Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (5 page)

 
          
 
"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 ...

 
          
I

 
          
H
e 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.