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

really on the spot this time, aren’t you, Will? That’s why I called. I like your ideas on machinery. I’ve always thought of machines, myself, as nothing but extensions of man’s frustrations and emotions, his losses and compensations in life. We agree. But you’re wrong this time, Will. You made a mistake today.”

“Now, don’t you start on me! You’re my last friend,” retorted Stanley tiredly. “What else could I do⁠—destroy the rocket?”

“That would be negative. No good. Give them something positive. Tell them to go ahead,” advised Cross, pleasantly enough. “Warn them, like a kindly father, of the consequences. Then, when their fingers are burnt⁠—”

“Humanity might go down the drain,” finished Stanley abruptly.

“Not if you play your cards right, control the variables. There must be some way around them without getting yourself mangled. I’m ready to help when you have a plan. Think it over.”

“I still think blowing the damn thing up would be⁠—”

“They’d build a bigger one. And they’d persecute you and your family the rest of your life,” explained Cross logically. “You and I may know that science hasn’t contributed one whit to man’s mental progress, but Mr. Everyman likes his babies diapered in disposable tissues and likes to travel from Siberia to Johnstown like an infuriated bullet. You can’t stop them, you can only divert them a bit.”

Stanley grasped the hand-audio, tightly. He listened.

A great roar of ’copters sounded out in the afternoon sky, directly overhead. The house shook. Althea sprang up lithely and ran to look out. “I can’t talk any more, Cross. I’ll call you back. They’re outside, waiting for me, now.⁠ ⁠…”

Cross’ voice faded like a dream. “Remember what I tell you. Let them go ahead.”

Stanley walked to the door, opened it, stepped half through.

A radio voice boomed out of the bright blue sky.

“Stanley!” it shouted. It was Simpson’s voice. “Stanley! Come out and talk! Come out and tell us, Stanley! Stanley!”

Althea would not stay in. She walked with him out onto the moist green lawn, in the open.

The heavens were flooded with ’copters whirling. The sun shook in its place. ’Copters hung everywhere, like huge hummingbirds, swiveling, whirring. Five hundred of them, at least, shadowing the lawns and shaking the housetops.

“Oh, there your are, Stanley!”

Stanley shaded his eyes. His lips drew away from his teeth in a grimace, as he stared upward, tense and afraid.

“It’s after three o’clock, Stanley!” came the dull boom of words.

In this moment, with the spiraling ’copters suspended over his lawn, over his wife and children and house, over himself and his beliefs, Stanley swallowed, stepped back, put his hands down and let the idea grow within him. Yes, he would give them their rocket. He would give it to them. You cannot fight the children, he thought. They must have their green apples. If you refuse them, they will find a way around you. Go along with their illogical tide and make logic of it. Let the children eat their full of green apples, many, many green apples to swell their vast stomach into sickness. Yes. A slow smile touched the corners of his mouth, vanished. The plan was complete.

The voice from the sky fell on him like an iron fist! “Stanley! What is your word now? How will you speak now? With a thousand pounds of nitroglycerine over your home, how will you talk?”

The ’copters sank, malignantly. Thunder swept the lawn. Althea’s brilliant amber skirt flared in the wash of it.

“Will the rocket fly, Stanley?”

From the corners of his aching, straining eyes, Stanley saw his son poised in the window, watching him.

“Raise your right hand and wave it,” thundered the sky-voice. “if the answer is yes!”

Stanley made them wait for it. He wetted his lips with a slow tongue, then, gradually, very casually, he raised his right hand, palm up, and waved it to the thundering sky.

A torrent of exultation poured in a Niagara from the heavens. Five hundred audios blasted, cheered, exulted! The trees ripped and tore in the cyclone of energy and explosion! The noise continued as Stanley turned, took Althea’s elbow, and steered her blindly back to the door.

The little black-jet-plane dropped out of the midnight stars. Moments later, Cross was getting out of it, crossing the dark lawn, grasping Stanley’s hand warmly. “Made good time, eh?”

Inside, they downed their glasses of brandy first, then got to business. Stanley outlined his plan, his contacts, his psychology. He was pleased and excited to see an extraordinary smile of approval come to Cross’s pink, round face. “Excellent! Now you’re talking!” cried Cross.

“I like your plan, Stanley. It places the blame right back on the people. They won’t be able to persecute you.”

Stanley refilled the glasses. “I’ll see to it you’re on the Rocket tomorrow. Greenwald⁠—he’s the captain⁠—will cooperate, I’m certain, when the trip is over. It’s up to you and Greenwald then.”

They raised their glasses. “And when it’s all over,” observed Cross slowly. “We’ll have the long, hard struggle to revise our educational system. To begin to apply the scientific method to man’s thinking, instead of just to his machines. And when we’ve built a logical subjective world, then it’ll be safe to make machines of all and any kinds. Here’s to our plan, may it be completed.” They drank.

The next day two million people spread over the rolling hills, through the tiny Jersey towns, sitting atop bugs and plastic beetles. An excitement pervaded the day. The sky was a blue vacuum, the ’copters grounded by law. The Rocket lay gleaming and monstrous and silent.

At noon, the crew ambled across the tarmac, Captain Greenwald leading. Cross walked among them. The huge metal doors slammed, and with a blast of Gargantuan flame, the Rocket heaved upward and vanished.

People cheered and laughed and cried.

Stanley watched his son and daughter and mother-in-law do likewise. He was deeply pleased to see that Althea did not join them. Hand in hand they watched the sky dazzlement fade. The first Rocket to the moon was gone. The world was drunkenly happy in its delirium.

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