The Stories of Ray Bradbury (31 page)

Pickard began to laugh quietly.

‘Shut up, Pickard!’

‘Ye gods, look what’s here for us—no food, no sun, nothing. The Venusians—they did it! Of course!’

Simmons nodded, with the rain funneling down on his face. The water ran in his silvered hair and on his white eyebrows. ‘Every once in a while the Venusians come up out of the sea and attack a Sun Dome. They know if they ruin the Sun Domes they can ruin us.’

‘But aren’t the Sun Domes protected with guns?’

‘Sure.’ Simmons stepped aside to a place that was relatively dry. ‘But it’s been five years since the Venusians tried anything. Defense relaxes. They caught this Dome unaware.’

‘Where are the bodies?’

‘The Venusians took them all down into the sea. I hear they have a delightful way of drowning you. It takes about eight hours to drown the way they work it. Really delightful.’

‘I bet there isn’t any food here at all.’ Pickard laughed.

The lieutenant frowned at him, nodded at him so Simmons could see. Simmons shook his head and went back to a room at one side of the oval chamber. The kitchen was strewn with soggy loaves of bread, and meat that had grown a faint green fur. Rain came through a hundred holes in the kitchen roof.

‘Brilliant.’ The lieutenant glanced up at the holes. ‘I don’t suppose we can plug up all those holes and get snug here.’

‘Without food, sir?’ Simmons snorted. ‘I notice the sun machine’s torn apart. Our best bet is to make our way to the next Sun Dome. How far is that from here?’

‘Not far. As I recall, they built two rather close together here. Perhaps if we waited here, a rescue mission from the other might—’

‘It’s probably been here and gone already, some days ago. They’ll send
a crew to repair this place in about six months, when they get the money from Congress. I don’t think we’d better wait.’

‘All right then, we’ll eat what’s left of our rations and get on to the next Dome.’

Pickard said, ‘If only the rain wouldn’t hit my head, just for a few minutes. If I could only remember what it’s like not to be bothered.’ He put his hands on his skull and held it tight. ‘I remember when I was in school a bully used to sit in back of me and pinch me and pinch me and pinch me every five minutes, all day long. He did that for weeks and months. My arms were sore and black and blue all the time. And I thought I’d go crazy from being pinched. One day I must have gone a little mad from being hurt and hurt, and I turned around and took a metal trisquare I used in mechanical drawing and I almost killed that bastard. I almost cut his lousy head off. I almost took his eye out before they dragged me out of the room, and I kept yelling, “Why don’t he leave me alone? why don’t he leave me alone?” Brother!’ His hands clenched the bone of his head, shaking, tightening, his eyes shut. ‘But what do I do
now
? Who do I hit, who do I tell to lay off, stop bothering me, this damn rain, like the pinching, always
on
you, that’s all you hear, that’s all you feel!’

‘We’ll be at the other Sun Dome by four this afternoon.’

‘Sun Dome? Look at this one! What if all the Sun Domes on Venus are gone? What then? What if there are holes in all the ceilings, and the rain coming in!’

‘We’ll have to chance it.’

‘I’m tired of chancing it. All I want is a roof and some quiet. I want to be alone.’

‘That’s only eight hours off, if you hold on.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll hold on all right.’ And Pickard laughed, not looking at them.

‘Let’s eat,’ said Simmons, watching him.

They set off down the coast, southward again. After four hours they had to cut inland to go around a river that was a mile wide and so swift it was not navigable by boat. They had to walk inland six miles to a place where the river boiled out of the earth, suddenly, like a mortal wound. In the rain, they walked on solid ground and returned to the sea.

‘I’ve got to sleep,’ said Pickard at last. He slumped. ‘Haven’t slept in four weeks. Tried, but couldn’t. Sleep here.’

The sky was getting darker. The night of Venus was setting in and it was so completely black that it was dangerous to move. Simmons and the lieutenant fell to their knees also, and the lieutenant said. ‘All right, we’ll see what we can do. We’ve tried it before, but I don’t know. Sleep doesn’t seem one of the things you can get in this weather.’

They lay out full, propping their heads up so the water wouldn’t come to their mouths, and they closed their eyes. The lieutenant twitched.

He did not sleep.

There were things that crawled on his skin. Things grew upon him in layers. Drops fell and touched other drops and they became streams that trickled over his body, and while these moved down his flesh, the small growths of the forest took root in his clothing. He felt the ivy cling and make a second garment over him; he felt the small flowers bud and open and petal away, and still the rain pattered on his body and on his head. In the luminous night—for the vegetation glowed in the darkness—he could see the other two men outlined, like logs that had fallen and taken upon themselves velvet coverings of grass and flowers. The rain hit his face. He covered his face with his hands. The rain hit his neck. He turned over on his stomach in the mud, on the rubbery plants, and the rain hit his back and hit his legs.

Suddenly he leaped up and began to brush the water from himself. A thousand hands were touching him and he no longer wanted to be touched. He no longer could stand being touched. He floundered and struck something else and knew that it was Simmons, standing up in the rain, sneezing moisture, coughing and choking. And then Pickard was up, shouting, running about.

‘Wait a minute, Pickard!’

‘Stop it, stop it!’ Pickard screamed. He fired off his gun six times at the night sky. In the flashes of powdery illumination they could see armies of raindrops, suspended as in a vast motionless amber, for an instant, hesitating as if shocked by the explosion, fifteen billion droplets, fifteen billion tears, fifteen billion ornaments, jewels standing out against a white velvet viewing board. And then, with the light gone, the drops which had waited to have their pictures taken, which had suspended their downward rush, fell upon them, stinging, in an insect cloud of coldness and pain.

‘Stop it! Stop it!’

‘Pickard!’

But Pickard was only standing now, alone. When the lieutenant switched on a small hand lamp and played it over Pickard’s wet face, the eyes of the man were dilated, and his mouth was open, his face turned up, so the water hit and splashed on his tongue, and hit and drowned the wide eyes, and bubbled in a whispering froth on the nostrils.

‘Pickard!’

The man would not reply. He simply stood there for a long while with the bubbles of rain breaking out in his whitened hair and manacles of rain jewels dripping from his wrists and neck.

‘Pickard! We’re leaving. We’re going on. Follow us.’

The rain dripped from Pickard’s ears.

‘Do you hear me, Pickard!’

It was like shouting down a well.

‘Pickard!’

‘Leave him alone,’ said Simmons.

‘We can’t go on without him.’

‘What’ll we do, carry him?’ Simmons spat. ‘He’s no good to us or himself. You know what he’ll do? He’ll just stand here and drown.’

‘What?’

‘You ought to know that by now. Don’t you know the story? He’ll just stand here with his head up and let the rain come in his nostrils and his mouth. He’ll breathe the water.’

‘No.’

‘That’s how they found General Mendt that time. Sitting on a rock with his head back, breathing the rain. His lungs were full of water.’

The lieutenant turned the light back to the unblinking face. Pickard’s nostrils gave off a tiny whispering wet sound.

‘Pickard!’ The lieutenant slapped the face.

‘He can’t even feel you,’ said Simmons. ‘A few days in this rain and you don’t have any face or any legs or hands.’

The lieutenant looked at his own hand in horror. He could no longer feel it.

‘But we can’t leave Pickard here.’

‘I’ll show you what we can do.’ Simmons fired his gun.

Pickard fell into the raining earth.

Simmons said, ‘Don’t move, Lieutenant. I’ve got my gun ready for you too. Think it over; he would only have stood or sat there and drowned. It’s quicker this way.’

The lieutenant blinked at the body. ‘But you killed him.’

‘Yes, because he’d have killed us by being a burden. You saw his face. Insane.’

After a moment the lieutenant nodded. ‘All right.’

They walked off into the rain.

It was dark and their hand lamps threw a beam that pierced the rain for only a few feet. After a half hour they had to stop and sit through the rest of the night, aching with hunger, waiting for the dawn to come; when it did come it was gray and continually raining as before, and they began to walk again.

‘We’ve miscalculated,’ said Simmons.

‘No. Another hour.’

‘Speak louder. I can’t hear you.’ Simmons stopped and smiled. ‘By Christ,’ he said, and touched his ears. ‘My ears. They’ve gone out on me. All the rain pouring finally numbed me right down to the bone.’

‘Can’t you hear anything?’ said the lieutenant.

‘What?’ Simmons’s eyes were puzzled.

‘Nothing. Come on.’

‘I think I’ll wait here. You go on ahead.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘I can’t hear you. You go on. I’m tired. I don’t think the Sun Dome is down this way. And, if it is, it’s probably got holes in the roof, like the last one. I think I’ll just sit here.’

‘Get up from there!’

‘So long, Lieutenant.’

‘You can’t give up now.’

‘I’ve got a gun here that says I’m staying, I just don’t give a damn any more. I’m not crazy yet, but I’m the next thing to it. I don’t want to go out that way. As soon as you get out of sight I’m going to use this gun on myself.’

‘Simmons!’

‘You said my name, I can read that much off your lips.’

‘Simmons.’

‘Look, it’s a matter of time. Either I die now or in a few hours. Wait’ll you get to that next Dome, if you ever get there, and find rain coming in through the roof. Won’t that be nice?’

The lieutenant waited and then splashed off in the rain. He turned and called back once, but Simmons was only sitting there with the gun in his hands, waiting for him to get out of sight. He shook his head and waved the lieutenant on.

The lieutenant didn’t even hear the sound of the gun.

He began to eat the flowers as he walked. They stayed down for a time, and weren’t poisonous; neither were they particularly sustaining, and he vomited them up, sickly, a minute or so later.

Once he took some leaves and tried to make himself a hat, but he had tried that before; the rain melted the leaves from his head. Once picked, the vegetation rotted quickly and fell away into gray masses in his fingers.

‘Another five minutes,’ he told himself. ‘Another five minutes and then I’ll walk into the sea and keep walking. We weren’t made for this; no Earth Man was or ever will be able to take it. Your nerves, your nerves.’

He floundered his way through a sea of slush and foliage and came to a small hill.

At a distance there was a faint yellow smudge in the cold veils of water.

The next Sun Dome.

Through the trees, a long round yellow building, far away. For a moment he only stood, swaying, looking at it.

He began to run and then he slowed down, for he was afraid. He didn’t call out. What if it’s the same one? What if it’s the dead Sun Dome, with no sun in it? he thought.

He slipped and fell. Lie here, he thought; it’s the wrong one. Lie here. It’s no use. Drink all you want.

But he managed to climb to his feet again and crossed several creeks, and the yellow light grew very bright, and he began to run again, his feet crashing into mirrors and glass, his arms flailing at diamonds and precious stones.

He stood before the yellow door. The printed letters over it said THE SUN DOME. He put his numb hand up to feel it. Then he twisted the doorknob and stumbled in.

He stood for a moment looking about. Behind him the rain whirled at the door. Ahead of him, upon a low table, stood a silver pot of hot chocolate, steaming, and a cup, full, with a marshmallow in it. And beside that, on another tray, stood thick sandwiches of rich chicken meat and fresh-cut tomatoes and green onions. And on a rod just before his eyes was a great thick green Turkish towel, and a bin in which to throw wet clothes, and, to his right, a small cubicle in which heat rays might dry you instantly. And upon a chair, a fresh change of uniform, waiting for anyone—himself, or any lost one—to make use of it. And farther over, coffee in steaming copper urns, and a phonograph from which music was playing quietly, and books bound in red and brown leather. And near the books a cot, a soft deep cot upon which one might lie, exposed and bare, to drink in the rays of the one great bright thing which dominated the long room.

He put his hands to his eyes. He saw other men moving toward him, but said nothing to them. He waited, and opened his eyes, and looked. The water from his uniform pooled at his feet, and he felt it drying from his hair and his face and his chest and his arms and his legs.

He was looking at the sun.

It hung in the center of the room, large and yellow and warm. It made not a sound, and there was no sound in the room. The door was shut and the rain only a memory to his tingling body. The sun hung very high in the blue sky of the room, warm, hot, yellow, and very fine.

He walked forward, tearing off his clothes as he went.

The morning the great fire started, nobody in the house could put it out. It was Mother’s niece, Marianne, living with us while her parents were in Europe, who was all aflame. So nobody could smash the little window in the red box at the corner and pull the trigger to bring the gushing hoses and the hatted firemen. Blazing like so much ignited cellophane, Marianne came downstairs, plumped herself with a loud cry or moan at the breakfast table, and refused to eat enough to fill a tooth cavity.

Mother and Father moved away, the warmth in the room being excessive.

‘Good morning, Marianne.’

‘What?’ Marianne looked beyond people and spoke vaguely. ‘Oh, good morning.’

‘Did you sleep well last night, Marianne?’

But they knew she hadn’t slept. Mother gave Marianne a glass of water to drink, and everyone wondered if it would evaporate in her hand. Grandma, from her table chair, surveyed Marianne’s fevered eyes. ‘You’re sick, but it’s no microbe,’ she said. ‘They couldn’t find it under a microscope.’

‘What?’ said Marianne.

‘Love is godmother to stupidity,’ said Father detachedly.

‘She’ll be all right,’ Mother said to Father. ‘Girls only seem stupid because when they’re in love they can’t hear.’

‘It affects the semicircular canals,’ said Father. ‘Making many girls fall right into a fellow’s arms. I
know
. I was almost crushed to death once by a falling woman, and let me tell you—’

‘Hush.’ Mother frowned, looking at Marianne.

‘She can’t hear what we’re saying: she’s cataleptic right now.’

‘He’s coming to pick her up this morning,’ whispered Mother to Father, as if Marianne wasn’t even in the room. ‘They’re going riding in his jalopy.’

Father patted his mouth with a napkin. ‘Was our daughter like this,
Mama?’ he wanted to know. ‘She’s been married and gone so long, I’ve forgotten. I don’t recall she was so foolish. One would never know a girl had an ounce of sense at a time like this. That’s what fools a man. He says, Oh, what a lovely brainless girl, she loves me, I think I’ll marry her. He marries her and wakes up one morning and all the dreaminess is gone out of her and her intellect has returned, unpacked, and is hanging up undies all about the house. The man begins running into ropes and lines. He finds himself on a little desert isle, a little living room alone in the midst of a universe, with a honeycomb that has turned into a bear trap, with a butterfly metamorphosed into a wasp. He then immediately takes up a hobby: stamp collecting, lodge meetings, or—’

‘How you
do
run on,’ cried Mother. ‘Marianne, tell us about this young man. What was his name again? Was it Isak Van Pelt?’

‘What? Oh—Isak, yes.’ Marianne had been roving about her bed all night, sometimes flipping poetry books and reading incredible lines, sometimes lying flat on her back, sometimes on her tummy looking out at dreaming moonlit country. The smell of jasmine had touched the room all night and the excessive warmth of early spring (the thermometer read fifty-five degrees) had kept her awake. She looked like a dying moth, if anyone had peeked through the keyhole.

This morning she had clapped her hands over her head in the mirror and come to breakfast, remembering just in time to put on a dress.

Grandma laughed quietly all during breakfast. Finally she said, ‘You must eat, child, you
must
.’ So Marianne played with her toast and got half a piece down. Just then there was a loud honk outside. That was Isak! In his jalopy!

‘Whoop!’ cried Marianne, and ran upstairs quickly.

The young Isak Van Pelt was brought in and introduced around.

When Marianne was finally gone, Father sat down, wiping his forehead. ‘I don’t know. This is too much.’

‘You were the one who suggested she start going out,’ said Mother.

‘And I’m sorry I suggested it,’ he said. ‘But she’s been visiting us for six months now, and six more months to go. I thought if she met some nice young man—’

‘And they were married,’ husked Grandma darkly, ‘why, Marianne might move out almost immediately—is
that
it?’

‘Well,’ said Father.

‘Well,’ said Grandma.

‘But now it’s worse than before,’ said Father. ‘She floats around singing with her eyes shut, playing those infernal love records and talking to herself. A man can stand so much. She’s getting so she laughs all the time, too. Do eighteen-year-old girls often wind up in the booby hatch?’

‘He seems a nice young man,’ said Mother.

‘Yes, we can always pray for that,’ said Father, taking out a little shot glass. ‘Here’s to an early marriage.’

The second morning Marianne was out of the house like a fireball when first she heard the jalopy horn. There was no time for the young man even to come to the door. Only Grandma saw them roar off together, from the parlor window.

‘She almost knocked me down.’ Father brushed his mustache. ‘What’s
that
? Brained eggs? Well.’

In the afternoon Marianne, home again, drifted about the living room to the phonograph records. The needle hiss filled the house. She played ‘That Old Black Magic’ twenty-one times, going ‘la la la’ as she swam with her eyes closed in the room.

‘I’m afraid to go in my own parlor,’ said Father. ‘I retired from business to smoke cigars and enjoy living, not to have a limp relative humming about under the parlor chandelier.’

‘Hush,’ said Mother.

‘This is a crisis,’ announced Father, ‘in my life. After all, she’s just visiting.’

‘You know how visiting girls are. Away from home they think they’re in Paris, France. She’ll be gone in October. It’s not so dreadful.’

‘Let’s see,’ figured Father slowly. ‘I’ll have been buried just about one hundred and thirty days out at Green Lawn Cemetery by then.’ He got up and threw his paper down into a little white tent on the floor. ‘By George, Mother, I’m talking to her right
now
!’

He went and stood in the parlor door, peering through it at the waltzing Marianne. ‘La,’ she sang to the music.

Clearing his throat, he stepped through.

‘Marianne,’ he said.

‘“That old black magic…”’ sang Marianne. ‘Yes?’

He watched her hands swinging in the air. She gave him a sudden fiery look as she danced by.

‘I want to talk to you.’ He straightened his tie.

‘Dah dum dee dum dum dee dum dee dum dum,’ she sang.

‘Did you
hear
me?’ he demanded.

‘He’s
so
nice,’ she said.

‘Evidently.’

‘Do you know, he bows and opens doors like a doorman and plays a trumpet like Harry James and brought me daisies this morning?’

‘I wouldn’t doubt.’

‘His eyes are blue.’ She looked at the ceiling.

He could find nothing at all on the ceiling to look at.

She kept looking, as she danced, at the ceiling as he came over and stood near her, looking up, but there wasn’t a rain spot or a settling crack there, and he sighed. ‘Marianne.’

‘And we ate lobster at that river café.’

‘Lobster. I know, but we don’t want you breaking down, getting weak. One day, tomorrow, you must stay home and help your aunt Math make her doilies—’

‘Yes, sir.’ She dreamed around the room with her wings out.

‘Did you
hear
me?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes.’ Her eyes shut. ‘Oh yes, yes.’ Her skirts whished around. ‘Uncle,’ she said, her head back, lolling.

‘You’ll help your aunt with her doilies?’ he cried.

‘—with her doilies,’ she murmured.

‘There!’ He sat down in the kitchen, plucking up the paper. ‘I guess
I
told her!’

But next morning he was on the edge of his bed when he heard the hotrod’s thunderous muffler and heard Marianne fall downstairs, linger two seconds in the dining room for breakfast, hesitate by the bathroom long enough to consider whether she would be sick, and then the slam of the front door, the sound of the jalopy banging down the street, two people singing off-key in it.

Father put his head in his hands. ‘Doilies,’ he said.

‘What?’ said Mother.

‘Dooley’s,’ said Father. ‘I’m going down to Dooley’s for a morning visit.’

‘But Dooley’s isn’t open until ten.’

‘I’ll wait,’ decided Father, eyes shut.

That night and seven other wild nights the porch swing sang a little creaking song, back and forth, back and forth. Father, hiding in the living room, could be seen in fierce relief whenever he drafted his ten-cent cigar and the cherry light illumined his immensely tragic face. The porch swing creaked. He waited for another creak. He heard little butterfly-soft sounds from outside, little palpitations of laughter and sweet nothings in small ears. ‘My porch,’ said Father. ‘My swing,’ he whispered to his cigar, looking at it. ‘My house.’ He listened for another creak. ‘My God,’ he said.

He went to the tool shed and appeared on the dark porch with a shiny oil can. ‘No, don’t get up. Don’t bother. There, and there.’ He oiled the swing joints. It was dark. He couldn’t see Marianne; he could smell her. The perfume almost knocked him off into the rosebush. He couldn’t see her gentleman friend, either. ‘Good night,’ he said. He went in and sat down and there was no more creaking. Now all he could hear was something that sounded like the mothlike flutter of Marianne’s heart.

‘He must be very nice,’ said Mother in the kitchen door, wiping a dinner dish.

‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ whispered Father. ‘That’s why I let them have the porch every night!’

‘So many days in a row,’ said Mother. ‘A girl doesn’t go with a nice young man that many times unless he’s serious.’

‘Maybe he’ll propose tonight!’ was Father’s happy thought.

‘Hardly so soon. And she is so young.’

‘Still,’ he ruminated, ‘it might happen. It’s
got
to happen, by the Lord Harry.’

Grandma chuckled from her corner easy chair. It sounded like someone turning the pages of an ancient book.

‘What’s so funny?’ said Father.

‘Wait and see,’ said Grandma. ‘Tomorrow.’

Father stared at the dark, but Grandma would say no more.

‘Well, well,’ said Father at breakfast. He surveyed his eggs with a kindly, paternal eye. ‘Well, well, by gosh, last night, on the porch, there was
more whispering
. What’s his name? Isak? Well, now, if I’m any judge at all, I think he proposed to Marianne last night; yes, I’m positive of it!’

‘It would be nice,’ said Mother. ‘A spring marriage. But it’s so
soon
.’

‘Look,’ said Father with full-mouthed logic. ‘Marianne’s the kind of girl who marries quick and young. We can’t stand in her way, can we?’

‘For once I think you’re right,’ said Mother. ‘A marriage would be fine. Spring flowers, and Marianne looking nice in that gown I saw at Haydecker’s last week.’

They all peered anxiously at the stairs, waiting for Marianne to appear.

‘Pardon me,’ rasped Grandma, sighting up from her morning toast. ‘But I wouldn’t talk of getting rid of Marianne just yet if I were you.’

‘And why not?’

‘Because.’

‘Because why?’

‘I hate to spoil your plans,’ rustled Grandma, chuckling. She gestured with her little vinegary head. ‘But while you people were worrying about getting Marianne married, I’ve been keeping tabs on her. Seven days now I’ve been watching this young fellow each day he came in his car and honked his horn outside. He must be an actor or a quick-change artist or something.’

‘What?’ asked Father.

‘Yep,’ said Grandma. ‘Because one day he was a young blond fellow, and next day he was a tall dark fellow, and Wednesday he was a chap with a brown mustache, and Thursday he had wavy red hair, and Friday he was shorter, with a Chevrolet stripped down instead of a Ford.’

Mother and Father sat for a moment as if hit with a hammer right behind the left ear.

At last Father, his face exploding with color, shouted, ‘Do you mean to
say
! You
sat
there, woman, you say: all those men, and you—’

‘You were always hiding,’ snapped Grandma. ‘So you wouldn’t spoil things. If you’d come out in the open you’d have seen the same as I. I never said a word. She’ll simmer down. It’s just her time of life. Every woman goes through it. It’s hard, but they can survive. A new man every day does wonders for a girl’s ego!’

‘You, you, you, you,
you
!’ Father choked on it, eyes wild, throat gorged too big for his collar. He fell back in his chair, exhausted. Mother sat, stunned.

‘Good morning, everyone!’ Marianne raced downstairs and popped into a chair. Father stared at her.

‘You, you, you, you, you,’ he accused Grandma.

I shall run down the street shouting, thought Father wildly, and break the fire-alarm window and pull the lever and bring the fire engines and the hoses. Or perhaps there will be a late snowstorm and I shall set Marianne out in it to cool.

He did neither. The heat in the room being excessive, according to the wall calendar, everyone moved out onto the cool porch while Marianne sat looking at her orange juice.