Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (29 page)

 
          
 
"Yes," he said.

 
          
 
"Well," she said, watching him
closely. "Don't ever do that again. Now—what'll you have?"

 
          
 
He picked up the menu and started to read it
and stopped suddenly.

 
          
 
"What's wrong?" asked his wife.

 
          
 
He turned his head and shut his eyes for a
moment.

 
          
 
“Listen." She listened.

 
          
 
"I don't hear anything," she said.
"Don't you?" "No. What is it?"

 
          
 
"Just the tide," he said after a
while, sitting there, his eyes still shut. "Just the tide coming in."

 
          
 
The night blew m 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 bum 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 beyond 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.

(or: The Sovereign Remedy Revealed!)

 
          
 
"Send for some leeches; bleed her,"
said Doctor Gimp.

 
          
 
"She has no blood left!" cried Mrs.
Wilkes. "Oh, Doctor, what ails our Camillia?"

 
          
 
"She's not right."

 
          
 
"Yes, yes?"

 
          
 
"She's poorly." The good doctor
scowled.

 
          
 
"Go on, go on!"

 
          
 
"She's a fluttering candle flame, no
doubt."

 
          
 
"Ah, Doctor Gimp," protested Mr.
Wilkes. "You but tell us as you go out what we told you when you came
in!"

 
          
 
"No, more! Give her these pills at dawn,
high noon, and sunset. A sovereign remedy!"

 
          
 
"Damn, she's stuped with sovereign
remedies now!"

 
          
 
"Tut-tut! That's a shilling as I pass
downstairs, sir."

 
          
 
"Go down and send the Devil up!" Mr.
Wilkes shoved a coin in the good doctor's hand.

 
          
 
Whereupon the physician, wheezing, taking
snuff, sneezing, stamped down into the swarming streets of London on a sloppy
mom in the spring of 1762.

 
          
 
Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes turned to the bed where their
sweet Camillia lay pale, thin, yes, but far from unlovely, with large wet lilac
eyes, her hair a creek of gold upon her pillow.

 
          
 
"Oh," she almost wept, "What's
to become of me? Since the start of spring, three weeks, I've been a ghost in
my mirror; I frighten me. To think I'll die without seeing my twentieth
birthday."

 
          
 
"Child," said the mother.
"Where do you hurt?"

 
          
 
"My arms. My legs. My bosom. My head. How
many doctors —six?—have turned me like a beef on a spit. No more. Please, let
me pass away untouched."

 
          
 
"What a ghastly, what a mysterious
illness," said the mother. "Oh, do something, Mr. Wilkes!"

 
          
 
"What?" asked Mr. Wilkes angrily.
"She won't have the physician, the apothecary, or the priest!—and Amen to
that!— they've wrung me dry! Shall I run in the street then and bring the
Dustman up?"

 
          
 
"Yes," said a voice.

 
          
 
"What!" All three turned to stare.

 
          
 
They had quite forgotten her younger brother,
Jamie, who stood picking his teeth at a far window, gazing serenely down into
the drizzle and the loud rumbling of the town.

 
          
 
"Four hundred years ago," he said
serenely, "it was tried, it worked. Don't bring the Dustman up, no, no.
But let us hoist Camillia, cot and all, maneuver her downstairs, and set her up
outside our door."

 
          
 
"Why? What for?"

 
          
 
"In a single hour"—Jamie's eyes
jumped, counting—"a thousand folk rush by our gate. In one day, twenty
thousand people run, hobble, or ride by. Each might eye my swooning sister,
each count her teeth, pull her ear lobes, and all, all, mind you, would have a
sovereign remedy to offer! One of them would just have to be right!"

 
          
 
"Ah," said Mr. Wilkes, stunned.

 
          
 
"Father!" said Jamie breathlessly.
"Have you ever known one single man who didn't think he personally wrote
Materia Medica? This green ointment for sour throat, that ox-salve for miasma
or bloat? Right now, ten thousand self-appointed apothecaries sneak off down
there, their wisdom lost to us!"

 
          
 
"Jamie boy, you're incredible!"

 
          
 
"Cease!" said Mrs. Wilkes. "No
daughter of mine will be put on display in this or any street—"

 
          
 
"Fie, woman!" said Mr. Wilkes.
"Camillia melts like snow and you hesitate to move her from this hot room?
Come, Jamie, lift the bed!"

 
          
 
"Camillia?" Mrs. Wilkes turned to
her daughter.

 
          
 
"I may as well die in the open,"
said Camillia, "where a cool breeze might stir my locks as I . . ."

 
          
 
"Bosh!" said the father.
"You'll not die. Jamie, heave! Ha! There! Out of the way, wife! Up, boy,
higher!"

 
          
 
"Oh," cried Camillia faintly.
"I fly, I fly . . . !"

 
          
 
Quite suddenly a blue sky opened over London.
The population, surprised by the weather, hurried out into the streets,
panicking for something to see, to do, to buy. Blind men sang, dogs jigged,
clowns shuffled and tumbled, children challenged games and threw balls as if it
were carnival time.

 
          
 
Down into all this, tottering, their veins
bursting from their brows, Jamie and Mr. Wilkes carried Camillia like a lady
Pope sailing high in her sedan-chair cot, eyes clenched shut, praying.

 
          
 
"Careful!" screamed Mrs. Wilkes.
"Ah, she's dead! No. There. Put her down. Easy . . ."

 
          
 
And at last the bed was tilted against the
house front so that the River of Humanity surging by could see Camillia, a
large pale Bartolemy Doll put out like a prize in the sun.

 
          
 
"Fetch a quill, ink, paper, lad,"
said the father. "I'll make notes as to symptoms spoken of and remedies
offered this day. Tonight we'll average them out. Now—"

 
          
 
But already a man in the passing crowd had
fixed Camillia with a sharp eye.

 
          
 
"She's sick!" he said.

 
          
 
"Ah," said Mr. Wilkes, gleefully.
"It begins. The quill, boy. There. Go on, sir!"

 
          
 
"She's not well." The man scowled.
"She does poorly."

 
          
 
"Does poorly—" Mr. Wilkes wrote,
then froze. "Su:?" He looked up suspiciously. "Are you a
physician?"

 
          
 
"I am, sir."

 
          
 
"I thought I knew the words! Jamie, take
my cane, drive him off! Go, sir, be gone!"

 
          
 
But the man hastened off, cursing, mightily
exasperated.

 
          
 
"She's not well, she does poorly . . .
pah!" mimicked Mr. Wilkes, but stopped. For now a woman, tall and gaunt as
a specter fresh risen from the tomb, was pointing a finger at Camillia Wilkes.

 
          
 
“Vapors," she intoned.

 
          
 
''Vapors," wrote Mr. Wilkes, pleased.

 
          
 
"Lung-flux," chanted the woman.

 
          
 
"Lung-flux!" Mr. Wilkes wrote,
beaming. "Now, that's more like it!"

 
          
 
"A medicine for melancholy is
needed," said the woman palely. "Be there mummy ground to medicine in
your house? The best mummies are: Egyptian, Arabian, Hirasphatos, Libyan, all
of great use in magnetic disorders. Ask for me, the Gypsy, at the Flodden Road.
I sell stone parsley, male frankincense—"

 
          
 
"Flodden Road, stone parsley—slower,
woman!"

 
          
 
"Opobalsam, pontic valerian—"

 
          
 
"Wait, woman! Opobalsam, yes! Jamie, stop
her!"

 
          
 
But the woman, naming medicines, glided on.

 
          
 
A girl, no more than seventeen, walked up now
and stared at Camillia Wilkes.

 
          
 
"She—"

 
          
 
"One moment!" Mr. Wilkes scribbled
feverishly, "—magnetic disorders—pontic valerian—drat! Well, young girl,
now. What do you see in my daughter's face? You fix her with your gaze, you
hardly breathe. So?"

 
          
 
"She—" The strange girl searched
deep iuto Camillia's eyes, flushed, and stammered. "She suffers from . . .
from . . ."

 
          
 
"Spit it out!"

 
          
 
"She . . . she . . . oh!"

 
          
 
And the girl, with a last look of deepest
sympathy, darted off through the crowd.

 
          
 
"Silly girl!"

 
          
 
"No, Papa," murmured Camillia, eyes
wide. **Not silly. She saw. She knew. Oh, Jamie, run fetch her, make her
tell!"

 
          
 
"No, she offered nothing! Whereas, the
Gypsy, see her list!"

 
          
 
"I know it, Papa." Camillia, paler,
shut her eyes.

 
          
 
Someone cleared his throat.

 
          
 
A butcher, his apron a scarlet battleground,
stood bristling his fierce mustaches there.

 
          
 
"I have seen cows with this look,"
he said. "I have saved them with brandy and three new eggs. In winter I
have saved myself with the same elixir—"

 
          
 
"My daughter is no cow, sir!" Mr.
Wilkes threw down his quill. "Nor is she a butcher, nor is it January!
Step back, sir, others wait!"

 
          
 
And indeed, now a vast crowd clamored, drawn by
the others, aching to advise their favorite swig, recommend some country site
where it rained less and shone more sun than in all England or your South of
France. Old men and women, especial doctors as all the aged are, clashed by
each other in bristles of canes, in phalanxes of crutches and hobble sticks.

 
          
 
"Back!" cried Mrs. Wilkes, alarmed.
"They'll crush my daughter like a spring berry!"

 
          
 
"Stand off!" Jamie seized canes and
crutches and threw them over the mob, which turned on itself to go seek their
missing members.

 
          
 
"Father, I fail, I fail," gasped
Camillia.

 
          
 
"Father!" cried Jamie. "There's
but one way to stop this riot! Charge them! Make them pay to give us their mind
on this ailment!"

 
          
 
"Jamie, you are my son! Quick, boy, paint
a sign! Listen, people! Tuppence! Queue up please, a line! Tuppence to speak
your piece! Get your money out, yes! That's it. You, sir. You, madame. And you,
sir. Now, my quill! Begin!"

 
          
 
The mob boiled in like a dark sea.

 
          
 
Camillia opened one eye and swooned again.

 
          
 
Sundown, the streets almost empty, only a few
strollers now. Camillia moth=fluttered her eyelids at a familiar clinking
jingle.

 
          
 
"Three hundred and ninety-nine, four
hundred pennies!" Mr. Wilkes counted the last money into a bag held by his
grinning son. "There!"

 
          
 
"It will buy me a fine black funeral
coach," said the pale girl.