Fahrenheit 451
PAGE 18
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And the house all burnt. And my job gone and
myself on the run, and I planted a book in a fireman's house on the way. Good Christ, the things
I've done in a single week! "
"You did what you had to do. It was coming on for a long time."
"Yes, I believe that, if there's nothing else I believe. It saved itself up to happen. I could feel it
for a long time, I was saving something up, I went around doing one thing and feeling another.
God, it was all there. It's a wonder it didn't show on me, like fat. And now here I am, messing up
your life. They might follow me here. "
"I feel alive for the first time in years," said Faber. "I feel I'm doing what I should have done a
lifetime ago. For a little while I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last.
Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. I suppose I'll
have to do even more violent things, exposing myself so I won't fall down on the job and turn
scared again. What are your plans?"
"To keep running."
"You know the war's on?"
"I heard."
"God, isn't it funny?" said the old man. "It seems so remote because we have our own troubles."
"I haven't had time to think." Montag drew out a hundred dollars. "I want this to stay with you,
use it any way that'll help when I'm gone."
"But- "
"I might be dead by noon; use this."
Faber nodded. "You'd better head for the river if you can, follow along it, and if you can hit the
old railroad lines going out into the country, follow them. Even though practically everything's
airborne these days and most of the tracks are abandoned, the rails are still there, rusting. I've
heard there are still hobo camps all across the country, here and there; walking camps they call
them, and if you keep walking far enough and keep an eye peeled, they say there's lots of old
Harvard degrees on the tracks between here and Los Angeles. Most of them are wanted and
hunted in the cities. They survive, I guess. There aren't many of them, and I guess the
Government's never considered them a great enough danger to go in and track them down. You
might hole up with them for a time and get in touch with me in St. Louis, I'm leaving on the five
a.m. bus this morning, to see a retired printer there, I'm getting out into the open myself, at last.
The money will be put to good use. Thanks and God bless you. Do you want to sleep a few
minutes?"
"I'd better run."
"Let's check."
He took Montag quickly into the bedroom and lifted a picture frame aside, revealing a television
screen the size of a postal card. "I always wanted something very small, something I could talk
to, something I could blot out with the palm of my hand, if necessary, nothing that could shout
me down, nothing monstrous big. So, you see." He snapped it on. "Montag," the TV set said, and
lit up. "M-O-N-T-A-G." The name was spelled out by the voice. "Guy Montag. Still running.
Police helicopters are up. A new Mechanical Hound has been brought from another district.. ."
Montag and Faber looked at each other.
"... Mechanical Hound never fails. Never since its first use in tracking quarry has this incredible
invention made a mistake. Tonight, this network is proud to have the opportunity to follow the
Hound by camera helicopter as it starts on its way to the target..."
Faber poured two glasses of whisky. "We'll need these."
They drank.
"... nose so sensitive the Mechanical Hound can remember and identify ten thousand odour-
indexes on ten thousand men without re-setting! "
Faber trembled the least bit and looked about at his house, at the walls, the door, the doorknob,
and the chair where Montag now sat. Montag saw the look. They both looked quickly about the
house and Montag felt his nostrils dilate and he knew that he was trying to track himself and his
nose was suddenly good enough to sense the path he had made in the air of the room and the
sweat of his hand hung from the doorknob, invisible, but as numerous as the jewels of a small
chandelier, he was everywhere, in and on and about everything, he was a luminous cloud, a ghost
that made breathing once more impossible. He saw Faber stop up his own breath for fear of
drawing that ghost into his own body, perhaps, being contaminated with the phantom exhalations
and odours of a running man.
"The Mechanical Hound is now landing by helicopter at the site of the Burning!"
And there on the small screen was the burnt house, and the crowd, and something with a sheet
over it and out of the sky, fluttering, came the helicopter like a grotesque flower.
So they must have their game out, thought Montag. The circus must go on, even with war
beginning within the hour....
He watched the scene, fascinated, not wanting to move. It seemed so remote and no part of him;
it was a play apart and separate, wondrous to watch, not without its strange pleasure. That's all
for me, you thought, that's all taking place just for me, by God.
If he wished, he could linger here, in comfort, and follow the entire hunt on through its swift,
phases, down alleys across streets, over empty running avenues, crossing lots and playgrounds,
with pauses here or there for the necessary commercials, up other alleys to the burning house of
Mr. and Mrs. Black, and so on finally to this house with Faber and himself seated, drinking,
while the Electric Hound snuffed down the last trail, silent as a drift of death itself, skidded to a
halt outside that window there. Then, if he wished, Montag might rise, walk to the window, keep
one eye on the TV screen, open the window, lean out, look back, and see himself dramatized,
described, made over, standing there, limned in the bright small television screen from outside, a
drama to be watched objectively, knowing that in other parlours he was large as life, in full
colour, dimensionally perfect! And if he kept his eye peeled quickly he would see himself, an
instant before oblivion, being punctured for the benefit of how many civilian parlour-sitters who
had been wakened from sleep a few minutes ago by the frantic sirening of their living-room
walls to come watch the big game, the hunt, the one-man carnival.
Would he have time for a speech? As the Hound seized him, in view of ten or twenty or thirty
million people, mightn't he sum up his entire life in the last week in one single phrase or a word
that would stay with them long after the. Hound had turned, clenching him in its metal-plier
jaws, and trotted off in darkness, while the camera remained stationary, watching the creature
dwindle in the distance�a splendid fade-out! What could he say in a single word, a few words,
that would sear all their faces and wake them up?
"There," whispered Faber.
Out of a helicopter glided something that was not machine, not animal, not dead, not alive,
glowing with a pale green luminosity. It stood near the smoking ruins of Montag's house and the
men brought his discarded flame-thrower to it and put it down under the muzzle of the Hound.
There was a whirring, clicking, humming.
Montag shook his head and got up and drank the rest of his drink. "It's time. I'm sorry about
this:"
"About what? Me? My house? I deserve everything. Run, for God's sake. Perhaps I can delay
them here--"
"Wait. There's no use your being discovered. When I leave, burn the spread of this bed, that I
touched. Burn the chair in the living room, in your wall incinerator. Wipe down the furniture
with alcohol, wipe the door-knobs. Burn the throwrug in the parlour. Turn the air-conditioning
on full in all the rooms and spray with moth-spray if you have it. Then, turn on your lawn
sprinklers as high as they'll go and hose off the sidewalks. With any luck at all, we can kill the
trail in here, anyway..'
Faber shook his hand. "I'll tend to it. Good luck. If we're both in good health, next week, the
week after, get in touch. General Delivery, St. Louis. I'm sorry there's no way I can go with you
this time, by ear-phone. That was good for both of us. But my equipment was limited. You see, I
never thought I would use it. What a silly old man. No thought there. Stupid, stupid. So I haven't
another green bullet, the right kind, to put in your head. Go now ! "
"One last thing. Quick. A suitcase, get it, fill it with your dirtiest clothes, an old suit, the dirtier
the better, a shirt, some old sneakers and socks . . . . "
Faber was gone and back in a minute. They sealed the cardboard valise with clear tape. "To keep
the ancient odour of Mr. Faber in, of course," said Faber sweating at the job.
Montag doused the exterior of the valise with whisky. "I don't want that Hound picking up two
odours at once. May I take this whisky. I'll need it later. Christ I hope this works!"
They shook hands again and, going out of the door, they glanced at the TV. The Hound was on
its way, followed by hovering helicopter cameras, silently, silently, sniffing the great night wind.
It was running down the first alley.
"Good-bye ! "
And Montag was out the back door lightly, running with the half-empty valise. Behind him he
heard the lawn-sprinkling system jump up, filling the dark air with rain that fell gently and then
with a steady pour all about, washing on the sidewalks, and draining into the alley. He carried a
few drops of this rain with him on his face. He thought he heard the old man call good-bye, but
he-wasn't certain.
He ran very fast away from the house, down toward the river.
Montag ran.
He could feel the Hound, like autumn, come cold and dry and swift, like a wind that didn't stir
grass, that didn't jar windows or disturb leaf-shadows on the white sidewalks as it passed. The
Hound did not touch the world. It carried its silence with it, so you could feel the silence building
up a pressure behind you all across town. Montag felt the pressure rising, and ran.
He stopped for breath, on his way to the river, to peer through dimly lit windows of wakened
houses, and saw the silhouettes of people inside watching their parlour walls and there on the
walls the Mechanical Hound, a breath of neon vapour, spidered along, here and gone, here and
gone ! Now at Elm Terrace, Lincoln, Oak, Park, and up the alley toward Faber's house.
Go past, thought Montag, don't stop, go on, don't turn in!
On the parlour wall, Faber's house, with its sprinkler system pulsing in the night air.
The Hound paused, quivering.
No! Montag held to the window sill. This way! Here!
The procaine needle flicked out and in, out and in. A single clear drop of the stuff of dreams fell
from the needle as it vanished in the Hound's muzzle.
Montag held his breath, like a doubled fist, in his chest.
The Mechanical Hound turned and plunged away from Faber's house down the alley again.
Montag snapped his gaze to the sky. The helicopters were closer, a great blowing of insects to a
single light source.
With an effort, Montag reminded himself again that this was no fictional episode to be watched
on his run to the river; it was in actuality his own chess-game he was witnessing, move by move.
He shouted to give himself the necessary push away from this last house window, and the
fascinating seance going on in there ! Hell ! and he was away and gone ! The alley, a street, the
alley, a street, and the smell of the river. Leg out, leg down, leg out and down. Twenty million
Montags running, soon, if the cameras caught him. Twenty million Montags running, running
like an ancient flickery Keystone Comedy, cops, robbers, chasers and the chased, hunters and
hunted, he had seen it a thousand times. Behind him now twenty million silently baying Hounds
ricocheted across parlours, three-cushion shooting from right wall to centre wall to left wall,
gone, right wall, centre wall, left wall, gone !
Montag jammed his Seas hell to his ear.
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