Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (20 page)

 
          
 
But then—a marvelous sound.

 
          
 
The squeal of brakes.

 
          
 
The car was backing up! Will was leaping
forward, waving, pointing.

 
          
 
"Yes, sir! Yes, ma'am! Secret View
Mirage! The Mysterious City! Drive right in!"

 
          
 
The treadmarks in the simple dust became
numerous, and then, quite suddenly, innumerable.

 
          
 
A great boll of heat-wafted dust hung over the
dry peninsula where in a vast sound of arrivals, with braked tires, slammed
doors, stilled engines, the cars of many kinds from many places came and took
their places in a line. And the people in the cars were as different as people
can be who come from four directions but are drawn in a single moment by a
single thing, all talking at first, but growing still at last at what they saw
out in the desert. The wind blew softly about their faces, fluttering the hair
of the women, the open shirt collars of the men. They sat in their cars for a
long time or they stood out on the rim of the earth, saying nothing, and at
last one by one turned to go.

           
 
As the first car drove back out past Bob and
Will, the woman in it nodded happily.

 
          
 
"Thanks! Why, it is just like Rome!"

 
          
 
"Did she say Rome or home?" asked
Will.

 
          
 
Another car wheeled toward the exit.

 
          
 
"Yes, sir!" The driver reached out
to shake Bob's hand. "Just looking made me feel I could speak
French!"

 
          
 
"French!" cried Bob.

 
          
 
Both stepped forward swiftly as the third car
made to leave. An old man sat at the wheel, shaking his head.

 
          
 
"Never seen the like. I mean to say, fog
and all, Westminster Bridge, better than a postcard, and Big Ben off there in
the distance. How do you do it? God bless. Much obliged."

 
          
 
Both men, disquieted, let the old man drive
away,
then
slowly wheeled to look out along their
small thrust of land toward the growing simmer of
noon
.

 
          
 
"Big Ben?" said Will Bantlin.
"
Westminster
Bridge
?
Fog?”

 
          
 
Faintly, faintly, they thought they heard,
they could not be sure, they cupped their ears, wasn't that a vast clock
striking three times off there beyond land's rim? Weren't foghorns calling
after boats and boat horns calling down on some lost river?

 
          
 
"Almost speak French?" whispered
Robert "Big Ben? Home? Rome? Is that
Rome
out
there.
Will?"

 
          
 
The wind shifted. A broiling surge of warm air
tumbled up, plucking changes on an invisible harp. The fog almost solidified
into gray stone monuments. The sun almost built a golden statue on top of a
breasted mount of fresh-cut snow marble.

 
          
 
"How—" said William Bantlin,
"how could it change? How could it be four, five cities? Did we tell
anyone what city they'd see? No. Well, then. Bob, well?"

 
          
 
Now they fixed their gaze on their last
customer, who stood alone at the rim of the dry peninsula. Gesturing his friend
to silence, Robert moved silently to stand to one side and behind their paying
visitor.

 
          
 
He was a man in his late forties with a vital,
sunburned face, good, warm,
clearwater
eyes, fine cheekbones, a receptive mouth. He looked as if he had traveled a
long way around in his life, over many deserts, in search of a particular
oasis. He resembled those architects found wandering the rubbled streets below
their buildings as the iron, steel and glass go soaring up to block out, fill
in an empty piece of sky. His face was that of such builders who suddenly see
reared up before them on the instant, from horizon to horizon, the perfect
implementation of an old, old dream. Now, only half aware of William and Robert
beside him, the stranger spoke at last in a quiet, an easy, a wondrous voice,
saying what he saw, telling what he felt;

 
          
 
" 'In
Xanadu
...' "

 
          
 
"What?" asked William.

 
          
 
The stranger half smiled, kept his eyes on the
mirage and quietly, from memory, recited.

 
          
 
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately
pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns
measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea."

 
          
 
His voice spelled the weather and the weather
blew about the other two men and made them more still.

 
          
 
"So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round: And here were gardens bright with
sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree. And here were
forests ancient as the hills. Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."

 
          
 
William and Robert looked off at the mirage,
and what the stranger said was there, in the golden dust, some fabled Middle
East or Far East clustering of minarets, domes, frail towers risen up in a
magnificent sift of pollen from the Gobi, a spread of river stone baked bright
by the fertile Euphrates, Palmyra not yet ruins, only just begun, newly minted,
then abandoned by the departing years, now shimmered by heat, now threatening
to blow away forever.

 
          
 
The stranger, his face transformed, beautified
by his vision, finished it out:

 
          
 
"It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny
pleasure-dome with caves of ice!"

 
          
 
And the stranger grew silent

 
          
 
Which made the silence in Bob and Will all the
deeper.

 
          
 
The stranger fumbled with his wallet, his eyes
wet.

           
 
"Thank you, thank you."

 
          
 
"You already paid us," said William.

 
          
 
"If I had more, you'd get it all."

 
          
 
He gripped William's hand, left a five-dollar
bill in it, got into his car, looked for a last time out at the mirage, then
sat down, started the car, idled it with wonderful ease and, face glowing, eyes
peaceful, drove away.

 
          
 
Robert walked a few steps after the car,
stunned.

 
          
 
Then William suddenly exploded, flung his arms
up, whooped, kicked his feet, wheeled around.

 
          
 
"Hallelujah! Fat of the land! Full dinner
pails! New squeaky shoes! Look at my fistfuls!"

 
          
 
But Robert said, "I don't think we should
take it"

 
          
 
William stopped dancing. "What?"

 
          
 
Robert looked steadily at the desert

 
          
 
"We can't ever really own it It's 'way
out there. Sure, we can homestead the land, but . . . We don't even know what
that thing is."

 
          
 
“Why, it's New York and—"

 
          
 
"Ever been to New York?"

 
          
 
"Always wanted.
Never did."

 
          
 
"Always wanted, never did." Robert
nodded slowly. "Same as them. You heard: Paris. Rome. London.
And this last man.
Xanadu.
Willy,
Willy, we got hold of something strange and big here. I'm scared we don't do
right by it."

 
          
 
"Well, we're not keeping anyone out, are
we?"

 
          
 
“Who knows? Might be a quarter's too much for
some. It don't seem right, a natural thing handled by unnatural rules. Look and
tell me I'm wrong.'*

 
          
 
William looked.

 
          
 
And the city was there like the first city he
had seen as a boy when his mother took him on a train across a long meadow of
grass early one morning and the city rose up head by head, tower by tower to
look at him , to watch him coming near. It was that fresh, that new, that old,
that frightening, that wonderful.

 
          
 
"I think," said Robert, "we
should take just enough to buy gas for a week, put the rest of the money in the
first poorbox we come to. That mirage is a clear river running, and people
coming by thirsty. If we're wise, we dip one cup, drink it cool in the heat of
the day and go. If we stop, build dams, try to own the whole river..."

           
 
William, peering out through the whispering
dust wind, tried to relax, accept.

 
          
 
"If you say so."

 
          
 
"I don't. The wilderness all around
says."

 
          
 
'Well, I say different!"

 
          
 
Both men jumped and spun about.

 
          
 
Half up the slope stood a motorcycle. Sitting
it, rainbowed with oil, eyes goggled, grease masking his stubbly cheeks, was a
man of familiar arrogance and free-running contempt.

 
          
 
"Ned Hopper!"

 
          
 
Ned Hopper smiled his most evilly benevolent smile,
un-braked the cycle and glided the rest of the way down to halt by his old
friends.

 
          
 
"You—" said Robert.

 
          
 
"Me! Me! Me!" Ned Hopper honked his
cycle horn four times, laughing loud, head back. "Me!"

 
          
 
"Shut up!" cried Robert. "Bust
it like a mirror."

 
          
 
"Bust what like a mirror?"

 
          
 
William, catching Robert's concern, glanced
apprehensively out beyond at the desert.

 
          
 
The mirage flurried, trembled, misted away,
then hung itself like a tapestry once more on the air.

 
          
 
"Nothing out there! What you guys up
to?" Ned peered down at the treadmarked earth. "I was twenty miles on
today when I realized you boys was hiding back behind. Says to myself, that
ain't like my buddies who led me to that gold mine in 'forty-seven, lent me
this cycle with a dice roll in 'fifty-five. All those years we help each other
and now you got secrets from friend Ned. So I come back. Been up on that hill
half the day, spying." Ned lifted binoculars from his greasy jacket front.
"You know I can read lips. Sure! Saw all the cars run in here, the cash.
Quite a show you're running!"

 
          
 
"Keep your voice down," warned
Robert. "So long."

 
          
 
Ned smiled sweetly. "Sorry to see you go.
But I surely respect your getting off my property."

 
          
 
"Yours!" Robert and William caught
themselves and said in a trembling whisper, "Yours?"

 
          
 
Ned laughed. "When I saw what you
was
up to, I just cycled into
Phoenix
.
See this little bitty government paper sticking out my back pocket?"