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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 Seashell to his ear.
"Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do
as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a
front or rear door or look from the windows. The fugitive
cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his
house. Ready!"
Of course! Why hadn't they done it before! Why, in all the
years, hadn't this game been tried! Everyone up, everyone
out! He couldn't be missed! The only man running alone in
the night city, the only man proving his legs!
"At the count of ten now! One! Two!"
He felt the city rise. Three.
He felt the city turn to its thousands of doors.
Faster! Leg up, leg down!
"Four!"
The people sleepwalking in their hallways.
"Five!"
He felt their hands on the doorknobs!
The smell of the river was cool and like a solid rain. His
throat was burnt rust and his eyes were wept dry with
running. He yelled as if this yell would jet him on, fling
him the last hundred yards.
"Six, seven, eight!"
The doorknobs turned on five thousand doors. "Nine!"
He ran out away from the last row of houses, on a slope
leading down to a solid moving blackness. "Ten!"
The doors opened.
He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into
yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains,
pale, night-frightened faces, like grey animals peering from
electric caves, faces with grey colourless eyes, grey
tongues and grey thoughts looking out through the numb flesh
of the face.
But he was at the river.
He touched it, just to be sure it was real. He waded in and
stripped in darkness to the skin, splashed his body, arms,
legs, and head with raw liquor; drank it and snuffed some up
his nose. Then he dressed in Faber's old clothes and shoes.
He tossed his own clothing into the river and watched it
swept away. Then, holding the suitcase, he walked out in the
river until there was no bottom and he was swept away in the
dark.
He was three hundred yards downstream when the Hound reached
the river. Overhead the great racketing fans of the
helicopters hovered. A storm of light fell upon the river
and Montag dived under the great illumination as if the sun
had broken the clouds. He felt the river pull him further on
its way, into darkness. Then the lights switched back to the
land, the helicopters swerved over the city again, as if
they had picked up another trail. They were gone. The Hound
was gone. Now there was only the cold river and Montag
floating in a sudden peacefulness, away from the city and
the lights and the chase, away from everything. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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