by Ray Bradbury
So many clocks. But why? I wondered. Mr. Smith had said he was a thinker.
I took the wastebasket down to the incinerator. Inside the basket, as I was dumping it, I found one of her handkerchiefs. I fondled it for a moment, smelling the flower fragrance. Then I tossed it onto the fire.
It did not burn.
I poked at it and pushed it far back in the fire.
But the handkerchief would not burn.
In my room I took out my cigar lighter and touched it to the handkerchief. It would not burn, nor could I tear it.
And then I considered their clothing. I realized why it had seemed peculiar. The cut was regular for men and women in this season, but in their coats and shirts and dresses and shoes, there was not one blessed seam anywhere!
They came back out later that afternoon to walk in the garden. Peering from my high window I saw them standing together, holding hands, talking earnestly.
It was then that the terrifying thing happened.
A roar filled the sky. The woman looked into the sky, screamed, put her hands to her face, and collapsed. The man’s face turned white, he stared blindly at the sun, and he fell to his knees calling to his wife to get up, but she lay there, hysterically.
By the time I got downstairs to help, they had vanished. They had evidently run around one side of the house while I had gone around the other. The sky was empty, the roar had dwindled.
Why, I thought, should a simple, ordinary sound of a plane flying unseen in the sky cause such terror?
The airplane flew back a minute later and on the wings it said: COUNTY FAIR! ATTEND! RACING! FUN!
That’s nothing to be afraid of, I thought.
I passed their room at nine-thirty and the door was open. On the walls I saw three calendars lined up with the date August 18, 2035, prominently circled.
“Good evening,” I said pleasantly. “Say, you have a lot of nice calendars there. Come in mighty handy.”
“Yes,” they said.
I went on to my room and stood in the dark before turning on the light and wondered why they should need three calendars, all with the year 2035. It was crazy, but they were not. Everything about them was crazy except themselves, they were clean, rational people with beautiful faces, but it began to move in my mind, the calendars, the clocks, the wristwatches they wore, worth a thousand dollars each if I ever saw a wristwatch, and they, themselves, constantly looking at the time. I thought of the handkerchief that wouldn’t burn and the seamless clothing, and the sentence “I’ve always hated Westercott.”
I’ve always hated Westercott.
Lionel Westercott. There wouldn’t be two people in the world with an unusual name like that. Lionel Westercott. I said it softly to myself in the summer night. It was a warm evening, with moths dancing softly, in velvet touches, on my screen. I slept fitfully, thinking of my comfortable job, this good little town, everything peaceful, everyone happy, and these two people in the next room, the only people in the town, in the world, it seemed, who were not happy. Their tired mouths haunted me. And sometimes the tired eyes, too tired for ones so young.
I must have slept a bit, for at two o’clock, as usual, I was wakened by her crying, but this time I heard her call out, “Where are we, where are we, how did we get here, where are we?” And his voice, “Hush, hush, now, please,” and he soothed her.
“Are we safe, are we safe, are we safe?”
“Yes, yes, dear, yes.”
And then the sobbing.
Perhaps I could have thought a lot of things. Most minds would turn to murder, fugitives from justice. My mind did not turn that way. Instead I lay in the dark, listening to her cry, and it broke my heart, it moved in my veins end my head and I was so unbearably touched by her sadness and loneliness that I got up and dressed and left the house. I walked down the street and before I knew it I was on the hill over the lake and there was the library, dark and immense, and I had my janitor’s key in my hand. Without thinking why, I entered the big silent place at two in the morning and walked through the empty rooms and down the aisles, turning on a few lights. And then I got a couple of big books out and began tracing some paragraphs and lines down and down, page after page, for about an hour in the early, early dark morning. I drew up a chair and sat down. I fetched some more books. I sent my eye searching. I grew tired. But then at last my hand paused on a name, “William Westercott, politician, New York City. Married to Aimee Ralph on January 1998. One child, Lionel, born February 2000.”
I shut the book and locked myself out of the library and walked home, cold, through the summer morning with the stars bright in the black sky.
I stood for a moment in front of the sleeping house with the empty porch and the curtains in every room fluttering with the warm August wind, and I held my cigar in my hand but did not light it. I listened, and there above me, like the cry of some night bird, was the sound of the lonely woman, crying. She had had another nightmare, and, I thought, nightmares are memory, they are based on things remembered, things remembered vividly and horridly and with too much detail, and she had had another of her nightmares and she was afraid.
I looked at the town all around me, the little houses, the houses with people in them, and the country beyond the houses, ten thousand miles of meadow and farm and river and lake, highways and hills and mountains and cities all sizes sleeping in the time before dawn, so quietly, and the streetlights going out now when there was no use for them at this nocturnal hour. And I thought of all the people in the whole land and the years to come, and all of us with good jobs and happy in this year.
Then I went upstairs past their door and went to bed and listened and there, behind the wall, the woman was saying over and over again, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” faintly, crying.
And lying there I was as cold as an ancient piece of ice placed between the blankets, and I was trembling, though I knew nothing, I knew everything, for now I knew where these travelers were from and what her nightmares were and what she was afraid of, and what they were running away from.
I figured it just before I went to sleep, with her crying faintly in my ears. Lionel Westercott, I thought, will be old enough to be president of the United States in the year 2035.
Somehow, I did not want the sun to rise in the morning.
To the Future
THE FIREWORKS SIZZLED ACROSS THE COOL-TILED square, banged against adobe café walls, then rushed on hot wires to bash the high church tower, while a fiery bull ran about the plaza chasing boys and laughing men. It was a spring night in Mexico in the year 1938.
Mr. and Mrs. William Travis stood on the edge of the yelling crowd, smiling. The bull charged. Ducking, the man and wife ran, fire pelting them, past the brass band that pulsed out vast rhythms of La Paloma. The bull passed, a framework of bamboo and gunpowder, carried lightly on the shoulders of a charging Mexican.
“I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in my life,” gasped Susan Travis, stopping.
“It’s terrific,” said William.
“It will go on, won’t it? I mean our trip?”
He patted his breast pocket. “I’ve enough traveler’s checks for a lifetime. Enjoy yourself. Forget it. They’ll never find us.”
“Never?”
Now someone hurled giant firecrackers from the bell tower.
The bull was dead. The Mexican lifted its framework from his shoulders. Children clustered to touch the magnificent papier-maché animal.
“Let’s examine the bull,” said William.
As they walked past the café entrance, Susan saw the strange man looking out at them, a white man in a white suit, with a thin, sunburned face. His eyes coldly 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 crème de menthe, a clear bottle of vermouth, a flagon of cognac, and seven other bottles of assorted liqueurs, and, at his fingertips, 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,” William said. “That man’s nobody.”
“I saw him in the plaza this morning.”
“Don’t look back, keep walking, examine the papier-maché 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!” 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 café, 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!” He spoke this last in a loud voice as they went up the café 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 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 café. 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 René! Have you heard? I mean about Travel In Time, Incorporated? Trips to Rome in 21 A.D., trips to Napoleon’s Waterloo, any time, anyplace!”
“René, 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, to see Kublai Khan, Moses and the Red Sea! You’ve probably got an ad in your tube-mail now.”
She had opened the suction mail tube and there was the metal foil advertisement:
ROME AND THE BORGIAS!
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AT KITTY HAWK!
Travel In Time, Inc., can costume you, put you in a crowd during the assassination of Lincoln or Caesar! We guarantee to teach you any language you need to move freely in any civilization, in any year, without friction. Latin, Greek, ancient American colloquial. Take your vacation in Time as well as Place!
René’s voice was buzzing on the phone. “Tom and I leave for 1492 tomorrow. They’re arranging for Tom to sail with Columbus—isn’t it amazing?”
“Yes,” murmured Ann, stunned. “What does the government say about this Time Machine Company?”
“Oh, the police have an eye on it. Afraid people might evade the draft, run off and hide in the Past. Everyone has to leave a security bond behind, his house and belongings, to guarantee return. After all, the war’s on.”
“Yes, the war,” murmured Ann. “The war.”
Standing there, holding the phone, she had thought: Here is the chance my husband and I have talked and prayed over for so many years. We don’t like the world of 2155. We want to run away from his work at the bomb factory—from any position with disease-culture units. Perhaps there is some chance for us, to escape, to run for centuries into a wild country of years where they will never find us and bring us back to burn our books, censor our thoughts, scald our minds with fear, march us, scream at us with radios…
The phone rang.
They were in Mexico in the year 1938.
She looked at the stained café wall.
Good workers for the Future State were allowed vacations into the Past to escape fatigue. And so she and her husband had moved back into 1938. They took a room in New York City, and enjoyed the theaters and the Statue of Liberty which still stood green in the harbor. And on the third day, they had changed their clothes and their names, and flown off to hide in Mexico.
“It must be him,” whispered Susan, looking at the stranger seated at the table. “Those cigarettes, the cigars, the liquor. They give him away. Remember our first night in the Past?”
A month ago, on their first night in New York, before their flight, they had tasted all the strange drinks, bought odd foods, perfumes, cigarettes of ten dozen rare brands, for they were scarce in the Future, where war was everything. So they had made fools of themselves, rushing in and out of stores, salons, tobacconists, going up to their room to get wonderfully ill.
And now here was this stranger, doing likewise, doing a thing that only a man from the Future would do, who had been starved for liquors and cigarettes too many years.
Susan and William sat and ordered a drink.
The stranger was examining their clothes, their hair, their jewelry, the way they walked and sat. “Sit easily,” said William under his breath. “Look as if you’ve worn this clothing style all your life.”
“We should never have tried to escape.”
“My God,” said William. “He’s coming over. Let me do the talking.”
The stranger bowed before them. There was the faintest tap of heels knocking together. Susan stiffened. That military sound—unmistakable as that certain ugly rap on your door at midnight.
“Mr. Kristen,” said the stranger, “you did not pull up your pant legs when you sat down.”
William froze. He looked at his hands lying on either leg, innocently. Susan’s heart was beating swiftly.
“You’ve got the wrong person,” said William, quickly. “My name’s not Krisler.”
“Kristen,” corrected the stranger.
“I’m William Travis,” said William. “And I don’t see what my pant legs have to do with you.”
“Sorry.” The stranger pulled up a chair. “Let us say I thought I knew you because you did not pull your trousers up. Everyone does. If they don’t the trousers bag quickly. I am a long way from home, Mr.—Travis—and in need of company. My name is Simms.”
“Mr. Simms, we appreciate your loneliness, but we’re tired. We’re leaving for Acapulco tomorrow.”
“A charming spot. I was just there, looking for some friends of mine. They are somewhere. I shall find them yet. Oh, is the lady a bit sick?”
“Good night, Mr. Simms.”
They started out the door, William holding Susan’s arm firmly. They did not look back when Mr. Simms called, “Oh, just one other thing.” He paused and then slowly spoke the words:
“Twenty-one fifty-five A.D.”
Susan shut her eyes and felt the earth falter under her. She kept going, into the fiery plaza, seeing nothing…
THEY LOCKED THE DOOR of their hotel room. And then she was crying and they were standing in the dark, and the room tilted under them. Far away, firecrackers exploded, there was laughter in the plaza.
“What a damned, loud nerve,” said William. “Him sitting there, looking us up and down like animals, smoking his damn cigarettes, drinking his drinks. I should have killed him then!” His voice was nearly hysterical. “He even had the nerve to use his real name to us. The Chief of the Searchers. And the thing about my pant legs. I should have pulled them up when I sat. It’s an automatic gesture of this day and age. When I didn’t do it, it set me off from the others. It made him think: Here’s a man who never wore pants, a man used to breech-uniforms and future styles. I could kill myself for giving us away!”
“No, no, it was my walk, these high heels, that
did it. Our haircuts, so new, so fresh. Everything about us odd and uneasy.”
William turned on the light. “He’s still testing us. He’s not positive of us, not completely. We can’t run out on him, then. We can’t make him certain. We’ll go to Acapulco, leisurely.”
“Maybe he is sure of us, but is just playing.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s got all the time in the world. He can dally here if he wants, and bring us back to the Future sixty seconds after we left it. He might keep us wondering for days, laughing at us.”
Susan sat on the bed, wiping the tears from her face, smelling the old smell of charcoal and incense.
“They won’t make a scene, will they?”
“They won’t dare. They’ll have to get us alone to put us in the Time Machine and send us back.”
“There’s a solution then,” she said. “We’ll never be alone, we’ll always be in crowds.”
Footsteps sounded outside their locked door.
They turned out the light and undressed in silence. The footsteps went away.
Susan stood by the window looking down at the plaza in the darkness. “So that building there is a church?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve often wondered what a church looked like. It’s been so long since anyone saw one. Can we visit it tomorrow?”
“Of course. Come to bed.”
They lay in the dark room.
Half an hour later, their phone rang. She lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
“The rabbits may hide in the forest,” said a voice, “but a fox can always find them.”
She replaced the receiver and lay back straight and cold in the bed.
Outside, in the year 1938, a man played three tunes upon a guitar, one following another …