Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (9 page)

 
          
“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.