you have to do is ask.”

McClure shut up again. His eyes moved. Only his eyes and nothing else. Once or twice he lifted his drink.

A little clock ticked somewhere in the distance.

“Tell me about yourself, Mr. Lantry.”

“Nothing much to tell.”

“You’re modest.”

“Hardly. You know about the past. I know nothing of the future, or I should say ‘today’ and day before yesterday. You don’t learn much in a coffin.”

McClure did not speak. He suddenly sat forward in his chair and then leaned back and shook his head.

They’ll never suspect me, thought Lantry. They aren’t superstitious, they simply can’t believe in a dead man walking. Therefore, I’ll be safe. I’ll keep putting off the physical checkup. They’re polite. They won’t force me.

Then, I’ll work it so I can get to Mars. After that, the tombs, in my own good time, and the plan. God, how simple. How naïve these people are.

McClure sat across the room for five minutes. A coldness had come over him. The color was very slowly going from his face, as one sees the color of medicine vanishing as one presses the bulb at the top of a dropper. He leaned forward, saying nothing, and offered another cigarette to Lantry.

“Thanks.” Lantry took it. McClure sat deeply back into his easy chair, his knees folded one over the other. He did not look at Lantry, and yet somehow did. The feeling of weighing and balancing returned. McClure was like a tall thin master of hounds listening for something that nobody else could hear. There are little silver whistles you can blow that only dogs can hear. McClure seemed to be listening acutely, sensitively for such an invisible whistle, listening with his eyes and with his half-opened, dry mouth, and with his aching, breathing nostrils.

Lantry sucked the cigarette, sucked the cigarette, sucked the cigarette, and, as many times, blew out, blew out, blew out. McClure was like some lean red-shagged hound listening and listening with a slick slide of eyes to one side, with an apprehension in that hand that was so precisely microscopic that one only sensed it, as one sensed the invisible whistle, with some part of the brain deeper than eyes or nostril or ear.

The room was so quiet the cigarette smoke made some kind of invisible noise rising to the ceiling. McClure was a thermometer, a chemist’s scales, a listening hound, a litmus paper, an antennae; all these. Lantry did not move. Perhaps the feeling would pass. It had passed before. McClure did not move for a long while and then, without a word, he nodded at the sherry decanter, and Lantry refused as silently. They sat looking but not looking at each other, again and away, again and away.

McClure stiffened slowly. Lantry saw the color getting paler in those lean cheeks, and the hand tightening on the sherry glass, and a knowledge come at last to stay, never to go away, into the eyes.

Lantry did not move. He could not. All of this was of such a fascination that he wanted only to see, to hear what would happen next. It was McClure’s show from here on in.

McClure said, “At first I thought it was the first psychosis I have ever seen. You, I mean. I thought, he’s convinced himself, Lantry’s convinced himself, he’s quite insane, he’s told himself to do all these little things.”

McClure talked as if in a dream, and continued talking and didn’t stop.

“I said to myself, he purposely doesn’t breathe through his nose. I watched your nostrils, Lantry. The little nostril hairs never once quivered in the last hour. That wasn’t enough. It was a fact I filed. It wasn’t enough. He breathes through his mouth, I said, on purpose. And then I gave you a cigarette and you sucked and blew, sucked and blew. None of it ever came out your nose. I told myself, well, that’s all right. He doesn’t inhale. Is that terrible, is that suspect? All in the mouth, all in the mouth. And then, I looked at your chest. I watched. It never moved up or down, it did nothing. He’s convinced himself, I said to myself. He’s convinced himself about all this. He doesn’t move his chest, except slowly, when he thinks you’re not looking.

That’s what I told myself.”

The words went on in the silent room, not pausing, still in a dream.

“And then I offered you a drink but you don’t drink and I thought, he doesn’t drink, I thought. Is that terrible? And I watched and watched you all this time.

Lantry holds his breath, he’s fooling himself. But now, yes, now, I understand it quite well. Now I know everything the way it is. Do you know how I know?

I do not hear breathing in the room. I wait and I hear nothing. There is no beat of heart or intake of lung. The room is so silent. Nonsense, one might say, but I know. At the Incinerator I know. There is a difference. You enter a room where a man is on a bed and you know immediately whether he will look up and speak to you or whether he will not speak to you ever again. Laugh if you will, but one can tell. It is a subliminal thing. It is the whistle the dog hears when no human hears. It is the tick of a clock that has ticked so long one no longer notices. Something is in a room when a man lives in it. Something is not in the room when a man is dead in it.”

McClure shut his eyes a moment. He put down his sherry glass. He waited a moment. He took up his cigarette and puffed it and then put it down in a black tray.

“I am alone in this room,” he said.

Lantry did not move.

“You are dead,” said McClure. “My mind does not know this. It is not a thinking thing. It is a thing of the senses and the subconscious. At first I thought, this man thinks he is dead, risen from the dead, a vampire. Is that not logical? Would not any man, buried as many centuries, raised in a superstitious, ignorant culture, think likewise of himself once risen from the tomb? Yes, that is logical. This man has hypnotized himself and fitted his bodily functions so that they would in no way interfere with his self-delusion, his great paranoia. He governs his breathing. He tells himself, I cannot hear my breathing, therefore I am dead. His inner mind censors the sound of breathing. He does not allow himself to eat or drink. These things he probably does in his sleep, with part of his mind, hiding the evidences of this humanity from his deluded mind at other times.”

McClure finished it. “I was wrong. You are not insane. You are not deluding yourself. Nor me. This is all very illogical and—I must admit—

almost frightening. Does that make you feel good, to think you frighten me? I have no label for you. You’re a very odd man, Lantry. I’m glad to have met you. This will make an interesting report indeed.”

“Is there anything wrong with me being dead?” said Lantry. “Is it a crime?”

“You must admit it’s highly unusual.”

“But, still now, is it a crime?” asked Lantry.

“We have no crime, no criminal court. We want to examine you, naturally, to find out how you have happened. It is like that chemical which, one minute is inert, the next is living cell. Who can say where what happened to what. You are that impossibility. It is enough to drive a man quite insane.”

“Will I be released when you are done fingering me?”

“You will not be held. If you don’t wish to be examined, you will not be. But I am hoping you will help by offering us your services.”

“I might,” said Lantry.

“But tell me,” said McClure. “What were you doing at the morgue?”

“Nothing.”

“I heard you talking when I came in.”

“I was merely curious.”

“You’re lying. That is very bad, Mr. Lantry. The truth is far better. The truth is, is it not, that you are dead and, being the only one of your sort, were lonely. Therefore you killed people to have company.”

“How does that follow?”

McClure laughed. “Logic, my dear fellow. Once I knew you were really dead, a moment ago, really a—what do you call it—a vampire (silly word!) I tied you immediately to the Incinerator blasts. Before that there was no reason to connect you. But once the one piece fell into place, the fact that you were dead, then it was simple to guess your loneliness, your hate, your envy, all of the tawdry motivations of a walking corpse. It took only an instant then to see the Incinerators blown to blazes, and then to think of you, among the bodies at the morgue, seeking help, seeking friends and people like yourself to work with—”

“Blast you!” Lantry was out of the chair. He was halfway to the other man when McClure rolled over and scuttled away, flinging the sherry decanter. With a great despair Lantry realized that, like an idiot, he had thrown away his one chance to kill McClure. He should have done it earlier. It had been Lantry’s one weapon, his safety margin. If people in a society never killed each other, they never suspected one another. You could walk up to any one of them and kill him.

“Come back here!” Lantry threw the knife.

McClure got behind a chair. The idea of flight, of protection, of fighting, was still new to him. He had part of the idea, but there was still a bit of luck on Lantry’s side if Lantry wanted to use it.

“Oh, no,” said McClure, holding the chair between himself and the advancing man. “You want to kill me. It’s odd, but true. I can’t understand it.

You want to cut me with that knife or something like that, and it’s up to me to prevent you from doing such an odd thing.”

“I will kill you!” Lantry let it slip out. He cursed himself. That was the worst possible thing to say.

Lantry lunged across the chair, clutching at McClure.

McClure was very logical. “It won’t do you any good to kill me. You know that.” They wrestled and held each other in a wild, toppling shuffle.

Tables fell over, scattering articles. “You remember what happened in the morgue?”

“I don’t care!” screamed Lantry.

“You didn’t raise those dead, did you?”

“I don’t care!” cried Lantry.

“Look here,” said McClure, reasonably. “There will never be any more like you, ever, there’s no use.”

“Then I’ll destroy all of you, all of you!” screamed Lantry.

“And then what? You’ll still be alone, with no more like you about.”

“I’ll go to Mars. They have tombs there. I’ll find more like myself!”

“No,” said McClure. “The executive order went through yesterday. All of the tombs are being deprived of their bodies. They’ll be burned in the next week.”

They fell together to the floor. Lantry got his hands on McClure’s throat.

“Please,” said McClure. “Do you see, you’ll die.”

“What do you mean?” cried Lantry.

“Once you kill all of us, and you’re alone, you’ll die! The hate will die. That hate is what moved you, nothing else! That envy moves you.

Nothing else! You’ll die, inevitably. You’re not immortal. You’re not even alive, you’re nothing but a moving hate.”

“I don’t care!” screamed Lantry, and began choking the man, beating his head with his fists, crouched on the defenseless body. McClure looked up at him with dying eyes.

The front door opened. Two men came in.

“I say,” said one of them. “What’s going on? A new game?”

Lantry jumped back and began to run.

“Yes, a new game!” said McClure, struggling up. “Catch him and you win!”

The two men caught Lantry. “We win,” they said.

“Let me go!” Lantry thrashed, hitting them across their faces, bringing blood.

“Hold him tight!” cried McClure.

They held him.

“A rough game, what?” one of them said. “What do we do now? ”

The beetle hissed along the shining road. Rain fell out of the sky and a wind ripped at the dark green wet trees. In the beetle, his hands on the half-wheel, McClure was talking. His voice was susurrant, a whispering, a hypnotic thing. The two other men sat in the back seat. Lantry sat, or rather lay, in the front seat, his head back, his eyes faintly open, the glowing green light of the dash dials showing on his cheeks. His mouth was relaxed. He did not speak.

McClure talked quietly and logically, about life and moving, about death and not moving, about the sun and the great sun Incinerator, about the emptied tombyard, about hatred and how hate lived and made a clay man live and move, and how illogical it all was, it all was, it all was. One was dead, was dead, was dead, that was all, all, all. One did not try to be otherwise. The car whispered on the moving road. The rain spattered gently on the windshield. The men in the back seat conversed quietly. Where were they going, going? To the Incinerator, of course. Cigarette smoke moved slowly up on the air, curling and tying into itself in gray loops and spirals. One was dead and must accept it.

Lantry did not move. He was a marionette, the strings cut. There was only a tiny hatred in his heart, in his eyes, like twin coals, feeble, glowing, fading.

I am Poe, he thought. I am all that is left of Edgar Allan Poe, and I am all that is left of Ambrose Bierce and all that is left of a man named Lovecraft.

I am a gray night bat with sharp teeth, and I am a square black monolith monster. I am Osiris and Bal and Set. I am the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead. I am the house of Usher, falling into flame. I am the Red Death. I am the man mortared into the catacomb with a cask of Amontillado … I am a dancing skeleton. I am a coffin, a shroud, a lightning bolt reflected in an old house window. I am an autumn-empty tree, I am a rapping, flinging shutter. I am a yellowed volume turned by a claw hand. I am an organ played in an attic at midnight. I am a mask, a skull mask behind an oak tree on the last day of October. I am a poison apple bobbling in a water tub for child noses to bump at, for child teeth to snap … I am a black candle lighted before an inverted cross. I am a coffin lid, a sheet with eyes, a foot-step on a black stairwell. I am Dunsany and Machen and I am the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I am The Monkey’s Paw and I am The Phantom Rickshaw. I am the Cat and the Canary, the Gorilla, the Bat. I am the ghost of Hamlet’s father on the castle wall.

All of these things am I. And now these last things will be burned.

While I lived they still lived. While I moved and hated and existed, they still existed. I am all that remembers them. I am all of them that still goes on, and will not go on after tonight. Tonight, all of us, Poe and Bierce and Hamlet’s father, we burn together. They will make a big heap of us and burn us like a bonfire, like things of Guy Fawkes’ day, gasoline, torches, cries, and all!

And what a wailing will we put up. The world will be clean of us, but in our going we shall say, oh what is the world like, clean of fear, where is the dark imagination from the dark time, the thrill and the anticipation, the suspense of old October, gone, never more to come again, flattened and smashed and burned by the rocket people, by the Incinerator people, destroyed and obliterated, to be replaced by doors that open and close and lights that go on and off without fear. If only you could remember how once we lived, what Halloween was to us, and what Poe was, and how we gloried in the dark morbidities. One more drink, dear friends, of Amontillado, before the burning. All of this, all, exists but in one last brain on earth. A whole world dying tonight. One more drink, pray.

“Here we are,” said McClure.

The Incinerator was brightly lighted. There was quiet music nearby.

McClure got out of the beetle, came around to the other side. He opened the door. Lantry simply lay there. The talking and the logical talking had slowly drained him of life. He was no more than wax now, with a small glow in his eyes. This future world, how the men talked to you, how logically they reasoned away your life. They wouldn’t believe in him. The force of their disbelief froze him. He could not move his arms or his legs. He could only mumble senselessly, coldly, eyes flickering.

McClure and the two others helped him out of the car, put him in a golden box, and rolled him on a roller table into the warm glowing interior of the building.

I am Edgar Allan Poe, I am Ambrose Bierce, I am Halloween, I am a coffin, a shroud, a Monkey’s Paw, a Phantom, a Vampire …

“Yes, yes,” said McClure, quietly, over him. “I know. I know.”

The table glided. The walls swung over him and by him, the music played. You are dead, you are logically dead.

I am Usher, I am the Maelstrom, I am the MS Found In A Bottle, I am the Pit and I am the Pendulum, I am the Telltale Heart, I am the Raven nevermore, nevermore.

“Yes,” said McClure, as they walked softly. “I know.”

“I am in the catacomb,” cried Lantry.

“Yes, the catacomb,” said the walking man over him.

“I am being chained to a wall, and there is no bottle of Amontillado here!” cried Lantry weakly, eyes closed.

“Yes,” someone said.

There was movement. The flame door opened.

“Now someone is mortaring up the cell, closing me in!”

“Yes, I know.” A whisper.

The golden box slid into the flame lock.

“I’m being walled in! A very good joke indeed! Let us be gone!” A wild scream and much laughter.

“We know, we understand …”

The inner flame lock opened. The golden coffin shot forth into flame.

“For the love of God, Montresor! For the love of God !”

The End

Conclusion

It’s a nice little story to read. A bit on the horrific side, but a good read never the less. I hope that you all enjoyed it.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my Ray Bradbury Index here…

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Chrysalis by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

This is a nice story by Ray Bradbury. I dedicate it to the many, many MM readers that tell me that they have changed by visiting this site, and that they are all the better for it. They tell me stories, and adventures, and just amazing events that confirm that everyone is on the right track. This story is about a man who changes.

Chrysalis.

This story  is dedicated to youse guys. It’s my way of telling you that I recognize what you are tying to ell me, and that I am so gladdened by your stories. It’s just a fictional story, and you all, well, you all are the “real deal”.  But Ray Bradbury has such a way with the words, and he conjures up such imagery, that I think that this is a treasure.

A treasure that is worthy for you all.

Chrysalis

Rockwell didn’t like the room’s smell. Not so much McGuke’s odor of beer, or Hartley’s unwashed, tired smell—-but the sharp insect tang rising from Smith’s cold green-skinned body lying stiffly naked on the table. There was also a smell of oil and grease from the nameless machinery gleaming in one comer of the small room.

The man Smith was a corpse. Irritated, Rockwell rose from his chair and packed his stethoscope. “I must get back to the hospital. War rush. You understand, Hartley. Smith’s been dead eight hours. If you want further information call a post-mortem—”

He stopped as Hartley raised a trembling, bony hand. Hartley gestured at the corpse—this corpse with brittle hard green shell grown solid over every inch of flesh. “Use your stethoscope again, Rockwell. Just once more. Please.”

Rockwell wanted to complain, but instead he sighed, sat down, and used the stethoscope. You have to treat fellow doctors politely. You press your stethoscope into cold green flesh, pretending to listen—

The small, dimly lit room exploded around him. Exploded in one green cold pulsing. It hit Rockwell’s ears like fists. It hit him. He saw his own fingers jerk over the recumbent corpse.

He heard a pulse.

Deep in the dark body the heart beat once. It sounded like an echo in fathoms of sea water.

Smith was dead, unbreathing, mummified. But at the core of that deadness—his heart lived. Lived, stirring like a small unborn baby!

Rockwell’s crisp surgeon’s fingers darted rapidly. He bent his head. In the light it was dark-haired, with flecks of gray in it. He had an even, level, nice-looking face. About thirty-five. He listened again and again, with sweat coming cold on his smooth cheeks. The pulse was not to be believed.

One heartbeat every thirty-five seconds.

Smith’s respiration—how could you believe that, too one breath of air every four minutes. Lungcase movement imperceptible.

Body temperature?

Sixty degrees.

Hartley laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. More like an echo that had gotten lost. “He’s alive,” he said tiredly. “Yes, he is. He almost fooled me many times. I injected adrenalin to speed that pulse, but it was no use. He’s been this way for twelve weeks. And I couldn’t stand keeping him a secret any longer. That’s why I phoned you, Rockwell. He’s—unnatural.

The impossibility of it overwhelmed Rockwell with an inexplicable excitement. He tried to lift Smiths’ eyelids. He couldn’t. They were webbed with epidermis. So were the lips. So were the nostrils. There was no way for Smith to breathe—

“Yet, he’s breathing.” Rockwell’s voice was numb. He dropped his stethoscope blankly, picked it up, and saw his fingers shaking.

Hartley grew tall, emaciated, nervous over the table. “Smith didn’t like my calling you. I called anyway. Smith warned me not to. Just an hour ago.”

Rockell’s eyes dilated into hot black circles. “How could he warn you? He can’t move.”

Hartley’s face, all razor-sharp bone, hard jaw, tight squinting gray eyes, twitched nervously. Smith— thinks. I know his thoughts. He’s afraid you’ll expose him to the world. He hates me. Why? I want to kill him, that’s why. Here.” Hardey fumbled blindly for a blue-steel revolver in his rumpled, stained coat. “Murphy. Take this. Take it before I use it on Smith’s foul body!”

Murphy pulled back, his thick red face afraid. “Don’t like guns. You take it, Rockwell.”

Like a scalpel, Rockwell made his voice slash. “Put the gun away, Hartley. After three months tending one patient you’ve got a psychological blemish. Sleep’ll help that.” He licked his lips. “What sort of disease has Smith got?”

Hartley swayed. His mouth moved words out slowly. Falling asleep on his feet, Rockwell realized. “Not diseased,” Hartley managed to say. “Don’t know what. But I resent him, like a kid resents the birth of a new brother or sister. He’s wrong. Help me. Help me, will you?”

“Of course.” Rockwell smiled. “My desert sanitarium’s the place to check him over, good. Why—why Smith’s the most incredible medical phenomenon in history. Bodies just don’t act this way!”

He got no further. Hartley had his gun pointed right at Rockwell’s stomach. “Wait. Wait. You—you’re not going to bury Smith! I thought you’d help me. Smith’s not healthy. I want him killed! He’s dangerous! I know he is!”

Rockwell blinked. Hartley was obviously psychoneurotic. Didn’t know what he was saying. Rockwell straightened his shoulders, feeling cool and calm inside. “Shoot Smith and I’ll turn you in for murder. You’re overworked mentally and physically. Put the gun away.”

They stared at one another.

Rockwell walked forward quietly and took the gun, patted Hartley understandingly on the shoulder, and gave the weapon to Murphy, who looked at it as if it would bite him. “Call the hospital. Murphy. I’m taking a week off. Maybe longer. Tell them I’m doing research at the sanitarium.”

A scowl formed in the red fat flesh of Murphy’s face. “What do I do with this gun?”

Hartley shut his teeth together, hard. “Keep it. You’ll want to use it—

later.”

Rockwell wanted to shout it to the world that he was sole possessor of the most incredible human in history. The sun was bright in the desert sanitarium room where

Smith lay, not saying a word, on his table; his handsome face frozen into a green, passionless expression.

Rockwell walked into the room quietly. He used the stethoscope on the green chest. It scraped, making the noise of metal tapping a beetle’s carapace.

McGuire stood by, eyeing the body dubiously, smelling of several recently acquired beers.

Rockwell listened intently. “The ambulance ride may have jolted him.

No use taking a chance—”

Rockwell cried out.

Heavily, McGuire lumbered to his side. ‘What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Rockwell stared about in desperation. He made one hand into a fist. “Smith’s dying!”

“How do you know? Hartley said Smith plays possum. He’s fooled you again—”

“No!” Rockwell worked furiously over the body, injecting drugs. Any drugs. Swearing at the top of his voice. After all this trouble, he couldn’t lose Smith. No, not now.

Shaking, jarring, twisting deep down inside, going completely liquidly mad. Smith’s body sounded like dim volcanic tides bursting.

Rockwell fought to remain calm. Smith was a case unto himself.

Normal treatment did nothing for him. What then? What?

Rockwell stared. Sunlight gleamed on Smith’s hard flesh. Hot sunlight. It flashed, glinting off the stethoscope tip. The sun. As he watched, clouds shifted across the sky outside, taking the sun away. The room darkened. Smith’s body shook into silence. The volcanic tides died.

“McGuire! Pull the blinds! Before the sun comes back!”

McGuire obeyed.

Smith’s heart slowed down to its sluggish, infrequent breathing.

“Sunlight’s bad for Smith. It counteracts something. I don’t know what or why, but it’s not good—” Rockwell relaxed. “Lord, I wouldn’t want to lose Smith. Not for anything. He’s different, making his own standards, doing things men have never done. Know something, Murphy?”

“What?”

“Smith’s not in agony. He’s not dying either. He wouldn’t be better off dead, no matter what Hartley says. Last night as I arranged Smith on the stretcher, readying him for his trip to this sanitarium, I realized, suddenly, that Smith likes me.”

“Gah. First Hartley. Now you. Did Smith tell you that?”

“He didn’t tell me. But he’s not unconscious under all that hard skin.

He’s aware. Yes, that’s it. He’s aware.”

“Pure and simply—he’s petrifying. He’ll die. It’s been weeks since he was fed. Hartley said so. Hartley fed him intravenously until the skin toughened so a needle couldn’t poke through it.”

Whining, the cubicle door swung slowly open. Rockwell started.

Hartley, his sharp face relaxed after hours of sleep, his eyes still a bitter gray, hostile, stood tall in the door. “If you’ll leave the room,” he said, quietly, “I’ll destroy Smith in a very few seconds. Well?”

“Don’t come a step closer.” Rockwell walked, feeling irritation, to Hartley’s side. “Every time you visit, you’ll have to be searched. Frankly, I don’t trust you.” There were no weapons. “Why didn’t you tell me about the sunlight?”

“Eh?” Soft and slow Hartley said it. “Oh—yes. I forgot. I tried shifting Smith weeks ago. Sunlight struck him and he began really dying.

Naturally, I stopped trying to move him. Smith seemed to know what was coming, vaguely. Perhaps he planned it; I’m not sure. While he was still able to talk and eat ravenously, before his body stiffened completely, he warned me not to move him for a twelve-week period. Said he didn’t like the sun.

Said it would spoil things. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. He ate like an animal, a hungry, wild animal, fell into a coma, and here he is—” Hartley swore under his breath. “I’d rather hoped you’d leave him in the sun long enough to kill him inadvertently.”

McGuire shifted his two hundred fifty pounds. “Look here, now.

What if we catch Smith’s disease?”

Hartley looked at the body, his pupils shrinking. “Smith’s not diseased. Don’t you recognize degeneration when you see it? It’s like cancer.

You don’t catch it, you inherit a tendency. I didn’t begin to fear and hate Smith until a week ago when I discovered he was breathing and existing and thriving with his nostrils and mouth sealed. It can’t happen. It mustn’t happen.”

McGuire’s voice trembled. “What if you and I and Rockwell all turn green and a plague sweeps the country—what then?”

“Then,” replied Rockwell, “if I’m wrong, perhaps I am, I’ll die. But it doesn’t worry me in the least.”

He turned back to Smith and went on with his work.

A bell. A bell. Two bells, two bells. A dozen bells, a hundred bells.

Ten thousand and a million clangorous, hammering metal dinning bells. All born at once in the silence, squalling, screaming, hurting echoes, bruising ears!

Ringing, chanting with loud and soft, tenor and bass, low and high voices. Great-armed clappers knocking the shells and ripping air with the thrusting din of sound!

With all those bells ringing, Smith could not immediately know where he was. He knew that he could not see, because his eyelids were sealed tight, knew he could not speak because his lips had grown together. His ears were clamped shut, but the bells hammered nevertheless.

He could not see. But yes, yes, he could, and it was like inside a small dark red cavern, as if his eyes were turned inward upon his skull. And Smith tried to twist his tongue, and suddenly, trying to scream, he knew his tongue was gone, that the place where it used to be was vacant, an itching spot that wanted a tongue but couldn’t have it just now.

No tongue. Strange. Why? Smith tried to stop the bells. They ceased, blessing him with a silence that wrapped him up in a cold blanket. Things were happening. Happening.

Smith tried to twitch a finger, but he had no control. A foot, a leg, a toe, his head, everything. Nothing moved. Torso, limbs—immovable, frozen in a concrete coffin.

A moment later came the dread discovery that he was no longer breathing. Not with his lungs, anyway.

 

“BECAUSE I HAVE NO LUNGS!” he screamed. Inwardly he screamed and that mental scream was drowned, webbed, clotted, and journeyed drowsily down in a red, dark tide. A red drowsy tide that sleepily swathed the scream, garroted it, took it all away, making Smith rest easier.

I am not afraid, he thought. I understand that which I do not understand. I understand that I do not fear, yet know not the reason.

No tongue, no nose, no lungs.

But they would come later. Yes, they would. Things were—

happening.

Through the pores of his shelled body air slid, like rain needling each portion of him, giving life. Breathing through a billion gills, breathing oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and using it all. Wondering.

Was his heart still beating?

But yes, it was beating. Slow, slow, slow. A red dim susurrance, a flood, a river surging around him, slow, slower, slower. So nice.

So restful.

The jigsaw pieces fitted together faster as the days drifted into weeks.

McGuire helped. A retired surgeon-medico, he’d been Rockwell’s secretary for a number of years. Not much help, but good company.

Rockwell noted that McGuire joked gruffly about Smith, nervously; and a lot. Trying to be calm. But one day McGuire stopped, thought it over, and drawled, “Hey, it just came to me! Smith’s alive. He should be dead. But he’s alive. Good God!”

Rockwell laughed. “What in blazes do you think I’m working on? I’m bringing an X-ray machine out next week so I can find out what’s going on inside Smith’s shell.” Rockwell jabbed with a hypo needle. It broke on the hard shell.

Rockwell tried another needle, and another, until finally he punctured, drew blood, and placed the slides under the microscope for study. Hours later he calmly shoved a serum test under McGuire’s red nose, and spoke quickly.

“Lord, I can’t believe it. His blood’s germicidal. I dropped a streptococci colony into it and the strep was annihilated in eight seconds! You could inject every known disease into Smith and he’d destroy them all, thrive on them!”

It was only a matter of hours until other discoveries. It kept Rockwell sleepless, tossing at night, wondering, theorizing the titanic ideas over and over. For instance—

Hartley’d fed Smith so many cc’s of blood-food every day of his illness until recently. NONE OF THAT FOOD HAD EVER BEEN

ELIMINATED. All of it had been stored, not in bulk-fats, but in a perfectly abnormal solution, an x-liquid contained in high concentrate form in Smith’s blood. An ounce of it would keep a man well fed for three days. This x-liquid circulated through the body until it was actually needed, when it was seized upon and used. More serviceable than fat. Much more!

Rockwell glowed with his discovery. Smith had enough x-liquid stored in him to last months and months more. Self-sustaining.

McGuire, when told, contemplated his paunch sadly.

“I wish I stored my food that way.”

That wasn’t all. Smith needed little air. What air he had he seemed to acquire by an osmotic process through his skin. And he used every molecule of it. No waste.

“And,” finished Rockwell, “eventually Smith’s heart might even take vacations from beating, entirely!”

“Then he’d be dead,” said McGuire.

“To you and I, yes. To Smith—maybe. Just maybe. Think of it, McGuire. Collectively, in Smith, we have a self-purifying blood stream demanding no replenishment but an interior one for months, having little breakdown and no elimination of wastes whatsoever because every molecule is utilized, self-evolving, and fatal to any and all microbic life. All this, and Hartley speaks of degeneration!”

Hartley was irritated when he heard of the discoveries. But he still insisted that Smith was degenerating. Dangerous.

McGuire tossed his two cents in. “How do we know that this isn’t some super microscopic disease that annihilates all other bacteria while it works on its victim. After all—malarial fever is sometimes used surgically to cure syphilis; why not a new bacillus that conquers all?”

“Good point,” said Rockwell. “But we’re not sick, are we?”

“It may have to incubate in our bodies.”

“A typical old-fashioned doctor’s response. No matter what happens to a man, he’s ‘sick’—if he varies from the norm. That’s your idea, Hartley,”

declared Rockwell, “not mine. Doctors aren’t satisfied unless they diagnose and label each case. Well, I think that Smith’s healthy; so healthy you’re afraid of him.”

“You’re crazy,” said McGuire.

“Maybe. But I don’t think Smith needs medical interference. He’s working out his own salvation. You believe he’s degenerating. I say he’s growing.’*

“Look at Smith’s skin,” complained McGuire.

“Sheep in wolfs clothing. Outside, the hard, brittle epidermis. Inside, ordered regrowth, change. Why? I’m on the verge of knowing. These changes inside Smith are so violent that they need a shell to protect their action. And as for you. Hartley, answer me truthfully, when you were young, were you afraid of insects, spiders, things like that?”

“Yes.”

“There you are. A phobia. A phobia you use against Smith. That explains your distaste for Smith’s change.”

In the following weeks, Rockwell went back over Smith’s life carefully. He visited the electronics lab where Smith had been employed and fallen ill. He probed the room where Smith had spent the first weeks of his

“illness” with Hartley in attendance. He examined the machinery there.

Something about radiations

While he was away from the sanitarium, Rockwell locked Smith tightly, and had McGuire guard the door in case Hartley got any unusual ideas.

The details of Smith’s twenty-three years were simple. He had worked for five years in the electronics lab, experimenting. He had never been seriously sick in his life.

And as the days went by Rockwell took long walks in the dry-wash near the sanitarium, alone. It gave him time to think and solidify the incredible theory that was becoming a unit in his brain.

And one afternoon he paused by a night-blooming jasmine outside the sanitarium, reached up, smiling, and plucked a dark shining object off of a high branch. He looked at the object and tucked it in his pocket. Then he walked into the sanitarium.

He summoned McGuire in off the veranda. McGuire came. Hartley trailed behind, threatening, complaining. The three of them sat in the living quarters of the building.

Rockwell told them.

“Smith’s not diseased. Germs can’t live in him. He’s not inhabited by banshees or weird monsters who’ve ‘taken over’ his body. I mention this to show I’ve left no stone untouched. I reject all normal diagnoses of Smith. I offer the most important, the most easily accepted possibility of—delayed hereditary mutation.”

“Mutation?” McGuire’s voice was funny.

Rockwell held up the shiny dark object in the light.

“I found this on a bush in the garden. It’ll illustrate my theory to perfection. After studying Smith’s symptoms, examining his laboratory, and considering several of these”—he twirled the dark object in his fingers— “I’m certain. It’s metamorphosis. It’s regeneration, change, mutation after birth.

Here. Catch. This is Smith.”

He tossed the object to Hartley. Hartley caught it.

“This is the chrysalis of a caterpillar,” said Hartley.

Rockwell nodded. “Yes, it is.”

“You don’t mean to infer that Smith’s a— chrysalis?”

“I’m positive of it,” replied Rockwell.

Rockwell stood over Smith’s body in the darkness of evening. Hartley and McGuire sat across the patient’s room, quiet, listening. Rockwell touched Smith softly. “Suppose that there’s more to life than just being born, living seventy years, and dying. Suppose there’s one more great step up in man’s existence, and Smith has been the first of us to make that step.

“Looking at a caterpillar, we see what we consider a static object. But it changes to a butterfly. Why? There are no final theories explaining it. It’s progress, mainly. The pertinent thing is that a supposedly unchangeable object weaves itself into an intermediary object, wholly unrecognizable, a chrysalis, and emerges a butterfly. Outwardly the chrysalis looks dead. This is misdirection. Smith has misdirected us, you see. Outwardly, dead. Inwardly, fluids whirlpool, reconstruct, rush about with wild purpose. From grub to mosquito, from caterpillar to butterfly, from Smith to—?”

“Smith a chrysalis?” McGuire laughed heavily.

“Yes.”

“Humans don’t work that way.”

“Stop it, McGuire. This evolutionary step’s too great for your comprehension. Examine this body and tell me anything else. Skin, eyes, breathing, blood flow. Weeks of assimilating food for his brittle hibernation.

Why did he eat all that food, why did he need that x-liquid in his body except for his metamorphosis? And the cause of it all was—eradiations. Hard radiations from Smith’s laboratory equipment. Planned or accidental I don’t know. It touched some part of his essential gene-structure, some part of the evolutionary structure of man that wasn’t scheduled for working for thousands of years yet, perhaps.”

“Do you think that some day all men—?”

“The maggot doesn’t stay in the stagnant pond, the grub in the soil, or the caterpillar on a cabbage leaf. They change, spreading across space in waves.

“Smith’s the answer to the problem ‘What happens next for man, where do we go from here?’ We’re faced with the blank wall of the universe and the fatality of living in that universe, and man as he is today is not prepared to go against the universe. The least exertion tires man, overwork kills his heart, disease his body. Maybe Smith will be prepared to answer the philosophers’ problem of life’s purpose. Maybe he can give it new purpose.

“Why, we’re just petty insects, all of us, fighting on a pinhead planet.

Man isn’t meant to remain here and be sick and small and weak, but he hasn’t discovered the secret of the greater knowledge yet.

“But—change man. Build your perfect man. Your— your superman, if you like. Eliminate petty mentality, give him complete physiological, neurological, psychological control of himself: give him clear, incisive channels of thought, give him an indefatigable blood stream, a body that can go months without outside food, that can adjust to any climate anywhere and kill any disease. Release man from the shackles of flesh and flesh misery and then he’s no longer a poor, petty little man afraid to dream because he knows his frail body stands between him and the fulfillment of dreams, then he’s ready to wage war, the only war worth waging—the conflict of man reborn and the whole confounded universe!”

Breathless, voice hoarse, heart pounding, Rockwell tensed over Smith, placed his hands admiringly, firmly on the cold length of the chrysalis and shut his eyes. The power and drive and belief in Smith surged through him. He was right. He was right. He knew he was right. He opened his eyes and looked at McGuire and Hartley who were mere shadows in the dim shielded light of the room.

After a silence of several seconds. Hartley snuffed out his cigarette. “I don’t believe that theory.”

McGuire said, “How do youknow Smith’s not just a mess of jelly inside? Did you X-ray him?”

“I couldn’t risk it, it might interfere with his change, like the sunlight did.”

“So he’s going to be a superman? What will he look like?”

“We’ll wait and see.”

“Do you think he can hear us talking about him now?”

 

“Whether or not he can, there’s one thing certain— we’re sharing a secret we weren’t intended to know. Smith didn’t plan on myself and McGuire entering the case. He had to make the most of it. But a superman doesn’t like people to know about him. Humans have a nasty way of being envious, jealous, and hateful. Smith knew he wouldn’t be safe if found out. Maybe that explains your hatred, too. Hartley.”

They all remained silent, listening. Nothing sounded. Rockwell’s blood whispered in his temples, that was all. There was Smith, no longer Smith, a container labeled Smith, its contents unknown.

“If what you say is true,” said Hartley, “then indeed we should destroy him. Think of the power over the world he would have. And if it affects his brain as I think it will affect it—he’ll try to kill us when he escapes because we are the only ones who know about him. He’ll hate us for prying.”

Rockwell said it easily. “I’m not afraid.”

Hartley remained silent. His breathing was harsh and loud in the room.

Rockwell came around the table, gesturing.

“I think we’d better say good-night now, don’t you?”

The thin rain swallowed Hartley’s car. Rockwell closed the door, instructed McGuire to sleep downstairs tonight on a cot fronting Smith’s room, and then he walked upstairs to bed.

Undressing, he had time to conjure over all the unbelievable events of the passing weeks. A superman. Why not? Efficiency, strength—

He slipped into bed.

When. When does Smith emerge from his chrysalis? When?

The rain drizzled quietly on the roof of the sanitarium.

McGuire lay in the middle of the sound of rain and the earthquaking of thunder, slumbering on the cot, breathing heavy breaths. Somewhere, a door creaked, but McGuire breathed on. Wind gusted down the hall.

McGuire granted and rolled over. A door closed softly and the wind ceased.

Footsteps tread softly on the deep carpeting. Slow footsteps, aware and alert and ready. Footsteps. McGuire blinked his eyes and opened them.

In the dim light a figure stood over him.

Upstairs, a single light m the hall thrust down a yellow shaft near McGuire’s cot.

An odor of crashed insect filled the air. A hand moved. A voice started to speak.

McGuire screamed.

Because the hand that moved into the light was green.

Green.

“Smith!’

McGuire flung himself ponderously down the hall, yelling.

“He’s walking! He can’t walk, but he’s walking!”

The door rammed open under McGuire’s bulk. Wind and rain shrieked in around him and he was gone into the storm, babbling.

In the hall, the figure was motionless. Upstairs a door opened swiftly and Rockwell ran down the steps. The green hand moved back out of the light behind the figure’s back.

“Who is it?” Rockwell paused halfway.

The figure stepped into the light.

Rockwell’s eyes narrowed.

“Hartley! What are you doing back here?”

“Something happened,” said Hartley. “You’d better get McGuire. He ran out in the rain babbling like a fool.”

Rockwell kept his thoughts to himself. He searched Hartley swiftly with one glance and then ran down the hall and out into the cold wind.

“McGuire! McGuire, come back you idiot!” The rain fell on Rockwell’s body as he ran. He found McGuire about a hundred yards from the sanitarium, blubbering,

“Smith—Smith’s walking .. .” “Nonsense. Hartley came back, that’s all.”

“I saw a green hand. It moved.”

“You dreamed.”

“No. No.” McGuire’s face was flabby pale, with water on it. “I saw a green hand, believe me. Why did Hartley come back? He—”

At the mention of Hartley’s name, full comprehension came smashing to Rockwell. Fear leaped through his mind, a mad blur of warning, a jagged edge of silent screaming for help.

“Hartley!”

Shoving McGuire abruptly aside, Rockwell twisted and leaped back toward the sanitarium, shouting. Into the hall, down the hall—

Smith’s door was broken open.

Gun in hand, Hartley was in the center of the room. He turned at the noise of Rockwell’s running. They both moved simultaneously. Hartley fired his gun and Rockwell pulled the light switch.

Darkness. Flame blew across the room, profiling Smith’s rigid body like a flash photo. Rockwell jumped at the flame. Even as he jumped, shocked deep, realizing why Hartley had returned. In that instant before the lights blinked out Rockwell had a glimpse of Hartley’s fingers.

They were a brittle mottled green.

Fists then. And Hartley collapsing as the lights came on, and McGuire, dripping wet at the door, shook out the words, “Is—is Smith killed?”

Smith wasn’t harmed. The shot had passed over him.

“This fool, this fool,” cried Rockwell, standing over Hartley’s numbed shape. “Greatest case in history and he tries to destroy it!”

Hartley came around, slowly. “I should’ve known. Smith warned you.”

“Nonsense, he—” Rockwell stopped, amazed. Yes. That sudden premonition crashing into his mind. Yes. Then he glared at Hartley. “Upstairs with you. You’re being locked in for the night. McGuire, you, too. So you can watch him.”

McGuire croaked. “Hartley’s hand. Look at it. It’s green. It was Hartley in the hall—not Smith!”

Hartley stared at his fingers. “Pretty, isn’t it?” he said, bitterly. “I was in range of those radiations for a long time at the start of Smith’s illness. I’m going to be a—creature—like Smith. It’s been this way for several days. I kept it hidden. I tried not to say anything. Tonight, I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I came back to destroy Smith for what he’s done to me …”

A dry noise racked, dryly, splitting the air. The three of them froze.

Three tiny flakes of Smith’s chrysalis flicked up and then spiraled down to the floor.

Instantly, Rockwell was to the table, and gaping.

“It’s starting to crack. From the collar-bone to the navel, a miscroscopic fissure! He’ll be out of his chrysalis soon!”

McGuire’s jowls trembled. “And then what?”

Hartley’s words were bitter sharp. “We’ll have a superman. Question: what does a superman look like? Answer: nobody knows.”

Another crust of flakes crackled open.

McGuire shivered. “Will you try to talk to him?”

“Certainly.”

“Since when do—butterflies—speak?”

“Oh, Good God, McGuire!”

With the two others securely imprisoned upstairs, Rockwell locked himself into Smith’s room and bedded down on a cot, prepared to wait through the long wet night, watching, listening, thinking.

Watching the tiny flakes flicking off the crumbling skin of chrysalis as the Unknown within struggled quietly outward.

Just a few more hours to wait. The rain slid over the house, pattering.

What would Smith look like? A change in the earcups perhaps for greater hearing; extra eyes, maybe; a change in the skull structure, the facial setup, the bones of the body, the placement of organs, the texture of skin, a million and one changes.

Rockwell grew tired and yet was afraid to sleep. Eyelids heavy, heavy. What if he was wrong? What if his theory was entirely disjointed?

 

What if Smith was only so much moving jelly inside? What if Smith was mad, insane—so different that he’d be a world menace?

No. No. Rockwell shook his head groggily. Smith was perfect.

Perfect. There’d be no room for evil thought in Smith. Perfect.

The sanitarium was death quiet. The only noise was the faint crackle of chrysalis flakes skimming to the hard floor …

Rockwell slept. Sinking into the darkness that blotted out the room as dreams moved in upon him. Dreams in which Smith arose, walked in stiff, parched gesticulations and Hartley, screaming, wielded an ax, shining, again and again into the green armor of the creature and hacked it into liquid horror.

Dreams in which McGuire ran babbling through a rain of blood. Dreams in which—

Hot sunlight. Hot sunlight all over the room. It was morning.

Rockwell rubbed his eyes, vaguely troubled by the fact that someone had raised the blinds. Someone had—he leaped! Sunlight! There was no way for the blinds to be up. They’d been down for weeks! He cried out.

The door was open. The sanitarium was silent. Hardly daring to turn his head, Rockwell glanced at the table. Smith should have been lying there.

He wasn’t.

There was nothing but sunlight on the table. That— and a few remnants of shattered chrysalis. Remnants.

Brittle shards, a discarded profile cleft in two pieces, a shell segment that had been a thigh, a trace of arm, a splint of chest—these were the fractured remains of Smith!

Smith was gone. Rockwell staggered to the table, crushed. Scrabbling like a child among the rattling papyrus of skin. Then he swung about, as if drunk, and swayed out of the room and pounded up the stairs, shouting:

“Hartley! What did you do with him? Hartley! Did you think you could kill him, dispose of his body, and leave a few bits of shell behind to throw me off trail?”

The door to the room where McGuire and Hartley had slept was locked. Fumbling, Rockwell unlocked it. Both McGuire and Hartley were there.

“You’re here,” said Rockwell, dazed. “You weren’t downstairs, then.

Or did you unlock the door, come down, break in, kill Smith and—no, no.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Smith’s gone! McGuire, did Hartley move out of this room?”

“Not all night.’*

“Then—there’s only one explanation—Smith emerged from his chrysalis and escaped during the night! I’ll never see him, I’ll never get to see him, damn it! What a fool I was to sleep!”

“That settles it!” declared Hartley. “The man’s dangerous or he would have stayed and let us see him! God only knows what he is.”

“We’ve got to search, then. He can’t be far off. We’ve got to search then! Quick now. Hartley. McGuire!”

McGuire sat heavily down. “I won’t budge. Let him find himself. I’ve had enough.”

Rockwell didn’t wait to hear more. He went downstairs with Hartley close after him. McGuire puffed down a few moments later.

Rockwell moved wildly down the hall, halted at the wide windows that overlooked the desert and the mountains with morning shining over them.

He squinted out, and wondered if there was any chance at all of finding Smith. The first superbeing. The first perhaps in a new long line. Rockwell sweated. Smith wouldn’t leave without revealing himself to at least Rockwell.

He couldn’t leave. Or could he?

The kitchen door swung open, slowly.

A foot stepped through the door, followed by another. A hand lifted against the wall. Cigarette smoke moved from pursed lips.

“Somebody looking for me?”

Stunned, Rockwell turned. He saw the expression on Hartley’s face, heard McGuire choke with surprise. The three of them spoke one word together, as if given their cue:

“Smith.”

Smith exhaled cigarette smoke. His face was red-pink as he had been sunburnt, his eyes were glittering blue.

He was barefoot and his nude body was attired in one of Rockwell’s old robes.

“Would you mind telling me where I am? What have I been doing for the last three or four months? Is this a—hospital or isn’t it?”

Dismay slammed Rockwell’s mind, hard. He swallowed.

“Hello. I. That is— Don’t you remember—anything?”

Smith displayed his fingertips. “I recall turning green, if that’s what you mean. Beyond that—nothing.” He raked his pink hand through his nut-brown hair with the vigor of a creature newborn and glad to breathe again.

Rockwell slumped back against the wall. He raised his hands, with shock, to his eyes, and shook his head. Not believing what he saw he said,

“What time did you come out of the chrysalis?’*

“What time did I come out of—what?”

Rockwell took him down the hall to the next room and pointed to the table.

“I don’t see what you mean,” said Smith, frankly sincere. “I found myself standing in this room half an hour ago, stark naked.”

“That’s all?” said McGuire, hopefully. He seemed relieved.

Rockwell explained the origin of the chrysalis on the table.

Smith frowned. “That’s ridiculous. Who are you?”

Rockwell introduced the others.

Smith scowled at Hartley. “When I first was sick you came, didn’t you. I remember. At the radiations plant. But this is silly. What disease was it?”

Hartley’s cheek muscles were taut wire. “No disease. Don’t you know anything about it?”

“I find myself with strange people in a strange sanitarium. I find myself naked in a room with a man sleeping on a cot. I walk around the sanitarium, hungry. I go to the kitchen, find food, eat, hear excited voices, and then am accused of emerging from a chrysalis. What am I supposed to think?

Thanks, by the way, for this robe, for food, and the cigarette I borrowed. I didn’t want to wake you at first, Mr. Rockwell. I didn’t know who you were and you looked dead tired.”

“Oh, that’s all right.’ Rockwell wouldn’t let himself believe it.

Everything was crumbling. With every word Smith spoke, his hopes were pulled apart like the crumpled chrysalis. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. Strong. Remarkable, when you consider how long I was under.”

“Very remarkable,” said Hartley.

“You can imagine how I felt when I saw the calendar. All those months—crack—gone. I wondered what I’d been doing all that time.”

“So have we.”

McGuire laughed. “Oh, leave him alone, Hartley. Just because you hated him—”

“Hated?” Smith’s brows went up. “Me? Why?”

“Here. This is why!” Hartley thrust his fingers out “Your damned radiations. Night after night sitting by you in your laboratory. What can I do about it?”

“Hartley,” warned Rockwell. “Sit down. Be quiet.”

“I won’t sit down and I won’t be quiet! Are you both fooled by this imitation of a man, this pink fellow who’s carrying on the greatest hoax in history? If you had any sense you’d destroy Smith before he escapes!”

Rockwell apologized for Hartley’s outburst.

Smith shook his head. “No, let him talk. What’s this about?”

“You know already!” shouted Hartley, angrily. “You’ve lain there for months, listening, planning. You can’t fool me. You’ve got Rockwell bluffed, disappointed. He expected you to be a superman. Maybe you are. But whatever you are, you’re not Smith any more. Not any more. It’s just another of your misdirections. We weren’t supposed to know all about you, and the world shouldn’t know about you. You could kill us, easily, but you’d prefer to stay and convince us that you’re normal. That’s the best way. You could have escaped a few minutes ago, but that would have left the seeds of suspicion behind. Instead, you waited, to convince us that you’re normal.”

“He is normal,” complained McGuire.

“No he’s not. His mind’s different. He’s clever.’*

“Give him word association tests then,” said McGuire.

“He’s too clever for that, too.”

“It’s very simple, then. We take blood tests, listen to his heart, and inject serums into him.”

Smith looked dubious. “I feel like an experiment, but if you really want to. This is silly.”

That shocked Hartley. He looked at Rockwell. “Get the hypos,” he said.

Rockwell got the hypos, thinking. Now, maybe after all, Smith was a superman. His blood. That super-blood. Its ability to kill germs. His heartbeat.

His breathing. Maybe Smith was a superman and didn’t know it. Yes. Yes, maybe—

Rockwell drew blood from Smith and slid it under a microscope. His shoulders sagged. It was normal blood. When you dropped germs into it the germs took a normal length of time to die. The blood was no longer super germicidal. The x-liquid, too, was gone. Rockwell sighed miserably. Smith’s temperature was normal. So was his pulse. His sensory and nervous system responded according to rule.

“Well, that takes care of that,” said Rockwell, softly.

Hartley sank into a chair, eyes widened, holding his head between bony fingers. He exhaled. “I’m sorry. I guess my—mind—it just imagined things. The months were so long. Night after night. I got obsessed, and afraid.

I’ve made a fool out of myself. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He stared at his green fingers. “But what about myself?”

Smith said, “I recovered. You’ll recover, too, I guess. I can sympathize with you. But it wasn’t bad … I don’t really recall anything.”

Hartley relaxed. “But—yes I guess you’re right. I don’t like the idea of my body getting hard, but it can’t be helped. I’ll be all right.”

Rockwell was sick. The tremendous letdown was too much for him.

The intense drive, the eagerness, the hunger and curiosity, the fire, had all sunk within him.

So this was the man from the chrysalis? The same man who had gone m. All this waiting and wondering for nothing.

He gulped a breath of air, tried to steady his innermost, racing thoughts. Turmoil. This pink-cheeked, fresh-voiced man who sat before him smoking calmly, was no more than a man who had suffered some partial skin petrification, and whose glands had gone wild from radiation, but, nevertheless, just a man now and nothing more. Rockwell’s mind, his overimaginative, fantastic mind had seized upon each facet of the illness and built it into a perfect organism of wishful thinking. Rockwell was deeply shocked, deeply stirred and disappointed.

The question of Smith’s living without food, his pure blood, low temperature, and the other evidences of superiority were now fragments of a strange illness. An illness and nothing more. Something that was over, down and gone and left nothing behind but brittle scraps on a sunlit tabletop.

There’d be a chance to watch Hartley now, if his illness progressed, and report the new sickness to the medical world.

But Rockwell didn’t care about illness. He cared about perfection.

And that perfection had been split and ripped and torn and it was gone. His dream^ was gone. His supercreature was gone. He didn’t care if the whole world went hard, green, brittle-mad now.

Smith was shaking hands all around. “I’d better get back to Los Angeles. Important work for me to do at the plant. I have my old job waiting for me. Sorry I can’t stay on. You understand.”

“You should stay on and rest a few days, at least,” said Rockwell. He hated to see the last wisp of his dream vanish.

“No thanks. I’ll drop by your office in a week or so for another checkup, though. Doctor, if you like? I’ll drop in every few weeks for the next year or so so you can check me, yes?”

“Yes. Yes,’smith. Do that, will you please? I’d like to talk your illness over with you. You’re lucky to be alive.”

McGuire said, happily, “I’ll drive you to L.A.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll walk to Tujunga and get a cab. I want to walk. It’s been so long, I want to see what it feels like.”

Rockwell lent him an old pair of shoes and an old suit of clothes.

“Thanks, Doctor. I’ll pay you what I owe you as soon as possible.”

“You don’t owe me a penny. It was interesting.”

“Well, good-bye, Doctor. Mr. McGuire. Hartley.”

“Good-bye, Smith.”

“Good-bye.”

Smith walked down the path to the dry wash, which was already baked dry by the late afternoon sun. He walked easily and happily and whistled. I wish I could whistle now, thought Rockwell tiredly.

Smith turned once, waved to them, and then he strode up the hillside and went on over it toward the distant city.

Rockwell watched him go as a small child watches his favorite sand castle eroded and annihilated by the waves of the sea. “I can’t believe it,” he said, over and over again. “I can’t believe it. The whole thing’s ending so soon, so abruptly for me. I’m dull and empty inside.”

“Everything looks rosy to me!” chuckled McGuire happily.

 

Hartley stood in the sun. His green hands hung softly at his side and his white face was really relaxed for the first time in months, Rockwell realized. Hartley said, softly,

“I’ll come out all right. I’ll come out all right. Oh, thank God for that.

Thank God for that. I won’t be a monster. I won’t be anything but myself.” He turned to Rockwell. “Just remember, remember, don’t let them bury me by mistake. Don’t let them bury me by mistake, thinking I’m dead. Remember that.”

Smith took the path across the dry wash and up the hill. It was late afternoon already and the sun had started to vanish behind blue hills. A few stars were visible. The odor of water, dust, and distant orange blossoms hung in the warm air.

Wind stirred. Smith took deep breaths of air. He walked.

Out of sight, away from the sanitarium, he paused and stood very still. He looked up at the sky.

Tossing away the cigarette he’d been smoking, he mashed it precisely under one heel. Then he straightened his well-shaped body, tossed his brown hair back, closed his eyes, swallowed, and relaxed his fingers at his sides.

With nothing of effort, just a little murmur of sound, Smith lifted his body gently from the ground into the warm air.

He soared up quickly, quietly—and- very soon he was lost among the stars as Smith headed for outer space …

…

…

The End

Conclusion

When you all tell me your stories, about how you have changed since arriving at MM… well, this is always what comes to mind.

And this is only the beginning.

Who knows what greatness lies in the futures ahead of you?

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my Ray Bradbury Index here…

Ray Bradbury

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The Exiles by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

This is a nice story by Ray Bradbury.

Summary

The story begins with a scene the three witches from Macbeth brewing a potion and staring into a crystal, which reveals another scene that takes place on a rocket ship. Originating from Earth, the men on the rocket ship are panicking because they have recently experienced nightmares, confusing illnesses, and unexpected death. They are destined for Mars, and they are worried that these events may be warnings from Martians not to arrive.

As the crewmembers talk, it becomes clear that the Earth they are leaving has banned many books, some of which are considered some of the best authors of all time. The rocket ship has the last edition of many of these works, and their goal is to burn the books upon their arrival at Mars. Once they have burned the books, there will be no remaining evidence that these authors ever existed...

The Exiles

THEIR EYES were fire and the breath flamed out the witches’ mouths as they bent to probe the caldron with greasy stick and bony finger.
‘When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’
They danced drunkenly on the shore of an empty sea, fouling the air with their
three tongues, and burning it with their cats’ eyes malevolently aglitter:

‘Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!’

They paused and cast a glance about. ‘Where’s the crystal? Where the needles?’
‘Here!’
‘Good!’
‘Is the yellow wax thickened?’
‘Yes!’
‘Pour it in the iron mold!’
‘Is the wax figure done?’ They shaped it like molasses adrip on their green
hands.
‘Shove the needle through the heart!’
‘The crystal, the crystal; fetch it from the tarot bag. Dust it off; have a
look!’
They bent to the crystal, their faces white.
‘See, see, see . . .’

…

A rocket ship moved through space from the planet Earth to the planet Mars. On
the rocket ship men were dying.
The captain raised his head, tiredly. ‘We’ll have to use the morphine.’
‘But, Captain”
‘You see yourself this man’s condition.’ The captain lifted the wool blanket and
the man restrained beneath the wet sheet moved and groaned. The air was full of
sulphurous thunder.
‘I saw it’I saw it.’ The man opened his eyes and stared at the port where there
were only black spaces, reeling stars, Earth far removed, and the planet Mars
rising large and red. ‘I saw it’a bat, a huge thing, a bat with a man’s face,
spread over the front port. Fluttering and fluttering, fluttering and
fluttering.’
‘Pulse?’ asked the captain.
The orderly measured it. ‘One hundred and thirty.’
‘He can’t go on with that. Use the morphine. Come along, Smith.’
They moved away. Suddenly the floor plates were laced with bone and white skulls that screamed. The captain did not dare look down, and over the screaming he said, ‘Is this where Perse is?’ turning in at a hatch.
A white-smocked surgeon stepped away from a body. ‘I just don’t understand it.’
‘How did Perse die?’
‘We don’t know, Captain. It wasn’t his heart, his brain, or shock. He just’ died.’
The captain felt the doctor’s wrist, which changed to a hissing snake and bit
him. The captain did not flinch. ‘Take care of yourself. You’ve a pulse too.’
The doctor nodded. ‘Perse complained of pains’needles, he said’ in his wrists and
legs. Said he felt like wax, melting. He fell. I helped him up. He cried like a
child. Said he had a silver needle in his heart. He died. Here he is. We can
repeat the autopsy for you. Everything’s physically normal.’
‘That’s impossible! He died of something!’
The captain walked to a port. He smelled of menthol and iodine and green soap on his polished and manicured hands. His white teeth were dentifriced, and his ears scoured to a pinkness, as were his cheeks. His uniform was the color of new
salt, and his boots were black mirrors shining below him. His crisp crew-cut
hair smelled of sharp alcohol. Even his breath was sharp and new and clean.
There was no spot to him. He was a fresh instrument, honed and ready, still hot
from the surgeon’s oven.
The men with him were from the same mold. One expected huge brass keys spiraling
slowly from their backs. They were expensive, talented, well-oiled toys,
obedient and quick.
The captain watched the planet Mars grow very large in space. ‘We’ll be landing
in an hour on that damned place. Smith, did you see any bats, or have other
nightmares?’
‘Yes, sir. The month before our rocket took off from New York, sir. White rats
biting my neck, drinking my blood. I didn’t tell. I was afraid you wouldn’t let me come on this trip.’
‘Never mind,’ sighed the captain. ‘I had dreams too. In all of my fifty years I
never had a dream until that week before we took off from Earth. And then every night I dreamed I was a white wolf. Caught on a snowy hill. Shot with a silver bullet. Buried with a stake in my heart.’ He moved his head toward Mars. ‘Do you think, Smith, they know we’re coming?’
‘We don’t know if there are Martian people, sir.’
‘Don’t we? They began frightening us off eight weeks ago, before we started.
They’ve killed Perse and Reynolds now. Yesterday they made Crenville go blind.
How? I don’t know. Bats, needles, dreams, men dying for no reason. I’d call it
witchcraft in another day. But this is the year 2120, Smith. We’re rational men.
This all can’t be happening. But it is! Whoever they are, with their needles and
their bats, they’ll try to finish us all.’ He swung about. ‘Smith, fetch those books from my file. I want them when we land.’
Two hundred books were piled on the rocket deck.
‘Thank you, Smith. Have you glanced at them? Think I’m insane? Perhaps. It’s a
crazy hunch. At that last moment I ordered these books from the Historical
Museum. Because of my dreams. Twenty nights I was stabbed, butchered, a
screaming bat pinned to a surgical mat, a thing rotting underground in a black
box; bad, wicked dreams. Our whole crew dreamed of witch-things and were-things, vampires and phantoms, things they couldn’t know anything about. Why? Because books on such ghastly subjects were destroyed a century ago. By law. Forbidden for anyone to own the grisly volumes. These books you see here are the last copies, kept for historical purposes in the locked museum vaults.’
Smith bent to read the dusty titles:
‘Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allan Poe. Dracula, by Brain Stoker.
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving. Rappaccini’s Daughter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce. Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood. The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth, by H. P. Lovecraft. And more! Books by Walter de la Mare, Wakefield, Harvey, Wells, Asquith, Huxley’all forbidden authors. All burned in the same year that Halloween was outlawed and Christmas was banned! But, sir, what good are these to us on the rocket?’
‘I don’t know,’ sighed the captain, ‘yet.’

 

…

The three bags lifted the crystal where the captain’s image flickered, his tiny
voice tinkling out of the glass:
‘I don’t know,’ sighed the captain, ‘yet.’
The three witches glared redly into one another’s faces.
‘We haven’t much time,’ said one.
‘Better warn Them in the City.’
‘They’ll want to know about the books. It doesn’t look good. That fool of a
captain!’
‘In an hour they’ll land their rocket.’
The three bags shuddered and blinked up at the Emerald City by the edge of the
dry Martian sea.

 

…

In its highest window a small man held a blood-red drape aside.
He watched the wastelands where the three witches fed their caldron and shaped the waxes. Farther along, ten thousand other blue fires and laurel incenses, black tobacco smokes and fir weeds, cinnamons and bone dusts rose soft as moths through the Martian night. The man counted the angry, magical fires. Then, as the three witches stared, he turned. The crimson drape, released, fell, causing the distant portal to wink, like a yellow eye.
Mr. Edgar Allan Poe stood in the tower window, a faint vapor of spirits upon his
breath. ‘Hecate’s friends are busy tonight,’ he said, seeing the witches, far
below.
A voice behind him said, ‘I saw Will Shakespeare at the shore, earlier, whipping
them on. All along the sea Shakespeare’s army alone, tonight, numbers thousands: the three witches, Oberon, Hamlet’s father, Puck’all, all of them’thousands!
Good lord, a regular sea of people.’
‘Good William.’ Poe turned. He let the crimson drape fall shut. He stood for a
moment to observe the raw stone room, the black-timbered table, the candle
flame, the other man, Mr. Ambrose Bierce, sitting very idly there, lighting
matches and watching them burn down, whistling under his breath, now and then laughing to himself.
‘We’ll have to tell Mr. Dickens now,’ said Mr. Poe. ‘We’ve put it off too long.
It’s a matter of hours. Will you go down to his home with me, Bierce?’
Bierce glanced up merrily. ‘I’ve just been thinking’what’ll happen to us?’
‘If we can’t kill the rocket men off, frighten them away, then we’ll have to
leave, of course. We’ll go on to Jupiter, and when they come to Jupiter, we’ll
go on to Saturn, and when they come to Saturn, we’ll go to Uranus, or Neptune,
and then on out to Pluto”’
‘Where then?’
Mr. Poe’s face was weary; there were fire coals remaining, fading, in his eyes,
and a sad wildness in the way he talked, and a uselessness of his hands and the
way his hair fell lankly over his amazing white brow. He was like a satan of
some lost dark cause, a general arrived from a derelict invasion. His silky,
soft, black mustache was worn away by his musing lips. He was so small his brow
seemed to float, vast and phosphorescent, by itself, in the dark room.
‘We have the advantages of superior forms of travel,’ he said. ‘We can always
hope for one of their atomic wars, dissolution, the dark ages come again. The
return of superstition. We could go back then to Earth, all of us, in one
night.’ Mr. Poe’s black eyes brooded under his round and luminant brow. He gazed
at the ceiling. ‘So they’re coming to ruin this world too? They won’t leave
anything undefiled, will they?’
‘Does a wolf pack stop until it’s killed its prey and eaten the guts? It should
be quite a war. I shall sit on the side lines and be the scorekeeper. So many
Earthmen boiled in oil, so many Mss. Found in Bottles burnt, so many Earthmen
stabbed with needles, so many Red Deaths put to flight by a battery of
hypodermic syringes’ha!’
Poe swayed angrily, faintly drunk with wine. ‘What did we do? Be with us,
Bierce, in the name of God! Did we have a fair trial before a company of
literary critics? No! Our books were plucked up by neat, sterile, surgeon’s
pliers, and flung into vats, to boil, to be killed of all their mortuary germs.
Damn them all!’
‘I find our situation amusing,’ said Bierce.
They were interrupted by a hysterical shout from the tower stair.
‘Mr. Poe! Mr. Bierce!’
‘Yes, yes, we’re coming!’ Poe and Bierce descended to find a man gasping against
the stone passage wall.
‘Have you heard the news?’ he cried immediately, clawing at them like a man
about to fall over a cliff. ‘In an hour they’ll land! They’re bringing books
with them’old books, the witches said! What’re you doing in the tower at a time
like this? Why aren’t you acting?’
Poe said: ‘We’re doing everything we can, Blackwood. You’re new to all this.
Come along, we’re going to Mr. Charles Dickens’ place”’
”to contemplate our doom, our black doom,’ said Mr. Bierce, with a wink.
They moved down the echoing throats of the castle, level after dim green level,
down into mustiness and decay and spiders and dreamlike webbing. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Poe, his brow like a huge white lamp before them, descending, sinking. ‘All along the dead sea tonight I’ve called the others. Your friends and mine, Blackwood’Bierce. They’re all there. The animals and the old women and the tall men with the sharp white teeth. The traps are waiting; the pits, yes, and the pendulums. The Red Death.’ Here he laughed quietly. ‘Yes, even the Red Death. I never thought’no, I never thought the time would come when a thing like the Red Death would actually be. But they asked for it, and they shall have it!’
‘But are we strong enough?’ wondered Blackwood.
‘How strong is strong? They won’t be prepared for us, at least. They haven’t the
imagination. Those clean young rocket men with their antiseptic bloomers and
fish-bowl helmets, with their new religion. About their necks, on gold chains,
scalpels. Upon their heads, a diadem of microscopes. In their holy fingers,
steaming incense urns which in reality are only germicidal ovens for steaming
out superstition. The names of Poe, Bierce, Hawthorne, Blackwood’blasphemy to
their clean lips.’
Outside the castle they advanced through a watery space, a tarn that was not a
tarn, which misted before them like the stuff of nightmares. The air filled with
wing sounds and a whirring, a motion of winds and blacknesses. Voices changed,
figures swayed at campfires. Mr. Poe watched the needles knitting, knitting,
knitting, in the firelight; knitting pain and misery, knitting wickedness into
wax marionettes, clay puppets. The caldron smells of wild garlic and cayenne and saffron hissed up to fill the night with evil pungency.
‘Get on with it!’ said Poe. ‘I’ll be back!’
All down the empty seashore black figures spindled and waned, grew up and blew into black smoke on the sky. Bells rang in mountain towers and licorice ravens spilled out with the bronze sounds and spun away to ashes.
Over a lonely moor and into a small valley Poe and Bierce hurried, and found
themselves quite suddenly on a cobbled street, in cold, bleak, biting weather,
with people stomping up and down stony courtyards to warm their feet; foggy
withal, and candles flaring in the windows of offices and shops where hung the
Yuletide turkeys. At a distance some boys, all bundled up, snorting their pale
breaths on the wintry air, were trilling, ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,’ while
the immense tones of a great clock continuously sounded midnight. Children
dashed by from the baker’s with dinners all asteam in their grubby fists, on
trays and under silver bowls.
At a sign which read SCROOGE, MARLEY AND DICKENS, Poe gave the Marley-faced knocker a rap, and from within, as the door popped open a few inches, a sudden gust of music almost swept them into a dance. And there, beyond the shoulder of the man who was sticking a him goatee and mustaches at them, was Mr. Fezziwig clapping his hands, and Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile, dancing and colliding with other merrymakers, while the fiddle chirped and laughter ran about a table like chandelier crystals given a sudden push of wind. The large table was heaped with brawn and turkey and holly and geese; with mince pies, suckling pigs, wreaths of sausages, oranges and apples; and there was Bob Cratchit and Little Dorrit and Tiny Tim and Mr. Fagin himself, and a man who looked as if he might be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato’who else but Mr. Marley, chains and all, while the wine poured and the brown turkeys did their excellent best to steam!
‘What do you want?’ demanded Mr. Charles Dickens.
‘We’ve come to plead with you again, Charles; we need your help,’ said Poe.
‘Help? Do you think I would help you fight against those good men coming in the
rocket? I don’t belong here, anyway. My books were burned by mistake. I’m no
supernaturalist, no writer of horrors and terrors like you, Poe; you, Bierce, or
the others. I’ll have nothing to do with you terrible people!’
‘You are a persuasive talker,’ reasoned Poe. ‘You could go to meet the rocket
men, lull them, lull their suspicions and then’then we would take care of them.’
Mr. Dickens eyed the folds of the black cape which hid Poe’s hands. From it,
smiling, Poe drew forth a black cat. ‘For one of our visitors.’
‘And for the others?’
Poe smiled again, well pleased. ‘The Premature Burial?’
‘You are a grim man, Mr. Poe.’
‘I am a frightened and an angry man. I am a god, Mr. Dickens, even as you are a
god, even as we all are gods, and our inventions’our people, if you wish’have
not only been threatened, but banished and burned, torn up and censored, ruined and done away with. The worlds we created are falling into ruin. Even gods must fight!’
‘So?’ Mr. Dickens tilted his head, impatient to return to the party, the music,
the food. ‘Perhaps you can explain why we are here? How did we come here?’
‘War begets war. Destruction begets destruction. On Earth, a century ago, in the
year 2020 they outlawed our books. Oh, what a horrible thing’to destroy our
literary creations that way! It summoned us out of’what? Death? The Beyond? I
don’t like abstract things. I don’t know. I only know that our worlds and our
creations called us and we tried to save them, and the only saving thing we
could do was wait out the century here on Mars, hoping Earth might overweight
itself with these scientists and their doubtings; but now they’re coming to
clean us out of here, us and our dark things, and all the alchemists, witches,
vampires, and were-things that, one by one, retreated across space as science
made inroads through every country on Earth and finally left no alternative at
all but exodus. You must help us. You have a good speaking manner. We need you.’
‘I repeat, I am not of you, I don’t approve of you and the others,’ cried
Dickens angrily. ‘I was no player with witches and vampires and midnight
things.’
‘What of A Christmas Carol?’
‘Ridiculous! One story. Oh, I wrote a few others about ghosts, perhaps, but what
of that? My basic works had none of that nonsense!’
‘Mistaken or not, they grouped you with us. They destroyed your books’your
worlds too. You must hate them, Mr. Dickens!’
‘I admit they are stupid and rude, but that is all. Good day!’
‘Let Mr. Marley come, at least!’
‘No!’
The door slammed. As Poe turned away, down the street, skimming over the frosty ground, the coachman playing a lively air on a bugle, came a great coach, out of which, cherry-red, laughing and singing, piled the Pickwickians, banging on the door, shouting Merry Christmas good and loud, when the door was opened by the fat boy.
Mr. Poe hurried along the midnight shore of the dry sea. By fires and smoke he
hesitated, to shout orders, to check the bubbling caldrons, the poisons and the
chalked pentagrams. ‘Good!’ he said, and ran on. ‘Fine!’ he shouted, and ran
again. People joined him and ran with him. Here were Mr. Coppard and Mr. Machen running with him now. And there were hating serpents and angry demons and fiery bronze dragons and spitting vipers and trembling witches like the barbs and nettles and thorns and all the vile flotsam and jetsam of the retreating sea of imagination, left on the melancholy shore, whining and frothing and spitting.
Mr. Machen stopped. He sat like a child on the cold sand. He began to sob. They
tried to soothe him, but he would not listen. ‘I just thought,’ he said. ‘What
happens to us on the day when the last copies of our books are destroyed?’
The air whirled.
‘Don’t speak of it!’
‘We must,’ wailed Mr. Machen. ‘Now, now, as the rocket comes down, you, Mr. Poe; you, Coppard; you, Bierce’all of you grow faint. Like wood smoke. Blowing away.
Your faces melt”
‘Death! Real death for all of us.’
‘We exist only through Earth’s sufferance. If a final edict tonight destroyed
our last few works we’d be like lights put out.’
Coppard brooded gently. ‘I wonder who I am. In what Earth mind tonight do I
exist? In some African hut? Some hermit, reading my tales? Is he the lonely
candle in the wind of time and science? The flickering orb sustaining me here in
rebellious exile? Is it him? Or some boy in a discarded attic, finding me, only
just in time! Oh, last night I felt ill, ill, ill to the marrows of me, for
there is a body of the soul as well as a body of the body, and this soul body
ached in all of its glowing parts, and last night I felt myself a candle,
guttering. When suddenly I sprang up, given new light! As some child, sneezing
with dust, in some yellow garret on Earth once more found a worn, time-specked
copy of me! And so I’m given a short respite!’
A door banged wide in a little hut by the shore. A thin short man, with flesh
hanging from him in folds, stepped out and, paying no attention to the others,
sat down and stared into his clenched fists.
‘There’s the one I’m sorry for,’ whispered Blackwood. ‘Look at him, dying away.
He was once more real than we, who were men. They took him, a skeleton thought,
and clothed him in centuries of pink flesh and snow beard and red velvet suit
and black boot; made him reindeers, tinsel, holly. And after centuries of
manufacturing him they drowned him in a vat of Lysol, you might say.’
The men were silent.
‘What must it be on Earth?’ wondered Poe. ‘Without Christmas? No hot chestnuts,
no tree, no ornaments or drums or candles’nothing; nothing but the snow and wind
and the lonely, factual people. . . .’
They all looked at the thin little old man with the scraggly beard and faded red
velvet suit.
‘Have you heard his story?’
‘I can imagine it. The glitter-eyed psychiatrist, the clever sociologist, the
resentful, froth-mouthed educationalist, the antiseptic parents”’
‘A regrettable situation,’ said fierce, smiling, ‘for the Yuletide merchants
who, toward the last there, as I recall, were beginning to put up holly and sing
Noel the day before Halloween. With any luck at all this year they might have
started on Labor Day!’
Bierce did not continue. He fell forward with a sigh. As he lay upon the ground
he had time to say only, ‘How interesting.’ And then, as they all watched,
horrified, his body burned into blue dust and charred bone, the ashes of which
fled through the air in black tatters.
‘Bierce, Berce!’
‘Gone!’
‘His last book gone. Someone on Earth just now burned it.’
‘God rest him. Nothing of him left now. For what are we but books, and when
those are gone, nothing’s to be seen.’
A rushing sound filled the sky.
They cried out, terrified, and looked up. In the sky, dazzling it with sizzling
fire clouds, was the rocket! Around the men on the seashore lanterns bobbed;
there was a squealing and a bubbling and an odor of cooked spells. Candle-eyed
pumpkins lifted into the cold clear air. Thin fingers clenched into fists and a
witch screamed from her withered mouth:
‘Ship, ship, break, fall!
Ship, ship, burn all!
Crack, flake, shake, melt!
Mummy dust, cat pelt!’
‘Time to go,’ murmured Blackwood. ‘On to Jupiter, on to Saturn or Pluto.’
‘Run away?’ shouted Poe in the wind. ‘Never!’
‘I’m a tired old man!’
Poe gazed into the old man’s face and believed him. He climbed atop a huge
boulder and faced the ten thousand gray shadows and green lights and yellow eyes
on the hissing wind.
‘The powders!’ he shouted.
A thick hot smell of bitter almond, civet, cumin, wormseed and orris!
The rocket came down’steadily down, with the shriek of a damned spirit! Poe
raged at it! He flung his fists up and the orchestra of heat and smell and
hatred answered in symphony! Like stripped tree fragments, bats flew upward!
Burning hearts, flung like missiles, burst in bloody fireworks on the singed
air. Down, down, relentlessly down, like a pendulum the rocket came. And Poe
howled, furiously, and shrank back with every sweep and sweep of the rocket
cutting and ravening the air! All the dead sea seemed a pit in which, trapped,
they waited the sinking of the dread machinery, the glistening ax; they were
people under the avalanche!
‘The snakes!’ screamed Poe.
And luminous serpentines of undulant green hurtled toward the rocket. But it
came down, a sweep, a fire, a motion, and it lay panting out exhaustions of red
plumage on the sand, a mile away.
‘At it!’ shrieked Poe. ‘The plan’s changed! Only one chance! Run! At it! At it!
Drown them with our bodies! Kill them!’
And as if he had commanded a violent sea to change its course, to suck itself
free from primeval beds, the whirls and savage gouts of fire spread and ran like
wind and rain and stark lightning over the sea sands, down empty river deltas,
shadowing and screaming, whistling and whining, sputtering and coalescing toward the rocket which, extinguished, lay like a clean metal torch in the farthest
hollow. As if a great charred caldron of sparkling lava had been overturned, the
boiling people and snapping animals churned down the dry fathoms.
‘Kill them!’ screamed Poe, running.
The rocket men leaped out of their ship, guns ready. They stalked about,
sniffing the air like hounds. They saw nothing. They relaxed.
The captain stepped forth last. He gave sharp commands. Wood was gathered,
kindled, and a fire leapt up in an instant. The captain beckoned his men into a
half circle about him.
‘A new world,’ he said, forcing himself to speak deliberately, though he glanced
nervously, now and again, over his shoulder at the empty sea. ‘The old world
left behind. A new start. What more symbolic than that we here dedicate
ourselves all the more firmly to science and progress.’ He nodded crisply to his
lieutenant. ‘The books.’
Firelight limned the faded gilt titles: The Willows, The Outsider, Behold, The
Dreamer, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Land of Oz, Pellucidar, The Land That Time
Forgot A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the monstrous names of Machen and Edgar
Allan Poe and Cabell and Dunsany and Blackwood and Lewis Carroll; the names, the
old names, the evil names.
‘A new world. With a gesture, we burn the last of the old.’ The captain ripped
pages from the books. Leaf by seared leaf, he fed them into the fire.
A scream!
Leaping back, the men stared beyond the firelight at the edges of the
encroaching and uninhabited sea.
Another scream! A high and wailing thing, like the death of a dragon and the
thrashing of a bronzed whale left gasping when the waters of a leviathan’s sea
drain down the shingles and evaporate.
It was the sound of air rushing in to fill a vacuum, where, a moment before,
there had been something!

…

The captain neatly disposed of the last book by putting it into the fire.
The air stopped quivering. Silence!
The rocket men leaned and listened. ‘Captain, did you hear it?’
‘No.’
‘Like a wave, sir. On the sea bottom! I thought I saw something. Over there. A
black wave. Big. Running at us.’
‘You were mistaken.’
‘There, sir!’
‘What?’
‘See it? There! The city! Way over! That green city near the lake! It’s
splitting in half. It’s falling!’
The men squinted and shuffled forward.
Smith stood trembling among them. He put his hand to his head as if to find a
thought there. ‘I remember. Yes, now I do. A long time back. When I was a child.
A book I read. A story. Oz, I think it was. Yes, Oz. The Emerald City of Oz . .
.’
‘Oz? Never heard of it.’
‘Yes, Oz, that’s what it was. I saw it just now, like in the story. I saw it
fall.’
‘Smith!’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Report for psychoanalysis tomorrow.’
‘Yes, sir!’ A brisk salute.
‘Be careful.’

…

The men tiptoed, guns alert, beyond the ship’s aseptic light to gaze at the long
sea and the low hills.

‘Why,’ whispered Smith, disappointed, ‘there’s no one here at all, is there? No
one here at all.’

The wind blew sand over his shoes, whining.

No

The End

A final MM note.

Our reality is one ruled by quantum physics. An within this reality is the idea that thoughts create and change our reality. So what happens when entire groups of people no longer have , or possess, certain thoughts? What will the resulting landscape look like?

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The Dragon by Ray Bradbury (Full Text)

Here's a nice short story to provide some brief moments of pleasure. I do hope that you enjoy it as much as I have. - MM

THE DRAGON
By Ray Bradbury

The night blew in the short grass on the moor; there was no other motion. It had been years since a single bird had flown by in the great blind shell of sky.

Long ago a few small stones had simulated life when they crumbled and fell into dust. Now only the night moved in the souls of the two men bent by their lonely fire in the wilderness; darkness pumped quietly in their veins and ticked silently in their temples and their wrists.

Firelight fled up and down their wild faces and welled in their eyes in orange tatters. They listened to each other’s faint, cool breathing and the lizard blink of their eyelids. At last, one man poked the fire with his sword.

“Don’t idiot; you’ll give us away!”

“No matter,” said the second man, “The dragon can smell us miles off anyway. God’s breath, it’s cold. I wish I was back at the castle.”

“It’s death, not sleep, we’re after…”

“Why? Why? The dragon never sets foot in the town!”

“Quiet, fool! He eats men traveling alone from our town to the next!”

“Let them be eaten and let us get home!”

“Wait now; listen!”

The two men froze.

They waited a long time, but there was only the shake of their horses’ nervous skin like black velvet tambourines jingling the silver stirrup buckles, softly, softly.
“Ah.” The second man sighed. “What a land of nightmares. Everything happens here. Someone blows out the sun; it’s night. And then, and then, oh, God, listen! This dragon, they say his eyes are fire. His breath a white gas; you can see him burn across the dark lands. He runs with sulfur and thunder and kindles the grass. Sheep panic and die insane. Women deliver forth monsters. The dragon’s fury is such that tower walls shake back to dust. His victims, at sunrise, are strewn hither thither on the hills. How many knights, I ask, have gone for this monster and failed, even as we shall fail?”

“Enough of that!”

“More than enough! Out here in this desolation I cannot tell what year this is!”

“Nine hundred years since the Nativity.”

“No, no,” whispered the second man, eyes shut, “On this moor is no Time, is only Forever. I feel if I ran back on the road the town would be gone, the people yet unborn, things changed, the castles unquarried from the rocks, the timbers still uncut from the forests; don’t ask how I know; the moor knows and tells me. And here we sit alone in the land of the fire dragon, God save us!”

“Be you afraid, then gird on your armor!”

“What use? The dragon runs from nowhere; we cannot guess its home. It vanishes in fog; we know not where it goes. Aye, on with our armor, we’ll die well dressed.”

Half into his silver corselet, the second man stopped again and turned his head.

Across the dim country, full of night and nothingness from the heart of the moor itself, the wind sprang full of dust from clocks that used dust for telling time. There were black suns burning in the heart of this new wind and a million burnt leaves shaken from some autumn tree be- yond the horizon. This wind melted landscapes, lengthened bones like white wax, made the blood roil and thicken to a muddy  deposit in the brain. The wind was a thousand souls dying and all time confused and in transit. It was a fog inside of a mist inside of a darkness, and this place was no man’s place and there was no year or hour at all, but only these men in a faceless emptiness of sudden frost, storm and white thunder which
moved behind the great falling pane of green glass that was the lightning. A squall of rain drenched the turf; all faded away until there was unbreathing hush and the two men waiting alone with their warmth in a cool season.

“There,” whispered the first man. “Oh, there…”

Miles off, rushing with a great chant and a roar – the dragon.

In silence the men buckled on their armor and mounted their horses. The midnight wilderness was split by a monstrous gushing as the dragon roared nearer, nearer; its flashing yellow glare spurted above a hill and then, fold on fold of dark body, distantly seen, therefore indistinct, flowed over that hill and plunged vanishing into a valley.

“Quick!”

They spurred their horses forward to a small hollow.

“This is where it passes!”

They seized their lances with mailed fists and blinded their horses by flipping the visors down over their eyes.

“Lord!”

“Yes, let us use His name.”

On the instant, the dragon rounded a hill. Its monstrous amber eye fed on them, fired their armor in red glints and glitters, With a terrible wailing cry and a grinding rush it flung itself forward.

“Mercy, God!”

The lance struck under the unlidded yellow eye, buckled, tossed the man through the air. The dragon hit, spilled him over, down, ground him under. Passing, the black brunt of its shoulder smashed the remaining horse and rider a hundred feet against the side of a boulder, wailing, wailing, the dragon shrieking, the fire all about, around, under it, a pink, yellow, orange sun-fire with great soft plumes of blinding smoke.

…

“Did you see it?” cried a voice. “Just like I told you!”

“The same! The same! A knight in armor, by the Lord Harry! We hit him!”

“You goin’ to stop?”

“Did once; found nothing. Don’t like to stop on this moor. I get the willies. Got a feel, it has.”

“But we hit something!”

“Gave him plenty of whistle; chap wouldn’t budge!”

A steaming blast cut the mist aside.

“We’ll make Stokely on time. More coal, eh, Fred?”

Another whistle shook dew from the empty sky. The night train, in fire and fury, shot through a gully, up a rise, and vanished away over cold earth toward the north, leaving black smoke and steam to dissolve in the numbed air minutes after it had passed and gone forever.

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Mars is Heaven! by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

Here is a nice story to get your mind off of whatever it might be on right now. Please relax, fix yourself a nice coffee, tea, or beer… get into your most comfortable chair, and relax.

MARS IS HEAVEN!

by Ray Bradbury

The ship came down from space. It came from the stars and the black velocities, and the shining movements, and the silent gulfs of space. It was a new ship; it had fire in its body and men in its metal cells, and it moved with a clean silence, fiery and warm. In it were seventeen men, including a captain.

The crowd at the Ohio field had shouted and waved their hands up into the sunlight, and the rocket bad bloomed out great flowers of beat and cobs and run away into space on the third voyage to Mars!

Now it was decelerating with metal efficiency in the upper Martian atmospheres. It was still a thing of beauty and strength. It had moved in the midnight waters of space like a pale sea leviathan; it had passed the ancient moon and thrown itself onward into one nothingness following another. The men within it had been battered,, thrown about, sickened, made well again, each in his turn. One man had died, but now the remaining sixteen, with their eyes clear in their heads and their faces pressed to the thick glass ports, watched Mars swing up under them.

“Mars! Mars! Good old Mars, here we are!” cried Navigator Lustig.
“Good old Mars!” said Samuel Hinkston, archaeologist.
“Well,” said Captain John Black.

The ship landed softly. on a lawn of green grass. Outside, upon the lawn, stood an iron deer. Further up the lawn, a tall brown Victorian house sat in the quiet sunlight, all covered with scrolls and rococo, its windows made of blue and pink and yellow and green colored glass. Upon the porch were hairy geraniums and an old swing which was hooked into the porch ceiling and which now swung back and forth, back and forth, in a little breeze.

At the top of the house was a cupola with diamond, leaded-glass windows, and a dunce-cap roof! Through the front window you could see an ancient piano with yellow keys and a piece of music titled Beautiful Ohio sitting on the music rest.

Around the rocket in four directions spread the little town, green and motionless in the Martian spring, There were white houses and red brick ones, and tall elm trees blowing in the wind, and tall maples and horse chestnuts. And church steeples with golden bells silent in them.

The men in the rocket looked out and saw this. Then they looked at one another and then they looked out again. They held on~ to each other’s elbows, suddenly unable to breathe, it seemed. Their faces grew pale and they blinked constantly, running from glass port to glass port of the ship.

“I’ll be damned,” whispered Lustig, rubbing his face with his numb fingers, his eyes wet. “Ill be thinned, damned, damned.’~

“It can~t be, it just can’t be,” said Samuel Hinkston.
“Lord,” said Captain John Black.
There was a call from the chemist. “Sir, the atmosphere is fine for
breathing, sir.” –

Black turned slowly. “Are you sure?’
“No doubt of it, sir.”
“Then we’ll go. out,” said Lustig.
“Lord, yes,” said Samuel Hinkston.
“Hold on,” said Captain John Black. “Just a moment, Nobody gave any orders.”
“But, sir-.-”
“Sir, nothing. How do we know what this is?”

“We know what it is, sir,” said the chemist. “It’s a small town with good air in it, sir.”
“And it’s a small town the like of Earth towns,” said Samuel Hinkston,
the archaeologist. “Incredible. it~ can’t be, but it is.”
Captain John Black looked at him, idly. “Do you think that the civilizations of two planets can progress at the same rate and evolve in the same way, Hinkston?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, sir.”
Captain Black stood by the port. “Look out there. The geraniums. A specialized plant. That specific variety has only been known on Earth for fifty years. Think of the thousands of years of time it takes to evolve plants. Then tell me if it is logical that the Martians should have: one, leaded glass windows; two, cupolas; three, porch swings; four, an instrument that looks like, a . piano and probably is a piano; and, five, if you look closely, . if a Martian composer would have published a piece of music titled, strangely enough, Beautiful Ohio. All of which means that we have an Ohio River here on Marst”

“It is quite strange, sir.”
“Strange, hell, it’s absolutely impossible, and I suspect the whole bloody shooting setup. Something’s wrong here, and I’m not leaving the ship until I know what it is.”

“Oh, sir,” said Lustig.
“Dam it,” said Samuel Hinkston. “Sir, I want to investigate this at first hand. It may be that there are similar patterns of thought, movement, civilization on every planet in our system. We may be on the threshold of the great psychological and metaphysical discovery In our time, sir, don’t you think?”

“I’m willing to wait a moment,” said Captain. John Black. – “It may be, sir, that we are looking upon a phenomenon that, for the first time, would absolutely prove the existence of a God, sir.”
“There are many people who are of good faith without such proof, Mr. Hinkston.”

“I’m one myself, sir. But certainly a thing like this, out there,” said Hinkston, “could not occur without divine intervention, sir. It fills me with such terror and elation I’ don’t know whether to laugh or cry, sir.”
“Do neither,. then, until we know what we’re up against.”

“Up against, sir?” inquired Lustig. “I see that we’re up against nothing.

It’s a good quiet, green town, much like the one I was born in, and I like the looks of It.”
“When were you born, Lustig?” –
– “In- 1910, sfr.”
“That makes you fifty years old, now, doesn’t it?”
“This being 1960, yes, sir.”
– “And you, Hinkston?”
“1920, sir. In Illinois. And this looks swell to me, sir.”

“This couldn’t be Heaven,” said the captain, ironically. “Though, I must admit, it looks peaceful and cool, and pretty much like Green Bluff, where I was born, in 1915.”
lie looked at the chemist. “The air’s all right, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
‘Well, then, tell you what we’ll do. Lustig, you and Ilinkston and I will fetch ourselves out to look this town over. The other 14 men will stay aboard ship. If’ anything untoward happens, lift ‘the Ship ‘and get the hell out, do you bear what I say, Craner?”

“Yes, sir. The hell out we’ll go, sir. Leaving you?”,
“A loss of three men’s better than a whole ship. If something bad happens get back to Earth and warn the next Rocket, that’s Lingle’s Rocket, I think, which will be completed and ready to take off some time around next Christmas, what he has to meet up with. If there’s something hostile about Mars we certainly want the next expedition to be well armed.”

“So are we, sir. We’ve got a regular arsenal with us.”
“Tell the ‘men to stand by the guns, then, as. Lustig and Hinkston and I go out,”
“Right, sir.”
“Come along, Lustig, Hinkston.”
The three men walked together, down through the levels of the ship.

It was a beautiful spring day. A robin sat on a blossoming apple tree and sang continuously. Showers of petal snow sifted down when the wind touched the apple tree, and the blossom smell drifted upon the air. Somewhere in the town, somebody was playing the piano and the music came and went, came and went, softly, drowsily. The song was Beautiful Dreamer. Somewhere else, a phonograph, scratchy and faded, was hissing out a record of Roamin’ In The Gloamin,’ sung by Harry Lapder.

The three men stood outside the ship. The port closed behind them. At every window, a face pressed, looking out. The large metal guns pointed this way and that, ready.
Now the phonograph record being played was:

–
“Oh give me a June night
The moonlight and you—”

Lustig began to tremble. Samuel Hinkston did likewise.
Hinkston’s voice was so feeble and uneven that the captain had to ask him to repeat what he had said. “I said, sir, that I think I have solved this, all of this, sir!”
“And what is the solution, Hinkston?”

The soft wind blew. The sky was serene and quiet and somewhere a stream of water ran through the cool caverns and tree-shadings of a ravine.

Somewhere a horse and wagon trotted and rolled by, bumping.

“Sir, it must be, it has to be, this is the only solution!
Rocket travel began to Mars in the years before the first’ World War, sir!” S
The captain stared at his archaeologist. “No!”

“But, yes, sir! You must admit, look at all of this! How else explain it, the houses, the lawns, the iron deer, the flowers, the pianos, the music!”

“Hinkston, Hinkston, oh,” and the captain put his hand to his face, shaking his head, his hand shaking no , his lips blue.

“Sir, listen to me.” Hinkston took his elbow persuasively and looked up into the captain’s face, pleading. “Say that there -were some people in the year 1905, perhaps, who hated wars and wanted to get away from Earth and they got together, some scientists, in secret, and built a rocket and came out here to Mars.”

“No, no, Hinkston.”
“Why not? The world was a different place in 1905, they could have kept
-it a secret much more easily.”

“But the work, Hinkston, the work of building a complex thing like a rocket, oh, no, no.” The captain looked at his shoes, looked -at his hands, looked at the houses, and then at Hinkston.

“And they caine up here, and haturally the houses they built were similar to Earth houses because they
brought the cultural -~architecture with them, and here it is!”

“And they’ve lived here all these years?” said the captain.
“In peace and quiet, sir, yes. Maybe they made a few trips, to bring enough people here for one small town, and then stopped, for fear of being discovered. That’s why the town seems so old-fashioned. I don’t see a thing,
myself, that is older than the year 1927, do you?”

“No, frankly, I don’t, Hinkston.”
“These are our people, sir. This is an American city; it’s definitely not
European!”
“That—that’s right, too, Hinkston.”
“Or maybe, just maybe, sir, rocket travel is older than we think. Perhaps it started in some part of the world hundreds of years ago, was discovered and kept secret by a small number of men, and they came to Mars, with only occasional visits to Earth over the centuries.”

“You make it sound almost reasonable.”
“it is, sir. It has to be. We have the proof here before us, all we have ‘to do now, is find some people and verify it!”

“You’re right- there, of course. We can’t just stand here and talk. Did’ you bring your gun?”
“Yes, but we won’t need it.”
“We’ll see about it. Come along, we’ll ring that doorbell and see if anyone is home.”

Their boots were deadened of all sound in the thick green grass. It smelled from a fresh mowing. In spite of himself, Captain John Black felt a great peace come over him. It had been thirty years since he had  een in a small’ town, and the buzzing of spring bees on the air lulled and quieted him, and the fresh look of things was a balm to the soul.

Hollow echoes sounded from under the boards as they walked across the porch and stood before the screen door. Inside, they could see a bead curtain hung across the hall entry, and a crystal chandelier and a Maxfleld Parrish painting framed on one wall over a comfortable Morris, Chair. The house smelled old, and of the attic, and infinitely comfortable. You could hear the tinkle of ice rattling in a lemonade pitcher~ In a distant kitchen, because of the day, someone was preparing a soft, lemon drieL – –

Captain’ John Black rang the bell.
Footsteps, dainty and thin, came along the hail and a kind-faced lady of some forty years, dressed in the sort of dress you might expect in the year 1909, peered out at them.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Beg your pardon,” said Captain Black, uncertainly.
“But we’re looking for, that is, could you help us, I mean.” He stopped. She looked out at him with dark wondering eyes.
“If you’re selling something,” she said, “I’m much too busy and I haven’t time.” She turned to go.

“No, wail,” he cried bewilderingly. “What town is this?”
She looked him up and down as if he were crazy.
“What do you mean, what town is it? How could you be in a town and not know what town it was?”
The captain looked as if he wanted to go sit under a shady apple tree. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “But we’re strangers here. We’re from Earth, and we want to know how this town got here and you’ got here.”

“Are you census takers?” she asked.
“No,” be said. –
“What do you want then?” she demanded.
“Well,” said the captain.
“Well?” she asked. -‘
“How long has this town been here?” he wondered.
“It was built in 1868,” she snapped at them. “Is this a game?”
“No, not a game,” cried the captain. “Oh, God,” – be said. “Look here.
We’re from Earth”
“From where?” she said.

‘Prom Earth!” he said. –
“Where’s that?” she said.
“From Earth,” he cried. ‘ –
“Out of the ground, do you mean?”
“No, from the planet Earth!” he almost shouted.
“Here,” she insisted, “come out on the porch and I’ll show you.” , –
“No,” she said, “I won’t come out there, you are all evidently quite mad
from the sun.”

Lustig and Hinkston stood behind the captain. Hinkston now spoke up.

“Mrs.,” he said. ‘We came in a flying ship across space, among the stars. We came from the third planet from the sun, Earth, to tb-is planet, which is Mars.

Now do you understand, Mrs.?”
“Mad from the sun,” she said, taking hold of the door. “Go away now, before I call my husband who’s upstairs taking a nap, and he’ll beat you all with his fists.”
“But—” said Hinkston. “This is Mars, is it not?”

“This,” explained the woman, as if she were addressing a child, “is Green Lake, Wisconsin, on the continent of America, surrounded by the Pacific and ~Atlantic Oceans, on a place called the world, or sometimes, the Earth. Go away now. Good-bye!”
She slammed the door. –

-The three men stood before the door with their hands up in the air toward it, as if pleading with her to open it once more.

They looked at one another.
– “Let’s knock the door down,” said Lustig.
“We can’t,” sighed the captain.
“Why not?”

“She didn’t do anything bad, did she? We’re the strangers here. This is private property. Good God, Hinkstonl” He went and sat down on the porchstep.
“What, sir?”

Did it ever strike you, that maybe we got ourselves, somehow, some way, fouled up. And, by accident, came back and landed on Earth!”

“Oh, sir, oh, sir, oh oh, sir.” And Hinkston sat down numbly and thought about it.
Lustig stood up in the sunlight. “How could we have done that?”
“I don’t know, just let me think.”

}Iinkston said, “But we checked every mile of the way, and we saw Mars and our chronometers said so many miles ‘gone, and we went past the moon and out into space and here we are, on Mars. I’m sure we’re on Mars, ‘ sir.” Lustig said, “But, suppose that, by accident, in space, in time, or something, we landed on a planet in space, in another time.

Suppose this is Earth, thirty or fifty years ago? Maybe we got lost in the dimensions, do you think?”

“Oh, go away, Lustig.” -‘
“Are the men in the ship keeping an eye on us, Hink..

ston?” , –
“At their guns, sir.”

Lustig went to the door, rang the bell. When the door opened again, he asked, ‘What year is this?’ –
“1926, of, course!” cried the woman, furiously, and slammed the door again. “Did you bear that?” Lustig ran back to them, wildly, “She said 1926! We – have gone back in time. This is Earth!”

Lustig sat down and the three men let the wonder and terror of the thought afflict them. Their hands stirred fitfully on their knees. The wind blew, nodding the locks of hair on their heads.

The captain stood up, brushing off his pants. “I never thought it would be like this. It scares the hell out of me. How ‘can a thing like this happen?”

“Will anybody in the whole town believe us?” wondered Hinkston.
“Are we playing around with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn’t we just take off and go home?”
“No. We’ll try another house.”

They walked three houses down to a little white cottage under an oak tree. “I like to be as logical as I can’ get,” said the captain, He nodded at the town. “How does this sound to you, Hinkston? Suppose, as you- said  originally, that rocket travel occurred years ago. And when the Earth people had lived here a number of years they began to get homesick for Earth. First a mild neurosis about it, then a full-fledged psychosis. Then, threatened insanity. What would you do, as a psychiatrist, if fated with such a problem?”
– –
Hinkston thought. “Well, I think I’d re-arrange the civilization on Mars so it resembled Earth more and more each day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every road and every lake, and even an ocean, I would do so. Then I would, by some vast crowd hypnosis, theoretically anyway, convince  veryone in a town this size that this really was Earth, not Mars at all.”

“Good enough, Hinkston. I think we’re on the right track now. That woman in that house back there, just’ minks she’s living on Earth. It protects ‘her sanity. She and all the others in this town are the patients of the greatest experiment in migration and hypnosis you will ever lay your eyes on in your life.” –

“That’s it, sir!” cried Lustig.
“Well,” the captain sighed. “Now we’re getting some- – where. I feel better. It all sounds a bit more logical now. This talk about time and going back and forth and traveling in time turns my stomach upside
down. But, this way—”- He actually smiled for the first time in a month. “Well. It looks as if we’ll be fairly welcome here.”

“Or, will we, sir?” said Lustig. “After all, like the Pilgrims, these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won’t be too happy to see us, sir Maybe they’ll try to drive us ~out or kill us?”

‘We have superior weapons if that should happen. Anyway, all we can do is try. This next house now. Up we go.”

But they had hardly crossed the lawn when Lustig stopped and looked off across the town, down the quiet, dreaming afternoon street. “Sir,” he said.

“What is it, Lustig?” asked the captain.

“Oh, sir, sir, what I see, what I do see now before me, oh, oh—” said Lustig, and he began to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and trembling, and his face was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked down the street and he began to run, stumbling awkwardly, falling, picking himself up, and running on. “Oh, God, God, thank you, God! Thank you!”

– “Don’t let him get away!” The captain broke into a run.
Now Lustig was running at full speed, shouting. He turned into a yard half way down the little shady side street and leaped up upon the porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof

He was beating upon the door, shouting and hollering and crying when Hinkston and the captain ran up and stood in the yard, The door opened. Lustig yanked the screen wide and in a high wail of discovery and happiness, cried out, “Grandma! Grandpa!” –

Two old people stood in the doorway, their faces light. lug up.
“Albert!” Their voices piped and they rushed out to embrace and pat him on the back and move around him, “Albert, oh, Albert, it’s been so many years! How you’ve grown, boy, how big you ate, boy, oh,  lbert boy, how are you!”

“Grandma, Grandpa!” sobbed Albert Lustig. “Good to see you! You look fine, fine! Oh, fine.” He held them, turned them, kissed them, hugged them, cried on them, held them out again, blinked at the little old people.- The, sun was in the sky, the wind blew, the grass was green, the screen door stood
open.

“Come in, lad, come in, there’s lemonade for you,fresh, lots of- it!”

“Grandma, Grandpa, good to see you! I’ve got- friends down here!

Here!” Lustig turned and waved wildly at the captain and Hinkston, who, all during the adventure on the porch, had stood in’ the shade of a tree, holding onto each other. “Captain, captain, come up, come up, I want you to meet my grandfolks!”

“Howdy,” said the folks. “Any- friend of Albert’s is ours, too! Don’t stand there with your mouths open Come on!”

In the living room of the old house it was cool and a grandfather clock ticked high and long and bronzed in one corner. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls filled with books and a rug cut in a thick rose pattern and antimacassars pinned to furniture, and lemonade in the hand, sweating, and cool on the thirsty tongue. “Here’s to our health.” Grandma tipped her glass to her porcelain teeth. – –

“How long you been here, Grandma?” said Lustig.
“A good many years,” she said, tartly. “Ever since we died.”
“Ever since you what?” asked Captain John Black, putting his drink down. – –
“Oh, yes,” Lustig looked at his captain. “They’ve been dead thirty years.”

“And you sit there, calmly!” cried the captain.
“Tush,” said the old woman, and winked glitteringly – at John Black. “Who are we to question what happens?

Here we are. What’s life, anyways? Who does what for why and where? All we know is here we are, alive again, and no questions -asked. A second chance.”
She toddled over and held out her -thin wrist to Captain John Black.
“Feel” He felt.~ “Solid, ain’t I?” she ask~ed. He nodded.
“You hear my voice, don’t you?” she inquired. Yes, he did. “Well, then,” she said in triumph, “why go around questioning?”
“Well,” said the captain, “it’s simply that we never thought we’d find a
thing like this on Mars.”

“And now you’ve found it. I dare say there’s lots on every planet that’ll show you God’s infinite ways.”
is this Heaven?” asked Hinkston.
“Nonsense, no. It’s a world and we get a second chance. Nobody told us why. But then nobody told us why we were on Earth, either. That other Earth, I mean. The one you came from. How do we know there wasn’t another before that one?”

“A good question,” said the captain.
The captain stood up and slapped his hand on his leg in an off-hand fashion. “We’ve got to be going. It’s been nice. Thank you for the drinks.”

He stopped. He turned and looked toward the door, startled. ‘ –
Far away, in the sunlight, there was a sound of voices, a crowd, a shouting and a great hello.

“What’s that?” asked Hinkston.
“We’ll soon find out!” And Captain John Black was out the front door abruptly, jolting across the green lawn and into the street of the Martian town.

He stood looking at the ship. The ports were open and his crew were streaming out, waving their hands. A crowd of people had gathered and in and through and among these people the members of the crew were running, talking, laughing, shaking hands. People did little dances. People swarmed. The rocket lay – empty and abandoned.

A brass band exploded in the sunlight, flinging off a gay tune from upraised tubas and trumpets. There was a bang of drums and a shrill of fifes. Little girls with golden hair jumped up and down. Little boys shouted, “Hoorayl” And fat men passed around ten-cent cigars. The mayor of the town made a speech. Then, each member of the crew with a mother on one -arm, a father or sister on the other, was spirited off down the street, into little cottages or big mansions and doors slammed shut.

The wind rose in the clear spring sky and all was silent. The brass band had banged off around a corner leaving the rocket to shine and dazzle alone in the sunlight.

“Abandoned!” cried the captain. “Abandoned the ship, they did! I’ll have their skins; by God! They had orders!”
“Sir,” said Lustig. “Don’t be too -hard on them. Those were all old relatives and friends.”

“That’s no excuse!” – –
“Think how they felt, captain, seeing familiar faces outside the ship!” –
“I would have obeyed orders! I would have~!’ The captain’s mouth
remained open.

Striding along the sidewalk – under the Martian sun, tall, smiling, eyes blue, face tan, came a young man of some twenty-six years. –
“John!” the man cried, and broke into a run.
“What?” said Captain .John Black. He swayed. –

“John, you old beggar, you!”
The man ran up and gripped his hand and slapped him
on the back. –
“It’s you,” said John Black.
“Of course, who’d you think it was!” –
“Edward!” The captain appealed now to Lustig and Hinkston, holding the stranger’s hand. “This is my brother – Edward. Ed, meet my men, Lustig, Hinkston My brother!” – – –
They tugged at each other’s hands and arms and then finally embraced.

“Ed!” “John, you old bum, you!” “You!re locking fine, Ed, but, Ed, what .is this? You haven’t ,changed over the years. You died, I remember, when you were twenty-six, and 1 was nineteen, oh God,
so many years ago, and here you are, and, Lord, what goes on, what goes on?”

Edward Black gave him a brotherly knock on the chin.
“Mom’s waiting,” he said.
“Mom?”
“And Dad, too.”
– “And Dad?” The- captain almost fell to earth as if hit upon the chest with a mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and awkwardly, out of coordination. He stuttered and whispered and talked only one or two  ords at a time.

“Mom alive? Dad? Where?”
“At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue.” –
“The old house.” The captain stared in delighted amazement. “Did you hear that, Lustig, Hinkston?”
~‘I know it’s hard for you to believe.”

“But alive. Real.”
“Don’t I feel real?” The strong arm, the firm grip, the white smile. The light, curling hair.
Hinkaton was gone. He had seen his own house down the street and was running for it. Lustig was grinning.

“Now you understand, sir, what happened to everybody on the ship. They couldn’t help themselves.”
“Yes. Yes,” said the captain, eyes shut. “Yes.” He put out his hand.
“When I open my eyes, you’ll be gone.” He opened his eyes. “You’re still here.
God, Edward, you look fine!” – – –
“Come along, lunch is waiting for you. I told Mom.” Lustig said, “Sir, Ui
be with my grandfolks if you want me.” –

“What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then.”
Edward grabbed his arm and marched him. “You need support.” –
“I do. My knees, all funny. My stomach, loose. God.”

“There’s the house. Remember it?” –
“Remember it? Hell! I bet I can beat you to the front porch!” –

They ran. The wind roared over Captain John Black’s ears. The earth roared -under his feet. He saw the golden figure of Edward Black pull ahead of him in the amazing dream of reality. He saw the house rush- forward, the door open, the screen swing back. “Beat you!” cried Edward, – bounding up the steps. “I’m an old man,” panted the captain, “and you’re still young. But, then, you always beat me, I remember!”

In the doorway, Mom, pink, and plump and bright. And behind her, pepper grey, Dad, with his pipe in his hand.

“Mom, Dad!”
He ran up -the steps like a child, to meet them.

It was a fine long afternoon. They finished lunch and they sat in the living room and he told them all about his rocket and his being captain and they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just the same, and Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted it in his old fashion. Mom brought in some iced tea in the middle of the afternoon. Then, there was a big turkey dinner at night and time flowing oil. When the drumsticks were sucked clean and lay brittle upon the plates, the captain leaned back in his chair and exhaled his deep contentment. Dad poured him a small glass of dry sherry. It was seven thirty in the evening. Night was in all the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of dim light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down the streets came sounds of music; pianos playing, laughter.

Mom put a record on the victrola and she and Captain John Black bad a – dance. She was wearing the same perfume he remembered from the summer when she and Dad had been killed in the train accident. She was very real in his arms as they danced lightly to the music. –

“I’ll wake in the morning,” said the captain. “And I’ll be in my rocket in space, and this will be gone.”
“No, no, don’t think that,” she cried, softly, pleadingly~ “We’re here.
Don’t question. God is good to- us. Let’s be happy.”

The record ended with a – hissing.
“You’re tired, son,” said Dad. He waved his pipe. “You and Ed go on
upstairs. Your old bedroom is waiting for you.” . – –
“The old one?”
“The brass bed and all,” laughed Edward.
“But I should report my men in.”
“Why?” Mother was logical
“Why? Well, I don’t know. No reason, I guess. No,. none at all. What’s the difference?” He shook his head.

“I’m not being very logical these days,” –
“Good night, son.” She kissed his cheek. “‘Night, Mom.”
“Sleep tight, son.” Dad shook his hand.
“Same to you, Pop.” – “It’s good to have you home.”

“It’s good to be home.”
He left the land of cigar smoke and perfume and books and gentle light and ascended the stairs, talking, talking with Edward. Edward pushed a door open and there was the yellow brass bed and the old semaphore banners from college days and a -very musty raccoon coat which he petted with strange, muted affection. “It’s too much,” he said faintly. “Like -being in a thunder- shower without an umbrella. Fm soaked to the skin with emotion. I’m numb. I’m tired.” –

“A night’s sleep between cool clean sheets for you, my bucko.” Edward slapped wide the snowy linens and flounced the pillows. Then he put up a window and let the night blooming jasmine float in. There was moonlight and the sound of distant dancing and whispering.

“So this is Mars,” said the captain undressing.
“So this is Mars.” Edward undressed in idle, leisurely moves, drawing his shirt off over his head, revealing golden shoulders and the good muscular neck. –

– The lights were out, they were into bed, side by side, as in the days, how many decades ago? The captain lolled and was nourished by the night wind pushing the lace curtains out upon the dark room air. Among the trees, upon a lawn, someone had cranked up a portable phonograph and now it was
playing softly, “I’ll be loving you, always,- with a love that’s true, always.”

The thought of Anna came to his mind. “Is Anna here?”
His brother, lying straight out in the moonlight from the window,waited and then said, “Yes. She’s out of town. But she’ll be here in the morning.” –
The captain shut his eyes. “I want to see Anna very much?’ –
The room was square and quiet except for their breathing. “Good night, Ed.”
A pause. “Good night, John.”

He lay peacefully, letting his thoughts float. For the — first time the stress of the day was -moved aside, all of the excitement was calmed. He could think logically now. It had all been emotion. The bands playing, the sight – of familiar faces, the sick pounding of your heart. But—

now… –

How? He thought. How was all this made? And why? For what purpose?

Out of the goodness of some kind God? Was God, then, really that fine and thoughtful of his children? -How and why and what for? –

He thought of the various theories advanced in the first heat of the afternoon by Hinkston and Lustig. He let all kinds of new theories drop in lazy pebbles down through his mind, as through a dark water, now, turning, throwing out dull flashes of white light. Mars. Earth. Mom. Dad Edward. Mars. Martians.
Who had – lived here a thousand years ago on Mars? Martians? Or had this always been like this? Martians. He repeated the word quietly, inwardly. –

He laughed out loud, – almost. He had the ridiculous theory, all of a sudden. It gave him a kind of chilled feeling. It was really nothing to think of, of course. Highly. improbable. Silly. Forget it. Ridiculous.

But, he thought, Just suppose. Just suppose now, that there were Martians living on Mars and they saw our ship coming and -saw us inside our ship and hated – us. Suppose, now, just for the hell of it, that they wanted to destroy us, as invaders, as unwanted ones, and – they wanted to do it in a very clever way, so that we would be taken- off guard. Well, what would the best weapon be that a Martian could use against Earthmen with atom weapons? –

The answer was interesting. Telepathy, hypnosis, memory and imagination. –
Suppose all these houses weren’t real at all, – this bed not real, but only figments of my own imagination, given substance by telepathy and hypnosis by the Martians.

Suppose these houses are really some other shape, a Martian shape, but, -by playing on my desires and wants, these Martians have made this seem like my old home town, my old house, to lull me out of my suspicions?

What better way to fool a man, by his own emotions.

And suppose those two people in the next room, asleep, are not my mother and- father at all. But two Martians, incredibly brilliant, with –the ability to keep me under this dreaming hypnosis all of the time?

And that brass band, today? What a clever plan it would be. First, fool Lustig, then fool Hinkston, then gather a crowd around -the rocket ship and wave. And- all the men in the ship, seeing mothers, aunts, uncles, sweethearts dead ten, twenty years ago, naturally, disregarding orders, would rush- out and abandon the ship. What more natural?- What more unsuspecting? What more simple? A man doesn’t ask too many questions when his mother is suddenly brought back to life; he’s much too happy. And – the brass band played and everybody was taken off to private homes. And here we all are, tonight, in various houses, in various beds, with no weapons to protect us, and the rocket lies in the moonlight, empty. And wouldn’t it be horrible and terrifying to discover that all of this was part of some -great clever plan by the Martians to divide and conquer us, and kill us. Some time during the night, perhaps, my brother here on this bed, wifi change form, melt, shift, and become a one eyed, green and yellow-toothed Martian. It would be very simple for him just – to -turn over in bed and put a- knife into my heart. And in all those other houses down the street a dozen other brothers or fathers suddenly melting away and taking out knives and doing things to the unsuspecting, sleeping men of Earth. –

His hands were shaking under the covers. His body was cold, -Suddenly it was not a theory. Suddenly he was very afraid. He lifted- himself in bed and listened. The night was very quiet. The music had stopped. The wind had died.

His brother (?) lay sleeping beside him.

Very carefully he lifted the sheets, rolled them back. He slipped from bed and was walking softly across the room when his brother’s voice said, “Where are you going?”

“What?” –
His brother’s voice was quite cold. “I said, where do you think you’re going?”
“For a drink of water.”
“But you’re not thirsty.”
“Yes, yes, I am.” –
“No, you’re not.” –
Captain John Black broke and ran across the room.
He screamed. He screamed twice. – He never reached- the door.

…

In the morning, the brass band played a mournful dirge. From every house in the street came little solemn processions bearing long boxes and along the sun-filled street, weeping and changing, came the grandmas and grandfathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, walking -to the churchyard, where there were open holes – dug freshly and new- tombstones installed. Seventeen – holes in all, and seventeen tombstones. Three of the tombstones said, CAPTAIN JOHN BLACK, ALBERT LUSTIG, and SAMUEL HINKSTON. – – –

The mayor made a little sad speech, his face sometimes looking like the
mayor, sometimes looking like something else. — – – –

Mother and Father Black were there, with Brother Edward, and they ‘cried, their faces melting now – from a familiar face into something else. – –

Grandpa and Grandma Lustig were there, weeping~ their faces. Also shifting- like wax, – shivering as a- thing does in waves of heat on a summer day. – –

The coffins were lowered. Somebody murmured –about “the unexpected and sudden deaths of seventeen fine men during the night—”. – – – –

Earth was shoveled in on the coffin tops. –

After the funeral the brass band slammed and banged into town and the crowd stood around and waved and shouted as the rocket was torn to pieces and strewn about and blown up. – –

The End

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The End of the Beginning by Ray Bradbury (Full text)

Here’s a nice charming story. I guess it is a bit dated, but the hopefulness of the 1960’s shines through. Lovely.

THE END OF THE BEGINNING
Ray Bradbury

He stopped the lawn mower in the middie of the yard, because he felt that the
sun at just that moment had gone down and the stars come out. The fresh-cut
grass that had showered his face and body died soft!y away. Yes, the stars were
there, faint at first, but brightening in the clear desert sky. He heard the
porch screen door tap shut and felt his wife watching him as he watched the
night.
“Almost time,” she said.
He nodded; he did not have to check his watch. In the passing moments he felt
very old, then very young, very cold, then very warm, now this, now that.
Suddenly he was miles away. He was his own son talking steadily, moving briskly
to cover his pounding heart and the resurgent panics as he felt himself slip
into fresh uniform, check food supplies, oxygen flasks, pressure helmet,
space-suiting, and turn as every man on earth tonight turned, to gaze at the
swiftly filling sky.
Then, quickly, he was back, once more the father of the son, hands gripped to
the lawn-mower handle. His wife called, “Come sit on the porch.”
“I’ve got to keep busy!”
She came down the steps and across the lawn. “Don’t worry about Robert; he’ll be
all right.”
“But it’s all so new,” he heard himself say. “It’s never been done before. Think
of it – a manned rocket going up tonight to build the first space station. Good
lord, it can’t be done, it doesn’t exist, there’s no rocket, no proving ground,
no take-off time, no technicians. For that matter, I don’t even have a son named
Bob. The whole thing’s too much for me!”
“Then what are you doing out here, staring?”
He shook his head. “Well, late this morning, walking to the office, I heard
someone laugh out loud. It shocked me, so I froze in the middle of the street.
It was me, laughing! Why? Because finally I really knew what Bob was going to do tonight; at last I believed it. Holy is a word I never use, but that’s how I
felt stranded in all that traffic. Then, middle of the afternoon I caught myself
humming. You know the song. ‘A wheel in a wheel. Way in the middle of the air.’
I laughed again. The space station, of course, I thought. The big wheel with
hollow spokes where Bob’ll live six or eight months, then get along to the moon.

Walking home, I remembered more of the song. ‘Little wheel run by faith, Big
wheel run by the grace of God.’ I wanted to jump, yell, and flame-out myself!”
His wife touched his arm. “If we stay out here, let’s at least be comfortable.”
They placed two wicker rockers in the center of the lawn and sat quietly as the
stars dissolved out of darkness in pale crushings of rock salt strewn from
horizon to horizon.
“Why,” said his wife, at last, “it’s like waiting for the fireworks at Sisley
Field every year.”
“Bigger crowd tonight . . .”
“I keep thinking – a billion people watching the sky right now, their mouths all
open at the same time.”
They waited, feeling the earth move under their chairs.
“What time is it now?”
“Eleven minutes to eight.”
“You’re always right; there must be a clock in your head.”
“I can’t be wrong tonight. I’ll be able to tell you one second before they blast
off. Look! The ten-minute warning!”
On the western sky they saw four crimson flares open out, float shimmering down the wind above the desert, then sink silently to the extinguishing earth.
In the new darkness the husband and wife did not rock in their chairs.
After a while he said, “Eight minutes.” A pause. “Seven minutes.” What seemed a
much longer pause. “Six . . .”
His wife, her head back, studied the stars immediately above her and murmured,
“Why?” She closed her eyes. “Why the rockets, why tonight? Why all this? I’d
like to know.”
He examined her face, pale in the vast powdering light of the Milky Way. He felt
the stirring of an answer, but let his wife continue.
“I mean it’s not that old thing again, is it, when people asked why men climbed
Mt. Everest and they said, ‘Because it’s there’? I never understood. That was no
answer to me.”
Five minutes, he thought. Time ticking . . . his wrist watch . . . a wheel in a
wheel . . . little wheel run by . . . big wheel run by . . . way in the middle
of . . . four minutes! . . . The men snug in the rocket by now, the hive, the
control board flickering with light.
His lips moved.
“All I know is it’s really the end of the beginning. The Stone Age, Bronze Age,
Iron Age; from now on we’ll lump all those together under one big name for when we walked on Earth and heard the birds at morning and cried with envy. Maybe we’ll call it the Earth Age, or maybe the Age of Gravity. Millions of years we fought gravity. When we were amoebas and fish we struggled to get out of the sea without gravity crushing us. Once safe on the shore we fought to stand upright without gravity breaking our new invention, the spine, tried to walk without stumbling, run without falling. A billion years Gravity kept us home, mocked us with wind and clouds, cabbage moths and locusts. That’s what’s so god-awful big about tonight . . . it’s the end of old man Gravity and the age we’ll remember him by, for once and all. I don’t know where they’ll divide the ages, at the Persians, who dreamt of flying carpets, or the Chinese, who all unknowing
celebrated birthdays and New Years with strung ladyfingers and high skyrockets,
or some minute, some incredible second the next hour. But we’re in at the end of
a billion years trying, the end of something long and to us humans, anyway,
honorable.”
Three minutes . . . two minutes fifty-nine seconds . . . two minutes fifty-eight
seconds . . .
“But,” said his wife, “I still don’t know why.”
Two minutes, he thought. Ready? Ready? Ready? The far radio voice calling.
Ready! Ready! Ready! The quick, faint replies from the humming rocket. Check!
Check! Check!
Tonight, he thought, even if we fail with this first, we’ll send a second and a
third ship and move on out to all the planets and later, all the stars. We’ll
just keep going until the big words like immortal and forever take on meaning.
Big words, yes, that’s what we want. Continuity. Since our tongues first moved
in our mouths we’ve asked, What does it all mean? No other question made sense, with death breathing down our necks. But just let us settle in on ten thousand worlds spinning around ten thousand alien suns and the question will fade away. Man will be endless and infinite, even as space is endless and infinite. Man will go on, as space goes on, forever. Individuals will die as always, but our
history will reach as far as we’ll ever need to see into the future, and with
the knowledge of our survival for all time to come, we’ll know security and thus
the answer we’ve always searched for. Gifted with life, the least we can do is
preserve and pass on the gift to infinity. That’s a goal worth shooting for.
The wicker chairs whispered ever so softly on the grass.
One minute.
“One minute,” he said aloud.
“Oh!” His wife moved suddenly to seize his hands. “I hope that Bob . . .”
“He’ll be all right!”
“Oh, God, take care . . .”
Thirty seconds.
“Watch now.”
Fifteen, ten, five . . .
“Watch!”
Four, three, two, one.
“There! There! Oh, there, there!”

They both cried out. They both stood. The chairs toppled back, fell flat on the
lawn. The man and his wife swayed, their hands struggled to find each other,
grip, hold. They saw the brightening color in the sky and, ten seconds later,
the great uprising comet burn the air, put out the stars, and rush away in fire
flight to become another star in the returning profusion of the Milky Way. The
man and wife held each other as if they had stumbled on the rim of an incredible
cliff that faced an abyss so deep and dark there seemed no end to it. Staring
up, they heard themselves sobbing and crying. Only after a long time were they
able to speak.
“It got away, it did, didn’t it?”
“Yes . . .”
“It’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes . . . yes . . .”
“It didn’t fall back . . .?”
“No, no, it’s all right, Bob’s all right, it’s all right.”
They stood away from each other at last.
He touched his face with his hand and looked at his wet fingers. “I’ll be
damned,” he said, “I’ll be damned.”
They waited another five and then ten minutes until the darkness in their heads,
the retina, ached with a million specks of fiery salt. Then they had to close
their eyes.
“Well,” she said, “now let’s go in.”
He could not move. Only his hand reached a long way out by itself to find the
lawn-mower handle. He saw what his hand had done and said, “There’s just a
little more to do . . .”
“But you can’t see.”
“Well enough,” he said. “I must finish this. Then we’ll sit on the porch awhile
before we turn in.”
He helped her put the chairs on the porch and sat her down and then walked back out to put his hands on the guide bar of the lawn mower. The lawn mower. A wheel in a wheel. A simple machine which you held in your bands, which you sent on ahead with a rush and a clatter while you walked behind with your quiet
philosophy. Racket, followed by warm silence. Whirling wheel, then soft footfall
of thought.
I’m a billion years old, he told himself; I’m one minute old. I’m one inch, no,
ten thousand miles, tall. I look down and can’t see my feet they’re so far off
and gone away below.
He moved the lawn mower. The grass showering up fell softly around him; he
relished and savored it and felt that he was all mankind bathing at last in the
fresh waters of the fountain of youth.
Thus bathed, he remembered the song again about the wheels and the faith and the  grace of God being way up there in the middle of the sky where that single star, among a million motionless stars, dared to move and keep on moving.
Then he finished cutting the grass.

The End

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A Story of Love (Full Text) by Ray Bradbury

I guess that I am a sentimentalist. 

While Ray Bradbury is most well known for his science fiction and dystopian writings, I consider the Story of Love to be on par in quality and enchantment to his other works. This short story explores the constraints that society puts on love and recognizes that affections cannot always be pursued.

That was the week Ann Taylor came to teach summer school at Green Town Central. It was the summer of her twenty-fourth birthday, and it was the summer when Bob Spaulding was just fourteen.

Everyone remembered Ann Taylor, for she was that teacher for whom all the children wanted to bring huge oranges or pink flowers, and for whom they rolled up the rustling green and yellow maps of the world without being asked. She was that woman who always seemed to be passing by on days when the shade was green under the tunnels of oaks and elms in the old town, her face shifting with the bright shadows as she walked, until it was all things to all people. She was the fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a hot early-June morning. Whenever you needed an opposite, Ann Taylor was there. And those rare few days in the world when the climate was balanced as fine as a maple leaf between winds that blew just right, those were the days like Ann Taylor, and should have been so named on the calendar.

As for Bob Spaulding, he was the cousin who walked alone through town on any October evening with a pack of leaves after him like a horde of Hallowe’en mice, or you would see him, like a slow white fish in spring in the tart waters of the Fox Hill Creek, baking brown with the shine of a chestnut to his face by autumn. Or you might hear his voice in those treetops where the wind entertained; dropping down hand by hand, there would come Bob Spaulding to sit alone and look at the world, and later you might see him on the lawn with the ants crawling over his books as he read through the long afternoons alone, or played himself a game of chess on Grandmother’s porch, or picked out a solitary tune upon the black piano in the bay window. You never saw him with any other child.

That first morning, Miss Ann Taylor entered through the side door of the schoolroom and all of the children sat still in their seats as they saw her write her name on the board in a nice round lettering.

“My name is Ann Taylor,” she said, quietly. “And I’m your new teacher.”

The room seemed suddenly flooded with illumination, as if the roof had moved back; and the trees were full of singing birds. Bob Spaulding sat with a spitball he had just made, hidden in his hand. After a half hour of listening to Miss Taylor, he quietly let the spitball drop to the floor.

That day, after class, he brought in a bucket of water and a rag and began to wash the boards.

“What’s this?” She turned to him from her desk, where she had been correcting spelling papers.

“The boards are kind of dirty,” said Bob, at work.

“Yes. I know. Are you sure you want to clean them?”

“I suppose I should have asked permission,” he said, halting uneasily.

“I think we can pretend you did,” she replied, smiling, and at this smile he finished the boards in an amazing burst of speed and pounded the erasers so furiously that the air was full of snow, it seemed, outside the open window.

“Let’s see,” said Miss Taylor. “You’re Bob Spaulding, aren’t you?”

“Yes’m.”

“Well, thank you, Bob.”

“Could I do them every day?” he asked.

“Don’t you think you should let the others try?”

“I’d like to do them,” he said. “Every day.”

“We’ll try it for a while and see,” she said.

He lingered.

“I think you’d better run on home,” she said, finally.

“Good night.” He walked slowly and was gone.

The next morning he happened by the place where she took board and room just as she was coming out to walk to school.

“Well, here I am,” he said.

“And do you know,” she said, “I’m not surprised.”

They walked together.

“May I carry your books?” he asked.

“Why, thank you, Bob.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, taking them.

They walked for a few minutes and he did not say a word. She glanced over and slightly down at him and saw how at ease he was and how happy he seemed, and she decided to let him break the silence, but he never did. When they reached the edge of the school ground he gave the books back to her. “I guess I better leave you here,” he said. “The other kids wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do, either, Bob,” said Miss Taylor.

“Why we’re friends,” said Bob earnestly and with a great natural honesty.

“Bob –” she started to say.

“Yes’m?”

“Never mind.” She walked away.

“I’ll be in class,” he said.

And he was in class, and he was there after school every night for the next two weeks, never saying a word, quietly washing the boards and cleaning the erasers and rolling up the maps while she worked at her papers, and there was that clock silence of four o’clock, the silence of the sun going down in the slow sky, the silence with the catlike sound of erasers patted together, and the drip of water from a moving sponge, and the rustle and turn of papers and the scratch of a pen, and perhaps the buzz of a fly banging with a tiny high anger against the tallest clear pane of window in the room. Sometimes the silence would go on this way until almost five, when Miss Taylor would find Bob Spaulding in the last seat of the room, sitting and looking at her silently, waiting for further orders.

“Well, it’s time to go home,” Miss Taylor would say, getting up.

“Yes’m.”

And he would run to fetch her hat and coat. He would also lock the school-room door for her unless the janitor was coming in later. Then they would walk out of school and across the yard, which was empty, the janitor taking down the chain swings slowly on his stepladder, the sun behind the umbrella trees. They talked of all sorts of things.

“And what are you going to be, Bob, when you grow up?”

“A writer,” he said.

“Oh, that’s a big ambition: it takes a lot of work.”

“I know, but I’m going to try,” he said. “I’ve read a lot.”

“Bob, haven’t you anything to do after school?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, I hate to see you kept in so much, washing the boards.”

“I like it,” he said. “I never do what I don’t like.”

“But nevertheless.”

“No, I’ve got to to that,” he said. He thought for a while and said, “Do me a favour, Miss Taylor?”

“It all depends.”

“I walk every Saturday from out around Buetrick Street along the creek to Lake Michigan. There’s a lot of butterflies and crayfish and birds. Maybe you’d like to walk, too.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Then you’ll come?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Don’t you think it’d be fun?”

“Yes, I’m sure of that, but I’m going to be busy.”

He started to ask what, but stopped.

“I take along sandwiches,” he said. “Ham-and-pickle ones. And orange pop and just walk along, taking my time. I get down to the lake about noon and walk back and get home about three o’clock. It makes a real fine day, and I wish you’d come. Do you collect butterflies? I have a big collection. We could start one for you.”

“Thanks, Bob, but no, perhaps some other time.”

He looked at her and said, “I shouldn’t have asked you, should I?”

“You have every right to ask anything you want to,” she said.

A few days later she found an old copy of `Great Expectations’, which she no longer wanted, and gave it to Bob. He was very grateful and took it home and stayed up that night and read it through and talked about it the next morning. Each day now he met her just beyond sight of her boarding house and many days she would start to say, “Bob –” and tell him not to come to meet her any more, but she never finished saying it, and he talked with her about Dickens and Kipling and Poe and others, coming and going to school. She found a butterfly on her desk on Friday morning. She almost waved it away before she found it was dead and had been placed there while she was out of the room. She glanced at Bob over the heads of her other students, but he was looking at his book; not reading, just looking at it.

It was about this time that she found it impossible to call on Bob to recite in class. She would hover her pencil about his name and then call the next person up or down the list. Nor would she look at him while they were walking to or from school. But on several late afternoons as he moved his arm high on the blackboard, sponging away the arithmetic symbols, she found herself glancing over at him for a few seconds at a time before she returned to her papers.

And then on Saturday morning he was standing in the middle of the creek with his overalls rolled up to his knees, kneeling down to catch a crayfish under a rock, when he looked up and there on the edge of the running stream was Miss Ann Taylor.

“Well, here I am,” she said, laughing.

“And do you know,” he said, “I’m not surprised.”

“Show me the crayfish and the butterflies,” she said.

They walked down to the lake and sat on the sand with a warm wind blowing softly about them, fluttering her hair and the ruffle of her blouse, and he sat a few yards back from her and they ate the ham-and-pickle sandwiches and drank the orange pop solemnly.

“Gee, this is swell,” he said. “This is the swellest time ever in my life.”

“I didn’t think I would ever come on a picnic like this,” she said.

“With some kid,” he said.

“I’m comfortable, however,” she said.

“That’s good news.”

They said little else during the afternoon.

“This is all wrong,” he said, later. “And I can’t figure out why it should be. Just walking along and catching old butterflies and crayfish and eating sandwiches. But Mom and Dad’d rib the heck out of me if they knew, and the kids would, too. And the other teachers, I suppose, would laugh at you, wouldn’t they?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I guess we better not do any more butterfly catching, then.”

“I don’t exactly understand how I came here at all,” she said.

And the day was over.

That was about all there was to the meeting of Ann Taylor and Bob Spaulding, two or three monarch butterflies, a copy of Dickens, a dozen crayfish, four sandwiches and two bottles of Orange Crush. The next Monday, quite unexpectedly, though he waited a long time, Bob did not see Miss Taylor come out to walk to school, but discovered later that she had left earlier and was already at school. Also, Monday night, she left early, with a headache, and another teacher finished her last class. He walked by her boarding house but did not see her anywhere, and he was afraid to ring the bell and inquire.

On Tuesday night after school they were both in the silent room again, he sponging the board contentedly, as if this time might go on forever, and she seated, working on her papers as if she, too, would be in this room and this particular peace and happiness forever, when suddenly the courthouse clock struck. It was a block away and its great bronze boom shuddered one’s body and made the ash of time shake away off your bones and slide through your blood, making you seem older by the minute. Stunned by that clock, you could not but sense the crashing flow of time, and as the clock said five o’clock, Miss Taylor suddenly looked up at it for a long time, and then she put down her pen.

“Bob,” she said.

He turned, startled. Neither of them had spoken in the peaceful and good hour before.

“Will you come here?” she asked.

He put down the sponge slowly.

“Yes,” he said.

“Bob, I want you to sit down.”

“Yes’m.”

She looked at him intently for a moment until he looked away. “Bob, I wonder if you know what I’m going to talk to you about. Do you know?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe it’d be a good idea if you told me, first.”

“About us,” he said, at last.

“How old are you, Bob?”

“Going on fourteen.”

“You’re thirteen years old.”

He winced. “Yes’m.”

“And do you know how old I am?”

“Yes’m. I heard. Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four.”

“I’ll be twenty-four in ten years, almost,” he said.

“But unfortunately you’re not twenty-four now.”

“No, but sometimes I feel twenty-four.”

“Yes, and sometimes you almost act it.”

“Do I, really!”

“Now sit still there, don’t bound around, we’ve a lot to discuss. It’s very important that we understand exactly what is happening, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“First, let’s admit that we are the greatest and best friends in the world. Let’s admit I have never had a student like you, nor have I had as much affection for any boy I’ve ever known.” He flushed at this. She went on. “And let me speak for you — you’ve found me to be the nicest teacher of all teachers you’ve ever known.”

“Oh, more than that,” he said.

“Perhaps more than that, but there are facts to be faced and an entire way of life to be considered. I’ve thought this over for a good many days, Bob. Don’t think I’ve missed anything, or been unaware of my own feelings in the matter. Under any normal circumstances our friendship would be odd indeed. But then you are no ordinary boy. I know myself pretty well, I think, and I know I’m not sick, either mentally or physically, and that whatever has evolved here has been a true regard for your character and goodness, Bob; but those are not the things we consider in this world, Bob, unless they occur in a man of a certain age. I don’t know if I’m saying this right.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s just if I was ten years older and about fifteen inches taller it’d make all the difference, and that’s silly,” he said, “to go by how tall a person is.”

“The world hasn’t found it so.”

“I’m not all the world,” he protested.

“I know it seems foolish,” she said. “When you feel very grown up and right and have nothing to be ashamed of. You have nothing at all to be ashamed of, Bob, remember that. You have been very honest and good, and I hope I have been, too.”

“You have,” he said.

“In an ideal climate, Bob, maybe someday they will be able to judge the oldness of a person’s mind so accurately that they can say, `This is a man, though his body is only thirteen; by some miracle of circumstances and fortune, this is a man, with a man’s recognition of responsibility and position and duty’; but until that day, Bob, I’m afraid we’re going to have to go by ages and heights and the ordinary way in an ordinary world.”

“I don’t like that,” he said.

“Perhaps I don’t like it, either, but do you want to end up far unhappier than you are now? Do you want both of us to be unhappy? Which we certainly would be. There really is no way to do anything about us — it is so strange even to try to talk about us.”

“Yes’m.”

“But at least we know all about us and the fact that we have been right and fair and good and there is nothing wrong with our knowing each other, nor did we ever intend that it should be, for we both understand how impossible it is, don’t we?”

“Yes, I know. But I can’t help it.”

“Now we must decide what to do about it,” she said. “Now only you and I know about this. Later, others might know. I can secure a transfer from this school to another one –“

“No!”

“Or I can have you transferred to another school.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Why?”

“We’re moving. My folks and I, we’re going to live in Madison. We’re leaving next week.”

“It has nothing to do with all this, has it?”

“No, no, everything’s all right. It’s just that my father has a new job there. It’s only fifty miles away. I can see you, can’t I, when I come to town?”

“Do you think that would be a good idea?”

“No, I guess not.”

They sat awhile in the silent schoolroom.

“When did all of this happen?” he said, helplessly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody ever knows. They haven’t known for thousands of years, and I don’t think they ever will. People either like each other or don’t, and sometimes two people like each other who shouldn’t. I can’t explain myself, and certainly you can’t explain you.”

“I guess I’d better get home,” he said.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“Oh, gosh no, I could never be mad at you.”

“There’s one more thing. I want you to remember, there are compensations in life. There always are, or we wouldn’t go on living. You don’t feel well, now; neither do I. But something will happen to fix that. Do you believe that?”

“I’d like to.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“If only,” he said.

“What?”

“If only you’d wait for me,” he blurted.

“Ten years?”

“I’d be twenty-four then.”

“But I’d be thirty-four and another person entirely, perhaps. No, I don’t think it can be done.”

“Wouldn’t you like it to be done?” he cried.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “It’s silly and it wouldn’t work, but I would like it very much.”

He sat there a long time.

“I’ll never forget you,” he said.

“It’s nice for you to say that, even though it can’t be true, because life isn’t that way. You’ll forget.”

“I’ll never forget. I’ll find a way of never forgetting you,” he said.

She got up and went to erase the boards.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

“No, no,” she said, hastily. “You go on now, get home, and no more tending to the boards after school. I’ll assign Helen Stevens to do it.”

He left the school. Looking back, outside, he saw Miss Ann Taylor, for the last time, at the board, slowly washing out the chalked words, her hand moving up and down.

He moved away from the town the next week and was gone for sixteen years. Though he was only fifty miles away, he never got down to Green Town again until he was almost thirty and married, and then one spring they were driving through on their way to Chicago and stopped off for a day.

Bob left his wife at the hotel and walked around town and finally asked about Miss Ann Taylor, but no-one remembered at first, and then one of them remembered.

“Oh, yes, the pretty teacher. She died in 1936, not long after you left.”

Had she ever married? No, come to think of it, she never had.

He walked out to the cemetery in the afternoon and found her stone, which said “Ann Taylor, born 1910, died 1936.” And he thought, Twenty-six years old. Why I’m three years older than you are now, Miss Taylor.

Later in the day the people in the town saw Bob Spaulding’s wife strolling to meet him under the elm trees and the oak trees, and they all turned to watch her pass, for her face shifted with bright shadows as she walked; she was the fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a hot early-summer morning. And this was one of those rare few days in time when the climate was balanced like a maple leaf between winds that blow just right, one of those days that should have been named, everyone agreed, after Robert Spaulding’s wife.

The End

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The Whole Town’s Sleeping (Full Text) by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is known for his fine science fiction stories, and poetic ambience. But he also writes horror and non-science fiction as well. This little beauty is about FEAR. And please pay attention to it. Fear is the big killer. Fear is what disrupts our lives and the beauty within our lives. It is fear.

Now a good story will take you to new places, and you will get to feel familiar emotions when you read about those places, and one such story is this one. It’s a horror story, but then again… it is not about the staples of horror. It’s about the emotions that accompany it.

The Whole Town’s Sleeping by Ray Bradbury

THE COURTHOUSE CLOCK CHIMED SEVEN TIMES.

The echoes of the chimes faded. Warm summer twilight here in upper Illinois country in this little town deep far away from everything, kept to itself by a river and a forest and a meadow and a lake.

The sidewalks still scorched.

The stores closing and the streets shadowed.

And there were two moons; the clock moon with four faces in four night directions above the solemn black courthouse, and the real moon rising in vanilla whiteness from the dark east.

In the drugstore fans whispered in the high ceiling.

In the rococo shade of porches, a few invisible people sat.

Cigars glowed pink, on occasion.

Screen doors whined their springs and slammed.

On the purple bricks of the summer-night streets, Douglas Spaulding ran; dogs and boys followed after.

“Hi, Miss Lavinia!” The boys loped away. Waving after them quietly, Lavinia Nebbs sat all alone with a tall cool lemonade in her white fingers, tapping it to her lips, sipping, waiting.

“Here I am, Lavinia.” She turned and there was Francine, all in snow white, at the bottom steps of the porch, in the smell of zinnias and hibiscus.

Lavinia Nebbs locked her front door and, leaving her lemonade glass half empty on the porch, said, “It’s a fine night for the movie.”

They walked down the street.

“Where you going, girls?” cried Miss Fern and Miss Roberta from their porch over the way.

Lavinia called back through the soft ocean of darkness: “To the Elite Theater to see CHARLIE CHAPLIN!”

“Won’t catch us out on no night like this,” wailed Miss Fern. “Not with the Lonely One strangling women. Lock ourselves up in our closet with a gun.”

“Oh, bosh!” Lavinia heard the old women’s door bang and lock, and she drifted on, feeling the warm breath of summer night shimmering off the oven-baked sidewalks.

It was like walking on a hard crust of freshly warmed bread.

The heat pulsed under your dress, along your legs, with a stealthy and not unpleasant sense of invasion.

“Lavinia, you don’t believe all that about the Lonely One, do you?”

“Those women like to see their tongues dance.”

“Just the same, Hattie McDollis was killed two months ago, Roberta Ferry the month before, and now Elizabeth Ramsell’s disappeared. . . .”

“Hattie McDollis was a silly girl, walked off with a traveling man, I bet.”

“But the others, all of them, strangled, their tongues sticking out their mouths, they say.”

They stood upon the edge of the ravine that cut the town half in two. Behind them were the lit houses and music, ahead was deepness, moistness, fireflies and dark.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go to the show tonight,” said Francine.

“The Lonely One might follow and kill us. I don’t like that ravine. Look at it, will you!”

Lavinia looked and the ravine was a dynamo that never stopped running, night or day; there was a great moving hum, a bumbling and murmuring of creature, insect, or plant life.

It smelled like a greenhouse, of secret vapors and ancient, washed shales and quicksands.

And always the black dynamo humming, with sparkles like great electricity where fireflies moved on the air.

“It won’t be me coming back through this old ravine tonight late, so darned late; it’ll be you, Lavinia, you down the steps and over the bridge and maybe the Lonely One there.”

“Bosh!” said Lavinia Nebbs.

“It’ll be you alone on the path, listening to your shoes, not me. You all alone on the way back to your house. Lavinia, don’t you get lonely living in that house?”

“Old maids love to live alone.” Lavinia pointed at the hot shadowy path leading down into the dark.

“Let’s take the short cut.”

“I’m afraid!”

“It’s early. Lonely One won’t be out till late.”

Lavinia took the other’s arm and led her down and down the crooked path into the cricket warmth and frog sound and mosquito-delicate silence.

They brushed through summer-scorched grass, burs prickling at their bare ankles.

“Let’s run!” gasped Francine.

“No!” They turned a curve in the path—and there it was.

In the singing deep night, in the shade of warm trees, as if she had laid herself out to enjoy the soft stars and the easy wind, her hands at either side of her like the oars of a delicate craft, lay Elizabeth Ramsell!

Francine screamed. “Don’t scream!”

Lavinia put out her hands to hold onto Francine, who was whimpering and choking. “Don’t! Don’t!”

The woman lay as if she had floated there, her face moonlit, her eyes wide and like flint, her tongue sticking from her mouth.

“She’s dead!” said Francine.

“Oh, she’s dead, dead! She’s dead!” Lavinia stood in the middle of a thousand warm shadows with the crickets screaming and the frogs loud.

“We’d better get the police,” she said at last.

“Hold me, Lavinia, hold me, I’m cold, oh, I’ve never been so cold in all my life!”

Lavinia held Francine and the policemen were brushing through the crackling grass, flashlights ducked about, voices mingled, and the night grew toward eight-thirty.

“It’s like December. I need a sweater,” said Francine, eyes shut, against Lavinia.

The policeman said, “I guess you can go now, ladies. You might drop by the station tomorrow for a little more questioning.”

Lavinia and Francine walked away from the police and the sheet over the delicate thing upon the ravine grass. Lavinia felt her heart going loudly in her and she was cold, too, with a February cold; there were bits of sudden snow all over her flesh, and the moon washed her brittle fingers whiter, and she remembered doing all the talking while Francine just sobbed against her.

A voice called from far off, “You want an escort, ladies?”

“No, we’ll make it,” said Lavinia to nobody, and they walked on.

They walked through the nuzzling, whispering ravine, the ravine of whispers and clicks, the little world of investigation growing small behind them with its lights and voices.

“I’ve never seen a dead person before,” said Francine. Lavinia examined her watch as if it was a thousand miles away on an arm and wrist grown impossibly distant.

“It’s only eightthirty. We’ll pick up Helen and get on to the show.”

“The show!” Francine jerked. “It’s what we need. We’ve got to forget this. It’s not good to remember. If we went home now we’d remember. We’ll go to the show as if nothing happened.”

“Lavinia, you don’t mean it!”

“I never meant anything more in my life. We need to laugh now and forget.”

“But Elizabeth’s back there—your friend, my friend—”

“We can’t help her; we can only help ourselves. Come on.”

They started up the ravine side, on the stony path, in the dark. And suddenly there, barring their way, standing very still in one spot, not seeing them, but looking on down at the moving lights and the body and listening to the official voices, was Douglas Spaulding.

He stood there, white as a mushroom, with his hands at his sides, staring down into the ravine.

“Get home!” cried Francine. He did not hear.

“You!” shrieked Francine. “Get home, get out of this place, you hear? Get home, get home, get home!”

Douglas jerked his head, stared at them as if they were not there. His mouth moved. He gave a bleating sound. Then, silently, he whirled about and ran. He ran silently up the distant hills into the warm darkness.

Francine sobbed and cried again and, doing this, walked on with Lavinia Nebbs. “There you are! I thought you ladies’d never come!”

Helen Greer stood tapping her foot atop her porch steps. “You’re only an hour late, that’s all. What happened?”

“We—” started Francine. Lavinia clutched her arm tight.

“There was a commotion. Somebody found Elizabeth Ramsell in the ravine.”

“Dead? Was she—dead?” Lavinia nodded. Helen gasped and put her hand to her throat.

“Who found her?” Lavinia held Francine’s wrist firmly.

“We don’t know.” The three young women stood in the summer night looking at each other.

“I’ve got a notion to go in the house and lock the doors,” said Helen at last. But finally she went to get a sweater, for though it was still warm, she, too, complained of the sudden winter night.

While she was gone Francine whispered frantically, “Why didn’t you tell her?”

“Why upset her?” said Lavinia.

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow’s plenty of time.”

The three women moved along the street under the black trees, past suddenly locked houses.

How soon the news had spread outward from the ravine, from house to house, porch to porch, telephone to telephone. Now, passing, the three women felt eyes looking out at them from curtained windows as locks rattled into place.

How strange the popsicle, the vanilla night, the night of close-packed ice cream, of mosquitolotioned wrists, the night of running children suddenly veered from their games and put away behind glass, behind wood, the popsicles in melting puddles of lime and strawberry where they fell when the children were scooped indoors.

Strange the hot rooms with the sweating people pressed tightly back into them behind the bronze knobs and knockers.

Baseball bats and balls lay upon the unfootprinted lawns.

A half-drawn, white-chalk game of hopscotch lay on the broiled, steamed sidewalk. It was as if someone had predicted freezing weather a moment ago.

“We’re crazy being out on a night like this,” said Helen.

“Lonely One won’t kill three ladies,” said Lavinia. “There’s safety in numbers. And besides, it’s too soon. The killings always come a month separated.”

A shadow fell across their terrified faces.

A figure loomed behind a tree.

As if someone had struck an organ a terrible blow with his fist, the three women gave off a scream, in three different shrill notes.

“Got you!” roared a voice. The man plunged at them. He came into the light, laughing. He leaned against a tree, pointing at the ladies weakly, laughing again.

“Hey! I’m the Lonely One!” said Frank Dillon.

“Frank Dillon!” “Frank!” “Frank,” said Lavinia, “if you ever do a childish thing like that again, may someone riddle you with bullets!”

“What a thing to do!” Francine began to cry hysterically. Frank Dillon stopped smiling.

“Say, I’m sorry.” “Go away!” said Lavinia. “Haven’t you heard about Elizabeth Ramsell— found dead in the ravine? You running around scaring women! Don’t speak to us again!”

“Aw, now—” They moved. He moved to follow.

“Stay right there, Mr. Lonely One, and scare yourself. Go take a look at Elizabeth Ramsell’s face and see if it’s funny. Good night!”

Lavinia took the other two on along the street of trees and stars, Francine holding a kerchief to her face.

“Francine, it was only a joke.” Helen turned to Lavinia.

“Why’s she crying so hard?”

“We’ll tell you when we get downtown. We’re going to the show no matter what! Enough’s enough. Come on now, get your money ready, we’re almost there!”

The drugstore was a small pool of sluggish air which the great wooden fans stirred in tides of arnica and tonic and soda-smell out onto the brick streets.

“I need a nickel’s worth of green peppermint chews,” said Lavinia to the druggist. His face was set and pale, like all the faces they had seen on the half-empty streets.

“For eating in the show,” said Lavinia as the druggist weighed out a nickel’s worth of the green candy with a silver shovel.

“You sure look pretty tonight, ladies. You looked cool this afternoon, Miss Lavinia, when you was in for a chocolate soda. So cool and nice that someone asked after you.” “Oh?”

“Man sitting at the counter—watched you walk out. Said to me, ‘Say, who’s that?’ Why, that’s Lavinia Nebbs, prettiest maiden lady in town, I said. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘Where does she live?’ ”

Here the druggist paused uncomfortably.

“You didn’t!” said Francine. “You didn’t give him her address, I hope? You didn’t!”

“I guess I didn’t think. I said, ‘Oh, over on Park Street, you know, near the ravine.”

A casual remark.

But now, tonight, them finding the body, I heard a minute ago, I thought, My God, what’ve I done!”

He handed over the package, much too full.

“You fool!” cried Francine, and tears were in her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Course, maybe it was nothing.” Lavinia stood with the three people looking at her, staring at her.

She felt nothing.

Except, perhaps, the slightest prickle of excitement in her throat. She held out her money automatically.

“There’s no charge on those peppermints,” said the druggist, turning to shuffle some papers.

“Well, I know what I’m going to do right now!” Helen stalked out of the drugshop.

“I’m calling a taxi to take us all home. I’ll be no part of a hunting party for you, Lavinia. That man was up to no good. Asking about you. You want to be dead in the ravine next?”

“It was just a man,” said Lavinia, turning in a slow circle to look at the town.

“So is Frank Dillon a man, but maybe he’s the Lonely One.”

Francine hadn’t come out with them, they noticed, and turning, they found her arriving.

“I made him give me a description—the druggist. I made him tell what the man looked like. A stranger,” she said, “in a dark suit. Sort of pale and thin.”

“We’re all overwrought,” said Lavinia. “I simply won’t take a taxi if you get one. If I’m the next victim, let me be the next. There’s all too little excitement in life, especially for a maiden lady thirty-three years old, so don’t you mind if I enjoy it. Anyway it’s silly; I’m not beautiful.”

“Oh, but you are, Lavinia; you’re the loveliest lady in town, now that Elizabeth is—” Francine stopped. “You keep men off at a distance. If you’d only relax, you’d been married years ago!”

“Stop sniveling, Francine! Here’s the theater box office, I’m paying forty-one cents to see Charlie Chaplin. If you two want a taxi, go on. I’ll sit alone and go home alone.”

“Lavinia, you’re crazy; we can’t let you do that—”

They entered the theater.

The first showing was over, intermission was on, and the dim auditorium was sparsely populated. The three ladies sat halfway down front, in the smell of ancient brass polish, and watched the manager step through the worn red velvet curtains to make an announcement.

“The police have asked us to close early tonight so everyone can be out at a decent hour. Therefore we are cutting our short subjects and running our feature again immediately. The show will be over at eleven. Everyone is advised to go straight home. Don’t linger on the streets.”

“That means us, Lavinia!” whispered Francine.

The lights went out.

The screen leaped to life.

“Lavinia,” whispered Helen. “What?”

“As we came in, a man in a dark suit, across the street, crossed over. He just walked down the aisle and is sitting in the row behind us.”

“Oh, Helen!”

“Right behind us?”

One by one the three women turned to look. They saw a white face there, flickering with unholy light from the silver screen. It seemed to be all men’s faces hovering there in the dark.

“I’m going to get the manager!” Helen was gone up the aisle.

“Stop the film! Lights!”

“Helen, come back!” cried Lavinia, rising. They tapped their empty soda glasses down, each with a vanilla mustache on their upper lip, which they found with their tongues, laughing.

“You see how silly?” said Lavinia.

“All that riot for nothing. How embarrassing.”

“I’m sorry,” said Helen faintly.

The clock said eleven-thirty now. They had come out of the dark theater, away from the fluttering rush of men and women hurrying everywhere, nowhere, on the street while laughing at Helen.

Helen was trying to laugh at herself.

“Helen, when you ran up that aisle crying, ‘Lights!’ I thought I’d die! That poor man!”

“The theater manager’s brother from Racine!”

“I apologized,” said Helen, looking up at the great fan still whirling, whirling the warm late night air, stirring, restirring the smells of vanilla, raspberry, peppermint and Lysol.

“We shouldn’t have stopped for these sodas. The police warned—”

“Oh, bosh the police,” laughed Lavinia.

“I’m not afraid of anything. The Lonely One is a million miles away now. He won’t be back for weeks and the police’ll get him then, just wait. Wasn’t the film wonderful?”

“Closing up, ladies.”

The druggist switched off the lights in the cool white-tiled silence. Outside, the streets were swept clean and empty of cars or trucks or people. Bright lights still burned in the small store windows where the warm wax dummies lifted pink wax hands fired with blue-white diamond rings, or flourished orange wax legs to reveal hosiery.

The hot blueglass eyes of the mannequins watched as the ladies drifted down the empty river bottom street, their images shimmering in the windows like blossoms seen under darkly moving waters.

“Do you suppose if we screamed they’d do anything?”

“Who?”

“The dummies, the window people.”

“Oh, Francine.”

“Well. . .”

There were a thousand people in the windows, stiff and silent, and three people on the street, the echoes following like gunshots from store fronts across the way when they tapped their heels on the baked pavement.

A red neon sign flickered dimly, buzzed like a dying insect, as they passed. Baked and white, the long avenues lay ahead.

Blowing and tall in a wind that touched only their leafy summits, the trees stood on either side of the three small women.

Seen from the courthouse peak, they appeared like three thistles far away.

“First, we’ll walk you home, Francine.”

“No, I’ll walk you home.”

“Don’t be silly. You live way out at Electric Park. If you walked me home you’d have to come back across the ravine alone, yourself. And if so much as a leaf fell on you, you’d drop dead.”

Francine said, “I can stay the night at your house. You’re the pretty one!”

And so they walked, they drifted like three prim clothes forms over a moonlit sea of lawn and concrete, Lavinia watching the black trees flit by each side of her, listening to the voices of her friends murmuring, trying to laugh; and the night seemed to quicken, they seemed to run while walking slowly, everything seemed fast and the color of hot snow.

“Let’s sing,” said Lavinia.

They sang, “Shine On, Shine On, Harvest Moon …”

They sang sweetly and quietly, arm in arm, not looking back. They felt the hot sidewalk cooling underfoot, moving, moving.

“Listen!” said Lavinia. They listened to the summer night. The summer-night crickets and the far-off tone of the courthouse clock making it eleven forty-five.

“Listen!” Lavinia listened.

A porch swing creaked in the dark and there was Mr. Terle, not saying anything to anybody, alone on his swing, having a last cigar.

They saw the pink ash swinging gently to and fro.

Now the lights were going, going, gone.

The little house lights and big house lights and yellow lights and green hurricane lights, the candles and oil lamps and porch lights, and everything felt locked up in brass and iron and steel, everything, thought Lavinia, is boxed and locked and wrapped and shaded.

She imagined the people in their moonlit beds. And their breathing in the summernight rooms, safe and together.

And here we are, thought Lavinia, our footsteps on along the baked summer evening sidewalk. And above us the lonely street lights shining down, making a drunken shadow.

“Here’s your house, Francine. Good night.”

“Lavinia, Helen, stay here tonight. It’s late, almost midnight now. You can sleep in the parlor. I’ll make hot chocolate—it’ll be such fun!”

Francine was holding them both now, close to her.

“No, thanks,” said Lavinia.

And Francine began to cry. “Oh, not again, Francine,” said Lavinia.

“I don’t want you dead,” sobbed Francine, the tears running straight down her cheeks.

“You’re so fine and nice, I want you alive. Please, oh, please!”

“Francine, I didn’t know how much this has done to you. I promise I’ll phone when I get home.”

“Oh, will you?”

“And tell you I’m safe, yes. And tomorrow we’ll have a picnic lunch at Electric Park. With ham sandwiches I’ll make myself, how’s that? You’ll see, I’ll live forever!”

“You’ll phone, then?”

“I promised, didn’t I?”

“Good night, good night!”

Rushing upstairs, Francine whisked behind a door, which slammed to be snap-bolted tight on the instant.

“Now,” said Lavinia to Helen, “I’ll walk you home.”

The courthouse clock struck the hour.

The sounds blew across a town that was empty, emptier than it had ever been. Over empty streets and empty lots and empty lawns the sound faded.

“Nine, ten, eleven, twelve,” counted Lavinia, with Helen on her arm.

“Don’t you feel funny?” asked Helen.

“How do you mean?”

“When you think of us being out here on the sidewalks, under the trees, and all those people safe behind locked doors, lying in their beds. We’re practically the only walking people out in the open in a thousand miles, I bet.”

The sound of the deep warm dark ravine came near.

In a minute they stood before Helen’s house, looking at each other for a long time. The wind blew the odor of cut grass between them.

The moon was sinking in a sky that was beginning to cloud.

“I don’t suppose it’s any use asking you to stay, Lavinia?”

“I’ll be going on.” “Sometimes—” “Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes I think people want to die. You’ve acted odd all evening.”

“I’m just not afraid,” said Lavinia.

“And I’m curious, I suppose. And I’m using my head. Logically, the Lonely One can’t be around. The police and all.”

“The police are home with their covers up over their ears.”

“Let’s just say I’m enjoying myself, precariously, but safely. If there was any real chance of anything happening to me, I’d stay here with you, you can be sure of that.”

“Maybe part of you doesn’t want to live anymore.”

“You and Francine. Honestly!”

“I feel so guilty. I’ll be drinking some hot cocoa just as you reach the ravine bottom and walk on the bridge.”

“Drink a cup for me. Good night.”

Lavinia Nebbs walked alone down the midnight street, down the late summer-night silence.

She saw houses with the dark windows and far away she heard a dog barking. In five minutes, she thought, I’ll be safe at home. In five minutes I’ll be phoning silly little Francine. I’ll—”

She heard the man’s voice. A man’s voice singing far away among the trees. “Oh, give me a June night, the moonlight and you . . .”

She walked a little faster.

The voice sang, “In my arms . . . with all your charms …”

Down the street in the dim moonlight a man walked slowly and casually along.

I can run knock on one of these doors, thought Lavinia, if I must.

“Oh, give me a June night,” sang the man, and he carried a long club in his hand.

“The moonlight and you. Well, look who’s here . What a time of night for you to be out, Miss Nebbs!”

“Officer Kennedy!” And that’s who it was, of course.

“I’d better see you home!”

“Thanks, I’ll make it.”

“But you live across the ravine. . . .”

Yes, she thought, but I won’t walk through the ravine with any man, not even an officer. How do I know who the Lonely One is?

“No,” she said, “I’ll hurry.”

“I’ll wait right here,” he said.

“If you need any help, give a yell. Voices carry good here. I’ll come running.”

“Thank you.” She went on, leaving him under a light, humming to himself, alone. Here I am, she thought.

The ravine.

She stood on the edge of the one hundred and thirteen steps that went down the steep hill and then across the bridge seventy yards and up the hills leading to Park Street. And only one lantern to see by.

Three minutes from now, she thought, I’ll be putting my key in my house door. Nothing can happen in just one hundred eighty seconds.

She started down the long dark-green steps into the deep ravine.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten steps,” she counted in a whisper. She felt she was running, but she was not running.

“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty steps,” she breathed.

“One fifth of the way!” she announced to herself.

The ravine was deep, black and black, black! And the world was gone behind, the world of safe people in bed, the locked doors, the town, the drugstore, the theater, the lights, everything was gone.

Only the ravine existed and lived, black and huge, about her.

“Nothing’s happened, has it? No one around, is there? Twenty-four, twenty-five steps. Remember that old ghost story you told each other when you were children?”

She listened to her shoes on the steps.

“The story about the dark man coming in your house and you upstairs in bed. And now he’s at the first step coming up to your room. And now he’s at the second step. And now he’s at the third step and the fourth step and the fifth! Oh, how you used to laugh and scream at that story! And now the horrid dark man’s at the twelfth step and now he’s opening the door of your room and now he’s standing by your bed. ‘I GOT YOU!’ “

She screamed. It was like nothing she’d ever heard, that scream. She had never screamed that loud in her life.

She stopped, she froze, she clung to the wooden banister.

Her heart exploded in her. The sound of the terrified beating filled the universe.

“There, there!” she screamed to herself.

“At the bottom of the steps. A man, under the light! No, now he’s gone! He was waiting there!”

She listened.

Silence.

The bridge was empty. Nothing, she thought, holding her heart. Nothing. Fool! That story I told myself. How silly. What shall I do?

Her heartbeats faded.

Shall I call the officer—did he hear me scream? She listened. Nothing. Nothing. I’ll go the rest of the way.

That silly story.

She began again, counting the steps.

“Thirty-five, thirty-six, careful, don’t fall. Oh, I am a fool. Thirty-seven steps, thirty-eight, nine and forty, and two makes forty-two— almost halfway.”

She froze again.

Wait, she told herself. She took a step.

There was an echo.

She took another step.

Another echo.

Another step, just a fraction of a moment later.

“Someone’s following me,” she whispered to the ravine, to the black crickets and dark-green hidden frogs and the black stream.

“Someone’s on the steps behind me. I don’t dare turn around.”

Another step, another echo.

“Every time I take a step, they take one.”

A step and an echo. Weakly she asked of the ravine, “Officer Kennedy, is that you?”

The crickets were still.

The crickets were listening. The night was listening to her. For a change, all of the far summer-night meadows and close summer-night trees were suspending motion; leaf, shrub, star, and meadow grass ceased their particular tremors and were listening to Lavinia Nebbs’s heart.

And perhaps a thousand miles away, across locomotive-lonely country, in an empty way station, a single traveler reading a dim newspaper under a solitary naked bulb, might raise up his head, listen, and think, What’s that? and decide, Only a woodchuck, surely, beating on a hollow log.

But it was Lavinia Nebbs, it was most surely the heart of Lavinia Nebbs.

Silence.

A summer-night silence which lay for a thousand miles, which covered the earth like a white and shadowy sea.

Faster, faster! She went down the steps. Run!

She heard music. In a mad way, in a silly way, she heard the great surge of music that pounded at her, and she realized as she ran, as she ran in panic and terror, that some part of her mind was dramatizing, borrowing from the turbulent musical score of some private drama, and the music was rushing and pushing her now, higher and higher, faster, faster, plummeting and scurrying, down, and down into the pit of the ravine.

Only a little way, she prayed.

One hundred eight, nine, one hundred ten steps!

The bottom!

Now, run! Across the bridge! She told her legs what to do, her arms, her body, her terror; she advised all parts of herself in this white and terrible moment, over the roaring creek waters, on the hollow, thudding, swaying almost alive, resilient bridge planks she ran, followed by the wild footsteps behind, behind, with the music following, too, the music shrieking and babbling.

He’s following, don’t turn, don’t look, if you see him, you’ll not be able to move, you’ll be so frightened.

Just run, run!

She ran across the bridge. Oh, God, God, please, please let me get up the hill! Now up the path, now between the hills, oh God, it’s dark, and everything so far away.

If I screamed now it wouldn’t help; I can’t scream anyway. Here’s the top of the path, here’s the street, oh, God, please let me be safe, if I get home safe I’ll never go out alone; I was a fool, let me admit it, I was a fool, I didn’t know what terror was, but if you let me get home from this I’ll never go without Helen or Francine again!

Here’s the street. Across the street! She crossed the street and rushed up the sidewalk.

Oh God, the porch!

My house!

Oh God, please give me time to get inside and lock the door and I’ll be safe!

And there—silly thing to notice—why did she notice, instantly, no time, no time—but there it was anyway, flashing by—there on the porch rail, the half-filled glass of lemonade she had abandoned a long time, a year, half an evening ago!

The lemonade glass sitting calmly, imperturbably there on the rail,. . . and . . . She heard her clumsy feet on the porch and listened and felt her hands scrabbling and ripping at the lock with the key.

She heard her heart.

She heard her inner voice screaming.

The key fit. Unlock the door, quick, quick!

The door opened. Now, inside. Slam it! She slammed the door.

“Now lock it, bar it, lock it!” she gasped wretchedly.

“Lock it, tight, tight!” The door was locked and bolted tight.

The music stopped. She listened to her heart again and the sound of it diminishing into silence.

Home! Oh God, safe at home! Safe, safe and safe at home! She slumped against the door. Safe, safe. Listen. Not a sound.

Safe, safe, oh thank God, safe at home.

I’ll never go out at night again. I’ll stay home.

I won’t go over that ravine again ever. Safe, oh safe, safe home, so good, so good, safe! Safe inside, the door locked. Wait. Look out the window. She looked. Why, there’s no one there at all!

Nobody. There was nobody following me at all.

Nobody running after me.

She got her breath and almost laughed at herself. It stands to reason If a man had been following me, he’d have caught me! I’m not a fast runner. . . . There’s no one on the porch or in the yard.

How silly of me. I wasn’t running from anything.

That ravine’s as safe as anyplace. Just the same, it’s nice to be home. Home’s the really good warm place, the only place to be.

She put her hand out to the light switch and stopped. “What?” she asked. “What, what?”

Behind her in the living room, someone cleared his throat.

The End

Some thoughts…

Have you ever been petrified or terrified of an event in the future? One where you really don’t have much control of the outcome? You do what you can. You make a “risk analysis”. and then you try to “hedge your bets” to avoid any undue discomfort. But then, all things said and done, you move forward with you head held high, and you confronted what ever your fear is.

And the truth really is that your fears are far worse than what you are going to experience.

Know this fact and use it. Bravery is simply the realization that your fears are much larger than what you will actually encounter.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my fictional index here…

Fictional Stories

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

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Master Index

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I See You Never (Full Text) by Ray Bradbury

The soft knock came at the kitchen door, and when Mrs. O’Brian opened it, there on the back porch were her best tenant, Mr. Ramirez, and two police officers, one on each side of him.

Mr. Ramirez just stood there, walled in and small.

“Why, Mr. Ramirez!” said Mrs. O’Brian.

Mr. Ramirez was overcome. He did not seem to have words to explain.

He had arrived at Mrs. O’Brian’s rooming house more than two years earlier and had lived there ever since.

He had come by bus from Mexico City to San Diego and had then gone up to Los Angeles. There he had found the clean little room, with glossy blue linoleum, and pictures and calendars on the flowered walls, and Mrs. O’Brian as the strict but kindly landlady.

During the war, he had worked at the airplane factory and made parts for the planes that flew off somewhere, and even now, after the war, he still held his job.

From the first, he had made big money.

He saved some of it, and he got drunk only once a week–a privilege that, to Mrs. O’Brian’s way of thinking, every good workingman deserved, unquestioned and unreprimanded.

Inside Mrs. O’Brian’s kitchen, pies were baking in the oven.

Soon the pies would come out with complexions like Mr. Ramirez’s, brown and shiny and crisp, with slits in them for the air almost like the slits of Mr. Ramirez’s dark eyes.

The kitchen smelled good.

The policemen leaned forward, lured by the odor.

Mr. Ramirez gazed at his feet, as if they had carried him into all this trouble.

“What happened, Mr. Ramirez?” asked Mrs. O’Brian.

Behind Mrs. O’Brian, as he lifted his eyes, Mr. Ramirez saw the long table, laid with clean white linen and set with a platter, cool, shining glasses, a water pitcher with ice cubes floating inside it, a bowl of fresh potato salad, and one of bananas and oranges, cubed and sugared.

At this table sat Mrs. O’Brian’s children–her three grown sons, eating and conversing, and her two younger daughters, who were staring at the policemen as they ate.

“I have been here thirty months,” said Mr. Ramirez quietly, looking at Mrs. O’Brian’s plump hands.

“That’s six months too long,” said one policeman.

“He only had a temporary visa. We’ve just got around to looking for him.”

Soon after Mr. Ramirez had arrived, he bought a radio for his little room; evenings, he turned it up very loud and enjoyed it.

And he had bought a wrist-watch and enjoyed that, too.

And on many nights he had walked silent streets and seen the bright clothes in the windows and bought some of them, and he had seen the jewels and bought some of them for his few lady friends.

And he had gone to picture shows five nights a week for a while.

Then, also, he had ridden the streetcars–all night some nights– smelling the electricity, his dark eyes moving over the advertisements, feeling the wheels rumble under him, watching the little sleeping houses and big hotels slip by.

Besides that, he had gone to large restaurants, where he had eaten many-course dinners, and to the opera and the theatre.

And he had bought a car, which later, when he forgot to pay for it, the dealer had driven off angrily from in front of the rooming house.

“So here I am,” said Mr. Ramirez now, “to tell you that I must give up my room, Mrs. O’Brian. I come to get my baggage and clothes and go with these men.”

“Back to Mexico?”

“Yes. To Lagos. That is a little town north of Mexico City.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Ramirez.”

“I’m packed,” said Mr. Ramirez hoarsely, blinking his dark eyes rapidly and moving his hands helplessly before him.

The policemen did not touch him. There was no necessity for that.

“Here is the key, Mrs. O’Brian,” Mr. Ramirez said, “I have my bag already.”

Mrs. O’Brian, for the first time, noticed a suitcase standing behind him on the porch. Mr. Ramirez looked in again at the huge kitchen, at the bright silver cutlery and the young people eating and the shining waxed floor.

He turned and looked for a long moment at the apartment house next door, rising up three stories, high and beautiful.

He looked at the balconies and fire escapes and back-porch stairs, at the lines of laundry snapping in the wind.

“You’ve been a good tenant,” said Mrs. O’Brian.

“Thank you, thank you, Mrs. O’Brian,” he said softly. He closed his eyes. Mrs. O’Brian stood holding the door half open.

One of her sons, behind her, said that her dinner was getting cold, but she shook her head at him and turned back to Mr. Ramirez.

She remembered a visit she had once made to some Mexican border towns–the hot days, the endless crickets leaping and falling or lying dead and brittle like the small cigars in the shop windows’ and the canals taking river water out to the farms, the dirt roads, the scorched fields, the little adobe houses, the bleached clothes, the eroded landscape.

She remembered the silent towns, the warm beer, the hot, thick foods each day.

She remembered the slow, dragging horses and the parched jack rabbits on the road.

She remembered the iron mountains and the dusty valleys and the ocean beaches that spread hundreds of miles with no sound but the waves –no cars, no buildings, nothing.

“I’m sure sorry, Mr. Ramirez,” she said.

“I don’t want to go back, Mrs. O’Brian,” he said weakly. “I like it here. I want to stay here. I’ve worked, I’ve got money. I look all right, don’t I? And I don’t want to go back!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Ramirez,” she said. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“Mrs. O’Brian!” he cried suddenly, tears rolling out from under his eyelids. He reached out his hands and took her hand fervently, shaking it, wringing it, holding to it.

“Mrs. O’Brian, I see you never, I see you never!”

The policemen smiled at this, but Mr. Ramirez did not notice it, and they stopped smiling very soon.

“Goodbye, Mrs. O’Brian. You have been good to me. Oh, goodbye, Mrs. O’Brian. I see you never”

The policemen waited for Mr. Ramirez to turn, pick up his suitcase, and walk away.

Then they followed him, tipping their caps to Mrs. O’Brian. She watched them go down the porch steps.

Then she shut the door quietly and went slowly back to her chair at the table.

She pulled the chair out and sat down. She picked up the shining knife and fork and started once more upon her steak.

“Hurry up, Mom,” said one of the sons. “It’ll be cold.”

Mrs. O’Brian took one bite and chewed on it for a long, slow time; then she stared at the closed door.

She laid down her knife and fork.

“What’s wrong, Ma?” asked her son.

“I just realized,” said Mrs. O’Brian–she put her hand to her face–“I’ll never see Mr. Ramirez again.”

The End

Some words…

Most of youse guys reading this might associate it with an immigrant coming to America and overstaying their visa. But for me, as an American expat, we are always at the mercy of our host country. In my case it is China. And they can just as easily revoke my visa. All it takes is a crazed madman running the United States and causing discord between our two nations.

When I lived in the USA, I believed the narrative that “foreigners were taking our jobs”. Why? Well, it was a non-stop mantra from the “news” media for decades.

But you know what? There weren’t any engineers from India taking my work, or the work of anyone around me. There wasn’t any “Mexicans” stealing my work in any way. And all this stuff about them getting free hospital care, free medicine, and free this and that… well I believed it.

But…

But…

But I never SAW it with my eyes – first hand. I only heard about it.

We need to return to being a compassionate and just people. We need to show care and empathy. And those that rule the media need to shut the FUCK UP and stop provoking and filling the world with hate. The big reset is coming to America. Wise up, and start being the Rufus. We need to be a compassionate people again. We really do. For that is the only true road to salvation on both the spiritual and physical worlds.

Do you want more?

I have more Ray Bradbury posts in my Literature Index here…

Fictional Stories

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

To go to the MAIN Index;

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE .
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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The Rocket Man (Full Text) by Ray Bradbury

Here is a classic story from Ray Bradbury. It’s titled “The Rocket Man.” It’s one of the first groups (or clusters) of stories that he compiled. And it’s a real beauty. It was written at a time when everyone thought of space and science fiction as gorilla suits and deep sea diving helmets, that rode in flying silver saucers that came from Mars. Here, he talks about the dreams of the man of a household and the consequences of him following that dream on those left behind.

It’s wonderful. Enjoy.

Ray Bradbury. The Rocket Man

                The Rocket Man
                1951

     The  electrical  fireflies  were hovering above Mother’s dark hair to light
her  path.  She  stood  in her bedroom door looking out at me as I passed in the
silent hall. “You will help me keep him here this time, won’t you?” she asked.
     “I guess so,” I said.
     “Please.”  The fireflies cast moving bits of light on her white face. “This
time he mustn’t go away again.”
     “All  right,”  I  said, after standing there a moment. “But it won’t do any
good; it’s no use.”
     She  went  away,  and  the fireflies, on their electric circuits, fluttered
after  her  like an errant constellation, showing her how to walk in darkness. I
heard her say, faintly, “We’ve got to try, anyway.”
     Other  fireflies  followed  me to my room. When the weight of my body cut a
circuit in the bed, the fireflies winked out. It was midnight, and my mother and
I  waited, our rooms separated by darkness, in bed. The bed began to rock me and
sing  to  me. I touched a switch; the singing and rocking stopped. I didn’t want
to sleep. I didn’t want to sleep at all.
     This  night  was  no different from a thousand others in our time. We would
wake  nights  and  feel the cool air turn hot, feel the fire in the wind, or see
the  walls burned a bright color for an instant, and then we knew his rocket was
over  our house-his rocket, and the oak trees swaying from the concussion. And I
would  lie  there,  eyes  wide, panting, and Mother in her room. Her voice would
come to me over the interroom radio:
     “Did you feel it?”
     And I would answer, “That was him, all right.”
     That  was  my father’s ship passing over our town, a small town where space
rockets  never  came,  and  we would lie awake for the next two hours, thinking,
“Now  Dad’s  landed in Springfield, now he’s on the tarmac, now he’s signing the
papers,  now he’s in the helicopter, now he’s over the river, now the hills, now
he’s settling the helicopter in at the little airport at Green Village here….”
And  the  night would be half over when, in our separate cool beds, Mother and I
would  be  listening,  listening.  “Now he’s walking down Bell Street. He always
walks  …  never  takes a cab … now across the park, now turning the comer of
Oakhurst and now…”
     I  lifted  my  head  from my pillow. Far down the street, coming closer and
closer, smartly, quickly, briskly-footsteps. Now turning in at our house, up the
porch  steps.  And we were both smiling in the cool darkness. Mom and I, when we
heard  the  front  door  open in recognition, speak a quiet word of welcome, and
shut, downstairs….
     Three hours later I turned the brass knob to their room quietly, holding my
breath, balancing in a darkness as big as the space between the planets, my hand
out  to  reach  the  small  black  case at the foot of my parents’ sleeping bed.
Taking  it,  I  ran  silently to my room, thinking, He won’t tell me, he doesn’t
want me to know.
     And  from  the  opened case spilled his black uniform, like a black nebula,
stars  glittering  here or there, distantly, in the material. I kneaded the dark
stuff in my warm hands; I smelled the planet Mars, an iron smell, and the planet
Venus,  a  green ivy smell, and the planet Mercury, a scent of sulphur and fire;
and I could smell the milky moon and the hardness of stars. I pushed the uniform
into  a  centrifuge  machine  I’d built in my ninth-grade shop that year, set it
whirling.  Soon  a  fine  powder precipitated into a retort. This I slid under a
microscope.  And while my parents slept unaware, and while our house was asleep,
all  the automatic bakers and servers and robot cleaners in an electric slumber,
I stared down upon brilliant motes of meteor dust, comet tail, and loam from far
Jupiter  glistening like worlds themselves which drew me down the tube a billion
miles into space, at terrific accelerations.
     At dawn, exhausted with my journey and fearful of discovery, I returned the
boxed uniform to their sleeping room.
     Then  I  slept,  only to waken at the sound of the horn of the dry-cleaning
car  which stopped in the yard below. They took the black uniform box with them.
It’s  good  I  didn’t wait, I thought. For the uniform would be back in an hour,
clean of all its destiny and travel.
     I  slept  again,  with the little vial of magical dust in my pajama pocket,
over my beating heart.
     When  I  came downstairs, there was Dad at the breakfast table, biting into
his toast. “Sleep good, Doug?” he said, as if he had been here all the time, and
hadn’t been gone for three months.
     “All right,” I said.
     “Toast?”
     He  pressed  a  button  and the breakfast table made me four pieces, golden
brown.
     I  remember  my  father  that afternoon, digging and digging in the garden,
like  an animal after something, it seemed. There he was with his long dark arms
moving  swiftly,  planting,  tamping,  fixing,  cutting,  pruning, his dark face
always  down to the soil, his eyes always down to what he was doing, never up to
the  sky, never looking at me, or Mother, even, unless we knelt with him to feel
the  earth  soak up through the overalls at our knees, to put our hands into the
black dirt and not look at the bright, crazy sky. Then he would glance to either
side,  to  Mother  or  me, and give us a gentle wink, and go on, bent down, face
down, the sky staring at his back.
     That  night  we sat on the mechanical porch swing which swung us and blew a
wind  upon us and sang to us. It was summer and moonlight and we had lemonade to
drink,   and  we  held  the  cold  glasses  in  our  hands,  and  Dad  read  the
stereo-newspapers  inserted  into the special hat you put on your head and which
turned the microscopic page in front of the magnifying lens if you blinked three
times  in succession. Dad smoked cigarettes and told me about how it was when he
was  a  boy in the year 1997. After a while he said, as he had always said, “Why
aren’t you out playing kick-the-can, Doug?”
     I  didn’t  say  anything, but Mom said, “He does, on nights when you’re not
here.”
     Dad  looked at me and then, for the first time that day, at the sky. Mother
always watched him when he glanced at the stars. The first day and night when he
got  home  he  wouldn’t  look at the sky much. I thought about him gardening and
gardening  so  furiously,  his face almost driven into the earth. But the second
night  he  looked at the stars a little more. Mother wasn’t afraid of the sky in
the  day  so  much,  but it was the night stars that she wanted to turn off, and
sometimes  I  could  almost see her reaching for a switch in her mind, but never
finding  it.  And  by the third night maybe Dad’d be out here on the porch until
way  after  we were all ready for bed, and then I’d hear Mom call him in, almost
like  she  called me from the street at times. And then I would hear Dad fitting
the  electric-eye  door  lock  in  place,  with  a sigh. And the next morning at
breakfast  I’d  glance  down  and  see his little black case near his feet as he
buttered his toast and Mother slept late.
     “Well, be seeing you, Doug,” he’d say, and we’d shake hands.
     “In about three months?”
     “Right.”
     And  he’d  walk  away down the street, not taking a helicopter or beetle or
bus,  just walking with his uniform hidden in his small underarm case; he didn’t
want anyone to think he was vain about being a Rocket Man.
     Mother  would  come  out to eat breakfast, one piece of dry toast, about an
hour later.
     But  now  it  was  tonight,  the first night, the good night, and he wasn’t
looking at the stars much at all.
     “Let’s go to the television carnival,” I said.
     “Fine,” said Dad.
     Mother smiled at me.
     And  we  rushed off to town in a helicopter and took Dad through a thousand
exhibits,  to keep his face and head down with us and not looking anywhere else.
And  as we laughed at the funny things and looked serious at the serious ones, I
thought.  My father goes to Saturn and Neptune and Pluto, but he never brings me
presents.  Other  boys  whose  fathers go into space bring back bits of ore from
Callisto  and  hunks  of  black  meteor  or  blue sand. But I have to get my own
collection, trading from other boys, the Martian rocks and Mercurian sands which
filled my room, but about which Dad would never comment.
     On occasion, I remembered, he brought something for Mother. He planted some
Martian  sunflowers  once  in  our  yard,  but after he was gone a month and the
sunflowers grew large. Mom ran out one day and cut them all down.
     Without  thinking, as we paused at one of the three-dimensional exhibits, I
asked Dad the question I always asked:
     “What’s it like, out in space?”
     Mother shot me a frightened glance. It was too late.
     Dad  stood  there  for a full half minute trying to find an answer, then he
shrugged.
     “It’s the best thing in a lifetime of best things.” Then he caught himself.
“Oh,  it’s  really  nothing at all. Routine. You wouldn’t like it.” He looked at
me, apprehensively.
     “But you always go back.”
     “Habit.”
     “Where’re you going next?”
     “I haven’t decided yet. I’ll think it over.”
     He  always  thought  it  over. In those days rocket pilots were rare and he
could  pick  and choose work when he liked. On the third night of his homecoming
you could see him picking and choosing among the stars.
     “Come on,” said Mother, “let’s go home.”
     It  was still early when we got home. I wanted Dad to put on his uniform. I
shouldn’t  have asked-it always made Mother unhappy-but I could not help myself.
I kept at him, though he
     had  always  refused. I had never seen him in it, and at last he said, “Oh,
all right.”
     We  waited  in  the  parlor  while he went upstairs in the air flue. Mother
looked at me dully, as if she couldn’t believe that her own son could do this to
her. I glanced away. “I’m sorry,” I said.
     “You’re not helping at all,” she said. “At all.”
     There was a whisper in the air flue a moment later.
     “Here I am,” said Dad quietly.
     We looked at him in his uniform.
     It was glossy black with silver buttons and silver rims to the heels of the
black boots, and it looked as if someone had cut the arms and legs and body from
a  dark nebula, with little faint stars glowing through it. It fit as close as a
glove  fits  to  a slender long hand, and it smelled like cool air and metal and
space. It smelled of fire and time.
     Father stood, smiling awkwardly, in the center of the room.
     “Turn around,” said Mother.
     Her eyes were remote, looking at him.
     When  he  was  gone, she never talked of him. She never said anything about
anything but the weather or the condition of my neck and the need of a washcloth
for  it,  or  the fact that she didn’t sleep nights. Once she said the light was
too strong at night.
     “But there’s no moon this week,” I said.
     “There’s starlight,” she said.
     I went to the store and bought her some
     darker,  greener  shades.  As  I lay in bed at night, I could hear her pull
them down tight to the bottom of the windows. It made a long rustling noise.
     Once I tried to mow the lawn.
     “No.” Mom stood in the door. “Put the mower away.”
     So  the  grass went three months at a time without cutting. Dad cut it when
he came home.
     She  wouldn’t let me do anything else either, like repairing the electrical
breakfast  maker  or  the mechanical book reader. She saved everything up, as if
for  Christmas.  And  then  I  would  see Dad hammering or tinkering, and always
smiling at his work, and Mother smiling over him, happy.
     No,  she never talked of him when he was gone. And as for Dad, he never did
anything  to  make  a  contact across the millions of miles. He said once, “If I
called you, I’d want to be with you. I wouldn’t be happy.”
     Once  Dad  said  to  me, “Your mother treats me, sometimes, as if I weren’t
here-as if I were invisible.”
     I had seen her do it. She would look just beyond him, over his shoulder, at
his  chin  or  hands,  but never into his eyes. If she did look at his eyes, her
eyes  were  covered  with a film, like an animal going to sleep. She said yes at
the right times, and smiled, but always a half second later than expected.
     “I’m not there for her,” said Dad.
     But  other  days she would be there and he would be there for her, and they
would  hold  hands  and  walk  around  the block, or take rides, with Mom’s hair
flying  like  a  girl’s  behind  her,  and  she would cut off all the mechanical
devices  in  the  kitchen  and  bake  him incredible cakes and pies and cookies,
looking  deep into his face, her smile a real smile. But at the end of such days
when  he  was  there to her, she would always cry. And Dad would stand helpless,
gazing about the room as if to find the answer, but never finding it.
     Dad turned slowly, in his uniform, for us to see.
     “Turn around again,” said Mom.
     The  next morning Dad came rushing into the house with handfuls of tickets.
Pink rocket tickets for California, blue tickets for Mexico.
     “Come on!” he said. “We’ll buy disposable clothes and bum them when they’re
soiled.  Look,  we  take the noon rocket to L. A., the two-o’clock helicopter to
Santa Barbara, the nine-o’clock plane to Ensenada, sleep overnight!”
     And we went to California and up and down the Pacific Coast for a day and a
half,  settling at last on the sands of Malibu to cook wieners at night. Dad was
always listening or singing or watching things on all sides of him, holding onto
things as if the world were a centrifuge going so swiftly that he might be flung
off away from us at any instant.
     The  last  afternoon at Malibu Mom was up in the hotel room. Dad lay on the
sand beside me
     for  a  long  time  in the hot sun. “Ah,” he sighed, “this is it.” His eyes
were  gently  closed;  he lay on his back, drinking the sun. “You miss this,” he
said.
     He  meant  “on  the  rocket,”  of course. But he never said “the rocket” or
mentioned  the  rocket  and  all the things you couldn’t have on the rocket. You
couldn’t  have  a salt wind on the rocket or a blue sky or a yellow sun or Mom’s
cooking. You couldn’t talk to your fourteen-year-old boy on a rocket.
     “Let’s hear it,’ he said at last.
     And I knew that now we would talk, as we had always talked, for three hours
straight.  All afternoon we would murmur back and forth in the lazy sun about my
school grades, how high I could jump, how fast I could swim.
     Dad  nodded  each  time  I spoke and smiled and slapped my chest lightly in
approval.  We  talked.  We  did  not  talk of rockets or space, but we talked of
Mexico,  where  we  had driven once in an ancient car, and of the butterflies we
had  caught in the rain forests of green warm Mexico at noon, seeing the hundred
butterflies  sucked to our radiator, dying there, beating their blue and crimson
wings,  twitching,  beautiful,  and sad. We talked of such things instead of the
things I wanted to talk about. And he listened to me. That was the thing he did,
as  if  he  was  trying to fill himself up with all the sounds he could hear. He
listened  to  the  wind  and  the falling ocean and my voice, always with a rapt
attention,  a  concentration that almost excluded physical bodies themselves and
kept  only  the sounds. He shut his eyes to listen. I would see him listening to
the  lawn  mower as he cut the grass by hand instead of using the remote-control
device,  and  I  would  see  him  smelling the cut grass as it sprayed up at him
behind the mower in a green fount.
     “Doug,”  he  said,  about  five in the afternoon, as we were picking up our
towels and heading back along the beach near the surf, “I want you to promise me
something.”
     “What?”
     “Don’t ever be a Rocket Man.”
     I stopped.
     “I  mean  it,” he said. “Because when you’re out there you want to be here,
and  when  you’re  here you want to be out there. Don’t start that. Don’t let it
get hold of you.”
     “But-“
     “You don’t know what it is. Every time I’m out there I think, If I ever get
back  to  Earth  I’ll  stay  there; I’ll never go out again. But I go out, and I
guess I’ll always go out.”
     “I’ve thought about being a Rocket Man for a long time,” I said.
     He  didn’t  hear  me.  “I try to stay here. Last Saturday when I got home I
started trying so damned hard to stay here.”
     I  remembered  him in the garden, sweating, and all the traveling and doing
and  listening, and I knew that he did this to convince himself that the sea and
the  towns  and  the  land and his family were the only real things and the good
things.  But  I  knew where he would be tonight: looking at the jewelry in Orion
from our front porch.
     “Promise me you won’t be like me,” he said.
     I hesitated awhile. “Okay,” I said.
     He shook my hand. “Good boy,” he said.
     The dinner was fine that night. Mom had run about the kitchen with handfuls
of  cinnamon  and dough and pots and pans tinkling, and now a great turkey fumed
on the table, with dressing, cranberry sauce, peas, and pumpkin pie.
     “In the middle of August?” said Dad, amazed.
     “You won’t be here for Thanksgiving.”
     “So I won’t.”
     He sniffed it. He lifted each lid from each tureen and let the flavor steam
over  his  sunburned  face.  He said “Ah” to each. He looked at the room and his
hands. He gazed at the pictures on the wall, the chairs, the table, me, and Mom.
He cleared his throat. I saw him make up his mind. “Lilly?”
     “Yes?”  Mom  looked  across  her  table  which she had set like a wonderful
silver  trap,  a miraculous gravy pit into which, like a struggling beast of the
past  caught in a tar pool, her husband might at last be caught and held, gazing
out through a jail of wishbones, safe forever. Her eyes sparkled.
     “Lilly,” said Dad.
     Go  on,  I  thought crazily. Say it, quick; say you’ll stay home this time,
for good, and never go away; say it!
     Just  then  a  passing helicopter jarred the room and the window pane shook
with a crystal sound. Dad glanced at the window.
     The blue stars of evening were there, and the red planet Mars was rising in
the East.
     Dad  looked  at Mars a full minute. Then he put his hand out blindly toward
me. “May I have some peas,” he said.
     “Excuse me,” said Mother. “I’m going to get some bread.”
     She rushed out into the kitchen.
     “But there’s bread on the table,” I said.
     Dad didn’t look at me as he began his meal.
     I  couldn’t  sleep  that night. I came downstairs at one in the morning and
the  moonlight  was  like  ice on all the housetops, and dew glittered in a snow
field on our grass. I stood in the doorway in my pajamas, feeling the warm night
wind,  and  then  I  knew  that  Dad  was sitting in the mechanical porch swing,
gliding  gently.  I  could  see his profile tilted back, and he was watching the
stars  wheel  over  the  sky. His eyes were like gray crystal there, the moon in
each one.
     I went out and sat beside him.
     We glided awhile in the swing.
     At last I said, “How many ways are there to die in space?”
     “A million.”
     “Name some.”
     “The  meteors  hit you. The air goes out of your rocket. Or comets take you
along  with  them.  Concussion. Strangulation. Explosion. Centrifugal force. Too
much acceleration. Too little. The heat, the cold, the sun, the moon, the stars,
the planets, the asteroids, the planetoids, radiation….”
     “And do they bury you?”
     “They never find you.”
     “Where do you go?”
     “A  billion  miles  away.  Traveling  graves,  they call them. You become a
meteor or a planetoid traveling forever through space.”
     I said nothing.
     “One  thing,”  he  said  later, “it’s quick in space. Death. It’s over like
that. You don’t linger. Most of the time you don’t even know it. You’re dead and
that’s it.”
     We went up to bed.
     It was morning.
     Standing  in  the doorway, Dad listened to the yellow canary singing in its
golden cage.
     “Well, I’ve decided,” he said. “Next time I come home, I’m home to stay.”
     “Dad!” I said.
     “Tell your mother that when she gets up,” he said.
     “You mean it!”
     He nodded gravely. “See you in about three months.”
     And  there  he went off down the street, carrying his uniform in its secret
box,  whistling and looking at the tall green trees and picking chinaberries off
the  chinaberry  bush  as  he brushed by, tossing them ahead of him as he walked
away into the bright shade of early morning….
     I asked Mother about a few things that mom-ing after Father had been gone a
number  of  hours.  “Dad said that sometimes you don’t act as if you hear or see
him,” I said.
     And then she explained everything to me quietly.
     “When  he went off into space ten years ago, I said to myself, ‘He’s dead.’
Or  as good as dead. So think of him dead. And when he comes back, three or four
times  a  year,  it’s  not  him  at all, it’s only a pleasant little memory or a
dream.  And  if  a memory stops or a dream stops, it can’t hurt half as much. So
most of the time I think of him dead-“
     “But other times-“
     “Other  times  I can’t help myself. I bake pies and treat him as if he were
alive,  and  then it hurts. No, it’s better to think he hasn’t been here for ten
years and I’ll never see him again. It doesn’t hurt as much.”
     “Didn’t he say next time he’d settle down.”
     She shook her head slowly. “No, he’s dead. I’m very sure of that.”
     “He’ll  come  alive  again, then,” 1 said. “Ten years ago,” said Mother, “I
thought,  What if he dies on Venus? Then we’ll never be able to see Venus again.
What  if  he dies on Mars? We’ll never be able to look at Mars again, all red in
the  sky,  without  wanting  to  go  in and lock the door. Or what if he died on
Jupiter  or  Saturn  or Neptune? On those nights when those planets were high in
the sky, we wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the stars.” “I guess not,”
I said.
     The message came the next day.
     The  messenger  gave  it to me and I read it standing on the porch. The sun
was  setting.  Mom  stood  in  the  screen  door behind me, watching me fold the
message and put it in my pocket.
     “Mom,” I said.
     “Don’t tell me anything I don’t already know,” she said.
     She didn’t cry.
     Well,  it wasn’t Mars, and it wasn’t Venus, and it wasn’t Jupiter or Saturn
that  killed  him. We wouldn’t have to think of him every time Jupiter or Saturn
or Mars lit up the evening sky.
     This was different.
     His ship had fallen into the sun.
     And  the  sun was big and fiery and merciless, and it was always in the sky
and you couldn’t get away from it.
     So  for  a  long time after my father died my mother slept through the days
and  wouldn’t  go  out.  We  had breakfast at midnight and lunch at three in the
morning,  and  dinner at the cold dim hour of 6 A. M. We went to all-night shows
and went to bed at sunrise.
     And, for a long while, the only days we ever went out to walk were the days
when it was raining and there was no sun.

The End

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The Last Night of the World by Ray Bradbury (full text)

The short story “The Last Night of The World” by Ray Bradbury is very calmed. Perhaps because it portrays speculation and ‘what ifs?’. It gives you an indirect complement, for it does not describe what is causing the end of the world. Only that you know that it is heading towards you and will reach you very, very soon.

Enjoy.

The Last Night of the World

By Ray Bradbury

“WHAT would you do if you knew that this was the last night of the world?” “What would I do? You mean seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.”

He poured some coffee. In the background the two girls were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps. There was an easy, clean aroma of the brewed coffee in the evening air.

“Well, better start thinking about it,” he said. “You don’t mean it!”

“A war?”

He shook his head.

“Not the hydrogen or atom bomb?” “No.”

“Or germ warfare?”

“None of those at all,” he said, stirring his coffee slowly. “But just, let’s say, the closing of a book.” “I don’t think I understand.”

“No, nor do I, really; it’s just a feeling. Sometimes it frightens me, sometimes I’m not frightened at all but at peace.” He glanced in at the girls and their yellow hair shining in the lamplight. “I didn’t say anything to you. It first happened about four nights ago.”

“What?”

“A dream I had. I dreamed that it was all going to be over, and a voice said it was; not any kind of voice I can remember, but a voice anyway, and it said things would stop here on Earth. I didn’t think too much about it the next day, but then I went to the office and caught Stan Willis looking out the window in the middle of the afternoon, and I said a penny for your thoughts, Stan, and he said, I had a dream last night, and before he even told me the dream I knew what it was. I could have told him, but he told me and I listened to him.”

“It was the same dream?”

“The same. I told Stan I had dreamed it too. He didn’t seem surprised. He relaxed, in fact. Then we started walking through the office, for the hell of it. It wasn’t planned. We didn’t say, ‘Let’s walk around.’ We just walked on our own, and everywhere we saw people looking at their desks or their hands or out windows. I talked to a few. So did Stan.”

“And they all had dreamed?”

“All of them. The same dream, with no difference.” “Do you believe in it?”

“Yes. I’ve never been more certain.”

“And when will it stop? The world, I mean.”

“Sometime during the night for us, and then as the night goes on around the world, that’ll go too. It’ll take twenty-four hours for it all to go.”

They sat awhile not touching their coffee. Then they lifted it slowly and drank, looking at each other. “Do we deserve this?” she said.

“It’s not a matter of deserving; it’s just that things didn’t work out. I notice you didn’t even argue about this. Why not?”

“I guess I’ve a reason,” she said.

“The same one everyone at the office had?”

She nodded slowly. “I didn’t want to say anything. It happened last night. And the women on the block talked about it, among themselves, today. They dreamed. I thought it was only a coincidence.” She picked up the evening paper. “There’s nothing in the paper about it.”

“Everyone knows, so there’s no need.”

He sat back in his chair, watching her. “Are you afraid?” “No. I always thought I would be, but I’m not.”

“Where’s that spirit called self-preservation they talk so much about?”

“I don’t know. You don’t get too excited when you feel things are logical. This is logical. Nothing else but this could have happened from the way we’ve lived.”

“We haven’t been too bad, have we?”

“No, nor enormously good. I suppose that’s the trouble—we haven’t been very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was busy being lots of quite awful things.”

The girls were laughing in the parlor.

“I always thought people would be screaming in the streets at a time like this.” “I guess not. You don’t scream about the real thing.”

“Do you know, I won’t miss anything but you and the girls. I never liked cities or my work or anything except you three. I won’t miss a thing except perhaps the change in the weather, and a glass of ice water when it’s hot, and I might miss sleeping. How can we sit here and talk this way?”

“Because there’s nothing else to do.”

“That’s it, of course; for if there were, we’d be doing it. I suppose this is the first time in the history of the world that everyone has known just what they were going to do during the night.”

“I wonder what everyone else will do now, this evening, for the next few hours.”

“Go to a show, listen to the radio, watch television, play cards, put the children to bed, go to bed themselves, like always.”

“In a way that’s something to be proud of—like always.”

They sat a moment and then he poured himself another coffee. “Why do you suppose it’s tonight?”

“Because.”

“Why not some other night in the last century, or five centuries ago, or ten?”

“Maybe it’s because it was never October 19, 1969, ever before in history, and now it is and that’s it; because this date means more than any other date ever meant; because it’s the year when things are as they are all over the world and that’s why it’s the end.”

“There are bombers on their schedules both ways across the ocean tonight that’ll never see land.” “That’s part of the reason why.”

“Well,” he said, getting up, “what shall it be? Wash the dishes?”

They washed the dishes and stacked them away with special neatness. At eight-thirty the girls were put to bed and kissed good night and the little lights by their beds turned on and the door left open just a trifle.

“I wonder,” said the husband, coming from the bedroom and glancing back, standing there with his pipe for a moment.

“What?”

“If the door will be shut all the way, or if it’ll be left just a little ajar so some light comes in.” “I wonder if the children know.”

“No, of course not.”

They sat and read the papers and talked and listened to some radio music and then sat together by the fireplace watching the charcoal embers as the clock struck ten-thirty and eleven and eleven-thirty. They thought of all the other people in the world who had spent their evening, each in his own special way.

“Well,” he said at last.

He kissed his wife for a long time.

“We’ve been good for each other, anyway.” “Do you want to cry?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

They moved through the house and turned out the lights and went into the bedroom and stood in the night cool darkness undressing and pushing back the covers. “The sheets are so clean and nice.”

“I’m tired.” “We’reall tired.”

They got into bed and lay back. “Just a moment,” she said.

He heard her get out of bed and go into the kitchen. A moment later, she returned. “I left the water running in the sink,” she said.

Something about this was so very funny that he had to laugh. She laughed with him, knowing what it was that she had done that was funny. They stopped laughing at last and lay in their cool night bed, their hands clasped, their heads together.

“Good night,” he said, after a moment. “Good night,” she said.

The End

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Zero Hour (Full text) by Ray Bradbury

This is a very short science-fiction story by Ray Bradbury. It is about how a race of extraterrestrials invade the United States. They use American children.

Oh, it was to be so jolly! What a game! Such excitement they hadn’t known in years. The children catapulted this way and that across the green lawns, shouting at each other, holding hands, flying in circles, climbing trees, laughing. Overhead the rockets flew, and beetle cars whispered by on the streets, but the children played on. Such fun, such tremulous joy, such tumbling and hearty screaming.

Mink ran into the house, all dirty and sweat. For her seven years she was loud and strong and definite. Her mother, Mrs. Morris, hardly saw her as she yanked out drawers and rattled pans and tools into a large sack.

‘Heavens, Mink, what’s going on?’

‘The most exciting game ever!’ gasped Mink, pink-faced. ‘Stop and get your breath,’ said the mother.

‘No, I’m all right,’ gasped Mink. ‘Okay I take these things, Mom?’ ‘But don’t dent them,’ said Mrs. Morris.

‘Thank you, thank you!’ cried Mink, and boom! She was gone, like a rocket. Mrs. Morris surveyed the fleeing tot. ‘What’s the name of the game?’ ‘Invasion!’ said Mink. The door slammed.

In every yard on the street children brought out knives and forks and pokers and old stovepipes and can-openers.

It was an interesting fact that this fury and bustle occurred only among the younger children. The older ones, those ten years and more, disdained the affair and marched scornfully off on hikes or played a more dignified version of hide-and-seek on their own.

Meanwhile, parents came and went in chromium beetles. Repair men came to repair the vacuum elevators in houses, to fix fluttering television sets or hammer upon stubborn food-delivery tubes. The adult civilization passed and repassed the busy youngsters, jealous of the fierce energy of the wild tots, tolerantly amused at their flourishings, longing to join in themselves.

‘This and this and this,’ said Mink, instructing the thers with their assorted spoons and wrenches. ‘Do that, and bring that over here. No! Here, ninny! Right. Now, get back while I fix this.’ Tongue in teeth, face wrinkled in thought. ‘Like that. See?’

‘Yayyy!’ shouted the kids.

Twelve-year-old Joseph Connors ran up. ‘Go away,’ said Mink straight at him.

‘I wanna play,’ said Joseph. ‘Can’t!’ said Mink.

‘Why not?’

‘You’d just make fun of us.’ ‘Honest, I wouldn’t.’

‘No. We know you. Go away or we’ll kick you.’

Another twelve-year-old boy whirred by on little motor skates. ‘Hey, Joe! Come on!

Let them sissies play!’

Joseph showed reluctance and a certain wistfulness ‘I want to play,’ he said. ‘You’re old,’ said Mink firmly.

‘Not that old,’ said Joe sensibly.

‘You’d only laugh and spoil the Invasion.’

The boy on the motor skates made a rude lip noise. ‘Come on, Joe! Them and their fairies! Nuts!’

Joseph walked off slowly. He kept looking back, all down the block.

Mink was already busy again. She made a kind of apparatus with her gathered equipment. She had appointed another little girl with a pad and pencil to take down notes in painful slow scribbles.  Their voices rose and fell in the warm sunlight.

All around them the city hummed. The streets were lined with good green and peaceful trees. Only the wind made a conflict across the city, across the country, across the continent. In a thousand other cities there were trees and children and avenues, businessmen in their quiet offices taping their voices, or watching television. Rockets hovered like darning needles in the blue sky. There was the universal, quiet conceit and easiness of men accustomed to peace, quite certain there would never be trouble again. Arm in arm, men all over earth were a united front. The perfect weapons were held in equal trust by all nations. A situation of incredibly beautiful balance had been brought about. There were no traitors among men, no unhappy ones, no disgruntled ones; therefore the world was based upon a stable ground. Sunlight illumined half the world and the trees drowsed in a tide of warm air.

Mink’s mother, from her upstairs window, gazed down.

The children. She looked upon them and shook her head. Well, they’d eat well, sleep well, and be in school on Monday. Bless their vigorous little bodies. She listened.

Mink talked earnestly to someone near the rose bush – though there was no one

there.

These odd children. And the little girl, what was her name? Anna? Anna took notes on a pad. First, Mink asked the rosebush a question, then called the answer to Anna.

‘Triangle,’ said Mink.

‘What’s a tri,’ said Anna with difficulty, ‘angle?’ ‘Never mind,’ said Mink.

‘How you spell it?’ asked Anna.

‘T-r-i —‘ spelled Mink slowly, then snapped, ‘Oh, spell it yourself!’ She went on to other words. ‘Beam,’ she said.

‘I haven’t got tri,’ said Anna, ‘angle down yet!’ ‘Well, hurry, hurry!’ cried Mink.

Mink’s mother leaned out of the upstairs window. ‘A-n-g-I-e,’ she spelled down at

Anna.

‘Oh, thanks, Mrs. Morris,’ said Anna.

‘Certainly,’  said  Mink’s  mother  and  withdrew,  laughing,  to  dust  the  hall  with  an electro-duster magnet.

The voices wavered on the shimmery air. ‘Beam,’ said Anna. Fading.

Four-nine-seven-A-and-B-and-X,’ said Mink, far away, seriously. ‘And a fork and a string and a — hex-hex-agony — hexagonal!’

At lunch Mink gulped milk at one toss and was at the door.  Her mother slapped the

table.

‘You sit right back down,’ commanded Mrs. Morris. ‘Hot soup in a minute.’ She poked a red button on the kitchen butler, and ten seconds later something landed with a hump in the rubber receiver. Mrs. Morris opened it, took out a can with a pair of aluminium holders, unsealed it with a flick, and poured hot soup into a bowl.

During all this Mink fidgeted. ‘Hurry, Mom! This is a matter of life and death! Aw -‘ ‘I was the same way at your age. Always life and death, I know.’

Mink banged away at the soup. ‘Slow down,’ said Mom.

‘Can’t,’ said Mink. ‘Drill’s waiting for me.’  ‘Who’s Drill? What a peculiar name,’ said Mom. ‘You don’t know him,’ said Mink.

‘A new boy in the neighbourhood?’ asked Mom.

‘He’s new all right,’ said Mink. She started on her second bowl.

‘Which one is Drill?’ asked Mom.

‘He’s around,’ said Mink evasively. ‘You’ll make fun.     Everybody pokes fun. Gee, darn. ‘

‘Is Drill shy?’

‘Yes. No. In a way. Gosh, Mom, I got to run if we want to have the Invasion!’ ‘Who’s invading what?’

‘Martians invading Earth. Well, not exactly Martians.   They’re – I don’t know. From up.’ She pointed with her spoon.

‘And inside,’ said Mom, touching Mink’s feverish brow.

Mink rebelled. ‘You’re laughing! You’ll kill Drill and everybody.’ ‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Mom. ‘Drill’s a Martian?’

‘No. He’s – well – maybe from Jupiter or Saturn or Venus. Anyway, he’s had a hard

time.’

‘I imagine.’ Mrs. Morris hid her mouth behind her hand. ‘They couldn’t figure a way to attack Earth.’

‘We’re impregnable,’ said Mom in mock seriousness.

‘That’s the word Drill used! Impreg – That was the word, Mom.’ ‘My, my, Drill’s a brilliant little boy.  Two-bit words.’

‘They couldn’t figure a way to attack, Mom. DrilI says – he says in order to make a good fight you got to have a new way of surprising people. That way you win. And he says also you got to have help from your enemy.’

‘A fifth column,’ said Mom.

‘Yeah. That’s what Drill said. And they couldn’t figure a way to surprise Earth or get

help.’

‘No wonder. We’re pretty darn strong.’ Mom laughed, cleaning up. Mink sat there, staring at the table, seeing what she was talking about.

‘Until, one day,’ whispered Mink melodramatically, ‘they thought of children!’

‘Well!’ said Mrs. Morris brightly.

‘And they thought of how grown-ups are so busy they never look under rose bushes or on lawns!’

‘Only for snails and fungus.’

‘And then there’s something about dim-dims.’ ‘Dim-dims?’

‘Dimens-shuns.’ ‘Dimensions?’

‘Four of ‘em!  And there’s something about kids under nine and imagination. It’s real funny to hear Drill talk.’

Mrs. Morris was tired. ‘Well, it must he funny. You’re keeping Drill waiting now. It’s getting late in the day and, if you want to have your Invasion before your supper bath, you’d better jump.’

‘Do I have to take a bath?’ growled Mink.

‘You do! Why is it children hate water? No matter what age you live in children hate water behind the ears!’

‘Drill says I won’t have to take baths,’ said Mink. ‘Oh, he does, does he?’

‘He told all the kids that. No more baths. And we can stay up till ten o’clock and go to two televisor shows on Saturday ‘stead of one!’

‘Well, Mr. Drill better mind his p’s and q’s. I’ll call up his mother and —‘

Mink went to the door. ‘We’re having trouble with guys like Pete Britz and Dale Jerrick. They’re growing up. They make fun. They’re worse than parents. They just won’t believe in Drill. They’re so snooty, ‘cause they’re growing up. You’d think they’d know better. They were little only a coupla years ago. I hate them worst. We’ll kill them first.’

‘Your father and I last?’

‘Drill says you’re dangerous. Know why? ‘Cause you don’t believe in Martians! They’re going to let us run the world. Well, not just us, but the kids over in the next block, too. I might be queen.’ She opened the door.

‘Mom?’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s lodge-ick?’

‘Logic? Why, dear, logic is knowing what things are true and not true.’

‘He mentioned that,’ said Mink. ‘And what’s im-pres-sion-able?’ It took her a minute to say it.

‘Why, it means –‘ Her mother looked at the floor, laughing gently. ‘It means — to be a child, dear.’

‘Thanks for lunch!’ Mink ran out, then stuck her head back in. ‘Mom, I’ll be sure you won’t be hurt much, really!’

‘Well, thanks,’ said Mom.

Slam went the door.

At four o’clock the audio-visor buzzed. Mrs. Morris flipped the tab. ‘Hello, Helen!’ she said in welcome.

‘Hello, Mary. How are things in New York?’

‘Fine. How are things in Scranton? You look tired.’ ‘So do you.  The children. Underfoot,’ said Helen.

Mrs. Morris sighed.  ‘My Mink too. The super-Invasion.’ Helen laughed. ‘Are your kids playing that game too?’

‘Lord, yes. Tomorrow it’ll be geometrical jacks and motorized hopscotch. Were we this bad when we were kids in ‘48?’

‘Worse. Japs and Nazis. Don’t know how my parents put up with me. Tomboy.’ ‘Parents learn to shut their ears.’

A silence.

‘What’s wrong, Mary?’ asked Helen.

Mrs. Morris’s eyes were half closed; her tongue slid slowly thoughtfully, over her lower lip. ‘Eh?’ She jerked. ‘Oh, nothing. Just thought about that. Shutting ears and such. Never mind. Where were we?’

‘My boy Tim’s got a crush on some guy named DrilI, I think it was.’ ‘Must be a new password. Mink likes him too.’

‘Didn’t know it had got as far as New York. Word of mouth, I imagine. Looks like a scrap drive. I talked to Josephine and she said her kids — that’s in Boston – are wild on this new game. It’s sweeping the country.’

At this moment Mink trotted into the kitchen to gulp a glass of water. Mrs. Morris turned. ‘How’re things going?’

‘Almost finished,’ said Mink.

‘Swell,’ said Mrs. Morris. ‘What’s that?’

‘A yo-yo,’ said Mink. ‘Watch.’

She flung the yo-yo down its string. Reaching the end it — It vanished.

‘See?’ said Mink. ‘Ope!’ Dibbling her finger, she made the yo-yo reappear and zip up the string.

‘Do that again,’ said her mother.

‘Can’t.  Zero hour’s five o’clock! Bye.’ Mink exited, zipping her yo-yo.

On the audio-visor, Helen laughed. ‘Tim brought one of those yo-yos in this morning, but when I got curious he said he wouldn’t show it to me, and when I tried to work it, finally, it wouldn’t work.’

‘You’re not impressionable,’ said Mrs. Morris. ‘What?’

‘Never mind. Something I thought of. Can I help you, Helen?’ ‘I wanted to get that black-and-white cake recipe –‘

The hour drowsed by. The way waned. The sun lowered in the peaceful blue sky. Shadows lengthened on the green lawns. The laughter and excitement continued. One little girl ran away, crying. Mrs. Morris came out the front door.

‘Mink was that Peggy Ann crying?’

Mink was bent over in the yard, near the rosebush. ‘Yeah. She’s a scarebaby. We won’t let her play, now. She’s getting too old to play. I guess she grew up all of a sudden.’

‘Is that why she cried? Nonsense. Give me a civil answer, young lady, or inside you

come!’

Mink whirled in consternation, mixed with irritation. ‘I can’t quit now. It’s almost time.

I’ll be good. I’m sorry.’

‘Did you hit Peggy Ann?’

‘No, honest. You ask her.  It was something — well, she’s just a scaredy pants.’

The ring of children drew in around Mink where she scowled at her work with spoons and a kind of square-shaped arrangement of hammers and pipes. ‘There and there,’ murmured Mink.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Mrs. Morris.

‘Drill’s stuck. Half-way. If we could only get him all the way through it’d be easier.

Then the others could come through after him.’ ‘Can I help?’

‘No thanks. I’ll fix it.’

‘All right. I’ll call you for your bath in half an hour. I’m tired of watching you.’

She went in and sat in the electric relaxing chair, sipping a little beer from a half- empty glass. The chair massaged her back. Children, children. Children and love and hate, side by side. Sometimes children loved you, hated you -~ all in half a second. Strange children, did they ever forget or forgive the whippings and the harsh, strict words of command? She wondered. How can you ever forget or forgive those over and above you, those tall and silly dictators?

Time passed. A curious, waiting silence came upon the street, deepening.

Five o’clock. A clock sang softly somewhere in the house in a quiet musical voice: ‘Five o’clock — five o’clock. Time’s a-wasting. Five o’clock —‘ and purred away into silence.

Zero hour.

Mrs. Morris chuckled in her throat.  Zero hour.

A beetle car hummed into the driveway. Mr. Morris. Mrs. Morris smiled. Mr. Morris got out of the beetle, locked it, and called hello to Mink at her work. Mink ignored him. He laughed and stood for a moment watching the children. Then he walked up the front steps.

‘Hello, darling.’ ‘Hello, Henry.’

She strained forward on the edge of the chair, listening. The children were silent. Too silent.  He emptied his pipe, refilled it. ‘Swell day. Makes you glad to be alive.’

Buzz.

‘What’s that?’ asked Henry.

‘I don’t know.’ She got up suddenly, her eyes widening. She was going to say something. She stopped it. Ridiculous. Her nerves jumped. ‘Those children haven’t anything dangerous out there, have they?’ she said.

‘Nothing but pipes and hammers. Why?’ ‘Nothing electrical?’

‘Heck, no,’ said Henry. ‘I looked.’

She walked to the kitchen. The buzzing continued. ‘Just the same, you’d better go tell them to quit. It’s after five. Tell them – ‘ Her eyes widened and narrowed. ‘Tell them to put off their Invasion until tomorrow.’ She laughed, nervously.

The buzzing grew louder.

‘What are they up to? I’d better go look, all right.’ The explosion!

The house shook with dull sound. There were other explosions in other yards on other streets.

Involuntarily, Mrs. Morris screamed. ‘Up this way!’ she cried senselessly, knowing no sense, no reason. Perhaps she saw something from the corners of her eyes; perhaps she smelled a new odor or heard a new noise. There was no time to argue with Henry to convince him. Let him think her insane. Yes, insane! Shrieking, she ran upstairs. He ran after her to see what she was up to. ‘In the attic!’ she screamed. ‘That’s where it is!’ It was only a poor excuse to get him in the attic in time. Oh, God – in time!

Another explosion outside. The children screamed with delight, as  if at a great fireworks display.

‘It’s not in the attic,’ cried Henry. ‘It’s outside!’

‘No, no!’ Wheezing, gasping, she fumbled at the attic door. ‘I’ll show you. Hurry! I’ll show you!’

They tumbled into the attic. She slammed the door, locked it, took the key, threw it into a far, cluttered corner.

She was babbling wild stuff now. It came out of her. All the subconscious suspicion and fear that had gathered secretly all afternoon and fermented like a wine in her. All the little revelations and knowledges and sense that had bothered her all day and which she had logically and carefully and sensibly rejected and censored. Now it exploded in her and shook her to bits.

‘There, there,’ she said, sobbing against the door. ‘We’re safe until tonight. Maybe we can sneak out. Maybe we can escape!’

Henry blew up too, but for another reason. ‘Are you crazy? Why’d you throw that key away? Damn it, honey!’

‘Yes, yes, I’m crazy, if it helps, but stay here with me!’ ‘I don’t know how in hell I can get out!’

‘Quiet. They’ll hear us. Oh, God, they’ll find us soon enough – ‘

Below them, Mink’s voice. The husband stopped. There was a great universal humming and sizzling, a screaming and giggling. Downstairs the audio-televisor buzzed and buzzed insistently, alarmingly, violently. Is that Helen calling? thought Mrs. Morris. And is she calling about what I think she’s calling about?

Footsteps came into the house. Heavy footsteps.

‘Who’s coming in my house?’ demanded Henry angrily. ‘Whose tramping around down there?’

Heavy feet. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty of them. Fifty persons crowding into the house.

The humming. The giggling of the children. ‘This way!’ cried Mink, below. ‘Who’s downstairs?’ roared Henry. ‘Who’s there!’

‘Hush. Oh, nononononono!’ said his wife weakly, holding him. ‘Please, be quiet. They might go away.’

‘Mom?’ called Mink. ‘Dad?’ A pause. ‘Where are you?’

Heavy footsteps, heavy, heavy, very heavy footsteps, came up the stairs. Mink leading them. ‘Mom?’ A hesitation. ‘Dad?’ A waiting, a silence.

Humming. Footsteps toward the attic. Mink’s first.

They trembled together in silence in the attic, Mr. and Mrs. Morris. For some reason the electric humming, the queer cold light suddenly visible under the door crack, the strange odor and the alien sound of eagerness in Mink’s voice finally got through to Henry Morris too. He stood, shivering, in the dark silence, his wife beside him.

‘Mom! Dad!’

Footsteps. A little humming sound. The attic-lock melted. The door opened. Mink peered inside, tall blue shadows behind her.

‘Peekaboo,’ said Mink.

The End.

If you enjoyed this story, you can find others at this link here…

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Invisible Boy (Full Text) by Ray Bradbury

Have you ever wondered how those witches and warlocks ever ended up with all those strange entities that lurk in the shadows around them? Well, perhaps Ray Bradbury can give us some insight into this. Eh?

Invisible Boy

She took the great iron spoon and the mummified frog and gave it a bash and made dust of it, and talked to the dust while she ground it in her stony fists quickly. Her beady gray bird-eyes nickered at the cabin. Each time she looked, a head in the small thin window ducked as if she’d fired off a shotgun.

“Charlie!” cried Old Lady. “You come outa there! I’m fixing a lizard magic to unlock that rusty door! You come out now and I won’t make the earth shake or the trees go up in fire or the sun set at high noon!”

The only sound was the warm mountain light on the high turpentine trees, a tufted squirrel cluttering around and around on a green-furred log, the ants moving in a fine brown line at Old Lady’s bare, blue-veined feet.

“You been starving in there two days, dam you!” she panted, chiming the spoon against a flat rock, causing the plump gray miracle bag to swing at her waist. Sweating sour, she rose and marched at the cabin, bearing the pulverized flesh. “Come out, now!” She flicked a pinch of powder inside the lock. “All right, I’ll come get you!” she wheezed.

She spun the knob with one walnut-coloured hand, first one way, then the other. “0 Lord,” she intoned, “fling this door wide!”

When nothing flung, she added yet another philter and held her breath. Her long blue untidy skirt rustled as she peered – into her bag of darkness to see if she had any scaly monsters there, any charm finer than the frog she’d killed months ago for such a crisis as this.

She heard Charlie breathing against the door. His folks had pranced off into some Ozark town early this week, leaving him, and he’d run almost six miles to Old Lady for company – she was by way of being an aunt or cousin or some such, and he didn’t mind her fashions.

But then, two days ago. Old Lady, having gotten used to the boy around, decided to keep him for convenient company. She pricked her thin shoulder bone, drew out three blood pearls, spat wet over her right elbow, tromped on a crunch-cricket, and at the same instant clawed her left hand at Charlie, crying, “My son you are, you are my son, for all eternity!”

Charlie, bounding like a startled hare, had crashed off into the bush, heading for home.

But Old Lady, skittering quick as a gingham lizard, cornered him in a dead end, and Charlie holed up in this old hermit’s cabin and wouldn’t come out, no matter how she whammed door, window, or knothole with amber-coloured fist or trounced her ritual fires, explaining to him that he was certainly her son now, all right.

“Charlie, you there?’ she asked, cutting holes in the door planks with her bright little slippery eyes.

“I’m all of me here,” he replied finally, very tired.

Maybe he would fall out on the ground any moment. She wrestled the knob hopefully. Perhaps a pinch too much frog powder had grated the lock wrong. She always overdid or underdid her miracles, she mused angrily, never doing them just exact. Devil take it!

“Charlie, I only wants someone to night-prattle to, someone to warm hands with at the fire. Someone to fetch kindling for me mornings, and fight off the spunks that come creeping of early fogs! I ain’t got no fetchings on you for myself, son, just for your company.” She smacked her lips. “Tell you what, Charles, you come out and I teach you things!”

“What things?” he suspicioned.

“Teach you how to buy cheap, sell high. Catch a snow weasel, cut off its head, carry it warm in your hind pocket. There!”

“Aw,” said Charlie.

She made haste. “Teach you to make yourself shot-proof. So if anyone bangs at you with a gun, nothing happens.”

When Charlie stayed silent, she gave him the secret in a high fluttering whisper. “Dig and stitch mouse-ear roots on Friday during full moon, and wear ‘em around your neck in a white silk.”

“You’re crazy,” Charlie said.

“Teach you how to stop blood or make animals stand frozen or make blind horses see, all them things I’ll teach you! Teach you to cure a swelled-up cow and unbewitch a goat. Show you how to make yourself invisible!”

“Oh,” said Charlie.

Old Lady’s heart beat like a Salvation tambourine. The knob turned from the other side.

“You,” said Charlie, “are funning me.”

“No, I’m not,” exclaimed Old Lady. “Oh, Charlie, why, I’ll make you like a window, see right through you. Why, child, you’ll be surprised!”

“Real invisible?” “Real invisible!”

“You won’t fetch onto me if I walk out?” “Won’t touch a bristle of you, son.” “Well,” he drawled reluctantly, “all right.”

The door opened. Charlie stood in his bare feet, head down, chin against chest. “Make me

invisible,” he said.

“First we got to catch us a bat,” said Old Lady. “Start lookin’!”

She gave him some jerky beef for his hunger and watched him climb a tree. He went high up and high up and it was nice seeing him there and it was nice having him here and all about after so many years alone with nothing to say good morning to but bird-droppings and silvery snail tracks.

Pretty soon a bat with a broken wing fluttered down out of the tree. Old Lady snatched it up, beating warm and shrieking between its porcelain white teeth, and Charlie dropped down after it, hand upon clenched hand, yelling.

That night, with the moon nibbling at the spiced pine cones. Old Lady extracted a long silver needle from under her wide blue dress. Gumming her excitement and secret anticipation, she sighted up the dead bat and held the cold needle steady-steady.

She had long ago realized that her miracles, despite all perspirations and salts and sulphurs, failed. But she had always dreamt that one day the miracles might start functioning, might spring up in crimson flowers and silver stars to prove that God had forgiven her for her pink body and her pink thoughts and her warm body and her warm thoughts as a young miss. But so far God had made no sign and said no word, but nobody knew this except Old Lady.

“Ready?” she asked Charlie, who crouched cross-kneed, wrapping his pretty legs in long goose- pimpled arms, his mouth open, making teeth. “Ready,” he whispered, shivering.

“There!” She plunged the needle deep in the bat’s right eye. “So!”

“Oh!” screamed Charlie, wadding up his face.

“Now I wrap it in gingham, and here, put it in your pocket, keep it there, bat and all. Go on!” He pocketed the charm.

“Charlie!” she shrieked fearfully. “Charlie, where are you? I can’t see you, child!”

“Here!” He jumped so the light ran in red streaks up his body. “I’m here. Old Lady!” He stared wildly at his arms, legs, chest, and toes. “I’m here!”

Her eyes looked as if they were watching a thousand fireflies crisscrossing each other in the wild night air.

“Charlie, oh, you went fast! Quick as a hummingbird! Oh, Charlie, come back to me!” “But I’m Acre!” he wailed.

“Where?”

“By the fire, the fire! And – and I can see myself. I’m not invisible at all!”

Old Lady rocked on her lean flanks. “Course you can see you! Every invisible person knows himself. Otherwise, how could you eat, walk, or get around places? Charlie, touch me. Touch me so I know you.”

Uneasily he put out a hand.

She pretended to jerk, startled, at his touch. “Ah!”

“You mean to say you can’t find me?” he asked. “Truly?” “Not the least half rump of you!”

She found a tree to stare at, and stared at it with shining eyes, careful not to glance at him.

“Why, I sure did a trick that time!” She sighed with wonder. “Whooeee. Quickest invisible I ever made! Charlie. Charlie, how you feel?”

“Like creek water – all stirred.” “You’ll settle.”

Then after a pause she added, “Well, what you going to do now, Charlie, since you’re invisible?”

All sorts of things shot through his brain, she could tell. Adventures stood up and danced like hell-fire in his eyes, and his mouth, just hanging, told what it meant to be a boy who imagined himself like the mountain winds. In a cold dream he said, “I’ll run across wheat fields, climb snow mountains, steal white chickens off’n farms. I’ll kick pink pigs when they ain’t looking. I’ll pinch pretty girls’ legs when they sleep, snap their garters in schoolrooms.” Charlie looked at Old Lady, and from the shiny tips of her eyes she saw something wicked shape his face. “And other things I’ll do, I’ll do, I will,” he said.

“Don’t try nothing on me,” warned Old Lady. “I’m brittle as spring ice and I don’t take handling.” Then: “What about your folks?”

“My folks?”

“You can’t fetch yourself home looking like that. Scare the inside ribbons out of them. Your mother’d faint straight back like timber falling. Think they want you about the house to stumble over and your ma have to call you every three minutes, even though you’re in the room next her elbow?”

Charlie had not considered it. He sort of simmered down and whispered out a little “Gosh” and felt of his long bones carefully.

“You’ll be mighty lonesome. People looking through you like a water glass, people knocking you aside because they didn’t reckon you to be underfoot. And women, Charlie, women -”

He swallowed. “What about women?”

“No woman will be giving you a second stare. And no woman wants to be kissed by a boy’s mouth they can’t even find!”

Charlie dug his bare toe in the soil contemplatively. He pouted. “Well, I’ll stay invisible, anyway, for a spell. I’ll have me some fun. I’ll just be pretty careful, is all. I’ll stay out from in front of wagons and horses and Pa. Pa shoots at the nariest sound.” Charlie blinked. “Why, with me invisible, someday Pa might just up and fill me with buckshot, thinkin’ I was a hill squirrel in the dooryard. Oh…”

Old Lady nodded at a tree. “That’s likely.”

“Well,” he decided slowly, “I’ll stay invisible for tonight, and tomorrow you can fix me back all whole again, Old Lady.”

“Now if that ain’t just like a critter, always wanting to be what he can’t be,” remarked Old Lady to a beetle on a log.

“What you mean?” said Charlie.

“Why,” she explained, “it was real hard work, fixing you up. It’ll take a little time for it to wear off. Like a coat of paint wears off, boy.”

“You!” he cried. “You did this to me! Now you make me back, you make me seeable!” “Hush,” she said. “It’ll wear off, a hand or a foot at a time.”

“How’ll it look, me around the hills with just one hand showing!” “Like a five-winged bird hopping on the stones and bramble.” “Or a foot showing!”

“Like a small pink rabbit jumping thicket.”

“Or my head Heating!”

“Like a hairy balloon at the carnival!” “How long before I’m whole?” he asked.

She deliberated that it might pretty well be an entire year.

He groaned. He began to sob and bite his lips and make fists. “You magicked me, you did this, you did this thing to me. Now I won’t be able to run home!”

She winked. “But you can stay here, child, stay on with me real comfort-like, and I’ll keep you fat and saucy.”

He flung it out: “You did this on purpose! You mean old hag, you want to keep me here!” He ran off through the shrubs on the instant.

“Charlie, come back!”

No answer but the pattern of his feet on the soft dark turf, and his wet choking cry which passed swiftly off and away.

She waited and then kindled herself a fire. “He’ll be back,” she whispered. And thinking inward on herself, she said, “And now I’ll have me my company through spring and into late summer. Then, when I’m tired of him and want a silence, I’ll send him home.”

Charlie returned noiselessly with the first gray of dawn, gliding over the rimed turf to where Old Lady sprawled like a bleached stick before the scattered ashes.

He sat on some creek pebbles and stared at her.

She didn’t dare look at him or beyond. He had made no sound, so how could she know he was anywhere about? She couldn’t.

He sat there, tear marks on his cheeks.

Pretending to be just waking – but she had found no sleep from one end of the night to the other – Old Lady stood up, grunting and yawning, and turned in a circle to the dawn.

“Charlie?”

Her eyes passed from pines to soil, to sky, to the far hills. She called out his name, over and

over again, and she felt like staring plumb straight at him, but she stopped herself. “Charlie? Oh, Charles!” she called, and heard the echoes say the very same.

He sat, beginning to grin a bit, suddenly, knowing he was close to her, yet she must feel alone. Perhaps he felt the growing of a secret power, perhaps he felt secure from the world, certainly he was pleased with his invisibility.

She said aloud, “Now where can that boy be? If he only made a noise so I could tell just where he is, maybe I’d fry him a breakfast.”

She prepared the morning victuals, irritated at his continuous quiet. She sizzled bacon on a hickory stick. “The smell of it will draw his nose,” she muttered.

While her back was turned he swiped all the frying bacon and devoured it hastily. She whirled, crying out, “Lord!”

She eyed the clearing suspiciously. “Charlie, that you?”

Charlie wiped his mouth clean on his wrists.

She trotted about the clearing, making like she was trying to locate him. Finally, with a clever thought, acting blind, she headed straight for him, groping. “Charlie, where are you?”

A lightning streak, he evaded her, bobbing, ducking.

It took all her will power not to give chase; but you can’t chase invisible boys, so she sat down, scowling, sputtering, and tried to fry more bacon. But every fresh strip she cut he would steal bubbling off the fire and run away far. Finally, cheeks burning, she cried, “I know where you are! Right there\ I hear you run!” She pointed to one side of him, not too accurate. He ran again. “Now you’re there!” she shouted. “There, and there!” pointing to all the places he was in the next five minutes. “I hear you press a grass blade, knock a flower, snap a twig. I got fine shell ears, delicate as roses. They can hear the stars moving!”

Silently he galloped off among the pines, Ms voice trailing back, “Can’t hear me when I’m set on a rock. I’ll just set!”

All day he sat on an observatory rock in the clear wind, motionless and sucking his tongue.

Old Lady gathered wood in the deep forest, feeling his eyes weaseling on her spine. She wanted to babble: “Oh, I see you, I see you! I was only fooling about invisible boys! You ‘re right there!” But she swallowed her gall and gummed it tight.

The following morning he did the spiteful thing. He began leaping from behind trees. He made toad-faces, frog-faces, spider-faces at her, clenching down his lips with his fingers, popping his raw eyes, pushing up his nostrils so you could peer in and see his brain thinking.

Once she dropped, her kindling. She pretended it was a blue jay startled her. He made a motion as if to strangle her.

She trembled a little.

He made another move as if to bang her shins and spit on her cheek. These motions she bore without a lid-flicker or a mouth-twitch.

He stuck out his tongue, making strange bad noises. He wiggled his loose ears so she wanted to laugh, and finally she did laugh and explained it away quickly by saying, “Sat on a salamander! Whew, how it poked!”

By high noon the whole madness boiled to a terrible peak.

For it was at that exact hour that Charlie came racing down the valley stark boy-naked! Old Lady nearly fell flat with shock!

“Charlie!” she almost cried.

Charlie raced naked up one side of a hill and naked down the other – naked as day, naked as the moon, raw as the sun and a newborn chick, his feet shimmering and rushing like the wings of a low-skimming hummingbird.

Old Lady’s tongue locked in her mouth. What could she say? Charlie, go dress? For shame? Stop that? Could she? Oh, Charlie, Charlie, God! Could she say that now? Well?

Upon the big rock, she witnessed him dancing up and down, naked as the day of his birth, stomping bare feet, smacking his hands on his knees and sucking in and out his white stomach like blowing and deflating a circus balloon.

She shut her eyes tight and prayed.

After three hours of this she pleaded, “Charlie, Charlie, come here! I got something to tell you!” Like a fallen leaf he came, dressed again, praise the Lord.

“Charlie,” she said, looking at the pine trees, “I see your right toe. There it is.” “You do?” he said.

“Yes,” she said very sadly. “There it is like a horny toad on the grass. And there, up there’s your

left ear hanging on the air like a pink butterfly.” Charlie danced. “I’m forming in, I’m forming in!” Old Lady nodded. “Here comes your ankle!” “Gimme both my feet!” ordered Charlie.

“You got ‘em.”

“How about my hands?”

“I see one crawling on your knee like a daddy long-legs.” “How about the other one?”

“It’s crawling too.” “I got a body?” “Shaping up fine.”

“I’ll need my head to go home. Old Lady.”

To go home, she thought wearily. “No!” she said, stubborn and angry. “No, you ain’t got no head. No head at all,” she cried. She’d leave that to the very last. “No head, no head,” she insisted.

“No head?” he wailed.

“Yes, oh my God, yes, yes, you got your blamed head!” she snapped, giving up. “Now fetch me back my bat with the needle in his eye!”

He flung it at her. “Haaaa-yoooo!” His yelling went all up the valley, and long after he had run toward home she heard his echoes, racing.

Then she plucked up her kindling with a great dry weariness and started back toward her shack, sighing, talking. And Charlie followed her all the way, really invisible now, so she couldn’t see him, just hear him, like a pine cone dropping or a deep underground stream trickling, or a squirrel clambering a bough; and over the fire at twilight she and Charlie sat, him so invisible, and her feeding him bacon he wouldn’t take, so she ate it herself, and then she fixed some magic and fell asleep with Charlie, made out of sticks and rags and pebbles, but still warm and her very own son, slumbering and nice in her shaking mother arms… and they talked about golden things in drowsy voices until dawn made the fire slowly, slowly wither out….

The End

Posts Regarding Life and Contentment

Here are some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society within communist China. As there are some really stark differences between the two.

Why no High-Speed rail in the USA?
Link
Link
Link
Tomatos
Link
Mad scientist
Gorilla Cage in the basement
The two family types and how they work.
Link
Soups, Sandwiches and ice cold beer.
Pleasures
Work in the 1960's
School in the 1970s
Cat Heaven
Corporate life
Corporate life - part 2
Build up your life
Grow and play - 1
Grow and play - 2
Asshole
Baby's got back
Link
A womanly vanity
SJW
Army and Navy Store
Playground Comparisons
Excuses that we use that keep us enslaved.

Posts about the Changes in America

America is going through a period of change. Change is good… that is, after it occurs. Often however, there are large periods of discomfort as the period of adjustment takes place. Here are some posts that discuss this issue.

Parable about America
What is planned for American Conservatives - Part 2
What is going to happen to conservatives - Part 3.
What is planned for conservatives - part 4
What is in store for Conservatives - part 5
What is in store for conservatives - part 6
Civil War
The Warning Signs
r/K selection theory
Line in the sand
A second passport
Link
Make America Great Again.
What would the founders think?

More Posts about Life

I have broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little different, in subtle ways.

Being older
Things I wish I knew.
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Travel
PT-141
Bronco Billy
How they get away with it
Paper Airplanes
Snopes
Taxiation without representation.
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1960's and 1970's link
Democracy Lessons
A polarized world.
The Rule of Eight
Types of American conservatives.

Stories that Inspired Me

Here are reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that are nearly impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a personal library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome to come and enjoy a read or two as well.

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Space Cadet (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein
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The Last Night
The Flying Machine
A story of escape.
All Summer in a day.
The Smile by Ray Bradbury
The menace from Earth
Delilah and the Space Rigger
Life-Line
The Tax-payer
The Pedestrian
Time for the stars.
Glory Road by Robert Heinlein
Starman Jones (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein.
The Lottery (Full Text) by Shirley Jackson
The Cold Equations (Full Text)
Farnham's Freehold (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein

Articles & Links

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