Fahrenheit 451 PAGE 4

 

Fahrenheit 451 PAGE 4

Fahrenheit 451

 

PAGE 4

The pawn was then
tossed in the incinerator. A new game began.

Montag stayed upstairs most nights when this went on. There had been a time two years ago
when he had bet with the best of them, and lost a week's salary and faced Mildred's insane anger,
which showed itself in veins and blotches. But now at night he lay in his bunk, face turned to the
wall, listening to whoops of laughter below and the piano-string scurry of rat feet, the violin
squeaking of mice, and the great shadowing, motioned silence of the Hound leaping out like a

moth in the raw light, finding, holding its victim, inserting the needle and going back to its
kennel to die as if a switch had been turned.

Montag touched the muzzle. .

The Hound growled.

Montag jumped back.

The Hound half rose in its kennel and looked at him with green-blue neon light flickering in its

suddenly activated eyebulbs. It growled again, a strange rasping combination of electrical sizzle,

a frying sound, a scraping of metal, a turning of cogs that seemed rusty and ancient with

suspicion.

"No, no, boy," said Montag, his heart pounding.

He saw the silver needle extended upon the air an inch, pull back, extend, pull back. The growl

simmered in the beast and it looked at him.

Montag backed up. The Hound took a step from its kennel.

Montag grabbed the brass pole with one hand. The pole, reacting, slid upward, and took him

through the ceiling, quietly. He stepped off in the half-lit deck of the upper level. He was

trembling and his face was green-white. Below, the Hound had sunk back down upon its eight

incredible insect legs and was humming to itself again, its multi-faceted eyes at peace.

Montag stood, letting the fears pass, by the drop-hole. Behind him, four men at a card table

under a green-lidded light in the corner glanced briefly but said nothing. Only the man with the

Captain's hat and the sign of the Phoenix on his hat, at last, curious, his playing cards in his thin

hand, talked across the long room.

"Montag . . . ?"

"It doesn't like me," said Montag.

"What, the Hound?" The Captain studied his cards.

"Come off it. It doesn't like or dislike. It just "functions.' It's like a lesson in ballistics. It has a

trajectory we decide for it. It follows through. It targets itself, homes itself, and cuts off. It's only

copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity."

Montag swallowed. "Its calculators can be set to any combination, so many amino acids, so

much sulphur, so much butterfat and alkaline. Right?"

"We all know that."

"All of those chemical balances and percentages on all of us here in the house are recorded in the

master file downstairs. It would be easy for someone to set up a partial combination on the

Hound's 'memory,' a touch of amino acids, perhaps. That would account for what the animal did

just now. Reacted toward me."

"Hell," said the Captain.

"Irritated, but not completely angry. Just enough 'memory' set up in it by someone so it growled

when I touched it. "

"Who would do a thing like that?." asked the Captain. "You haven't any enemies here, Guy."

"None that I know of."

"We'll have the Hound checked by our technicians tomorrow.

"This isn't the first time it's threatened me," said Montag. "Last month it happened twice."

"We'll fix it up. Don't worry"

But Montag did not move and only stood thinking of the ventilator grille in the hall at home and

what lay hidden behind the grille. If someone here in the firehouse knew about the ventilator

then mightn't they "tell" the Hound . . . ?

The Captain came over to the drop-hole and gave Montag a questioning glance.

"I was just figuring," said Montag, "what does the Hound think about down there nights? Is it

coming alive on us, really? It makes me cold."



"It doesn't think anything we don't want it to think."

"That's sad," said Montag, quietly, "because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing.

What a shame if that's all it can ever know.'"

Beatty snorted, gently. "Hell! It's a fine bit of craftsmanship, a good rifle that can fetch its own

target and guarantees the bull's-eye every time."

"That's why," said Montag. "I wouldn't want to be its next victim.

"Why? You got a guilty conscience about something?"

Montag glanced up swiftly.

Beatty stood there looking at him steadily with his eyes, while his mouth opened and began to

laugh, very softly.

One two three four five six seven days. And as many times he came out of the house and Clarisse

was there somewhere in the world. Once he saw her shaking a walnut tree, once he saw her

sitting on the lawn knitting a blue sweater, three or four times he found a bouquet of late flowers

on his porch, or a handful of chestnuts in a little sack, or some autumn leaves neatly pinned to a

sheet of white paper and thumb-tacked to his door. Every day Clarisse walked him to the corner.

One day it was raining, the next it was clear, the day after that the wind blew strong, and the day

after that it was mild and calm, and the day after that calm day was a day like a furnace of

summer and Clarisse with her face all sunburnt by late afternoon.

"Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?"

"Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you. And because we know each

other."

"You make me feel very old and very much like a father."

"Now you explain," she said, "why you haven't any daughters like me, if you love children so

much?"

"I don't know."

"You're joking!"

"I mean-" He stopped and shook his head. "Well, my wife, she . . . she just never wanted any

children at all."

The girl stopped smiling. "I'm sorry. I really, thought you were having fun at my expense. I'm a

fool."

"No, no," he said. "It was a good question. It's been a long time since anyone cared enough to

ask . A good question."

"Let's talk about something else. Have you ever smelled old leaves? Don't they smell like

cinnamon? Here. Smell."

"Why, yes, it is like cinnamon in a way."

She looked at him with her clear dark eyes. "You always seem shocked."

"It's just I haven't had time--"

"Did you look at the stretched-out billboards like I told you?"

"I think so. Yes." He had to laugh.

"Your laugh sounds much nicer than it did"

"Does it?"

"Much more relaxed."

He felt at ease and comfortable. "Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering

around."

"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very

social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking



about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard.
"Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social
to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an
hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting
pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they
just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-
teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the
spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by
the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people
around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker
place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close
you can get to lamp-posts, playing "chicken' and 'knock hub-caps.' I guess I'm everything they
say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I
know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice
how people hurt each other nowadays?"
"You sound so very old."

"Sometimes I'm ancient. I'm afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always
used to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone.
Ten of them died in car wrecks. I'm afraid of them and they don't like me because I'm afraid. My
uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn't kill each other. But that was a long
time ago when they had things different. They believed in responsibility, my uncle says. Do you
know, I'm responsible. I was spanked when I needed it, years ago. And I do all the shopping and
house-cleaning by hand.

"But most of all," she said, "I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look
at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where
they're going. Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on
the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as
everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in
subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what?"
"What?"

"People don't talk about anything."
"Oh, they must!"

"No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming-pools mostly and say how
swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.
And most of the time in the cafes they have the jokeboxes on and the same jokes most of the
time, or the musical wall lit and all the coloured patterns running up and down, but it's only
colour and all abstract. And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract. That's all there is
now. My uncle says it was different once. A long time back sometimes pictures said things or
even showed people. "

"Your uncle said, your uncle said. Your uncle must be a remarkable man."
"He is. He certainly is. Well, I've got to be going. Goodbye, Mr. Montag."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye...."

One two three four five six seven days: the firehouse.
"Montag, you shin that pole like a bird up a tree."
Third day.



"Montag, I see you came in the back door this time. The Hound bother you?"
"No, no."
Fourth day.

"Montag, a funny thing. Heard tell this morning. Fireman in Seattle, purposely set a Mechanical
Hound to his own chemical complex and let it loose. What kind of suicide would you call that?"
Five six seven days.

And then, Clarisse was gone. He didn't know what there was about the afternoon, but it was not
seeing her somewhere in the world. The lawn was empty, the trees empty, the street empty, and
while at first he did not even know he missed her or was even looking for her, the fact was that
by the time he reached the subway, there were vague stirrings of un-ease in him. Something was
the matter, his routine had been disturbed. A simple routine, true, established in a short few days,
and yet . . . ? He almost turned back to make the walk again, to give her time to appear. He was
certain if he tried the same route, everything would work out fine. But it was late, and the arrival
of his train put a stop to his plan.

The flutter of cards, motion of hands, of eyelids, the drone of the time-voice in the firehouse
ceiling "... one thirty- five. Thursday morning, November 4th,... one thirty-six . . . one thirty-
seven a.m... " The tick of the playing-cards on the greasy table-top, all the sounds came to
Montag, behind his closed eyes, behind the barrier he had momentarily erected. He could feel the
firehouse full of glitter and shine and silence, of brass colours, the colours of coins, of gold, of
silver: The unseen men across the table were sighing on their cards, waiting.