The sundials were tumbled into white pebbles. The birds of the air now flew in ancient skies of rock and sand, buried, their songs stopped. The dead sea bottoms were currented with dust which flooded the land when the wind bade it reenact an old tale of engulfment. The cities were deep laid with granaries of silence, time stored and kept, pools and fountains of quietude and memory.

Mars was dead.

Then, out of the large stillness, from a great distance, there was an insect sound which grew large among the cinnamon hills and moved in the sun-blazed air until the highway trembled and dust was shook whispering down in the old cities.

The sound ceased.

In the shimmering silence of midday, Albert Beck and Leonard Craig sat in an ancient landcar, eyeing a dead city which did not move under their gaze but waited for their shout:

“Hello!”

A crystal tower dropped into soft dusting rain.

“You there!”

And another tumbled down.

And another and another fell as Beck called, summoning them to death. In shattering flights, stone animals with vast granite wings dived to strike the courtyards and fountains. His cry summoned them like living beasts and the beasts gave answer, groaned, cracked, leaned up, tilted over, trembling, hesitant, then split the air and swept down with grimaced mouths and empty eyes, with sharp, eternally hungry teeth suddenly seized out and strewn like shrapnel on the tiles.

Beck waited. No more towers fell.

“It’s safe to go in now.”

Craig didn’t move. “For the same reason?”

Beck nodded.

“For a damned bottle! I don’t understand. Why does everyone want it?”

Beck got out of the car. “Those that found it, they never told, they never explained. But—it’s old. Old as the desert, as the dead seas—and it might contain anything. That’s what the legend says. And because it could hold anything—well, that stirs a man’s hunger.”

“Yours, not mine,” said Craig. His mouth barely moved; his eyes were half-shut, faintly amused. He stretched lazily. “I’m just along for the ride. Better watching you than sitting in the heat.”

Beck had stumbled upon the old landcar a month back, before Craig had joined him. It was part of the flotsam of the First Industrial СКАЧАТЬ

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LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT

Dedication

Table of Contents

The Blue Bottle

Long After Midnight. Ray Bradbury
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