I Sing the Body Electric by Ray Bradbury
"Wait!" cried the old man.
Click.
Barton sat holding the silent phone a long time. His heart gave him intense pain.
What insanity it had been. In his youth how silly, how inspired, those first secluded years, fixing the telephonic brains, the tapes, the circuits, scheduling calls on time relays: The phone bell.
"Morning, Barton. This is Barton. Seven o'clock. Rise and shine!"
Again!
"Barton? Barton calling. You're to go to Mars Town at noon. Install a telephonic brain. Thought I'd remind you."
"Thanks."
The bell!
"Barton? Barton. Have lunch with me? The Rocket Inn?"
"Right."
"See you. So long!"
Brrrrinnnnng!
"That you, B.? Thought I'd cheer you. Firm chin, and all that. The rescue rocket might come tomorrow, to save us."
"Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow."
Click.
But the years had burned into smoke. Barton had muted the insidious phones and their clever, clever repartee. They were to call him only after he was eighty, if he still lived. And now today, the phone ringing, the past breathing in his ear, whispering, remembering.
The phone!
He let it ring.
I don't have to answer it, he thought.
The bell!
There's no one there at all, he thought.
The ringing!
It's like talking to yourself, he thought. But different. Oh God, how different.
He felt his hands lift the phone.
"Hello, old Barton, this is young Barton. I'm twenty-one today! In the last year I've put voice-brains in two hundred more towns. I've populated Mars with Bartons!"
"Yes." The old man remembered those nights six decades ago. rushing over blue hills and into iron valleys, with a truckful of machinery, whistling, happy. Another telephone, another relay. Something to do. Something clever and wonderful and sad. Hidden voices. Hidden, hidden. In those young days when death was not death, time was not time, old age a faint echo from the long cavern of years ahead. That young idiot, that sadistic fool, never thinking someday he might reap this harvest.
"Last night," said Barton, aged twenty-one. "I sat alone in a movie theater in an empty town. I played an old Laurel and Hardy. God, how I laughed."
"Yes."
"I got an idea. I recorded my voice one thousand times on one tape. Broadcast from the town, it sounds like a thousand people. A comforting noise, the noise of a crowd. I fixed it so doors slam in town, children sing, music boxes play, all by clockworks. If I don't look out the window, if I just listen, it's all right. But if I look, it spoils the illusion. I guess I'm getting lonely."
The old man said, "That was your first sign."
"What?"
"The first time you admitted you were lonely."
"I've experimented with smells. As I walk the empty streets, the smell of bacon, eggs, ham, fillets, come from the houses. All done with hidden machines."
"Madness."
"Self-protection!"
"I'm tired." Abruptly, the old man hung up. It was too much. The past drowning him...
Swaying, he moved down the tower stairs to the streets of the town.
The town was dark. No longer did red neons burn, music play, or cooking smells linger. Long ago he had abandoned the fantasy of the mechanical lie. Listen! Are those footsteps? Smell! Isn't that strawberry pie! He had stopped it all.
He moved to the canal where the stars shone in the quivering waters.
Underwater, in row after fishlike row, rusting, were the robot population of Mars he had constructed over the years, and, in a wild realization of his own insane inadequacy, had commanded to march, one two three four! into the canal deeps, plunging, bubbling like sunken bottles. He had killed them and shown no remorse.
Faintly a phone rang in a lightless cottage.
He walked on. The phone ceased.
Another cottage ahead rang its bell as if it knew of his passing. He began to run. The ringing stayed behind. Only to be taken up by a ringing from now this house--now that, now here, there! He darted on. Another phone!
"All right!" he shrieked, exhausted. "I'm coming!"
"Hello, Barton."
"What do you want!"
"I'm lonely. I only live when I speak. So I must speak. You can't shut me up forever."
"Leave me atone!" said the old man, in horror. "Oh, my heart!"
"This is Barton, age twenty-four. Another couple of years gone. Waiting. A little lonelier. I've read War and Peace, drunk sherry, run restaurants with myself as waiter, cook, entertainer. Tonight, I star in a film at the Tivoli--Emil Barton in Love's Labor Lost, playing all the parts, some with wigs!"
"Stop calling me--or I'll kill you!"
"You can't kill me. You'll have to find me, first!"
"I'll find you!"
"You've forgotten where you hid me. I'm everywhere, in boxes, houses, cables, towers, underground! Go ahead, try! What'll you call it? Telecide? Suicide? Jealous, are you? Jealous of me here, only twenty-four, bright-eyed, strong, young. All right, old man, it's war! Between us. Between me! A whole regiment of us, all ages from against you, the real one. Go ahead, declare war!"
"I'll kill you!"
Click. Silence.
He threw the phone out the window.
In the midnight cold, the automobile moved in deep valleys. Under Barton's feet on the floorboard were revolvers, rifles, dynamite. The roar of the car was in his thin, tired bones.
I'll find them, he thought, and destroy all of them. Oh, God, how can he do this to me?
He stopped the car. A strange town lay under the late moons. There was no wind.
He held the rifle in his cold hands. He peered at the poles, the towers, the boxes. Where was this town's voice hidden? That tower? Or that one there! So many years ago. He turned his head now this way, now that, wildly.
He raised the rifle.
The tower fell with the first bullet.
All of them, he thought. All of the towers in this town will have to be cut apart. I've forgotten. Too long.
The car moved along the silent street.
A phone rang.
He looked at the deserted drugstore.
A phone.
Pistol in hand, he shot the lock off the door, and entered.
Click.
"Hello, Barton? Just a warning. Don't try to rip down all the towers, blow things up. Cut your own throat that way. Think it over..."
Click.
He stepped out of the phone booth slowly and moved into the street and listened to the telephone towers humming high in the air, still alive, still untouched. He looked at them and then he understood.
He could not destroy the towers. Suppose a rocket came from Earth, impossible idea, but suppose it came tonight, tomorrow, next week? And landed on the other side of the planet, and used the phones to try to call Barton, only to find the circuits dead?
Barton dropped his gun.
"A rocket won't come," he argued, softly with himself, "I'm old. It's too late."
But suppose it came, and you never knew, he thought. No, you've got to keep the lines open.
Again, a phone ringing.
He turned dully. He shuffled back into the drugstore and fumbled with the receiver.
"Hello?" A strange voice.
"Please," said the old man, "don't bother me."
"Who's this, who's there? Who is it? Where are you?" cried the voice, surprised.
"Wait a minute." The old man staggered. "This is Emil Barton, who's that?"
"This is Captain Rockwell, Apollo Rocket 48. Just arrived from Earth."
"No, no, no."
"Are you there, Mr. Barton?"
"No, no, it can't be."
"Where are you?"
"You're lying!" The old man had to lean against the booth. His eyes were cold blind. "It's you, Barton, making fun of me, lying again!"
"This is Ca
"In Green Villa," he gasped. "That's six hundred miles from you."
"Look, Barton, can you come here?"
"What?"
"We've repairs on our rocket. Exhausted from the flight. Can you come help?"
"Yes, yes."
"We're at the field outside town. Can you come by tomorrow?"
"Yes, but--"
"Well?"
The old man petted the phone. "How's Earth? How's New York? Is the war over? Who's President now? What happened?"
"Plenty of time for gossip when you arrive."
"Is everything fine?"
"Fine."
"Thank God." The old man listened to the far voice. "Are you sure you're Captain Rockwell?"
"Dammit, man!"
"I'm sorry!"
He hung up and ran.
They were here, after many years, unbelievable, his own people who would take him back to Earth's seas and skies and mountains.
He started the car. He would drive all night. It would be worth a risk, to see people, to shake hands, to hear them again.
The car thundered in the hills.
That voice. Captain Rockwell. It couldn't be himself, forty years ago. He had never made a recording like that. Or had he? In one of his depressive fits, in a spell of drunken cynicism, hadn't he once made a false tape of a false landing on Mars with a synthetic captain, an imaginary crew? He jerked his head, savagely. No. He was a suspicious fool. Now was no time to doubt. He must run with the moons of Mars, all night. What a party they would have!
The sun rose. He was immensely tired, full of thorns and brambles, his heart plunging, his fingers fumbling the wheel, but the thing that pleased him most was the thought of one last phone call: Hello, young Barton, this is old Barton. I'm leaving for Earth today! Rescued! He smiled weakly.
He drove into the shadowy limits of New Chicago at sundown. Stepping from his car he stood staring at the rocket tarmac, rubbing his reddened eyes.
The rocket field was empty. No one ran to meet him. No one shook his hand, shouted, or laughed.
He felt his heart roar. He knew blackness and a sensation of falling through the open sky. He stumbled toward an office.
Inside, six phones sat in a neat row.
He waited, gasping.
Finally: the bell.
He lifted the heavy receiver.
A voice said, "I was wondering if you'd get there alive."
The old man did not speak but stood with the phone in his hands.
The voice continued, "Captain Rockwell reporting for duty. Your orders, sir?"
"You," groaned the old man.
"How's your heart, old man?"
"No!"
"Had to eliminate you some way. so I could live, if you call a transcription living."
"I'm going out now," replied the old man. "I don't care. I'll blow up everything until you're all dead!"
"You haven't the strength. Why do you think I had you travel so far, so fast? This is your last trip!"
The old man felt his heart falter. He would never make the other towns. The war was lost. He slid into a chair and made low, mournful noises with his mouth. He glared at the five other phones. As if at a signal, they burst into chorus! A nest of ugly birds screaming!
Automatic receivers popped up.
The office whirled. "Barton, Barton, Barton!"
He throttled a phone in his hands. He choked it and still it laughed at him. He beat it. He kicked it. He furled the hot wire like serpentine in his fingers, ripped it. It fell about his stumbling feet.
He destroyed three other phones. There was a sudden silence.
And as if his body now discovered a thing which it had long kept secret, it seemed to sink upon his tired bones. The flesh of his eyelids fell away like petals. His mouth withered. The lobes of his ears were melting wax. He pushed his chest with his hands and fell face down. He lay still. His breathing stopped. His heart stopped.
After a long spell, the remaining two phones rang.
A relay snapped somewhere. The two phone voices were connected, one to the other.
"Hello, Barton?"
"Yes, Barton?"
"Aged twenty-four."
"I'm twenty-six. We're both young. What's happened?"
"I don't know. Listen."
The silent room. The old man did not stir on the floor. The wind blew in the broken window. The air was cool.
"Congratulate me, Barton, this is my twenty-sixth birthday!"
"Congratulations!"
The voices sang together, about birthdays, and the singing blew out the window, faintly, faintly, into the dead city.
The Haunting of the New
I hadn't been in Dublin for years. I'd been round the world--everywhere but Ireland--but now within the hour of my arrival the Royal Hibernian Hotel phone rang and on the phone: Nora herself, God Bless!
"Charles? Charlie? Chuck? Are you rich at last? And do rich writers buy fabulous estates?"
"Nora!" I laughed. "Don't you ever say hello?"
"Life's too short for hellos, and now there's no time for decent good-byes. Could you buy Grynwood?"
"Nora, Nora, your family house, two hundred rich years old? What would happen to wild Irish social life, the parties, drinks, gossip? You can't throw it all away!"
"Can and shall. Oh, I've trunks of money waiting out in the rain this moment. But, Charlie, Charles, I'm alone in the house. The servants have fled to help the Aga. Now on this final night, Chuck, I need a writer-man to see the Ghost. Does your skin prickle? Come. I've mysteries and a home to give away. Charlie, oh, Chuck, oh, Charles."
Click. Silence.
Ten minutes later I roared round the snake-road through the green hills toward the blue lake and the lush grass meadows of the hidden and fabulous house called Grynwood.
I laughed again. Dear Nora! For all her gab, a party was probably on the tracks this moment, lurched toward wondrous destruction. Bertie might fly from London, Nick from Paris, Alicia would surely motor up from Galway. Some film director, cabled within the hour, would parachute or helicopter down, a rather seedy manna in dark glasses. Marion would show with his Pekingese dog troupe, which always got drunker, and sicker, than he.
I gunned my hilarity as I gunned the motor.
You'll be beautifully mellow by eight o'clock, I thought, stunned to sleep by concussions of bodies before midnight, drowse till noon, then even more nicely potted by Sunday high tea. And somewhere in between, the rare game of musical beds with Irish and French contesses, ladies, and plain field-beast art majors crated in from the Sorbonne, some with chewable mustaches, some not, and Monday ten million years off. Tuesday, I would motor oh so carefully back to Dublin, nursing my body like a great impacted wisdom tooth, gone much too wise with women, pain-flashing with memory.
Trembling, I remembered the first time I had drummed out to Nora's, when I was twenty-one.
A mad old Duchess with flour-talcummed cheeks, and the teeth of a barracuda had wrestled me and a sports car down this road fifteen years ago, braying into the fast weather: "You shall love Nora's menagerie zoo and horticultural garden! Her friends are beasts and keepers, tigers and pussies, rhododendrons and flytraps. Her streams run cold fish, hot trout. Hers is a great greenhouse where brutes grow outsize, force-fed by unnatural airs, enter Nora's on Friday with clean linen, sog out with the wet-wash-soiled bedclothes Monday, feeling as if you had meantime inspired, painted, and lived through all Bosch's Temptations, Hells, Judgments, and Dooms! Live at Nora's and you reside in a great warm giant's cheek, deliciously gummed and morseled hourly. You will pass, like victuals, through her mansion. When it has crushed forth your last sweet-sour sauce and dismarrowed your youth-candied bones, you will be discarded in a cold iron-country train station lonely with rain."
"I'm coated with enzymes?" I cried above the engine roar. "No house can break down my elements, or take nourishment from my Original Sin."
"Foo
I came out of memory as I came out of the woods at a fine popping glide and slowed because the very friction of beauty stayed the heart, the mind, the blood, and therefore the foot upon the throttle.
There under a blue-lake sky by a blue-sky lake lay Nora's own dear place, the grand house called Grynwood. It nestled in the roundest hills by the tallest trees in the deepest forest in all Eire. It had towers built a thousand years ago by unremembered peoples and unsung architects for reasons never to be guessed. Its gardens had first flowered five hundred years back and there were outbuildings scattered from a creative explosion two hundred years gone amongst old tomb yards and crypts. Here was a convent hall become a horse barn of the landed gentry, there were new wings built on ninety years ago. Out around the lake was a hunting-lodge ruin where wild horses might plunge through minted shadow to sink away in green-water grasses by yet further cold ponds and single graves of daughters whose sins were so rank they were driven forth even in death to the wilderness, sunk traceless in the gloom.
As if in bright welcome, the sun flashed vast tintinnabulations from scores of house windows. Blinded, I clenched the car to a halt. Eyes shut, I licked my lips.
I remembered my first night at Grynwood.
Nora herself opening the front door. Standing stark naked, she announced: "You're too late. It's all over!"
"Nonsense. Hold this, boy, and this."
Whereupon the Duchess, in three nimble moves, peeled herself raw as a blanched oyster in the wintry doorway.
I stood aghast, gripping her clothes.
"Come in, boy, you'll catch your death." And the bare Duchess walked serenely away among the well-dressed people.
"Beaten at my own game," cried Nora. "Now, to compete, I must put my clothes back on. And I was so hoping to shock you."
"Never fear," I said. "You have."
"Come help me dress."
In the alcove, we waded among her clothes, which lay in misshapen pools of musky scent upon a parqueted floor.
"Hold the panties while I slip into them. You're Charles, aren't you?"
"How do you do." I flushed, then burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "Forgive me," I said at last, snapping her bra in back, "it's just here it is early evening, and I'm putting you into your clothes. I--"
A door slammed somewhere. I glanced around for the Duchess.
"Gone," I murmured. "The house has devoured her, already."
True. I didn't see the Duchess again until the rainy Tuesday morn she had predicted. By then she had forgotten my name, my face, and the soul behind my face.