Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (34 page)

 
          
           
"You are merciful, Emperor."

 
          
           
"No, not merciful," said the old man. Beyond the garden wall he saw
the guards burning the beautiful machine of paper and reeds that smelled of the
morning wind. He saw the dark smoke climb into the sky. "No, only very
much bewildered and afraid." He saw the guards digging a tiny pit wherein
to bury the ashes. "What is the life of one man against those of a million
others? I must take solace from that thought."

 
          
           
He took the key from its chain about his neck and once more wound up the
beautiful miniature garden. He stood looking out across the land at the Great
Wall, the peaceful town, the green fields, the rivers and streams. He sighed.
The tiny garden whirred its hidden and delicate machinery and set itself in
motion; tiny people walked in forests, tiny faces loped through sun-speckled
glades in beautiful shining pelts, and among the tiny trees flew little bits of
high song and bright blue and yellow color, flying, flying, flying in that
small sky.

 
          
           
"Oh," said the Emperor, closing his eyes, "look at the birds,
look at the birds!"

 
          
H
e lay on his bed and the wind blew
through the window over his ears and over his half-opened mouth so it whispered
to him in his dream. It was like the wind of time hollowing the Delphic caves
to say what must be said of yesterday, today, tomorrow. Sometimes one voice
gave a shout far off away, sometimes two, a dozen, an entire race of men cried
out through his mouth, but their words were always the same:

 
          
“Look,
look, we’ve done it!”

 
          
For
suddenly he, they, one or many, were flung in the dream, and flew. The air
spread in a soft warm sea where he swam, disbelieving.

 
          
“Look,
look! It’s done!”

 
          
But
he didn’t ask the world to watch, he was only shocking his senses wide to see,
taste, smell, touch the air, the wind, the rising moon. He swam along in the
sky. The heavy earth was gone.

 
          
But
wait, he thought, wait now!

 
          
Tonight—what
night is this?

 
          
The
night before, of course. The night before the first flight of a rocket to the
Moon. Beyond this room on the baked desert floor one hundred yards away the
rocket waits for me.

 
          
Well,
does it now? Is there
really
a
rocket?

 
          
Hold
on! he thought, and twisted, turned, sweating, eyes tight, to the wall, the
fierce whisper in his teeth. Be certain-sure! You, now, who
are
you?

 
          
Me?
he thought.
My
name?

 
          
Jedediah
Prentiss, born 1938, college graduate 1959, licensed rocket pilot, 1971.
Jedediah Prentiss … Jedediah Prentiss....

 
          
The
wind whistled his name away! He grabbed for it, yelling.

 
          
Then,
gone quiet, he waited for the wind to bring his name back. He waited a long
while, and there was only silence, and then after a thousand heartbeats he felt
motion.

 
          
The
sky opened out like a soft blue flower. The Aegean Sea stirred soft white fans
through a distant wine-colored surf.

 
          
In
the wash of the waves on the shore, he heard his name.

 
          
Icarus
.

 
          
And
again in a breathing whisper.

 
          
Icarus
.

 
          
Someone
shook his arm and it was his father saying his name and shaking away the night.
And he himself lay small, half-turned to the window and the shore below and the
deep sky, feeling the first wind of morning ruffle the golden feathers bedded
in amber wax lying by the side of his cot. Golden wings stirred half-alive in
his father’s arms, and the faint down on his own shoulders quilled trembling as
he looked at these wings and beyond them to the cliff.

 
          
“Father,
how’s the wind?”

 
          
“Enough
for me, but never enough for you....”

 
          
“Father,
don’t worry. The wings seem clumsy now, but my bones in the feathers will make
them strong, my blood in the wax will make it live!”

 
          
“My
blood, my bones too, remember; each man lends his flesh to his children, asking
that they tend it well. Promise you’ll not go high, Icarus.
The
sun or
my
son, the heat of one, the fever of the other, could melt these
wings. Take care!”

 
          
And
they carried the splendid golden wings into the morning and heard them whisper
in their arms, whisper his name or a name or some name that blew, spun, and
settled like a feather on the soft air.

 
          
Montgolfier
.

 
          
His
hands touched fiery rope, bright linen, stitched thread gone hot as summer. His
hands fed wool and straw to a breathing flame.

 
          
Montgolfier
.

 
          
And
his eye soared up along the swell and sway, the oceanic tug and pull, the
immensely wafted silver pear still filling with the shimmering tidal airs
channeled up from the blaze. Silent as a god tilted slumbering above French
countryside, this delicate linen envelope, this swelling sack of oven-baked air
would soon pluck itself free. Draughting upward to blue worlds of silence, his
mind and his brother’s mind would sail with it, muted, serene among island
clouds where uncivilized lightnings slept. Into that uncharted gulf and abyss
where no bird-song or shout of man could follow, the balloon would hush itself.
So cast adrift, he, Montgolfier, and all men, might hear the unmeasured
breathing of God and the cathedral tread of eternity.

 
          
“Ah
…” He moved, the crowd moved, shadowed by the warm balloon. “Everything’s
ready, everything’s right....”

 
          
Right.
His lips twitched in his dream. Right. Hiss, whisper, flutter, rush. Right.

 
          
From
his father’s hands a toy jumped to the ceiling, whirled in its own wind,
suspended, while he and his brother stared to see it flicker, rustle, whistle,
heard it murmuring their names.

 
          
Wright.

 
          
Whispering:
wind, sky, cloud, space, wing, fly …

 
          
“Wilbur,
Orville? Look, how’s
that?
”

 
          
Ah.
In his sleep, his mouth sighed.

 
          
The
toy helicopter hummed, bumped the ceiling, murmured eagle, raven, sparrow,
robin, hawk; murmured eagle, raven, sparrow, robin, hawk. Whispered eagle,
whispered raven, and at last, fluttering to their hands with a susurration, a
wash of blowing weather from summers yet to come, with a last whir and
exhalation, whispered hawk.

 
          
Dreaming,
he smiled.

 
          
He
saw the clouds rush down the Aegean sky.

 
          
He
felt the balloon sway drunkenly, its great bulk ready for the clear running
wind.

 
          
He
felt the sand hiss up the Atlantic shelves from the soft dunes that might save
him if he, a fledgling bird, should fall. The framework struts hummed and
chorded like a harp, and himself caught up in its music.

 
          
Beyond
this room he felt the primed rocket glide on the desert field, its fire wings
folded, its fire breath kept, held ready to speak for three billion men. In a
moment he would wake and walk slowly out to that rocket.

 
          
And
stand on the rim of the cliff.

 
          
Stand
cool in the shadow of the warm balloon.

 
          
Stand
whipped by tidal sands drummed over Kitty Hawk.

 
          
And
sheathe his boy’s wrists, arms, hands, fingers with golden wings in golden wax.

 
          
And
touch for a final time the captured breath of man, the warm gasp of awe and
wonder siphoned and sewn to lift their dreams.

 
          
And
spark the gasoline engine.

 
          
And
take his father’s hand and wish him well with his own wings, flexed and ready,
here on the precipice.

 
          
Then
whirl and jump.

 
          
Then
cut the cords to free the great balloon.

 
          
Then
rev the motor, prop the plane on air.

 
          
And
crack the switch, to fire the rocket fuse.

 
          
And
together in a single leap, swim, rush, flail, jump, sail, and glide, upturned
to sun, moon, stars, they would go above Atlantic, Mediterranean; over country,
wilderness, city, town; in gaseous silence, riffling feather, rattle-drum
frame, in volcanic eruption, in timid, sputtering roar; in start, jar,
hesitation, then steady ascension, beautifully held, wondrously transported,
they would laugh and cry each his own name to himself. Or shout the names of
others unborn or others long dead and blown away by the wine wind or the salt
wind or the silent hush of balloon wind or the wind of chemical fire. Each
feeling the bright feathers stir and bud deep-buried and thrusting to burst
from their riven shoulder blades! Each leaving behind the echo of their flying,
a sound to encircle, recircle the earth in the winds and speak again in other
years to the sons of the sons of their sons, asleep but hearing the restless
midnight sky.

 
          
Up,
yet farther up, higher, higher! A spring tide, a summer flood, an unending
river of wings!

 
          
A
bell rang softly.

 
          
No,
he whispered, I’ll wake in a moment. Wait …

 
          
The
Aegean slid away below the window, gone; the Atlantic dunes, the French
countryside, dissolved down to New Mexico desert. In his room near his cot
stirred no plumes in golden wax. Outside, no wind-sculpted pear, no trapdrum
butterfly machine. Outside only a rocket, a combustible dream, waiting for the
friction of his hand to set it off.

 
          
In
the last moment of sleep someone asked his name.

 
          
Quietly,
he gave the answer as he had heard it during the hours from
midnight
on.

 
          
“Icarus
Montgolfier Wright.”

 
          
He
repeated it slowly so the questioner might remember the order and spelling down
to the last incredible letter.

 
          
“Icarus
Montgolfier Wright.

 
          
“Born:
nine hundred years before Christ. Grammar school: Paris, 1783, High school,
college:
Kitty Hawk
, 1903. Graduation from Earth to Moon: this
day, God willing,
August 1, 1971
. Death and burial, with luck, on Mars,
summer 1999 in the Year of Our Lord.”

 
          
Then
he let himself drift awake.

 
          
Moments
later, crossing the desert Tarmac, he heard someone shouting again and again
and again.

 
          
And
if no one was there or if someone was there behind him, he could not tell. And
whether it was one voice or many, young or old, near or very far away, rising
or falling, whispering or shouting to him all three of his brave new names, he
could not tell, either. He did not turn to see.

 
          
For
the wind was slowly rising and he let it take hold and blow him all the rest of
the way across the desert to the rocket which stood waiting there.