The Fireman (9 page)

THE police, thought Montag. They see me, of course. But walk slowly, quietly, don't turn, don't look, don't seem concerned. Walk, that's it, walk, walk.

The car was rushing at a terrific speed. A good one hundred miles an hour. Its horn blared. Its light flushed the concrete. The heat of the lights, it seemed, burned Montag's cheeks and eyelids and brought the sweat coursing from his body.

He began to shuffle idiotically, then broke and ran. The horn hooted. The motor sound whined higher. Montag sprinted. He dropped a book, whirled, hesitated, left it there, plunged on, yelling to himself, in the middle of concrete emptiness, the car a hundred feet away, closer, closer, hooting, pushing, rolling, screeching, the horn hunting, himself running, his legs up, down, out, back, his eyes blind in the flashing glare, the horn nearer, now on top of him!

They'll run me down, they know who I am, it's all over, thought Montag, it's done!

He stumbled and fell. An instant before reaching him, the wild car swerved around him and was gone. Falling had saved him.

Mr. Montag lay flat, his head down. Wisps of laughter trailed back with the blue car exhaust.

That wasn't the police, thought Mr. Montag.

It was a carful of high-school children, yelling, whistling, hurrahing. And they had seen a man, a pedestrian, a rarity, and they had yelled "Let's get him!" They didn't know he was the fugitive Mr. Montag; they were simply out for a night of roaring five hundred miles in a few moonlit hours, their faces icy with wind.

"They would have killed me," whispered Montag to the shaking concrete under his bruised cheek. "For no reason at all in the world, they would have killed me."

He got up and walked unsteadily to the far curb. Somehow, he had remembered to pick up the spilled books. He shuffled them, oddly, in his numb hands.

"I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarisse."

His eyes watered.

The thing that had saved him was falling flat. The driver of that car, seeing Montag prone, considered the possibility that running over a body at one hundred miles an hour might turn the car over and spill them all out. Now, if Montag had remained upright, things would have been far different...

Montag gasped. Far down the empty avenue, four blocks away, the car of laughing children had turned. Now it was racing back, picking up speed.

Montag dodged into an alley and was gone in the shadow long before the car returned.

THE house was silent. Mr. Montag approached it from the back, creeping through the scent of daffodils and roses and wet grass. He touched the screen door, found it open, slipped in, tiptoed across the porch, and, behind the refrigerator in the kitchen, deposited three of the books. He waited, listening to the house.

"Mrs. Black, are you asleep up there?" he asked of the second floor in a whisper. "I hate to do this to you, but your husband did just as bad to others, never asking, never wondering, never worrying. You're a fireman's wife, Mrs. Black, and now it's your house, and you will be in jail a while, for all the houses your husband has burned and people he's killed."

The ceiling did not reply.

Quietly, Montag slipped from the house and returned to the alley. The house was still dark; no one had heard him come or go.

He walked casually down the alley, and came to an all-night, dimly lighted phone booth. He closed himself in the booth and dialed a number.

"I want to report an illegal ownership of books," he said.

The voice sharpened on the other end. "The address?"

He gave it and added, "Better get there before they burn them. Check the kitchen."

Montag stepped out and stood in the cold night air, waiting. At a great distance he heard the fire sirens coming, coming to burn Mr. Black's house while he was away at work, and make his wife stand shivering in the morning air while the roof dropped down. But now she was upstairs, deep in sleep.

"Good night, Mrs. Black," said Mr. Montag. "You'll excuse me — I have several other visits to make."

A RAP at the door. "Professor Faber!"

Another rap and a long waiting. Then, from within, lights flickered on about the small house. After another pause, the front door opened.

"Who is it?" Faber cried, for the man who staggered in was in the dark for a moment and then rushing past. "Oh, Montag!"

"I'm going away," said Montag, stumbling to a chair. "I've been a fool."

Professor Faber stood at the door listening to the distant sirens wailing off like animals in the morning. "Someone's been busy."

"It worked."

"At least you were a fool about the right things." Faber shut the door, came back, and poured a drink for each of them. "I wondered what had happened to you."

"I was delayed." Montag patted his inside pocket. "The money's here." He took it out and laid it on the desk, then sat tiredly sipping his drink. "How do you feel?"

"This is the first night in many years I've fallen right to sleep," said Faber. "That must mean I'm doing the right thing. I think we can trust me now. Once, I didn't think so."

"People never trust themselves, but they never let others know. I suppose that's why we do rash things, expose ourselves in positions from which we don't dare retreat. Unconsciously, we fear we might give in, quit the fight, and so we do a foolish thing, like reading poetry to women." Montag laughed at himself. "So I guess I'm on the run. It'll be up to you to keep things moving."

"I'll do my damnedest." Faber sat down. "Tell me about it. What you did just now, I mean."

"I hid my remaining books in four firemen's homes. Then I telephoned an alarm. I figured I might be dead by morning, and I wanted to have done something before then."

"God, I'd like to've been there."

"Yes, the places burned very well."

"Where are you going now?"

"I don't know."

"Try the factory section, follow the old rail lines, look up some of the hobo camps. I didn't tell you this before — maybe I didn't quite trust you yet, I don't know — but they were in touch with me last year, wanting me to go underground with them."

"With tramps?"

"There are a lot of Harvard degrees on the tracks between here and Los Angeles. What else can they do? Most of them are wanted and hunted in cities. They survive. I don't think they have a plan for a revolution, though; I never heard them speak of it. They simply sit by their fires. Not a very lively group. But they might hide you now."

"I'll try. I'm heading for the river, I think, then the old factory district. I'll keep in touch with you.'

"In Boston, then. I'm leaving on the three o'clock train tonight — or, rather, this morning. That's not long from now. There's a retired printer in Boston that I want to see with this money."

"I'll contact you there," said Montag. "And get books from you when I need them, to plant in firemen's houses across the country."

MONTAG drained his drink. "Do you want to sleep here a while?" Faber asked.

"I'd better get going. I wouldn't want you held responsible."

"Let's check." Faber switched on the televisor. A voice was talking swiftly:

" — this evening. Montag has escaped, but we expect his arrest in 24 hours. Here's a bulletin. The Electric Dog is being transported here from Green Town — "

Montag and Faber glanced at each other.

" — You may recall the interviews recently on t-v concerning this incredible new invention, a machine so delicate in sense perception that it can follow trails much as bloodhounds did for centuries. But this machine, without fail, always finds its quarry!"

Montag put his empty glass down and he was cold.

"The machine is self-operating, weighs only forty pounds, is propelled on seven rubber wheels. The front is a nose, which in reality is a thousand noses, so sensitive that they can distinguish 10,000 food combinations, 5,000 flower smells, and remember identity index odors of 15,000 men without the bother of resetting."

Faber began to tremble. He looked at his house, at the door, the floor, the chair in which Montag sat. Montag interpreted this look. They both stared together at the invisible trail of his footprints leading to this house, the odor of his hand on the brass doorknobs, the smell of his body in the air and on this chair.

"The Electric Hound is now landing, by helicopter, at the burned Montag home. We take you there by t-v control!"

So they must have a game, thought Montag. In the midst of a time of war, they must play the game out.

There was the burned house, the crowd, and something with a sheet over it, Mr. Leahy — yes, Mr. Leahy — and out of the sky, fluttering, came the red helicopter, landing like a grotesque and menacing flower.

Montag watched the scene with a solid fascination, not wanting to move, ever. If he wished, he could linger here, in comfort, and follow the entire hunt on through its quick phases, down alleys, up streets, across empty running avenues, with the sky finally lightening with dawn, up other alleys to burned houses, and so on to this place here, this house, with Faber and himself seated at their leisure, smoking idly, drinking good wine, while the Electric Hound sniffed down the fatal paths, whirring and pausing with finality right outside that door there.

Then, if he wished, Montag could rise, walk to the door, keep one eye on the t-v screen, open the door, look out, look back, and see himself, dramatized, described, made over, standing there, limned in the bright television screen, from outside, a drama to be watched objectively, and he would catch himself, an instant before oblivion, being killed for the benefit of a million televiewers who had been wakened from their sleeps a few minutes ago by the frantic beep-beeping of their receivers to watch the big game, the big hunt, the Scoop!

"There it is," whispered Faber, hoarsely.

OUT of the helicopter glided something that was not a machine, not an animal, not dead, not alive, just gliding. It glowed with a green phosphorescence, and it was on a long leash. Behind it came a man, dressed lightly, with earphones on his shaven head.

"I can't stay here." Montag leaped up, his eyes still fixed to the scene. The Electric Hound shot forward to the smoking ruins, the man running after it. A coat was brought forward. Montag recognized it as his own, dropped in the yard during flight. The Electric Hound studied it for only a moment. There was a whirring and clicking of dials and meters.

"You can't escape." Faber mourned over it, turning away. "I've heard about that damned monster. No one has ever escaped."

"I'll try, anyway. I'm sorry about this, Professor."

"About me? About my house? Don't be. I'm the one to be sorry I didn't act years ago. Whatever I get out of this, I deserve. You run, now; perhaps I can delay them here somehow — "

"Wait a minute." Montag moved forward. "There's no use your being discovered. We can erase the trail here. First the chair. Get me a knife."

Faber ran and fetched a knife. With it, Montag attacked the chair where he had sat. He cut the upholstery free, then shoved it, bit by bit, without touching the lid, into the wall incinerator. "Now," he said, "after I leave, rip up the carpet. It has my footprints on it. Cut it up, burn it, air the house. Rub the doorknobs with alcohol. After I go, turn your garden sprinkler on full. That'll wash away the side-walk traces."

Faber shook his hand vigorously. "You don't know what this means. I'll do anything to help you in the future. Get in touch with me in Boston, then."

"One more thing. A suitcase, Get it, fill it with your dirty laundry, an old suit, the dirtier the better, denim pants maybe, a shirt, some old sneakers and socks."

Faber was gone and back in a minute. Montag sealed the full suitcase with scotch tape. "To keep the odor in," he said, breathlessly. He poured a liberal amount of cognac over the exterior of the case. "I don't want that Hound picking up two odors at once. Mind if I take this bottle of whisky? I'll need it later. When I get to the river, I'll change clothes."

"And identities; from Montag to Faber."

"Christ, I hope it works! If your clothes smell strong enough, which God knows they seem to, we might confuse the Hound, anyway."

"Good luck."

They shook hands again and glanced at the t-v. The Electric Hound was on its way, followed by mobile camera units, through alleys, across empty morning streets, silently, silently, sniffing the great night wind for Mr. Leonard Montag.