Short Fiction - Ray Bradbury (short story to read .TXT) 📗

Walk with your gun out in front of you, firing. That’s number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?”

“Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula.⁠ ⁠…”

An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets, lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a wide, green-lawned Plaza.

Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that was pretentious enough to be Gunther’s quarters.

He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.

He didn’t resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.

Hathaway looked at him. “So you’re Gunther?” he said, calmly. The pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken, questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he could speak, Hathaway said:

“Everything’s over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and we’re capturing your Base. Don’t try to fight. We’ve a thousand men against your eighty-five.”

Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands twitched in his lap. “You are bluffing,” he said, finally, with a firm directness. “A ship hasn’t landed here for an hour. Your ship was the last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed.”

“Both. The other guy went after the Patrol.”

“Impossible!”

“I can’t respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther.”

A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther’s men, lounging on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side of his office. He stared, hard.

The Patrol was coming!

Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol. Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis guns with them in their tight hands.

Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air. “Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We’re outnumbered!”

Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther’s men didn’t run, Hathaway had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.

Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was. His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.

Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and twitch. God, what photography!

Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paperweight. Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos taking place immediately outside his window.

The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And out of the chaos came Marnagan’s voice, “Here!”

One of the Patrolmen stopped firing, and ran toward Click and the Building. He got inside. “Did you see them run, Click boy? What an idea. How did we do?”

“Fine, Irish. Fine!”

“So here’s Gunther, the spalpeen! Gunther, the little dried up pirate, eh?” Marnagan whacked Hathaway on the back. “I’ll have to hand it to you, this is the best plan o’ battle ever laid out. And proud I was to fight with such splendid men as these⁠—” He gestured toward the Plaza.

Click laughed with him. “You should be proud. Five hundred Patrolmen with hair like red banners flying, with thick Irish brogues and broad shoulders and freckles and blue eyes and a body as tall as your stories!”

Marnagan roared. “I always said, I said⁠—if ever there could be an army of Marnagans, we could lick the whole damn uneeverse! Did you photograph it, Click?”

“I did.” Hathaway tapped his camera happily.

“Ah, then, won’t that be a scoop for you, boy? Money from the Patrol so they can use the film as instruction in Classes and money from Cosmic Films for the newsreel headlines! And what a scene, and what acting! Five hundred duplicates of Steve Marnagan, broadcast telepathically into the minds of the pirates, walking across a Plaza, capturing the whole shebang! How did you like my death-scenes?”

“You’re a ham. And anyway⁠—five hundred duplicates, nothing!” said Click. He ripped the film-spool from the camera, spread it in the air to develop, inserted it in the micro-viewer. “Have a look⁠—”

Marnagan looked. “Ah, now. Ah, now,” he said over and over. “There’s the Plaza, and there’s Gunther’s men fighting and then they’re turning and running. And what are they running from? One man! Me. Irish Marnagan! Walking all by myself across the lawn, paralyzing them. One against a hundred, and the cowards running from me!

“Sure, Click, this is better than I thought. I forgot that the film wouldn’t register telepathic emanations, them other Marnagans. It makes it look like I’m a mighty brave man, does it not? It does. Ah, look⁠—look at me, Hathaway, I’m enjoying every minute of it, I am.”

Hathaway swatted him on his backside. “Look here, you egocentric son of Erin, there’s more work to be done. More pirates to be captured. The Patrol is still marching around and someone might be suspicious if they looked too close and saw all that red hair.”

“All right, Click, we’ll clean up the rest of them now. We’re a combination, we two, we are. I take it all back about your pictures, Click, if you hadn’t thought of taking pictures of me and inserting it into those telepath machines we’d be dead ducks now. Well⁠—here I go.⁠ ⁠…”

Hathaway stopped him.