Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2

‘Far nearer than you think.’

She took a step, looked down, and gasped with delight. ‘Look, oh, look. I can move!’

‘Yes.’

‘What was it you said, boys walk all night, miles and miles?’

‘Yes.’

‘I could go back in, but I can’t sleep now. I must walk, too.’

‘Do that,’ he said gently.

‘But where shall I go?’

‘Why,’ he said, and he suddenly knew. He knew where to send her and was suddenly angry with himself for knowing, angry with her for asking. A burst of jealousy welled in him. He wanted to race down the street to a certain house where a certain young man lived in another year and break the window, burn the roof. And yet, oh, yet, if he did that!?

‘Yes?’ she said, for he had kept her waiting.

Now, he thought, you must tell her. There’s no escape.

For if you don’t tell her, angry fool, you yourself will never be born.

A wild laugh burst from his mouth, a laugh that accepted the entire night and time and all his crazed thinking.

‘So you want to know where to go?’ he said at last.

‘Oh, yes!’

He nodded his head. ‘Up to that corner, four blocks to the right, one block to the left.’

She repeated it quickly. ‘And the final number?!’

‘Eleven Green Park.’

‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’ She ran a few steps, then stopped, bewildered. Her hands were helpless at her throat. Her mouth trembled. ‘Silly. I hate to leave.’

‘Why?’

‘Why, because … I’m afraid I’ll never see you again!’

‘You will. Three years from now.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I won’t look quite the same. But it’ll be me. And you’ll know me forever.’

‘Oh, I’m glad for that. Your face is familiar. I somehow know you well.’

She began to walk slowly, looking over at him as he stood near the porch of the house.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You’ve saved my life.’

‘And my own along with it.’

The shadows of a tree fell across her face, touched her cheeks, moved in her eyes.

‘Oh, Lord! Girls lie in bed nights listing the names for their future children. Silly. Joe. John. Christopher. Samuel. Stephen. And right now, Will.’ She touched the gentle rise of her stomach, then lifted her hand out halfway to point to him in the night. ‘Is your name Will?’

‘Yes.’

Tears absolutely burst from her eyes.

He wept with her.

‘Oh, that’s fine, fine,’ she said at last. ‘I can go now. I won’t be out here on the lawn anymore. Thank God, thank you. Good night.’

She went away into the shadows across the lawn and along the sidewalk down the street. At the far corner he saw her turn and wave and walk away.

‘Good night,’ he said quietly.

I am not born yet, he thought, or she has been dead many years, which is it? which?

The moon sailed into clouds.

The motion touched him to step, walk, go up the porch stairs, wait, look out at the lawn, go inside, shut the door.

A wind shook the trees.

The moon came out again and looked upon a lawn where two sets of footprints, one going one way, one going another in the dew, slowly, slowly, as the night continued, vanished.

By the time the moon had gone down the sky there was only an empty lawn and no sign, and much dew.

The great town clock struck six in the morning. Fire showed in the east. A cock crowed.

February 1999: Ylla (#ulink_823aa82b-1d97-5cc5-997c-c5a7b7979390)

They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.

Mr and Mrs K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years, and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.

Mr and Mrs K were not old. They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking room.

They were not happy now.

This morning Mrs K stood between the pillars, listening to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly run on the horizon.

Something was going to happen.