by Ray Bradbury
Montag slid down the brass pole. He went out to look at the city and the clouds had cleared away completely, and he lit a cigarette and came back to bend down and look at the Hound. It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself.
"Hello," whispered Montag, fascinated as always with the dead beast, the living beast.
Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the Hound and let loose rats in the firehouse areaway, and sometimes chickens, and sometimes cats that would have to be drowned anyway, and there would be betting to see which of the cats or chickens or rats the Hound would seize first. The animals were turned loose. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat, cat, or chicken caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentling paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the Hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine. 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 nights he lay in his bunk, face turned to the wall, listening to the 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 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 eye bulbs. 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 extend 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 multifaceted 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 on 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 know all 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 grill in the hall at home and what lay hidden behind the grill. 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 thumbtacked 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 the 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 antisocial, 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 to you 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 t
alk, 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 lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' 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 housecleaning 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 joke-boxes on and the same jokes most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the colored patterns running up and down, but it's only color 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 got to be going. Goodbye, Mr. Montag."
"Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
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 disease 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 tabletop, 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 colors, the colors of coins, of gold, of silver. The unseen men across the table were sighing on their cards, waiting. ". . . one forty-five. . . ." The voice clock mourned out the cold hour of a cold morning of a still colder year.
"What's wrong, Montag?"
Montag opened his eyes.
A radio hummed somewhere. ". . . war may be declared any hour. This country stands ready to defend its . . ."
The firehouse trembled as a great flight of jet planes whistled a single note across the black morning sky.
Montag blinked. Beatty was looking at him as if he were a museum statue. At any moment, Beatty might rise and walk about him, touching, exploring his guilt and self-consciousness. Guilt? What guilt was that?
"Your play, Montag."
Montag looked at these men whose faces were sunburnt by a thousand real and ten thousand imaginary fires, whose work flushed their cheeks and fevered their eyes. These men who looked steadily into their platinum igniter flames as they lit their eternally burning black pipes. They and their charcoal hair and soot-colored brows and bluish-ash-smeared cheeks where they had shaven close; but their heritage showed. Montag started up, his mouth opened. Had he ever seen a fireman that didn't have black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look? These men were all mirror images of himself! Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities? The color of cinders and ash about them, and the continual smell of burning from their pipes. Captain Beatty there, rising in thunderheads of tobacco smoke. Beatty opening a fresh tobacco packet, crumpling the cellophane into a sound of fire.
Montag looked at the cards in his own hands. "I--I've been thinking. About the fire last week. About the man whose library we fixed. What happened to him?"
"They took him screaming off to the asylum."
"He wasn't insane."
Beatty arranged his cards quietly. "Any man's insane who thinks he can fool the government and us."
"I've tried to imagine," said Montag, "just how it would feel. I mean, to have firemen burn our houses and our books."
"We haven't any books."
"But if we did have some."
"You got some?"
Beatty blinked slowly.
"No." Montag gazed beyond them to the wall with the typed lists of a million forbidden books. Their names leapt in fire, burning down the years under his axe and his hose which sprayed not water but kerosene. "No." But in his mind, a cool wind started up and blew out the ventilator grill at home, softly, chilling his face. And, again, he saw himself in a green park talking to an old man, a very old man, and the wind from the park was cold, too.
Montag hesitated. "What--was it always like this? The firehouse, our work? I mean, well, once upon a time. . . ."
"Once upon a time!" Beatty said. "What kind of talk is that?"
Fool, thought Montag to himself, you'll give it away. At the last fire, a book of fairy tales, he'd glanced at a single line. "I mean," he said, "in the old days, before homes were completely fireproofed--" Suddenly it seemed a much younger voice was speaking for him. He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McClellan saying, "Didn't firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?"
"That's rich!" Stoneman and Black drew forth their rule books, which also contained brief histories of the Firemen of America, and laid them out where Montag, though long familiar with them, might read: Established, 1790, to burn English-influenced books in the Colonies. First Firem
an: Benjamin Franklin.
RULE 1. Answer the alarm quickly.
2. Start the fire swiftly.
3. Burn everything.
4. Report back to firehouse immediately.
5. Stand alert for other Alarms.
Everyone watched Montag. He did not move. The alarm sounded.
The bell in the ceiling kicked itself two hundred times. Suddenly there were four empty chairs. The cards fell in a flurry of snow. The brass pole shivered. The men were gone.
Montag sat in his chair. Below, the orange dragon coughed to life.
Montag slid down the pole like a man in a dream.
The Mechanical Hound leapt up in its kennel, its eyes all green flame.
"Montag, you forgot your helmet!"
He seized it off the wall behind him, ran, leapt, and they were off, the night wind hammering about their siren scream and their mighty metal thunder!
It was a flaking three-story house in the ancient part of the city, a century old if it was a day, but like all houses it had been given a thin fireproof plastic sheath many years ago, and this preservative shell seemed to be the only thing holding it in the sky.
"Here we are!"
The engine slammed to a stop. Beatty, Stoneman, and Black ran up the sidewalk, suddenly odious and fat in their plump fireproof slickers. Montag followed.
They crashed the front door and grabbed at a woman, though she was not running; she was not trying to escape. She was only standing, weaving from side to side, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness in the wall, as if they had struck her a terrible blow upon the head. Her tongue was moving in her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be trying to remember something and then they remembered and her tongue moved again: "'Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.'U
"Enough of that!" said Beatty. "Where are they?"
He slapped her face with amazing objectivity and repeated the question. The old woman's eyes came to a focus upon Beatty. "You know where they are or you wouldn't be here," she said.
Stoneman held out the telephone alarm card with the complaint signed in telephone duplicate on the back:
