S is for Space. Ray Bradbury
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kill germs. His heartbeat. His breathing. Maybe Smith was a superman and didn’t know it. Yes. Yes, maybe—
Rockwell drew blood from Smith and slid it under a microscope. His shoulders sagged. It was normal blood. When you dropped germs into it the germs took a normal length of time to die. The blood was no longer super-germicidal. The x-liquid, too, was gone. Rockwell sighed miserably. Smith’s temperature was normal. So was his pulse. His sensory and nervous system responded according to rule.
“Well, that takes care of that,” said Rockwell, softly.
Hartley sank into a chair, eyes widened, holding his head between bony fingers. He exhaled. “I’m sorry. I guess my—mind—it just imagined things. The months were so long. Night after night. I got obsessed, and afraid. I’ve made a fool out of myself. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He stared at his green fingers. “But what about myself?”
Smith said, “I recovered. You’ll recover, too, I guess. I can sympathize with you. But it wasn’t bad … I don’t really recall anything.”
Hartley relaxed. “But—yes I guess you’re right. I don’t like the idea of my body getting hard, but it can’t be helped. I’ll be all right.”
Rockwell was sick. The tremendous letdown was too much for him. The intense drive, the eagerness, the hunger and curiosity, the fire, had all sunk within him. So this was the man from the chrysalis? The same man who had gone in. All this waiting and wondering for nothing.
He gulped a breath of air, tried to steady his innermost, racing thoughts. Turmoil. This pink-cheeked, fresh-voiced man who sat before him smoking calmly, was no more than a man who had suffered some partial skin petrification, and whose glands had gone wild from radiation, but, nevertheless, just a man now and nothing more. Rockwell’s mind, his overimaginative, fantastic mind had seized upon each facet of the illness and built it into a perfect organism of wishful thinking. Rockwell was deeply shocked, deeply stirred and disappointed.
The question of Smith’s living without food, his pure blood, low temperature, and the other evidences of superiority were now fragments of a strange illness. An illness and nothing more. Something that was over, down and gone and left nothing behind but brittle scraps on a sunlit tabletop. There’d be a chance to watch Hartley now, if his illness progressed, and report the new sickness to the medical world.
But Rockwell didn’t care about illness. He cared about perfection. And that perfection had been split and ripped and torn and it was gone. His dream was gone. His super-creature was gone. He didn’t care if the whole world went hard, green, brittle-mad now.
Smith was shaking hands all around. “I’d better get back to Los Angeles. Important work for me to do at the plant. I have my old job waiting for me. Sorry I can’t stay on. You understand.”
“You should stay on and rest a few days, at least,” said Rockwell. He hated to see the last wisp of his dream vanish.
“No thanks. I’ll drop by your office in a week or so for another checkup, though, Doctor, if you like? I’ll drop in every few weeks for the next year or so so you can check me, yes?”
“Yes. Yes, Smith. Do that, will you, please? I’d like to talk your illness over with you. You’re lucky to be alive.”
McGuire said, happily, “I’ll drive you to L.A.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll walk to Tujunga and get a cab. I want to walk. It’s been so long, I want to see what it feels like.”
Rockwell lent him an old pair of shoes and an old suit of clothes.
“Thanks, Doctor. I’ll pay you what I owe you as soon as possible.”
“You don’t owe me a penny. It was interesting.”
“Well, good-bye, Doctor. Mr. McGuire. Hartley.”
“Good-bye, Smith.”
“Good-bye.”
Smith walked down the path to the dry wash, which was already baked dry by the late afternoon sun. He walked easily and happily and whistled. I wish I could whistle now, thought Rockwell tiredly.
Smith turned once, waved to them, and then he strode up the hillside and went on over it toward the distant city.
Rockwell watched him go as a small child watches his favorite sand castle eroded and annihilated by the waves of the sea. “I can’t believe it,” he said, over and over again. “I can’t believe it. The whole thing’s ending so soon, so abruptly for me. I’m dull and empty inside.”
“Everything’s looks rosy to me!” chuckled McGuire happily.
Hartley stood in the sun. His green hands hung softly at his side and his white face was really relaxed for the first time in months, Rockwell realized. Hartley said, softly,
“I’ll come out all right. I’ll come out all right. Oh, thank God for that. Thank God for that. I won’t be a monster. I won’t be anything but myself.” He turned to Rockwell. “Just remember, remember, don’t let them bury me by mistake. Don’t let them bury me by mistake, thinking I’m dead. Remember that.”
Smith took the path across the dry wash and up the hill. It was late afternoon already and the sun had started to vanish behind blue hills. A few stars were visible. The odor of water, dust, and distant orange blossoms hung in the warm air.
Wind stirred. Smith took deep breaths of air. He walked.
Out of sight, away from the sanitarium, he paused and stood very still. He looked up at the sky.
Tossing away the cigarette he’d been smoking, he mashed it precisely under one heel. Then he straightened his well-shaped body, tossed his brown hair back, closed his eyes, swallowed, and relaxed his fingers at his sides.
With nothing of effort, just a little murmur of sound, Smith lifted his body gently from the ground into the warm air.
He soared up quickly, quietly—and very soon he was lost among the stars as Smith headed for outer space …
He came out of the earth, hating. Hate was his father; hate was his mother.
It was good to walk again. It was good to leap up out of the earth, off of your back, and stretch your cramped arms violently and try to take a deep breath!
He tried. He cried out.
He couldn’t breathe. He flung his arms over his face and tried to breathe. It was impossible. He walked on the earth, he came out of the earth. But he was dead. He couldn’t breathe. He could take air into his mouth and force it half down his throat, with withered moves of long-dormant muscles, wildly, wildly! And with this little air he could shout and cry! He wanted to have tears, but he couldn’t make them come, either. All he knew was that he was standing upright, he was dead, he shouldn’t be walking! He couldn’t breathe and yet he stood.
The smells of the world were all about him. Frustratedly, he tried to smell the smells of autumn. Autumn was burning the land down into ruin. All across the country the ruins of summer lay; vast forests bloomed with flame, tumbled down timber on empty, unleafed timber. The smoke of the burning was rich, blue, and invisible.
He stood in the graveyard, hating. He walked through the world and yet could not taste nor smell of it. He heard, yes. The wind roared on his newly opened ears. But he was dead. Even though he walked he knew he was dead and should expect not too much of himself or this hateful living world.
He touched the tombstone over his own empty grave. He knew his own name again. It was a good job of carving.
WILLIAM LANTRY
That’s what the gravestone said.
His fingers trembled on the cool stone surface.
BORN