Fahrenheit 451 PAGE 20 by Isaac Asimov

 Fahrenheit 451 PAGE 20 by Isaac Asimov

Fahrenheit 451

PAGE 20

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Half an hour later, cold, and moving carefully on the tracks, fully aware of his entire body, his

face, his mouth, his eyes stuffed with blackness, his ears stuffed with sound, his legs prickled

with burrs and nettles, he saw the fire ahead.


The fire was gone, then back again, like a winking eye. He stopped, afraid he might blow the fire

out with a single breath. But the fire was there and he approached warily, from a long way off. It

took the better part of fifteen minutes before he drew very close indeed to it, and then he stood

looking at it from cover. That small motion, the white and red colour, a strange fire because it

meant a different thing to him.

It was not burning; it was warming!

He saw many hands held to its warmth, hands without arms, hidden in darkness. Above the

hands, motionless faces that were only moved and tossed and flickered with firelight. He hadn't

known fire could look this way. He had never thought in his life that it could give as well as take.

Even its smell was different.

How long he stood he did not know, but there was a foolish and yet delicious sense of knowing

himself as an animal come from the forest, drawn by the fire. He was a thing of brush and liquid

eye, of fur and muzzle and hoof, he was a thing of horn and blood that would smell like autumn

if you bled it out on the ground. He stood a long long time, listening to the warm crackle of the

flames.

There was a silence gathered all about that fire and the silence was in the men's faces, and time

was there, time enough to sit by this rusting track under the trees, and look at the world and turn

it over with the eyes, as if it were held to the centre of the bonfire, a piece of steel these men

were all shaping. It was not only the fire that was different. It was the silence. Montag moved

toward this special silence that was concerned with all of the world.

And then the voices began and they were talking, and he could hear nothing of what the voices

said, but the sound rose and fell quietly and the voices were turning the world over and looking

at it; the voices knew the land and the trees and the city which lay down the track by the river.

The voices talked of everything, there was nothing they could not talk about, he knew from the

very cadence and motion and continual stir of curiosity and wonder in them.

And then one of the men looked up and saw him, for the first or perhaps the seventh time, and a

voice called to Montag:

"All right, you can come out now ! "

Montag stepped back into the shadows.

"It's all right," the voice said. "You're welcome here."

Montag walked slowly toward the fire and the five old men sitting there dressed in dark blue

denim pants and jackets and dark blue suits. He did not know what to say to them.

"Sit down," said the man who seemed to be the leader of the small group. "Have some coffee?"

He watched the dark steaming mixture pour into a collapsible tin cup, which was handed him

straight off. He sipped it gingerly and felt them looking at him with curiosity. His lips were

scalded, but that was good. The faces around him were bearded, but the beards were clean, neat,

and their hands were clean. They had stood up as if to welcome a guest, and now they sat down

again. Montag sipped. "Thanks," he said. "Thanks very much."

"You're welcome, Montag. My name's Granger." He held out a small bottle of colourless fluid.

"Drink this, too. It'll change the chemical index of your perspiration. Half an hour from now

you'll smell like two other people. With the Hound after you, the best thing is Bottoms up."

Montag drank the bitter fluid.

"You'll stink like a bobcat, but that's all right," said Granger.



"You know my name;" said Montag.

Granger nodded to a portable battery TV set by the fire.

"We've watched the chase. Figured you'd wind up south along the river. When we heard you

plunging around out in the forest like a drunken elk, we didn't hide as we usually do. We figured

you were in the river, when the helicopter cameras swung back in over the city. Something funny

there. The chase is still running. The other way, though."

"The other way?"

"Let's have a look."

Granger snapped the portable viewer on. The picture was a nightmare, condensed, easily passed

from hand to hand, in the forest, all whirring colour and flight. A voice cried:

"The chase continues north in the city! Police helicopters are converging on Avenue 87 and Elm

Grove Park!"

Granger nodded. "They're faking. You threw them off at the river. They can't admit it. They

know they can hold their audience only so long. The show's got to have a snap ending, quick! If

they started searching the whole damn river it might take all night. So they're sniffing for a

scape-goat to end things with a bang. Watch. They'll catch Montag in the next five minutes ! "

"But how--"

"Watch."

The camera, hovering in the belly of a helicopter, now swung down at an empty street.

"See that?" whispered Granger. "It'll be you; right up at the end of that street is our victim. See

how our camera is coming in? Building the scene. Suspense. Long shot. Right now, some poor

fellow is out for a walk. A rarity. An odd one. Don't think the police don't know the habits of

queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of it, or for reasons of insomnia

Anyway, the police have had him charted for months, years. Never know when that sort of

information might be handy. And today, it turns out, it's very usable indeed. It saves face. Oh,

God, look there!"

The men at the fire bent forward.

On the screen, a man turned a corner. The Mechanical Hound rushed forward into the viewer,

suddenly. The helicopter light shot down a dozen brilliant pillars that built a cage all about the

man.

A voice cried, "There's Montag ! The search is done!"

The innocent man stood bewildered, a cigarette burning in his hand. He stared at the Hound, not

knowing what it was. He probably never knew. He glanced up at the sky and the wailing sirens.

The cameras rushed down. The Hound leapt up into the air with a rhythm and a sense of timing

that was incredibly beautiful. Its needle shot out. It was suspended for a moment in their gaze, as

if to give the vast audience time to appreciate everything, the raw look of the victim's face, the

empty street, the steel animal a bullet nosing the target.

"Montag, don't move!" said a voice from the sky.

The camera fell upon the victim, even as did the Hound. Both reached him simultaneously. The

victim was seized by Hound and camera in a great spidering, clenching grip. He screamed. He

screamed. He screamed!

Blackout.

Silence.

Darkness.

Montag cried out in the silence and turned away.

Silence.



And then, after a time of the men sitting around the fire, their faces expressionless, an announcer

on the dark screen said, "The search is over, Montag is dead; a crime against society has been

avenged."

Darkness.

"We now take you to the Sky Room of the Hotel Lux for a half-hour of Just-Before-Dawn, a

programme of-"

Granger turned it off.

"They didn't show the man's face in focus. Did you notice?

Even your best friends couldn't tell if it was you. They scrambled it just enough to let the

imagination take over. Hell," he whispered. "Hell."

Montag said nothing but now, looking back, sat with his eyes fixed to the blank screen,

trembling.

Granger touched Montag's arm. "Welcome back from the dead." Montag nodded. Granger went

on. "You might as well know all of us, now. This is Fred Clement, former occupant of the

Thomas Hardy chair at Cambridge in the years before it became an Atomic Engineering School.

This other is Dr. Simmons from U.C.L.A., a specialist in Ortega y Gasset; Professor West here

did quite a bit for ethics, an ancient study now, for Columbia University quite some years ago.

Reverend Padover here gave a few lectures thirty years ago and lost his flock between one

Sunday and the next for his views. He's been bumming with us some time now. Myself: I wrote a

book called The Fingers in the Glove; the Proper Relationship between the Individual and

Society, and here I am! Welcome, Montag! "

"I don't belong with you," said Montag, at last, slowly. "I've been an idiot all the way."

"We're used to that. We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn't be here. When we

were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman when he came to burn my

library years ago. I've been running ever since. You want to join us, Montag?"

"Yes."

"What have you to offer?"

"Nothing. I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little of Revelation, but I

haven't even that now."

"The Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine. Where was it?"

"Here," Montag touched his head.

"Ah," Granger smiled and nodded.

"What's wrong? Isn't that all right?" said Montag.

"Better than all right; perfect!" Granger turned to the Reverend. "Do we have a Book of

Ecclesiastes?"

"One. A man named Harris of Youngstown."

"Montag." Granger took Montag's shoulder firmly. "Walk carefully. Guard your health. If

anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. See how important you've

become in the last minute!"

"But I've forgotten!"

"No, nothing's ever lost. We have ways to shake down your clinkers for you."

"But I've tried to remember!"

"Don't try. It'll come when we need it. All of us have photographic memories, but spend a

lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. Simmons here has worked



on it for twenty years and now we've got the method down to where we can recall anything that's

been read once. Would you like, some day, Montag, to read Plato's Republic?"

"Of course!"

"I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus."

"How do you do?" said Mr. Simmons.

"Hello," said Montag.

"I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And

this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and

this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all

are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and

Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."

Everyone laughed quietly.

"It can't be," said Montag.

"It is," replied Granger, smiling. " We're book-burners, too. We read the books and burnt them,

afraid they'd be found. Micro-filming didn't pay off; we were always travelling, we didn't want to

bury the film and come back later. Always the chance of discovery. Better to keep it in the old

heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature

and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it's here. And the hour is late.

And the war's begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of

a thousand colours. What do you think, Montag?"

"I think I was blind trying to do things my way, planting books in firemen's houses and sending

in alarms."

"You did what you had to do. Carried out on a national scale, it might have worked beautifully.

But our way is simpler and, we think, better. All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think

we will need, intact and safe. We're not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed,

the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good.