by Ray Bradbury
"You're cutting yourself off, that way."
"Why should I have anything to do with that younger Hitchcock? He was a fool, and he was yanked around and taken advantage of and used. His father was no good, and he was glad when his mother died, because she was the same. Should I go back and see his face on that day and gloat over it? He was a fool."
"We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly."
"I don't want to remember imperfect things," said Hitchcock. "I can't shake hands with that younger Hitchcock, can I? Where he? Can you find him for me? He's dead, so to hell with him! I won't shape what I do tomorrow by some lousy thing I did yesterday."
"You've got it wrong."
"Let me have it then." Hitchcock sat, finished with his meal, looking out the port. The other men glanced at him.
"Do meteors exist?" asked Hitchcock.
"You know damn well they do."
"In our radar machines--yes, as streaks of light in space. No, I don't believe in anything that doesn't exist and act in my presence. Sometimes"--he nodded at the men finishing their food--"sometimes I don't believe in anyone or anything but me." He sat up. "Is there an upstairs to this ship?"
"Yes."
"I've got to see it immediately."
"Don't get excited."
"You wait here; I'll be right back." Hitchcock walked out swiftly. The other men sat nibbling their food slowly. A moment passed. One of the men raised his head. "How long's this been going on? I mean Hitchcock."
"Just today."
"He acted funny the other day too."
"Yes, but it's worse today."
"Has anyone told the psychiatrist?"
"We thought he'd come out of it. Everyone has a little touch of space the first time out. I've had it. You get wildly philosophical, then frightened. You break into a sweat, then you doubt your parentage, you don't believe in Earth, you get drunk, wake up with a hang-over, and that's it."
"But Hitchcock don't get drunk," said someone. "I wish he would."
"How'd he ever get past the examining board?"
"How'd we all get past? They need men. Space scares the hell out of most people. So the board lets a lot of borderlines through."
"That man isn't a borderline," said someone. "He's a fall-off-a-cliff-and-no-bottom-to-hit."
They waited for five minutes. Hitchcock didn't come back. Clemens finally got up and went out and climbed the circular stair to the flight deck above. Hitchcock was there, touching the wall tenderly.
"It's here," he said.
"Of course it is."
"I was afraid it might not be." Hitchcock peered at Clemens. "And you're alive."
"I have been for a long time."
"No," said Hitchcock. "Now, justnow, thisinstant, while you're here with me, you're alive. A moment ago you weren't anything."
"I was to me," said the other.
"That's not important. You weren't here with me," said Hitchcock. "Only that's important. Is the crew down below?"
"Yes."
"Can you prove it?"
"Look, Hitchcock, you'd better see Dr. Edwards. I think you need a little servicing."
"No, I'm all right. Who's the doctor, anyway? Can you prove he's on this ship?"
"I can. All I have to do is call him."
"No. I mean, standing here, in this instant, you can't prove he's here, can you?"
"Not without moving, I can't."
"You see. You have no mental evidence. That's what I want, a mental evidence I canfeel. I don't want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there's no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you've got to carry it with you. You can't carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them. How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and become impossible to believe in then."
"Those are the rules of the game."
"I want to change them. Wouldn't it be fine if we couldprove things with our mind, and know for certain that things are always in their place. I'd like to know what a place islike when I'mnot there. I'd like to besure."
"That's not possible."
"You know," said Hitchcock, "I first got the idea of coming out into space about five years ago. About the time I lost my job. Did you know I wanted to be a writer? Oh yes, one of those men who always talk about writing but rarely write. And too much temper. So I lost my good job and left the editorial business and couldn't get another job and went on down hill. Then my wife died. You see, nothing stays where you put it--you can't trust material things. I had to put my boy in an aunt's trust, and things got worse; then one day I had a story published with my name on it, but it wasn't me."
"I don't get you."
Hitchcock's face was pale and sweating.
"I can only say that I looked at the page with my name under the title. By Joseph Hitchcock. But it was some other man. There was no way toprove --actuallyprove, really prove--that that man was me. The story was familiar--I knew I had written it--but that name on the paper still was not me. It was a symbol, a name. It was alien. And then I realized that even if I did become successful at writing, it would never mean a thing to me, because I couldn't identify myself with that name. It would be soot and ashes. So I didn't write any more. I was never sure, anyway, that the stories I had in my desk a few days later were mine, though I remembered typing them. There was always that gap of proof. That gap between doing and having done. What is done is dead and is not proof, for it is not an action. Only actions are important. And pieces of paper were remains of actions done and over and now unseen. The proof of doing was over and done. Nothing but memory remained, and I didn't trust my memory. Could I actuallyprove I'd written these stories? No. Canany author? I meanproof. I mean action as proof. No. Not really. Not unless someone sits in the room while you type, and then maybe you're doing it from memory. And once a thing is accomplished there is no proof, only memory. So then I began to find gaps between everything. I doubted I was married or had a child or ever had a job in my life. I doubted that I had been born in Illinois and had a drunken father and swinish mother. I couldn't prove anything. Oh yes, people could say, 'You are thus and so and such and such,' but that was nothing."
"You should get your mind off stuff like that," said Clemens. "I can't. All the gaps and spaces. And that's how I got to thinking about the stars. I thought how I'd like to be in a rocket ship, in space, in nothing, innothing, going on into nothing, with just a thin something, a thin eggshell of metal holding me, going on away from all the somethings with gaps in them that couldn't prove themselves. I knew then that the only happiness for me was space. When I get to Aldebaran II I'll sign up to return on the five-year journey to Earth and so go back and forth like a shuttlecock all the rest of my life."
"Have you talked about this to the psychiatrist?"
"So he could try to mortar up the gaps for me, fill in the gulfs with noise and warm water and words and hands touching me, and all that? No, thanks." Hitchcock stopped. "I'm getting worse, aren't I? I thought so. This morning when I woke up I thought, I'm getting worse. Or is it better?" He paused again and cocked an eye at Clemens. "Are you there? Are youreally there? Go on, prove it."
Clemens slapped him on the arm, hard.
"Yes," said Hitchcock, rubbing his arm, looking at it very thoroughly, wonderingly, massaging it. "You were there. For a brief fraction of an instant. But I wonder if you are--now.
"See you later," said Clemens. He was on his way to find the docto
r. He walked away.
A bell rang. Two bells, three bells rang. The ship rocked as if a hand had slapped it. There was a sucking sound, the sound of a vacuum cleaner turned on. Clemens heard the screams and felt the air thin. The air hissed away about his ears. Suddenly there was nothing in his nose or lungs. He stumbled and then the hissing stopped.
He heard someone cry, "A meteor." Another said, "It's patched!" And this was true. The ship's emergency spider, running over the outside of the hull, had slapped a hot patch on the hole in the metal and welded it tight.
Someone was talking and talking and then beginning to shout at a distance. Clemens ran along the corridor through the freshening, thickening air. As he turned in at a bulkhead he saw the hole in the steel wall, freshly sealed; he saw the meteor fragments lying about the room like bits of a toy. He saw the captain and the members of the crew and a man lying on the floor. It was Hitchcock. His eyes were closed and he was crying. "It tried to kill me," he said, over and over. "It tried to kill me." They got him on his feet. "It can't do that," said Hitchcock. "That's not how it should be. Things like that can't happen, can they? It came in afterme. Why did it do that?"
"All right, all right Hitchcock," said the captain.
The doctor was bandaging a small cut on Hitchcock's arm. Hitchcock looked up, his face pale, and saw Clemens there looking at him. "It tried tokill me," he said.
"I know," said Clemens.
Seventeen hours passed. The ship moved on in space.
Clemens stepped through a bulkhead and waited. The psychiatrist and the captain were there. Hitchcock sat on the floor with his legs drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped tight about them.
"Hitchcock," said the captain.
No answer.
"Hitchcock, listen to me," said the psychiatrist.
They turned to Clemens. "You're his friend?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to help us?"
"If I can."
"It was that damned meteor," said the captain. "This might not have happened if it hadn't been for that."
"It would've come anyway, sooner or later," said the doctor. To Clemens: "You might talk to him."
Clemens walked quietly over and crouched by Hitchcock and began to shake his arm gently, calling in a low voice, "Hey there, Hitchcock."
No reply.
"Hey, it's me. Me, Clemens," said Clemens. "Look, I'm here." He gave the arm a little slap. He massaged the rigid neck, gently, and the back of the bent-down head. He glanced at the psychiatrist, who sighed very softly. The captain shrugged.
"Shock treatment, Doctor?"
The psychiatrist nodded. "We'll start within the hour." Yes, thought Clemens, shock treatment. Play a dozen jazz records for him, wave a bottle of fresh green chlorophyll and dandelions under his nose, put grass under his feet, squirt Chanel on the air, cut his hair, clip his fingernails, bring him a woman, shout, bang and crash at him, fry him with electricity, fill the gap and the gulf, but where's your proof? You can't keep proving to him forever. You can't entertain a baby with rattles and sirens all night every night for the next thirty years. Sometime you've got to stop. When you do that, he's lost again. That is, if he pays any attention to you at all.
"Hitchcock!" he cried, as loud as he could, almost frantically, as if he himself were falling over a cliff. "It's me. It's your pal! Hey!"
Clemens turned and walked away out of the silent room.
Twelve hours later another alarm bell rang.
After all of the running had died down, the captain explained: "Hitchcock snapped out of it for a minute or so. He was alone. He climbed into a space suit. He opened an airlock. Then he walked out into space--alone."
Clemens blinked through the immense glass port, where there was a blur of stars and distant blackness. "He's out there now?"
"Yes. A million miles behind us. We'd never find him. First time I knew he was outside the ship was when his helmet radio came in on our control-room beam. I heard him talking to himself."
"What did he say?"
"Something like 'No more space ship now. Never was any. No people. No people in all the universe. Never were any. No planets. No stars.' That's what he said. And then he said something about his hands and feet and legs. 'No hands,' he said. 'I haven't any hands any more. Never had any. No feet. Never had any. Can't prove it. No body. Never had any. No lips. No face. No head. Nothing. Only space. Only space. Only the gap.'"
The men turned quietly to look from the glass port out into the remote and cold stars.
Space, thought Clemens. The space that Hitchcock loved so well. Space, with nothing on top, nothing on the bottom, a lot of empty nothings between, and Hitchcock falling in the middle of the nothing, on his way to no particular night and no particular morning. . . .
* * *
The Fox and the Forest
THERE WERE fireworks the very first night, things that you should be afraid of perhaps, for they might remind you of other more horrible things, but these were beautiful, rockets that ascended into the ancient soft air of Mexico and shook the stars apart in blue and white fragments. Everything was good and sweet, the air was that blend of the dead and the living, of the rains and the dusts, of the incense from the church, and the brass smell of the tubas on the bandstand which pulsed out vast rhythms of "La Paloma." The church doors were thrown wide and it seemed as if a giant yellow constellation had fallen from the October sky and lay breathing fire upon the church walls; a million candles sent their color and fumes about. Newer and better fireworks scurried like tight-rope walking comets across the cool-filed square, banged against adobe cafe walls, then rushed on hot wires to bash the high church tower, in which boys' naked feet alone could be seen kicking and re-kicking, clanging and tilting and re-tilting the monster bells into monstrous music. A flaming bull blundered about the plaza chasing laughing men and screaming children.
"The year is 1938," said William Travis, standing by his wife on the edge of the yelling crowd, smiling. "A good year."
The bull rushed upon them. Ducking, the couple ran, with fire balls pelting them, past the music and riot, the church, the band, under the stars, clutching each other, laughing. The bull passed, carried lightly on the shoulders of a charging Mexican, a framework of bamboo and sulphurous gunpowder.
"I've never enjoyed myself so much in my life." Susan Travis had stopped for her breath.
"It's amazing," said William.
"It will go on, won't it?"
"All night."
"No, I mean our trip."
He frowned and patted his breast pocket. "I've enough traveler's checks for a lifetime. Enjoy yourself. Forget it. They'll never find us."
"Never?"
"Never."
Now someone was setting off giant crackers, hurling them from the great bell-tolling tower of the church in a sputter of smoke, while the crowd below fell back under the threat and the crackers exploded in wonderful concussions among their dancing feet and flailing bodies. A wondrous smell of frying tortillas hung all about, and in the cafes men sat at tables looking out, mugs of beer in their brown hands.
The bull was dead. The fire was out of the bamboo tubes and he was expended. The laborer lifted the framework from his shoulders. Little boys clustered to touch the magnificent papier-mache head, the real horns.
"Let's examine the bull," said William.
As they walked past the cafe entrance Susan saw the man looking out at them, a white man in a salt-white suit, with a blue tie and blue shirt, and a thin, sunburned face. His hair was blond and straight and his eyes were blue, and he watched them as they walked.
She would never have noticed him if it had not been for the bottles at his immaculate elbow; a fat bottle of creme de menthe, a clear bottle of vermouth, a flagon of cognac, and seven other bottles of assorted liqueurs, and, at his finger tips, ten small half-filled glasses from which, without taking his eyes off the street, he sipped, occasionally squinting, pressing his thin mouth shut upon the savor. In his free hand
a thin Havana cigar smoked, and on a chair stood twenty cartons of Turkish cigarettes, six boxes of cigars, and some packaged colognes.
"Bill----" whispered Susan.
"Take it easy," he said. "He's nobody."
"I saw him in the plaza this morning."
"Don't look back, keep walking. Examine the papier-mache bull here. That's it, ask questions."
"Do you think he's from the Searchers?"
"They couldn't follow us!"
"They might!"
"What a nice bull," said William to the man who owned it.
"He couldn't have followed us back through two hundred years, could he?"
"Watch yourself, for God's sake," said William.
She swayed. He crushed her elbow tightly, steering her away.
"Don't faint." He smiled, to make it look good. "You'll be all right. Let's go right in that cafe, drink in front of him, so if he is what we think he is, he won't suspect."
"No, I couldn't."
"We've got to. Come on now. And so I said to David, that's ridiculous!" This last in a loud voice as they went up the cafe steps.
We are here, thought Susan. Who are we? Where are we going? What do we fear? Start at the beginning, she told herself, holding to her sanity, as she felt the adobe floor underfoot.
My name is Ann Kristen; my husband's name is Roger. We were born in the year 2155 A.D. And we lived in a world that was evil. A world that was like a great black ship pulling away from the shore of sanity and civilization, roaring its black horn in the night, taking two billion people with it, whether they wanted to go or not, to death, to fall over the edge of the earth and the sea into radioactive flame and madness.
They walked into the cafe. The man was staring at them.
A phone rang.
The phone startled Susan. She remembered a phone ringing two hundred years in the future, on that blue April morning in 2155, and herself answering it:
"Ann, this is Rene! Have you heard? I mean about Travel in Time, Incorporated? Trips to Rome in 21 B.C., trips to Napoleon's Waterloo--any time, any place!"
"Rene, you're joking."
"No. Clinton Smith left this morning for Philadelphia in 1776. Travel in Time, Inc., arranges everything. Costs money. But,think-- to actually see the burning of Rome, Kubla Khan, Moses and the Red Sea! You've probably got an ad in your tube mail now.