Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (2 page)

 
          
 
The Fog Horn blew.

 
          
 
"Last year," said McDunn, "that
creature swam round and round, round and round, all night. Not coming too near,
puzzled,

 
          
 
I'd say. Afraid, maybe. And a bit angry after
coming all this way. But the next day, unexpectedly, the fog lifted, the sun
came out fresh, the sky was as blue as a painting. And the monster swam on away
from the heat and the silence and didn't come back. I suppose it's been
brooding on it for a year now, thinking it over from every which way."

 
          
 
The monster was only a hundred yards off now,
it and the Fog Horn crying at each other. As the lights hit them, the monster's
eyes were fire and ice, fire and ice.

 
          
 
"That's life for you," said McDunn.
"Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone
loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want
to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more."

 
          
 
The monster was rushing at the lighthouse.

 
          
 
The Fog Horn blew.

 
          
 
"Let's see what happens," said
McDunn.

 
          
 
He switched the Fog Horn off.

 
          
 
The ensuing minute of silence was so intense
that we could hear our hearts pounding in the glassed area of the tower, could
hear the slow greased turn of the light.

 
          
 
The monster stopped and froze. Its great
lantern eyes blinked. Its mouth gaped. It gave a sort of rumble, like a
volcano. It twitched its head this way and that, as if to seek the sounds now
dwindled off into the fog. It peered at the lighthouse. It rumbled again. Then
its eyes caught fire. It reared up, threshed the water, and rushed at the
tower, its eyes filled with angry torment.

 
          
 
"McDunn!" I cried. "Switch on
the horn!"

 
          
 
McDunn fumbled with the switch. But even as he
flicked it on, the monster was rearing up. I had a glimpse of its gigantic
paws, fishskin glittering in webs between the fingerhke projections, clawing at
the tower. The huge eye on the right side of its anguished head glittered
before me like a caldron into which I might drop, screaming. The tower shook.
The Fog Horn cried; the monster cried. It seized the tower and gnashed at the
glass, which shattered in upon us.

 
          
 
McDunn seized my arm. "Downstairs!"

 
          
 
The tower rocked, trembled, and started to
give. The Fog Horn and the monster roared. We stumbled and half fell down the
stairs. "Quick!"

 
          
 
We reached the bottom as the tower buckled
down toward us. We ducked under the stairs into the small stone cellar. There
were a thousand concussions as the rocks rained down; the Fog Horn stopped
abruptly. The monster crashed upon the tower. The tower fell. We knelt together,
McDunn and I, holding tight, while our world exploded.

 
          
 
Then it was over, and there was nothing but
darkness and the wash of the sea on the raw stones.

 
          
 
That and the other sound.

 
          
 
"Listen," said McDunn quietly.
"Listen."

 
          
 
We waited a moment. And then I began to hear
it. First a great vacuumed sucking of air, and then the lament, the
bewilderment, the loneliness of the great monster, folded over and upon us,
above us, so that the sickening reek of its body filled the air, a stone's
thickness away from our cellar. The monster gasped and cried. The tower was
gone. The light was gone. The thing that had called to it across a million
years was gone. And the monster was opening its mouth and sending out great
sounds. The sounds of a Fog Horn, again and again. And ships far at sea, not
finding the light, not seeing anything, but passing and hearing late that
night, must've thought: There it
is,
the lonely sound,
the
Lonesome
Bay
horn. All's well. We've rounded the cape.

 
          
 
And so it went for the rest of that night.

 
          
 
The sun was hot and yellow the next afternoon
when the rescuers came out to dig us from our stoned-under cellar.

 
          
 
"It fell apart, is all," said Mr.
McDunn gravely. "We had a few bad knocks from the waves and it just
crumbled." He pinched my arm.

 
          
 
There was nothing to see. The ocean was calm,
the sky blue. The only thing was a great algaic stink from the green matter
that covered the fallen tower stones and the shore rocks. Flies buzzed about.
The ocean washed empty on the shore.

 
          
 
The next year they built a new lighthouse, but
by that time I had a job in the little town and a wife and a good small warm
house that glowed yellow on autumn nights, the doors locked, the chimney
puffing smoke. As for McDunn, he was master of the new lighthouse, built to his
own specifications, out of steel-reinforced concrete. "Just in case,"
he said.

 
          
 
The new lighthouse was ready in November. I
drove down alone one evening late and parked my car and looked across the gray
waters and listened to the new horn sounding, once, twice, three, four times a
minute far out there, by itself.

 
          
 
The monster?

 
          
 
It never came back.

 
          
 
"It's gone away," said McDunn.
"It's gone back to the Deeps. It's learned you can't love anything too
much in this world. It's gone into the deepest Deeps to wait another million
years. Ah, the poor thing! Waiting out there, and waiting out there, while man
comes and goes on this pitiful little planet. Waiting and waiting."

 
          
 
I sat in my car, listening. I couldn't see the
lighthouse or the light standing out in
Lonesome
Bay
. I could only hear the Horn,
the Horn,
the
Horn. It sounded like the monster
calling.

 
          
 
I sat there wishing there was something I
could say.

 
          
 
To enter out into that silence that was the
city at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon
that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands
in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly
loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down
long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go,
but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of 2052 A.D., or
as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would
stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a
cigar.

 
          
 
Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles
and return only at
midnight
to his
house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark
windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the
faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows.
Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain
was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs
where a window in a tomb-like building was still open.

           
 
Mr. Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head,
listen, look, and
march
on, his feet making no noise
on the lumpy walk. For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when
strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his
journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and
faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure,
himself, in the early November evening.

 
          
 
On this particular evening he began his
journey in a westerly direction, toward the hidden sea. There was a good
crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a
Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the
branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft
shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet
whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed,
examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on,
smelling its rusty smell.

 
          
 
"Hello, in there," he whispered to
every house on every side as he moved. "What's up tonight on Channel 4,
Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United
States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?"

 
          
 
The street was silent and long and empty, with
only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in mid-country. If he closed
his eyes and stood very still, frozen, he could imagine himself upon the center
of a plain, a wintry, windless
Arizona
desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry river beds, the streets,
for company.

 
          
 
"What is it now?" he asked the
houses, noticing his wrist watch. "Eight-thirty p.m.? Time for a dozen
assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?"

 
          
 
Was that a murmur of laughter from within a
moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when nothing more happened. He
stumbled over a particularly uneven section of sidewalk. The cement was
vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for
thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not one in all
that time.

 
          
 
He came to a cloverleaf intersection which
stood silent where two main highways crossed the town. During the day it was a
thunderous surge of cars, the gas stations open, a great insect rustling and a
ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab-beetles, a faint incense
puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far directions. But now
these highways, too, were like streams in a dry season, all stone and bed and
moon radiance.

 
          
 
He turned back on a side street, circling around
toward his home. He was within a block of his destination when the lone car
turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon
him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination,
and then drawn toward it.

 
          
 
A metallic voice called to him:

 
          
 
"Stand still. Stay where you are! Don't
move!"

 
          
 
He halted.

 
          
 
"Put up your hands!"

 
          
 
"But—" he said.

 
          
 
"Your hands up! Or we'll shoot!"

 
          
 
The police, of course, but what a rare,
incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car
left, wasn't that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the
force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no
need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the
empty streets.

 
          
 
"Your name?" said the police car in
a metallic whisper. He couldn't see the men in it for the bright light in his
eyes.

 
          
 
"Leonard Mead," he said.

 
          
 
"Speak up!"

 
          
 
"Leonard Mead!"

 
          
 
"Business or profession?"

 
          
 
"I guess you'd call me a writer."

 
          
 
"No profession," said the police
car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen,
needle thrust through chest.

 
          
 
"You might say that," said Mr. Mead.
He hadn't written in years. Magazines and books didn't sell any more.
Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing
his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like
the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never
really touching them,

 
          
 
"No profession," said the phonograph
voice, hissing. "What are you doing out?"

 
          
 
"Walking," said Leonard Mead.

 
          
 
"Walking!"

 
          
 
"Just walking," he said simply, but
his face felt cold.

 
          
 
"Walking, just walking, walking?"

 
          
 
"Yes, sir."

 
          
 
"Walking where? For what?"

 
          
 
"Walking for air. Walking to see"

 
          
 
"Your address!"

 
          
 
"
Eleven South
Saint James Street
."

 
          
 
"And there is air in your
house,
you have an air conditioner, Mr. Mead?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"And you have a viewing screen in your
house to see with?"

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"No?" There was a crackling quiet
that in itself was an accusation.

 
          
 
"Are you married, Mr. Mead?"

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"Not married," said the police voice
behind the fiery beam. The moon was high and clear among the stars and the
houses were gray and silent.

 
          
 
"Nobody wanted me," said Leonard
Mead with a smile.

 
          
 
"Don't speak unless you're spoken
to!"

 
          
 
Leonard Mead waited in the cold night.

 
          
 
"Just walking, Mr. Mead?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
'*But you haven't explained for what
purpose."

 
          
 
"I explained; for air, and to see, and
just to walk."

 
          
 
"Have you done this often?"

 
          
 
"Every night for years."

 
          
 
The police car sat in the center of the street
with its radio throat faintly humming.

 
          
 
"Well, Mr. Mead," it said.

 
          
 
"Is that all?" he asked politely.

 
          
 
"Yes," said the voice.
"Here." There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car
sprang wide. "Get in."

 
          
 
"Wait a minute, I haven't done
anything!"

 
          
 
"Get in."

 
          
 
"I protest!"

 
          
 
"Mr. Mead."

 
          
 
He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he
passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was
no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all.

 
          
 
"Get in."

 
          
 
He put his hand to the door and peered into
the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It
smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean
and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there.

 
          
 
"Now if you had a wife to give you an
alibi," said the iron voice. "But—"

 
          
 
"Where are you taking me?"

 
          
 
The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint
whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by
punch-slotted card under electric eyes. "To the Psychiatric Center for
Research on Regressive Tendencies."

 
          
 
He got in. The door shut with a soft thud. The
police car rolled through the night avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead.

 
          
 
They passed one house on one street a moment later,
one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular
house had all of its electric Hghts brightly lit, every window a loud yellow
illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.

 
          
 
"That's my house," said Leonard
Mead.

 
          
 
No one answered him.

 
          
 
The car moved down the empty river-bed streets
and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty sidewalks, and no sound
and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.