Ray Bradbury Stories, Volume 1 (20 page)

‘And a picnic!’

‘Right. This is between you and me. When I saw everything was finishing
on Earth, after I’d waited until the last moment, I packed us up. Bert Edwards had a ship hidden, too, but we decided it would be safer to take off separately, in case anyone tried to shoot us down.’

‘Why’d you blow up the rocket, Dad?’

‘So we can’t go back, ever. And so if any of those evil men ever come to Mars they won’t know we’re here.’

‘Is that why you look up all the time?’

‘Yes, it’s silly. They won’t follow us, ever. They haven’t anything to follow with. I’m being too careful, is all.’

Michael came running back. ‘Is this really
our
city, Dad?’

‘The whole darn planet belongs to us, kids. The whole darn planet.’

They stood there, King of the Hill, Top of the Heap, Ruler of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs and Presidents, trying to understand what it meant to own a world and how big a world really was.

Night came quickly in the thin atmosphere, and Dad left them in the square by the pulsing fountain, went down to the boat, and came walking back carrying a stack of paper in his big hands.

He laid the papers in a clutter in an old courtyard and set them afire. To keep warm, they crouched around the blaze and laughed, and Timothy saw the little letters leap like frightened animals when the flames touched and engulfed them. The papers crinkled like an old man’s skin, and the cremation surrounded innumerable words:

‘GOVERNMENT BONDS; Business Graph, 1999; Religious Prejudice: An Essay: The Science of Logistics; Problems of the Pan-American Unity; Stock Report for July 3, 1998; The War Digest…’

Dad had insisted on bringing these papers for this purpose. He sat there and fed them into the fire, one by one, with satisfaction, and told his children what it all meant.

‘It’s time I told you a few things. I don’t suppose it was fair, keeping so much from you. I don’t know if you’ll understand, but I have to talk, even if only part of it gets over to you.’

He dropped a leaf in the fire.

‘I’m burning a way of life, just like that way of life is being burned clean of Earth right now. Forgive me if I talk like a politician. I am, after all, a former state governor, and I was honest and they hated me for it. Life on Earth never settled down to doing anything very good. Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness, like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets, emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth. That’s what the silent radio means. That’s what we ran away from.

‘We were lucky. There aren’t any more rockets left. It’s time you knew this isn’t a fishing trip at all. I put off telling you. Earth is gone. Interplanetary
travel won’t be back for centuries, maybe never. But that way of life proved itself wrong and strangled itself with its own hands. You’re young. I’ll tell you this again every day until it sinks in.’

He paused to feed more papers to the fire.

‘Now we’re alone. We and a handful of others who’ll land in a few days. Enough to start over. Enough to turn away from all that back on Earth and strike out on a new line—’

The fire leaped up to emphasize his talking. And then all the papers were gone except one. All the laws and beliefs of Earth were burnt into small hot ashes which soon would be carried off in a wind.

Timothy looked at the last thing that Dad tossed in the fire. It was a map of the World, and it wrinkled and distorted itself hotly and went—flimpf—and was gone like a warm, black butterfly. Timothy turned away.

‘Now I’m going to show you the Martians,’ said Dad. ‘Come on, all of you. Here, Alice.’ He took her hand.

Michael was crying loudly, and Dad picked him up and carried him, and they walked down through the ruins toward the canal.

The canal. Where tomorrow or the next day their future wives would come up in a boat, small laughing girls now, with their father and mother.

The night came down around them, and there were stars. But Timothy couldn’t find Earth. It had already set. That was something to think about.

A night bird called among the ruins as they walked. Dad said. ‘Your mother and I will try to teach you. Perhaps we’ll fail. I hope not. We’ve had a good lot to see and learn from. We planned this trip years ago, before you were born. Even if there hadn’t been a war we would have come to Mars, I think, to live and form our own standard of living. It would have been another century before Mars would have been really poisoned by the Earth civilization. Now, of course—’

They reached the canal. It was long and straight and cool and wet and reflective in the night.

‘I’ve always wanted to see a Martian,’ said Michael. ‘Where are they, Dad? You promised.’

‘There they are,’ said Dad, and he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down.

The Martians were there. Timothy began to shiver.

The Martians were there—in the canal—reflected in the water. Timothy and Michael and Robert and Mom and Dad.

The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water…

There were fireworks the very first night, things that you should be afraid of perhaps, for they might remind you of other more horrible things, but these were beautiful, rockets that ascended into the ancient soft air of Mexico and shook the stars apart in blue and white fragments. Everything was good and sweet, the air was that blend of the dead and the living, of the rains and the dusts, of the incense from the church, and the brass smell of the tuba on the bandstand which pulsed out vast rhythms of ‘La Paloma.’ The church doors were thrown wide and it seemed as if a giant yellow constellation had fallen from the October sky and lay breathing fire upon the church walls; a million candles sent their color and fumes about. Newer and better fireworks scurried like tight-rope walking comets across the cool-tiled square, banged against adobe café walls, then rushed on hot wires to bash the high church tower, in which boys naked feet alone could be seen kicking and rekicking, clanging and tilting and re-tilting the monster bells into monstrous music. A flaming bull blundered about the plaza chasing laughing men and screaming children.

‘The year is 1938,’ said William Travis, standing by his wife on the edge of the yelling crowd, smiling. ‘A good year.’

The bull rushed upon them. Ducking, the couple ran, with fire balls pelting them, past the music and riot, the church, the band, under the stars, clutching each other, laughing. The bull passed, carried lightly on the shoulders of a charging Mexican, a framework of bamboo and sulphurous gunpowder.

‘I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in my life.’ Susan Travis had stopped for her breath.

‘It’s amazing,’ said William.

‘It will go on, won’t it?’

‘All night.’

‘No, I mean our trip.’

He frowned and patted his breast pocket. ‘I’ve enough traveler’s checks for a lifetime. Enjoy yourself. Forget it. They’ll never find us.’

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

Now someone was setting off giant crackers, hurling them from the great bell-tolling tower of the church in a sputter of smoke, while the crowd below fell back under the threat and the crackers exploded in wonderful concussions among their dancing feet and flailing bodies. A wondrous smell of frying tortillas hung all about, and in the cafés men sat at tables looking out, mugs of beer in their brown hands.

The bull was dead. The fire was out of the bamboo tubes and he was expended. The laborer lifted the framework from his shoulders. Little boys clustered to touch the magnificent paper-mâché head, the real horns.

‘Let’s examine the bull,’ said William.

As they walked past the café entrance Susan saw the man looking out at them, a white man in a salt-white suit, with a blue tie and blue shirt, and a thin, sunburned face. His hair was blond and straight and his eyes were blue, and he watched them as they walked.

She would never have noticed him if it had not been for the bottles at his immaculate elbow; a fat bottle of crème de menthe, a clear bottle of vermouth, a flagon of cognac, and seven other bottles of assorted liqueurs, and, at his finger tips, ten small half-filled glasses from which, without taking his eyes off the street, he sipped, occasionally squinting, pressing his thin mouth shut upon the savor. In his free hand a thin Havana cigar smoked, and on a chair stood twenty cartons of Turkish cigarettes, six boxes of cigars, and some packaged colognes.

‘Bill—’ whispered Susan.

‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘He’s nobody.’

‘I saw him in the plaza this morning.’

‘Don’t look back, keep walking. Examine the papier-mâché bull here. That’s it, ask questions.’

‘Do you think he’s from the Searchers?’

‘They couldn’t follow us!’

‘They might!’

‘What a nice bull,’ said William to the man who owned it.

‘He couldn’t have followed us back through two hundred years, could he?’

‘Watch yourself, for God’s sake,’ said William.

She swayed. He crushed her elbow tightly, steering her away.

‘Don’t faint.’ He smiled, to make it look good. ‘You’ll be all right. Let’s go right in that café, drink in front of him, so if he is what we think he is, he won’t suspect.’

‘No. I couldn’t.’

‘We’ve
got
to. Come on now. And so I said to David, that’s ridiculous!’ This last in a loud voice as they went up the café steps.

We are here, thought Susan. Who are we? Where are we going? What do we fear? Start at the beginning, she told herself, holding to her sanity, as she felt the adobe floor underfoot.

My name is Ann Kristen; my husband’s name is Roger. We were born in the year A.D. 2155. And we lived in a world that was evil. A world that was like a great black ship pulling away from the shore of sanity and civilization, roaring its black horn in the night, taking two billion people with it, whether they wanted to go or not, to death, to fall over the edge of the earth and the sea into radioactive flame and madness.

They walked into the café. The man was staring at them.

A phone rang.

The phone startled Susan. She remembered a phone ringing two hundred years in the future, on that blue April morning in 2155, and herself answering it.

‘Ann, this is Rene! Have you heard? I mean about Travel in Time. Incorporated? Trips to Rome in 21 B.C., trips to Napoleon’s Waterloo—any time, any place!’

‘Rene, you’re joking.’

‘No, Clinton Smith left this morning for Philadelphia in 1776. Travel in Time, Inc., arranges everything. Costs money. But,
think
—to actually see the burning of Rome, Kubla Khan, Moses and the Red Sea! You’ve probably got an ad in your tube mail now.’

She had opened the suction mail tube and there was the metal foil advertisement:

ROME AND THE BORGIAS
!
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AT KITTY HAWK
!

Travel in Time, Inc., can costume you, put you in a crowd during the assassination of Lincoln or Caesar! We guarantee to teach you any language you need to move freely in any civilization, in any year, without friction. Latin, Greek, ancient American colloquial. Take your vacation in
Time
as well as Place!

Rene’s voice was buzzing on the phone. ‘Tom and I leave for 1492 tomorrow. They’re arranging for Tom to sail with Columbus. Isn’t it amazing!’

‘Yes,’ murmured Ann, stunned. ‘What does the Government say about this Time Machine company?’

‘Oh, the police have an eye on it. Afraid people might evade the draft, run off and hide in the Past. Everyone has to leave a security bond behind, his house and belongings, to guarantee return. After all, the war’s on.’

‘Yes, the war,’ murmured Ann. ‘The war.’

Standing there, holding the phone, she had thought. Here is the chance my husband and I have talked and prayed over for so many years. We don’t like this world of 2155. We want to run away from his work at the bomb factory, I from my position with disease-culture units. Perhaps there is a chance for us to escape, to run for centuries into a wild country of years where they will never find and bring us back to burn our books, censor our thoughts, scald our minds with fear, march us, scream at us with radios…

They were in Mexico in the year 1938.

She looked at the stained café wall.

Good workers for the Future State were allowed vacations into the Past to escape fatigue. And so she and her husband had moved back into 1938, a room in New York City, and enjoyed the theaters and the Statue of Liberty which still stood green in the harbor. And on the third day they had changed their clothes, their names, and had flown off to hide in Mexico!

‘It
must
be him,’ whispered Susan, looking at the stranger seated at the table. ‘Those cigarettes, the cigars, the liquor. They give him away. Remember our first night in the Past?’

A month ago, their first night in New York, before their flight, drinking all the strange drinks, savoring and buying odd foods, perfumes, cigarettes of ten dozen rare brands, for they were rare in the Future, where war was everything. So they had made fools of themselves, rushing in and out of stores, salons, tobacconists, going up to their room to get wonderfully ill.

And now here was this stranger doing likewise, doing a thing that only a man from the Future would do who had been starved for liquors and cigarettes for many years.

Susan and William sat and ordered a drink.

The stranger was examining their clothes, their hair, their jewelry—the way they walked and sat.

‘Sit easily,’ said William under his breath. ‘Look as if you’ve worn this clothing style all your life.’

‘We should never have tried to escape.’

‘My God!’ said William. ‘He’s coming over. Let me do the talking.’

The stranger bowed before them. There was the faintest tap of heels knocking together. Susan stiffened. That military sound!—unmistakable as that certain ugly rap on your door at midnight.

‘Mr Roger Kristen,’ said the stranger, ‘you did not pull up your pant legs when you sat down.’

William froze. He looked at his hands lying on either leg, innocently. Susan’s heart was beating swiftly.

‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ said William quickly. ‘My name’s not Krisler.’

‘
Kristen
,’ corrected the stranger.

‘I’m William Travis,’ said William. ‘And I don’t see what my pant legs have to do with you.’

‘Sorry.’ The stranger pulled up a chair. ‘Let us say I thought I knew you because you did
not
pull your trousers up.
Everyone
does. If they don’t, the trousers bag quickly. I am a long way from home, Mr—Travis, and in need of company. My name is Simms.’

‘Mr Simms, we appreciate your loneliness, but we’re tired. We’re leaving for Acapulco tomorrow.’

‘A charming spot, I was just there, looking for some friends of mine. They are somewhere. I shall find them yet. Oh, is the lady a bit sick?’

‘Good night, Mr Simms.’

They started out the door, William holding Susan’s arm firmly. They did not look back when Mr Simms called, ‘Oh, just one other thing.’ He paused and then slowly spoke the words:

‘A.D. 2155.’

Susan shut her eyes and felt the earth falter under her. She kept going, into the fiery plaza, seeing nothing.

They locked the door of their hotel room. And then she was crying and they were standing in the dark, and the room tilted under them. Far away firecrackers exploded, and there was laughter in the plaza.

‘What a damned, loud nerve,’ said William. ‘Him sitting there, looking us up and down like animals, smoking his damn cigarettes, drinking his drinks. I should have killed him then!’ His voice was nearly hysterical. ‘He even had the nerve to use his real name to us. The Chief of the Searchers. And the thing about my pant legs. My God, I should have pulled them up when I sat. It’s an automatic gesture of this day and age. When I didn’t do it, it set me off from the others: it made
him
think. Here’s a man who never wore pants, a man used to breech uniforms and future styles. I could kill myself for giving us away!’

‘No, no, it was my walk—these high heels—that did it. Our haircuts

—so new, so fresh. Everything about us odd and uneasy.’

He turned on the light. ‘He’s still testing us. He’s not positive of us—not completely. We can’t run out on him, then. We can’t make him certain. We’ll go to Acapulco leisurely.’

‘Maybe he
is
sure of us, but is just playing.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s got all the time in the world. He can dally here if he wants, and bring us back to the Future sixty seconds after we left it. He might keep us wondering for days, laughing at us.’

Susan sat on the bed, wiping the tears from her face, smelling the old smell of charcoal and incense. ‘

They won’t make a scene, will they?’

‘They won’t dare. They’ll have to get us alone to put us in that Time Machine and send us back.’

‘There’s a solution then,’ she said. ‘We’ll never be alone: we’ll always be in crowds. We’ll make a million friends, visit markets, sleep in the Official Palaces in each town, pay the Chief of Police to guard us until we find a way to kill Simms and escape, disguise ourselves in new clothes, perhaps as Mexicans.’

Footsteps sounded outside their locked door.

They turned out the light and undressed in silence. The footsteps went away. A door closed.

Susan stood by the window looking down at the plaza in the darkness. ‘So that building there is a church?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve often wondered what a church looked like. It’s been so long since anyone saw one. Can we visit it tomorrow?’

‘Of course. Come to bed.’

They lay in the dark room.

Half an hour later their phone rang. She lifted the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘The rabbits may hide in the forest,’ said a voice, ‘but a fox can always find them.’

She replaced the receiver and lay back straight and cold in the bed.

Outside, in the year 1938, a man played three tunes upon a guitar, one following another.

During the night she put her hand out and almost touched the year 2155. She felt her fingers slide over cool space of time, as over a corrugated surface, and she heard the insistent thump of marching feet, a million bands playing a million military tunes, and she saw the fifty thousand rows of disease cultures in their aseptic glass tubes, her hand reaching out to them at her work in that huge factory in the Future; the tubes of leprosy, bubonic, typhoid, tuberculosis, and then the great explosion. She saw her hand burned to a wrinkled plum, felt it recoil from a concussion so immense that the world was lifted and let fall and all the buildings broke and people hemorrhaged and lay silent. Great volcanoes, machines, winds, avalanches slid down to silence and she awoke, sobbing, in the bed, in Mexico, many years away…

In the early morning, drugged with the single hour’s sleep they had finally been able to obtain, they awoke to the sound of loud automobiles in the street. Susan peered down from the iron balcony at a small crowd of eight people only now emerging, chattering, yelling, from trucks and cars with red lettering on them. A crowd of Mexicans had followed the trucks.