Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1. Ray Bradbury

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      Clemens ignored this. ‘I’m putting a dime in the phone slot right now,’ he said, pantomiming it with a slow smile. ‘And calling my girl in Evanston. Hello, Barbara!’

      The rocket sailed on through space.

      The lunch bell rang at 1305 hours. The men ran by on soft rubber sneakers and sat at the cushioned tables.

      Clemens wasn’t hungry.

      ‘See, what did I tell you!’ said Hitchcock. ‘You and your damned porcupines! Leave them alone, like I told you. Look at me, shoveling away food.’ He said this with a mechanical, slow, and unhumorous voice. ‘Watch me.’ He put a big piece of pie in his mouth and felt it with his tongue. He looked at the pie on his plate as if to see the texture. He moved it with his fork. He felt the fork handle. He mashed the lemon filling and watched it jet up between the tines. Then he touched a bottle of milk all over and poured out half a quart into a glass, listening to it. He looked at the milk as if to make it whiter. He drank the milk so swiftly that he couldn’t have tasted it. He had eaten his entire lunch in a few minutes, cramming it in feverishly, and now he looked around for more, but it was gone. He gazed out the window of the rocket, blankly. ‘Those aren’t real either,’ he said.

      ‘What?’ asked Clemens.

      ‘The stars. Who’s ever touched one? I can see them, sure, but what’s the use of seeing a thing that’s a million or a billion miles away? Anything that far off isn’t worth bothering with.’

      ‘Why did you come on this trip?’ asked Clemens suddenly.

      Hitchcock peered into his amazingly empty milk glass and clenched it tight, then relaxed his hand and clenched it again. ‘I don’t know.’ He ran his tongue on the glass rim. ‘I just had to, is all. How do you know why you do anything in this life?’

      ‘You liked the idea of space travel? Going places?’

      ‘I don’t know. Yes. No. It wasn’t going places. It was being between.’ Hitchcock for the first time tried to focus his eyes upon something, but it was so nebulous and far off that his eyes couldn’t make the adjustment, though he worked his face and hands. ‘Mostly it was space. So much space. I liked the idea of nothing on top, nothing on the bottom, and a lot of nothing in between, and me in the middle of the nothing.’

      ‘I never heard it put that way before.’

      ‘I just put it that way; I hope you listened.’

      Hitchcock took out his cigarettes and lit up and began to suck and blow smoke, again and again.

      Clemens said, ‘What sort of childhood did you have, Hitchcock?’

      ‘I was never young. Whoever I was then is dead. That’s more of your quills. I don’t want a hideful, thanks. I’ve always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you’ve died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that’s a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don’t know or understand or want to understand.’

      ‘You’re cutting yourself off, that way.’

      ‘Why should I have anything to do with that younger Hitchcock? He was a fool, and he was yanked around and taken advantage of and used. His father was no good, and he was glad when his mother died, because she was the same. Should I go back and see his face on that day and gloat over it? He was a fool.’

      ‘We’re all fools,’ said Clemens. ‘all the time. It’s just we’re a different kind each day. We think, I’m not a fool today. I’ve learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact that we’re not perfect and live accordingly.’

      ‘I don’t want to remember imperfect things,’ said Hitchcock. ‘I can’t shake hands with that younger Hitchcock, can I? Where is he? Can you find him for me? He’s dead, so to hell with him! I won’t shape what I do tomorrow by some lousy thing I did yesterday.’

      ‘You’ve got it wrong.’

      ‘Let me have it then.’ Hitchcock sat, finished with his meal, looking out the port. The other men glanced at him.

      ‘Do meteors exist?’ asked Hitchcock.

      ‘You know damn well they do.’

      ‘In our radar machines – yes, as streaks of light in space. No, I don’t believe in anything that doesn’t exist and act in my presence. Sometimes’ – he nodded at the men finishing their food – ‘sometimes I don’t believe in anyone or anything but me.’ He sat up. ‘Is there an upstairs to this ship?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I’ve got to see it immediately.’

      ‘Don’t get excited.’

      ‘You wait here; I’ll be right back.’ Hitchcock walked out swiftly. The other men sat nibbling their food slowly. A moment passed. One of the men raised his head. ‘How long’s this been going on? I mean Hitchcock.’

      ‘Just today.’

      ‘He acted funny the other day too.’

      ‘Yes, but it’s worse today.’

      ‘Has anyone told the psychiatrist?’

      ‘We thought he’d come out of it. Everyone has a little touch of space the first time out. I’ve had it. You get wildly philosophical, then frightened. You break into a sweat, then you doubt your parentage, you don’t believe in Earth, you get drunk, wake up with a hangover, and that’s it.’

      ‘But Hitchcock don’t get drunk,’ said someone. ‘I wish he would.’

      ‘How’d he ever get past the examining board?’

      ‘How’d we all get past? They need men. Space scares the hell out of most people. So the board lets a lot of borderlines through.’

      ‘That man isn’t a borderline,’ said someone. ‘He’s a fall-off-a-cliff-and-no-bottom-to-hit.’

      They waited for five minutes. Hitchcock didn’t come back.

      Clemens finally got up and went out and climbed the circular stair to the flight deck above. Hitchcock was there, touching the wall tenderly.

      ‘It’s here,’ he said.

      ‘Of course it is.’

      ‘I was afraid it might not be.’ Hitchcock peered at Clemens. ‘And you’re alive.’

      ‘I have been for a long time.’

      ‘No,’ said Hitchcock. ‘Now, just now, this instant, while you’re here with me, you’re alive. A moment ago you weren’t anything.’

      ‘I was to me,’ said the other.

      ‘That’s СКАЧАТЬ