Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Fahrenheit 451 PAGE 17 by Isaac Asimov

Fahrenheit 451


PAGE 17


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Montag pulled back into the shadows. Directly ahead lay a gas station, a great chunk of porcelain

snow shining there, and two silver beetles pulling in to fill up. Now he must be clean and

presentable if he wished, to walk, not run, stroll calmly across that wide boulevard. It would give

him an extra margin of safety if he washed up and combed his hair before he went on his way to


get where . . . ?

Yes, he thought, where am I running?

Nowhere. There was nowhere to go, no friend to turn to, really. Except Faber. And then he

realized that he was indeed, running toward Faber's house, instinctively. But Faber couldn't hide

him; it would be suicide even to try. But he knew that he would go to see Faber anyway, for a

few short minutes. Faber's would be the place where he might refuel his fast draining belief in

his own ability to survive. He just wanted to know that there was a man like Faber in the world.

He wanted to see the man alive and not burned back there like a body shelled in another body.

And some of the money must be left with Faber, of course, to be spent after Montag ran on his

way. Perhaps he could make the open country and live on or near the rivers and near the

highways, in the fields and hills.

A great whirling whisper made him look to the sky.

The police helicopters were rising so far away that it seemed someone had blown the grey head

off a dry dandelion flower. Two dozen of them flurried, wavering, indecisive, three miles off,

like butterflies puzzled by autumn, and then they were plummeting down to land, one by one,

here, there, softly kneading the streets where, turned back to beetles, they shrieked along the

boulevards or, as suddenly, leapt back into the sir, continuing their search.

And here was the gas station, its attendants busy now with customers. Approaching from the

rear, Montag entered the men's washroom. Through the aluminium wall he heard a radio voice

saying, "War has been declared." The gas was being pumped outside. The men in the beetles

were talking and the attendants were talking about the engines, the gas, the money owed. Montag

stood trying to make himself feel the shock of the quiet statement from the radio, but nothing

would happen. The war would have to wait for him to come to it in his personal file, an hour,

two hours from now.

He washed his hands and face and towelled himself dry, making little sound. He came out of the

washroom and shut the door carefully and walked into the darkness and at last stood again on the

edge of the empty boulevard.

There it lay, a game for him to win, a vast bowling alley in the cool morning. The boulevard was

as clean as the surface of an arena two minutes before the appearance of certain unnamed victims

and certain unknown killers. The air over and above the vast concrete river trembled with the

warmth of Montag' s body alone; it was incredible how he felt his temperature could cause the

whole immediate world to vibrate. He was a phosphorescent target; he knew it, he felt it. And

now he must begin his little walk.

Three blocks away a few headlights glared. Montag drew a deep breath. His lungs were like

burning brooms in his chest. His mouth was sucked dry from running. His throat tasted of bloody

iron and there was rusted steel in his feet.

What about those lights there? Once you started walking you'd have to gauge how fast those

beetles could make it down here. Well, how far was it to the other curb? It seemed like a hundred

yards. Probably not a hundred, but figure for that anyway, figure that with him going very

slowly, at a nice stroll, it might take as much as thirty seconds, forty seconds to walk all the way.

The beetles? Once started, they could leave three blocks behind them in about fifteen seconds.

So, even if halfway across he started to run . . . ?



He put his right foot out and then his left foot and then his right. He walked on the empty avenue.

Even if the street were entirely empty, of course, you couldn't be sure of a safe crossing, for a car

could appear suddenly over the rise four blocks further on and be on and past you before you had

taken a dozen breaths.

He decided not to count his steps. He looked neither to left nor right. The light from the overhead

lamps seemed as bright and revealing as the midday sun and just as hot.

He listened to the sound of the car picking up speed two blocks away on his right. Its movable

headlights jerked back and forth suddenly, and caught at Montag.

Keep going.

Montag faltered, got a grip on the books, and forced himself not to freeze. Instinctively he took a

few quick, running steps then talked out loud to himself and pulled up to stroll again. He was

now half across the street, but the roar from the beetle's engines whined higher as it put on speed.

The police, of course. They see me. But slow now; slow, quiet, don't turn, don't look, don't seem

concerned. Walk, that's it, walls, walk.

The beetle was rushing. The beetle was roaring. The beetle raised its speed. The beetle was

whining. The beetle was in high thunder. The beetle came skimming. The beetle came in a single

whistling trajectory, fired from an invisible rifle. It was up to 120 m.p.h. It was up to 130 at least.

Montag clamped his jaws. The heat of the racing headlights burnt his cheeks, it seemed, and

jittered his eye-lids and flushed the sour sweat out all over his body.

He began to shuffle idiotically and talk to himself and then he broke and just ran. He put out his

legs as far as they would go and down and then far out again and down and back and out and

down and back. God ! God! He dropped a book, broke pace, almost turned, changed his mind,

plunged on, yelling in concrete emptiness, the beetle scuttling after its running food, two

hundred, one hundred feet away, ninety, eighty, seventy, Montag gasping, flailing his hands, legs

up down out, up down out, closer, closer, hooting, calling, his eyes burnt white now as his head

jerked about to confront the flashing glare, now the beetle was swallowed in its own light, now it

was nothing but a torch hurtling upon him; all sound, all blare. Now-almost on top of him !

He stumbled and fell.

I'm done! It's over!

But the falling made a difference. An instant before reaching him the wild beetle cut and

swerved out. It was gone. Montag lay flat, his head down. Wisps of laughter trailed back to him

with the blue exhaust from the beetle.

His right hand was extended above him, flat. Across the extreme tip of his middle finger, he saw

now as he lifted that hand, a faint sixteenth of an inch of black tread where tyre had touched in

passing. He looked at that black line with disbelief, getting to his feet.

That wasn't the police, he thought.

He looked down the boulevard. It was clear now. A earful of children, all ages, God knew, from

twelve to sixteen, out

124 FAHRENHEIT 451

whistling, yelling, hurrahing, had seen a man, a very extraordinary sight, a man strolling, a rarity,
and simply said, "Let's get him," not knowing he was the fugitive Mr. Montag, simply a,number
of children out for a long night of roaring five or six hundred miles in a few moonlit hours, their
faces icy with wind, and coming home or not coming at dawn, alive or not alive, that made the
adventure.



They would have killed me, thought Montag, swaying, the air still torn and stirring about him in

dust, touching his bruised cheek. For no reason at all in the world they would have killed me.

He walked toward the far kerb telling each foot to go and keep going. Somehow he had picked

up the spilled books; he didn't remember bending or touching them. He kept moving them from

hand to hand as if they were a poker hand he could not figure.

I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarisse?

He stopped and his mind said it again, very loud.

I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarisse!

He wanted to run after them yelling.

His eyes watered.

The thing that had saved him was falling flat. The driver of that car, seeing Montag down,

instinctively considered the probability that running over a body at that speed might turn the car

upside down and spill them out. If Montag had remained an upright target. . . ?

Montag gasped.

Far down the boulevard, four blocks away, the beetle had slowed, spun about on two wheels, and

was now racing back, slanting over on the wrong side of the street, picking up speed.

But Montag was gone, hidden in the safety of the dark alley for which he had set out on a long

journey, an hour or was it a minute, ago? He stood shivering in the night, looking back out as the

beetle ran by and skidded back to the centre of the avenue, whirling laughter in the air all about

it, gone.

Further on, as Montag moved in darkness, he could see the helicopters falling, falling, like the

first flakes of snow in the long winter, to come....

The house was silent.

Montag approached from the rear, creeping through a thick night-moistened scent of daffodils

and roses and wet grass. He touched the screen door in back, found it open, slipped in, moved

across the porch, listening.

Mrs. Black, are you asleep in there? he thought. This isn't good, but your husband did it to others

and never asked and never wondered and never worried. And now since you're a fireman's wife,

it's your house and your turn, for all the houses your husband burned and the people he hurt

without thinking. .

The house did not reply.

He hid the books in the kitchen and moved from the house again to the alley and looked back

and the house was still dark and quiet, sleeping.

On his way across town, with the helicopters fluttering like torn bits of paper in the sky, he

phoned the alarm at a lonely phone booth outside a store that was closed for the night. Then he

stood in the cold night air, waiting and at a distance he heard the fire sirens start up and run, and

the Salamanders coming, coming to bum Mr. Black's house while he was away at work, to make

his wife stand shivering in the morning air while the roof let go and dropped in upon the fire. But

now, she was still asleep.

Good night, Mrs. Black, he thought. -

"Faber! "

Another rap, a whisper, and a long waiting. Then, after a minute, a small light flickered inside

Faber's small house. After another pause, the back door opened.

They stood looking at each other in the half-light, Faber and Montag, as if each did not believe in

the other's existence. Then Faber moved and put out his hand and grabbed Montag and moved



him in and sat him down and went back and stood in the door, listening. The sirens were wailing
off in the morning distance. He came in and shut the door.

Montag said, "I've been a fool all down the line. I can't stay long. I'm on my way God knows
where."

"At least you were a fool about the right things," said Faber. "I thought you were dead. The
audio-capsule I gave you--"
"Burnt."

"I heard the captain talking to you and suddenly there was nothing. I almost came out looking for
you."

"The captain's dead. He found the audio-capsule, he heard your voice, he was going to trace it. I
killed him with the flamethrower."
Faber sat down and did not speak for a time.

"My God, how did this happen?" said Montag. "It was only the other night everything was fine
and the next thing I know I'm drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive?
I can't breathe. There's Beatty dead, and he was my friend once, and there's Millie gone, I
thought she was my wife, but now I don't know.

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