part one the hear and the salamander it was a pleasure to burn it was a special pleasure to see things eaten to see things blackened and changed with the brass nozzle in his fists with his great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world the blood pounded in his head and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the Symphonies of Blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of History with his symbolic helmet number 451 on his stolid head and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black he stroe in a swarm of fireflies he wanted above all like the old joke to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace while the flapping pigeon ringed books died on the porch and Lawn of the house while the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by Flame he knew that when he returned to the Firehouse he might wink at himself a minstral man burnt corked in the mirror later going to sleep he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles in the dark it never went away that smile it never ever went away as long as he remembered he hung up his black beetle colored helmet and shined it he hung his flame proof jacket neatly he showered luxuriously and then whistling Hands In Pockets walked across the Upper Floor of the fire station and fell down the hole at the last moment when disaster seemed positive he pulled his hands from his pockets and broke his Fall by grasping the golden pole he slid to a squeaking halt the heels one inch from the concrete floor downstairs he walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flu in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the cream tiled escalator rising to the suburb whistling he let the escalator waft him into the still night air he walked toward the corner thinking little at all about nothing in particular before he reached the corner however he slowed as if a wind had sprung up from nowhere as if someone had called his name the last few nights he had had the most UNC certain feelings about the sidewalk just around the corner here moving in the Starlight toward his house he had felt that a moment prior to his making the turn someone had been there the air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there quietly and only a moment before he came simply turned to a shadow and let him through perhaps his nose detected a Fain perfume perhaps the skin on the backs of his hands on his face felt the temperature rise if this one spot where a person standing might raise the immediate atmosphere 10° for an instant there was no understanding it each time he made the turn he saw only the white unused buckling sidewalk with perhaps on one night something Vanishing swiftly across a lawn before he could focus his eyes or speak but now tonight he slowed almost to a stop his inner mind reaching out to turn the corner for him had heard the faintest whisper breathing or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there waiting he turned the corner the autumn leaves blew over the moonlit Pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seemed fixed to a sliding walk letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves her face was Slender and milk white and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity it was a look almost of Kale's surprise the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them her dress was white and it whispered he almost thought he heard the motion of her hands as she walked and the infinitely small sound now the white Stir of her face turning when she discovered she was a moment away from a man who stood in the middle of the pavement waiting the trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain the girl stopped and looked as if she might pull back in surprise but instead instead stood regarding Montag with eyes so dark and shining and alive that he felt he had said something quite wonderful but he knew his mouth had only moved to say hello and then when she seemed hypnotized by the salamander on his arm and the Phoenix disc on his chest he spoke again of course he said you're our new neighbor aren't you and you must be she raised her eyes from his professional symbols the fireman her voice trailed off how oddly you say that i' I'd have known it with my eyes shut she said slowly what the smell of kerosene my wife always complains he laughed you never wash it off completely no you don't she said in awe he thought she was walking in a circle about him turning him end for end shaking him quietly and emptying his pockets without once moving herself kerosene he said because the silence had lengthened is nothing but perfume to me does it seem like that really of course why not she gave herself time to think of it I don't know she turned to face the sidewalker going toward their homes do you mind if I walk back with you I'm Clarice mcla Clarice guy manag come along what are you doing out so late wandering around how old are you they walked in the warm cool glowing night on the silver pavement and there was the faintest breath of fresh apricots and strawberries in the air and he looked around and realized this was quite impossible so late in the a there was only the girl walking with him now her face bright as snow in the Moonlight and he knew she was working his questions around seeking the best answers she could possibly give well she said I'm 17 and I'm crazy my uncle says the two almost always go together when people ask your age he said always say 17 and insane isn't this a nice time of night to walk I like to smell things and look at things and sometimes stay up all night walking and watch the sunrise we walked on again in silence and finally she said thoughtfully you know I'm not afraid of you at all he was surprised why should you be so many people are afraid of firemen I mean but you're just a man have after all he saw himself in her eyes suspended into shining drops of Bright Water himself dark and Tiny and fine detail the lines about his mouth everything there as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet Amber that might capture and hold him intact her face turned to him now was fragile milk Crystal with a soft and constant light in it it was not the hysterical light of electricity but what what but the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle one time as a child in a power failure his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and droop comfortably around them and they mother and son alone transformed hoping that the power might not come on again too soon and then Clarice mclen said do you mind if I ask how long have you worked at being a fireman since I was 20 10 years ago do you ever read any of the books you burn he laughed that's against the law oh of course it's fine work Monday burn Malay Wednesday Whitman Friday fuckner burn him to ashes then burn the ashes as our official slogan they walked still farther and the girl said Is it true that long ago firemen put Fires at out instead of going to start them no houses have always been fireproof take my word for it strange I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed farming to stop the Flames he laughed she glanced quickly over why you laughing I don't know he started to laugh again and stopped why you laugh when I hadn't been funny and you answer right off you never stop to think would have asked you he stopped walking you are an odd one he said looking at her I didn't you any respect I don't mean to be insulting it's just I love to watch people too much I guess well doesn't this mean anything to you he taed the numerals 4 5 1 stitched on his charc colored sleeve yes she whispered she increased her Pace have you ever watched the jet cars racing on the boulevards down that way changing the subject I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is or flowers because they never see them slowly she said if you showed a driver for a green blur oh yes he'd say that's grass a pink blur that's a Rose Garden white blurs are houses Brown blurs are cows my uncle drove slowly on a highway once he drove 40 m an hour and they jailed him for 2 days isn't that funny and sad to you think too many things said Montag uneasily I read watch The Parlor walls or go to races or fun parks so had lots of time for crazy thoughts I guess have you seen the 200t long Billboards in the country Beyond Town did you know that once Billboards were only 20 ft long but car started rushing by so quickly they had to stretch the advertising out so it would last I didn't know they had to monag laughed abruptly bet I know something else you don't there's Dew on the grass in the morning he suddenly couldn't remember if he had known this or not and it made him quite irritable and if you look she nodded at the sky there's a man in the moon he hadn't looked for a long time they walked the rest of the way in silence hers thoughtful his a kind of clenching and uncomfortable silence in which he shot her accusing glances when they reached her house all its lights were blazing what's going on monag had rarely seen that many house lights oh just my mother and father and Uncle sitting around talking it's like being a pedestrian only rare my uncle was arrested another time did I tell you for being a pedestrian I were most peculiar but what do you talk about she laughed at this good night she started up her walk then she seemed to remember something and came back to look at him with Wonder and curiosity are you happy she said am I what he cried but she was gone running in the Moonlight her front door shut gently happy of all the nonsense he stopped laughing he put his hand into the glove hole of his front door and let it know his touch the front door slid open of course I'm happppy what does she think I'm not he asked the quiet rooms he stood looking out at the ventilator Grill in the hall and suddenly remembered that something lay hidden behind the grill something that seemed to peer down at him now he moved his eyes quickly away what a strange meeting on a strange night you remembered nothing like it save one afternoon a year ago when he had met an old man in the park and N had talked Montag shook his head he looked at a blank wall the girl's face was there really quite beautiful in memory astonishing in fact she had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of the night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second with a white silence and a glowing all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses but moving also toward a new Sun what asked Montag of that other self the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times quite independent of will habit and conscience he glanced back at the wall how like a mirror too her face impossible for how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you people were more often he searched for a simile found one in his work torches blazing away until they whiffed out how rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression your own innermost trembling thought what incredible power of identification the girl had she was like the eager Watcher of a maranet show anticipating each flicker of an eyelid each gesture of his hand each flick of a finger the moment before it began how long had they walked together 3 minutes 5 yet how large that time seemed now how immense a figure she was on the stage before him what a shadow she threw on the wall with her slender body he felt that if his eye itched she might blink and if the muscles of his Jaws stretched imperceptibly she would yawn long before he would why he thought now that I think of it she almost seemed to be waiting for me there in the street so damned late at night he opened the bedroom door it was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mzia after the moon has set complete darkness not a hint of the silver World outside the windows tightly shut the chamber a tomb world where no sound from the great City could penetrate the room was not empty he listened the little mosquito delicate dancing hum in the air the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm Nest the music was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune he felt his smile Slide Away melt fold over and down on itself like a Tallow skin like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out Darkness he was not happy he was not happy he said the words to himself he he recognized this as the true State of Affairs he wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look his wife stretched out on the bed uncovered and cold like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of Steel immovable and in her ears the little seashells the thimble radios tamped tight and an electronic ocean of Sound of Music and talk and music and talk coming in coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind the room was indeed empty every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound floating her wide eyed toward morning there had been no night in the last 2 years that Mildred had not swam that sea had not gladly gone down in it for the third time the room was cold but nonetheless he felt he could not breathe he did not wish to open the DRS and open the French windows for he did not want the moon to come into the room so with the feeling of a man who will die in the next hour for lack of air he felt his way toward his open separate and therefore cold bed an instant before his foot hit the object on the floor he knew he would hit such an object it was not unlike the feeling he had experience before turning the corner and almost knocking the girl down his foot sending vibrations ahead received back Echoes of the small barrier across its path even as the foot swung his foot kicked the object gave a dull clink and slid off in darkness he stood very straight and listened to the person on the dark bed in the completely featuress night the breath coming out the nostrils was so faint it stirred only the farthest fringes of Life a small Leaf a black feather a single fiber of hair he still did not want outside light he pulled out his igniter felt the salamander etched on its silver disc gave it a flick two moonstones looked out at him in the light of a small handheld fire two pale moonstones buried in a creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran not touching them Mildred her face was like a snow covered Island upon which rain might fall but it felt no rain over which clouds might pass their moving Shadows but she felt no shadow there was only the singing of the thimble wasps in her temped shut ears and her eyes all glass and breath going in and out softly fatly in and out her nostrils and her not caring whether it came or went went or came the object he had sent tumbling with his foot now glinted under the edge of his own bed the small Crystal bottle of sleeping tablets which earlier today had been filled with 30 capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the tiny flare as he stood there the sky over the house screamed there was a tremendous riing sound as if two giant hands had torn 10,000 miles of black lines down the seam monag was cut in half he felt his chest chopped down and split apart the jet bombers going over going over going over 1 2 one 2 one 2 six of them nine of them 12 of them one and one and one and another and another and another did all the screaming for him he opened his own mouth and left a shriek come down and out between his Beed teeth the house shook the flare went out in his hand the moonstones vanished he felt his hand plunge toward the telephone the Jets were gone he felt his lips move brushing the mouthpiece of the phone emergency hospital a terrible whisper he felt that the Stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black Chets and that in the morning the Earth would be covered with their dust like a strange snow that was his idiot thought as he stood shivering in the dark and let his lips go on moving and moving they had this machine they two machines really one of them slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old th gathered there it drank up the green matter that flowed to the top in a slow boil did it drink of the darkness did it suck out all the poisons accumulated with the ears it fed inide Silence with an occasional sound of inner Suffocation and blind searching it had an eye the impersonal operator of the machine could by wearing a special Optical helmet gaze into the soul of the person whom he was pumping out what did the eyes see he did not say he saw but did not see what the eyes saw the entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one's yard the woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached go on anyway shove the boore down slush up the emptiness if such a thing could be brought out in the throb of the suction snake the operator stood smoking a cigarette the other machine was working too the other machine operated by an equally impersonal fellow in non- stainable reddish brown coveralls this machine pumped all of the blood from the body and replaced it with fresh blood and serum got to clean them out both ways said the operator standing over the silent woman no use getting the stomach if you don't clean the blood leave that stuff in the blood and the blood hits a brain like a mallet bang a couple thousand times and the Brain just gives up just quits stop it said monag I was just saying said the operator are you done said Montag they shut the machines up tight we're done is anger did not even touch them they stood with the cigarette smoke curling around their noses and into their eyes without making Kingdom blink or squint that's 50 bucks first why of you tell me if she'll be all right sure she'll be okay we got all the mean stuff right in your suitcase here you can't get at her now as I said you take out the old and put in the new and you're okay neither of you is an MD why didn't they send an MD from emergency hell the operator's cigarette moved on his lip we get these cases 9 or 10 a night got so many starting a few years ago we had the special machines built with the optical lens of course that was new the rest is ancient you don't need an MD casee like this all you need is two handyman clean up the problem in half an hour look he started for the door we got to go just had another call on the old ear thimble 10 blots from here someone else just jumped off the cap of a pill box call if you need us again keep her quiet we had a contractive in her she'll wake up hungry along long and the men with the cigarettes in their straight lined mouths the men with the eyes of puff adders took up their load of machine and Tube their case of liquid Melancholy and the slow dark sludge of nameless stuff and strolled out the door Montag sank down into a chair and looked at this woman her eyes were closed now gently and he put out his hand to feel the Warmness of breath on his palm Mildred he said at last there are too many of us he thought there are billions of us and that's too many nobody knows anyone strangers come come and violate you strangers come and cut your heart out strangers come and take your blood good God who were those men I never saw them before in my life half an hour passed the bloodstream in this woman was new and it seemed to have done a new thing to her her cheeks were very pink and her lips were very fresh and full of color and they looked soft and relaxed someone else's blood there if only someone else's flesh and brain and memory if only they could have taken her mind along to the dry cleaners and emptied the pockets and steamed and cleansed it and reblocked it and brought it back in the morning if only he got up and put back the draps and opened the windows wide to let the night air in it was 2:00 in the morning was it only an hour ago Clarice mlen in the street and him coming in in the dark room and his foot kicking the little Crystal bottle only an hour but the world had melted down and sprung up in a new and colorless form laughter blew across the moon colored lawn from the house of Clarice and her father and mother and the uncle who smiled so quietly and so earnestly above all their laughter was relaxed and Hearty and not forced in any way coming from the house that was so brightly lit this late at night while all the other houses were kept to themselves in darkness monteg heard the voices talking talking talking giving talking weaving reweaving their hypnotic web Montag moved out through the French windows and crossed the lawn without even thinking of it he stood outside the talking house in the shadows thinking he might even tap on their door and Whisper let me come in I won't say anything I just want to listen what is it you're saying but instead he stood there very cold his face a mask of ice listening to a man's voice the uncle moving along at an easy Pace well after all this is the age of the Disposable tissue blow your nose on a person while them flush them away reach for another blow WOD flush everyone using everyone else's coattails how are you supposed to root for the home team when you don't even have a program or know the names for that matter what color jerseys are they wearing as they Trot out on the field Montag moved back to his own house left the window wide checked Mildred tucked the covers about her carefully and then lay down with the Moonlight on his cheekbones and on the frowning ridges in his brow with the Moonlight distilled in each eye to form a silver cataract there one drop of rain Clarice another drop Mildred a third the uncle a fourth the fire tonight one Clarice two Mildred three Uncle four fire one Mildred 2 Clarice 1 2 3 4 five Clarice Mildred Uncle fire sleeping tablets men disposable tissue coattails blow wad flush Clarice mil Uncle fire tablets tissues blow wad flush 1 2 3 1 2 3 rain the storm the uncle laughing Thunder falling downstairs the whole world pouring down the fire gushing up in a volcano all rushing on down around in a spouting Roar and rivering stream toward morning I don't know anything anymore he said and let a sleep lozenge dissolve on his tongue at 9:00 in the morning mild bed was empty Monte got up quickly his heart pumping and ran down the hall and stopped at the kitchen door toast popped out of the silver toaster was seized by a spidery metal hand that drenched it with melted butter Mildred watched the toast delivered to her plate she had both ears plugged with electronic bees that were humming the hour away she looked up Suddenly SE him and nodded you all right he asked she was an expert at lip reading from 10 years of apprenticeship at seashell ear thimbles she nodded again she set the toaster clicking away at another piece of bread Montag sat down his wife said I don't know why I should be so hungry you I'm hungry last night he began didn't sleep well feel terrible she said God I'm hungry I can't figure it last night he said again she watched his lips casually what about last night don't you remember what did we have a wild party or something feel like at The Hangover God I'm hungry who was here a few people he said that's what I thought she chewed her toast sore stomach that I'm hungry as I'll get out hope I didn't do anything foolish at the party no he said quietly the toaster spidered out a piece of buttered bread for him he held it in his hand feeling obligated you don't look so hot yourself said his wife in the late afternoon it rained and the entire world was dark gray he stood in the Hall of his house putting on his badge with the orange salamander burning across it he stood looking up at the air conditioning vent in the hall for a long time his wife in the TV parlor paused long enough from reading her script to glance up hey she said the man's thinking yes he said I wanted to talk to you he paused you took all the pills in your bottle last night oh I wouldn't do that she said surprised the bottle was empty I wouldn't do a thing like that why would I do a thing like that she said maybe you took two pills and forgot and took two more and forgot again and took two more and were so Dopey you kept right on until you had 30 or 40 of the menu heck she said what would I want to go and do a silly thing like that for I don't know he said she was quite obviously waiting for him to go I didn't do that she said never in a billion years all right if you say so he said that's what the lady said she turned back to her script what's on this afternoon he asked tiredly she didn't look up from the script again well this is a play comes on the wall circuit in 10 minutes they mailed me my part this morning I sent in some box TOS they write the script with one part missing is a new idea the Homemaker that's me is the missing part when it comes time for the missing lines they all look at me out of the three walls and I say the lines here for instance the man says what do you think of this whole idea Helen and he looks at me sitting here Center Stage see and I say I say she paused and ran her finger under a line on the script I think that's fine and then they go on with the play until he says do you agree to that Helen and I say I sure do isn't that fun guy he stood in the hall looking at her it's sure fun she said what's the play about I just told you there are these people named Bob and Ruth and Helen oh it's really fun it'll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed how long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall TV put in it's only $2,000 that's one3 of my yearly pay it's only $2,000 she replied and I should think you'd consider me sometimes if we had a fourth wall what it' be just like this room wasn't ours at all they're all kinds of exotic people's rooms we could do without a few things we're already doing without a few things to pay for the third wall it was only put in 2 months ago remember is that all I was she sat looking at him for a long moment well goodbye dear goodbye he said he stopped and turned around does it have a happy ending i't read that far he walked over read the last page nodded folded the script and handed it back to her he walked out of the house into the rain the rain was Sting away and the girl was walking in the center of the sidewalk with her head up and the few drops falling on her face she smiled when she saw monag hello he said hello and then said what are you up to now andun still crazy the rain feels good I love to walk in it I don't think I'd like that he said said you might if you tried I never have she licked her lips rain even tastes good what you do go around trying everything once he asked sometimes twice she looked at something in her hand what have you got there he said I guess it's the last of the dandelions this year I didn't think I'd find one on the lawn this late have you ever heard of rubbing it under your chin look she touched her chin with the flower laughing why if it runs off it means I'm in love has it it could hardly do anything else but look well she said you're yellow under there fine let's try you now it won't work for me here before he could move she had put the dandelion under his chin he drew back and she laughed hold still she peered under his chin and frowned well he said what a shame she said you're not in love with anyone yes I am it doesn't show I am very much in love he tried to conjure up a face to fit the words but there was no face I am oh please don't look that way it's that dandelion he said you've used it all up on yourself that's why it won't work for me of course that must be it oh now I upset you I can see I have I'm sorry really I am she touched his elbow no no he said quickly I'm all right I've got to be going so say you forgive me I don't want you angry with me I'm not angry upet yes I've got to go see my psychiatrist now they make me go I make up things to say I don't know what he thinks of me he says I'm a regular Ona I keep him busy peeling away the layers I'm inclined to believe you need the psychiatrist said said Montag you don't mean that he took a breath and let it out and at last said no I don't mean that the psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests and watch the birds and collect butterflies I'll show you my collection someday good they want to know what I do with my time I tell them that sometimes I just sit and think but I won't tell them what I've got them running and sometimes I tell them oh like to put my head back like this and Let the Rain Fall In My Mouth it tastes just like wine have you ever tried it no I you have forgiven me haven't you yes he thought about it yes I have God knows why you're peculiar you're aggravating yet you're easy to forgive you say you're 17 well next month how OD how strange and my wife 30 and yet you seem so much older at times I can't get over it y peculiar yourself Mr Montag sometimes I even forget you're a fireman now may I make you angry again go ahead how did it start how did you get into it how did you pick your work and how did you happen to think to take the job you have you're not like the others I've seen a few I know when I talk you look at at me when I said something about the moon you looked at the Moon last night the others would never do that the others would walk off and leave me talking or threaten me no one has time anymore for anyone else you're one of the few who put up with me that's why I think it's so strange you're a fireman it just doesn't seem right for you somehow he felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness a softness and a hardness a trembling and a nut trembling the two halves grinding one upon the other you'd better run onto your appointment he said and she ran off and left him standing there in the rain only after a long time did he move and then very slowly as he walked he tilted his head back in the rain for just a few moments and opened his mouth the mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep lived but did not live in it gently humming gently vibrating softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse the dim light of 1 in the morning the Moonlight from the Open Sky framed through the great window touched here and there on the brass and the copper and the steel of the faintly trembling Beast light flickered on bits of Ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently gently its eight legs spidered under it on rubber haded pause monag slid down the brass pole he went out to look at the city and the clouds had cleared away completely and he lit a cigarette and came back to bend down and look at the Hound it was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness of insanity and Nightmare its body crammed with that overr nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself hello whispered Montag fascinated as always with the dead Beast the living Beast nights when things got dull which was every night the men slid down the brass poles and set the ticking combinations of the old factory system of the hound and let loose rats in the firehouse area way and sometimes chickens and sometimes cats that would have to be drowned anyway and there would be bedding to see which of the cats or chickens or rats the Hound would seize first the animals were turned loose 3 seconds later the game was done the rat C chicken caught half across the areaway gripped by gentling Paws while a 4-in hollow steel needle plunged down from the kosis of the Hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine the pawn was then tossed in the incinerator a new game began Monch stayed upstairs most nights when this went on there had been a time two years ago when he had bet with the best of them and lost a weak salary and faced Mildred's insane anger which showed itself in veins of and blotches but now nights he lay in his bunk face turned to the wall listening to the whoops of laughter below and the piano string Scurry of rat feet the violin squeaking of mice and the great shadowing motioned Silence of the H leaping out like a moth in the Raw light finding holding its victim inserting the needle and going back to its kennel to die as if a switch had been turned Montag touched the muzzle the Hound growled Montag jumped back the Hound half rose in its kennel and looked at him with green blue neon light flickering in its suddenly activated eye bulbs it growled again a strange rasping combination of electrical Sizzle a frying sound a scraping of metal a turning of cogs that seemed Rusty and ancient with suspicion no no boy said Montag his heart pounding he saw the Silver Needle extend upon the air an inch pull back extend pull back the growls simmered in the Beast and it looked at him monag backed up the Hound took a step from its kennel monag grabbed the brass pole with one hand the pole reacting slid upward and took him through the ceiling quietly he stepped off in the half lit deck of the upper level he was trembling and his face was green white below the Hound had sunk back down upon its eight incredible ins legs and was humming to itself again its multifaceted eyes at peace Montag stood letting the fears pass by the drop hole behind him four men at a card table under a green lied light in the corner glanced briefly but said nothing only the man with the captain's hat and the sign of the Phoenix on his hat at last curious his playing cards and his thin hand talked across the long room Montag it doesn't like me said Montag what the Hound the captain studied his cards come off it it doesn't like or dislike it just functions it's like a lesson in ballistics it has a trajectory we decide on for it it follows through it targets itself homes itself and cuts off it's only copper wires storage batteries and electricity Montag swallowed his calculators can be set to any combination so many amino acids so much sulfur so much butter fat and alkaline right we all know that all of those chemical balances and percentages on all of us here in the house are recorded in the masterfile downstairs it would be easy for someone to set up a partial combination on The Hound's memory a touch of amino acids perhaps that would account for what the animal did just now reacted toward me hell said the captain irritated but not completely angry just enough memory set up in it by someone so had growled when I touched it who would do a thing like that asked the captain you haven't any enemies here guy none that I know of we'll have the Hound check by our technicians tomorrow this isn't the first time it's threatened me said Montag last month it happened twice we'll fix it up don't worry but Montag did not move and only stood thinking of the ventilator Grill in the hall at home and what lay hidden behind the grill if someone here in the firehouse knew about the ventilator then mightn't they tell the Hound the captain came over to the drop hole and gave Montag a questioning cents I was just figuring said Montag what does the Hound think about down there Knights is it coming alive on us really it makes me cold it doesn't think anything we don't want it to think that's sad said monag quietly cuz all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing what a shame if that's all I can ever know batty snorted gently hell it's a fine bit of craftsmanship a good rifle that can fetch its own Target and guarantees the bullseye every time that's why said Montag I wouldn't want to be its next victim why you got a guilty conscience about something Monte glanced up swiftly batty stood there looking at him steadily with his eyes while his mouth opened and began to to laugh very softly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 days and as many times he came out of the house and Clarice was there somewhere in the world once he saw a shaking a walnut tree once he saw her sitting on the lawn knitting a blue sweater three or four times he found a bouquet of late flowers on his porch or a handful of chestnuts and a little sack or some Autumn Leaves neatly tinned to a sheet of white paper and thumbtacked to his door every day Clarice walked into the corner one day it was raining the next it was clear the day after that the wind blew strong and the day after that it was mild and calm and the day after that calm day was a day like the furnace of Summer and Clarice with her face all sunburnt by late afternoon why is it he said one time at the subway entrance I feel I've known you so many years because I like you she said and I don't want anything from you and because we know each other you make me feel very old and very much like a father now you explain she said why you haven't any daughters like me if you love children so much I don't know you're joking I mean he stopped and shook his head well my wife she she just never wanted any children at all the girl stopped smiling I'm sorry I really thought you were having fun at my expense I'm a fool no no he said there's a good question it's been a long time since anyone cared enough to ask a good question let's talk about something else have you ever smelled old leaves don't they smell like cinnamon here smell oh yes it is like cinnamon in a way she looked at him with her clear dark eyes you always seem shocked it's just I haven't had time did you look at the stretched out Billboards like I told you I think so yes he had to laugh your laugh sounds much nicer than it did does it much more relaxed he felt at ease and comfortable why aren't you in school I see you every day wandering around oh they don't miss me she said I'm antisocial they say I don't mix it's so strange I'm very social indeed it all depends on what you mean by social doesn't it social to me means talking to you about things like this she rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard or talking about how strange the world is being with people is nice but I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk do you an hour of TB class an hour of basketball or baseball or running another hour of transcription history or painting pictures and more sports but do you know we never ask questions or at least most don't they just run the answers At You Bing Bing Bing you us sitting there for four more hours a film teacher that's not social to me at all it's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout not the bottom and them telling us it's wine when it's not they run so raged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a fun part to bully people around break window panes in the window smash a place or wreck cars and the car wreck a place with the big steel ball or go out in the cars and race on the streets trying to see how close you can get to lamp posts playing chick and knub caps I guess I'm everything they say I am all right I haven't any friends that's supposed to prove I'm have normal but everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another do you notice how people hurt each other now a days you sound so very old sometimes I'm ancient I'm afraid of children my own age they kill each other did it always used to be that way my uncle says no six of my friends have been shot in the last year Alone 10 of them died in car wrecks I'm afraid of them and they don't like me because I'm afraid my uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn't kill each other but that was a long time ago when they had things different they believed in responsibility my uncle says do you know I'm responsible I was spanked when I needed it years ago and I do all the shopping and house cleaning by hand but most of all she said I like to watch people sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going sometimes I even go to the fun parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured as long as everyone has 10,000 Insurance everyone's happy sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways or I listen at soda fountain and do you know what what people don't talk about anything oh they must no not anything they name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell but they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else and most of the time in the caves they have the joke boxes on and the same jokes most of the time all the musical wall lit and all the colored patterns running up down but it's only color and all abstract and at the museums have you ever been all abstract that's all there is now my uncle says it was different once a long time back sometimes pictures send things or even showed people your uncle said your uncle said your uncle must be a remarkable man he is he certainly is well I got to be going goodby Mr mon tag goodbye goodbye 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Days the firehouse monag you Shin that pull like a bird of a tree Third Day Montag I see you came in the back door this time the Hound bother you no no fourth day Montag a funny thing heard tell this morning fireman in Seattle purposely said him mechanical Hound to his own chemical complex and Let it Loose what kind of suicide would you call that 5 6 7 days and then Clarice was gone he didn't know what there was about the afternoon but it was not seeing her somewhere in the world the lawn was empty the trees empty the street empty and while at first he did not even know he missed her or was even looking for her the fact was that by the time he reached the subway there were vague srings of disease in him something was the matter his routine had been Disturbed a simple routine true established in a short few days and yet he almost turned back to make the walk again to give her time to appear he was certain if he tried the same route everything would work out fine but it was late and the arrival of his train put a stop to his plan the flutter of cards motion of hands of eyelids the Drone of the the time voice in The Firehouse ceiling 1:35 Thursday morning November 4th 1:36 1:37 a.m. The Tick of the playing cards on the greasy tabletop all the sounds came to Montag behind his closed eyes behind the barrier he had momentarily erected he could feel the firehouse full of glitter and shine and Silence of grass colors the colors of coins of gold of silver the Unseen men across the table were sighing on their cards waiting 145 The Voice clock mourned out the cold hour of a cold morning of a still colder year what's wrong Montag Montag opened his eyes a radio hummed somewhere War may be declared any hour this country stands ready to defend its the firehouse trembled as a great flight of jet planes whistled a single note across the black morning sky Monte blinked batty was looking at him as if he were a museum statue at any moment batty might rise and walk about him touching exploring his guilt and self-consciousness guilt what guilt was that your play Montag Montag looked at these men whose faces were sunburnt by a thousand real and 10,000 imaginary fires whose work flushed their cheeks and fevered their eyes these men who looked steadily into their Platinum igniter Flames as they lit their eternally burning black pipes B and their charal hair and soot colored brows and bluish Ash smeared cheeks where they had shaven close but their Heritage showed monteg started up his mouth open had he ever seen a fireman that didn't have black hair black brows a fiery face and a blue steel shaved but unshaved look these men were all mirror images of himself were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities the color of cinders and Ash about them and the continual smell of burning from their pipes Captain batty there rising in thunderheads of tobacco smoke batty opening a fresh tobacco packet crumbling the cellophane into a sound of fire monag looked at the cards in his own hands I I've been thinking about the fire last week about the man who's Library we fixed what happened to him they took him screaming after the Asylum he wasn't insane batty arranged his cards quietly any man's insane who thinks he can fool the government and us I tried to imagine said montech just how it would feel I mean to have firemen burn our houses and our books we haven't any books but if we did have some you got some bigy blinked slowly no Mont gazed Beyond them to the wall with the typed lists of a million forbidden books the names lecked in Fire Burning Down the ears under his ax and his hose which sprayed not water but kerosene no but in his mind a cool wind started up and blew out of the ventilator Grill at home softly softly chilling his face and again he saw himself in a green Park talking to an old man A Very Old Man and the wind from the park was cold too Montag hesitated was was it always like this the firehouse our work I mean well once upon a time once upon a time baty said what kind of talk is that fool thought Montag to himself you'll give it away at the last fire a book of fairy tales he glanced at a single lie I mean he said in the old days before homes were completely fireproofed suddenly it seemed a much younger voice was speaking for him he opened his mouth and it was claresa mcla saying didn't firemen prevent fires rather than Stoke them up and get them going that's a rich Stoneman and black Drew forth their Rule books which also contained brief histories of the firemen of America and laid them out where monag though Long familiar with them might read established 1790 to burn English influenced books in the colonies first fireman Benjamin Franklin rule one answer the alarm swiftly two Start the Fire swiftly three burn everything four report back to Firehouse immediately five stand alert for other alarms everyone watched Montag he did not move the alarm sounded the bell in the ceiling kicked itself 200 times suddenly there were four empty chairs the cards fell in a flurry of snow the brass poles shivered the men were gone monag sat in his chair below the orange Dragon coughed to life monag slid down the pole like a man in a dream the mechanical Hound leapt up in its kennel its eyes all green flame Monte you forgot your helmet he seized it off the wall behind him ran leapt and they were off the night wind hammering about their siren scream and their Mighty metal Thunder it was a flaking three-story house in the ancient part of the city a century old if it was a day but like all houses it had been given a thin fireproof plastic sheath many years ago and this preservative shell seemed to be the only thing holding it in the sky here we are the engine slammed to a stop batty Stoneman and black ran up the sidewalk suddenly odious and fat in their plump fireproof Slickers Montag followed they crashed the front door and grabbed at a woman though she was not running she was not trying to escape she was only standing weaving from side to side her eyes fixed Upon A nothingness in the wall as if they had struck her a terrible blow upon the head her tongue was moving in her mouth and her eyes seemed to be trying to remember something and then they remembered and her tongue moved again Play The Man Master Ridley we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace and in as I trust shall never be put out enough of that said batty where are they he slapped her face with amazing objectivity and repeated the question the old woman's eyes came to a focus upon batty you know where they are or you wouldn't be here she said Stoneman held out the telephone alarm card with the complaint signed in telephone duplicate on the back have reason to suspect attic 11 North Elm City EB that would be Mrs Blake my neighbor said the woman reading the initials all right man let's get them next thing they were up in musty Blackness swinging silver hatchets at doors that were after all unlocked tumbling through like boys all Ric and Shout hey a fountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stairwell how inconvenient always before it had been like snuffing a candle the police went first and adhesive taped to the victim's mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering Beetle cars so when you arrived you found an empty house you weren't hurting anyone you were hurting only things and since things really couldn't be hurt since things felt nothing and things don't scream or whimper as this woman might begin to scream and cry out there was nothing to tease your conscience later you were simply cleaning up janitorial work essentially everything to its proper place quick with the kerosene who's got a match but now tonight someone had slipped this woman was spoiling the ritual the men were making too much noise laughing joking to cover her terrible accusing silence below she made the empty rooms Roar with accusation and shake down a fine dust of guilt it was sucked in their nostrils as they plunged about it was neither Cricket nor correct Montag felt an immense irritation she shouldn't be here on top of everything books bombarded his shoulders his arms his up turned face a book lit almost obediently Like A white pigeon in his hair Wings fluttering in the dim wavering light a cage hung open and it was like a snowy feather the words delicately painted thereon in all the Russian fervor Montag had only an instant to read a line but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine he dropped the book immediately another fell into his arms Montag up here montag's hand closed like a mouth crushed the book with wild devotion with an insanity of mindlessness to his chest the men above were hurling shovel fulls of magazines into the dusty air they fell like slaughtered Birds and the woman stood below like a small girl among the bodies Montag had done nothing his hand had done it all his hand with a brain of its own with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling finger had turned a thief now it plunged the book back under his arm pressed it tight to sweating armpit rushed out empty with a magician's flourish look here innocent look he gazed shaken at that white hand he held it way out as if he were farsighted he held it close as if he were blind manag he jerked about don't stand there idiot the books lay like great mounds of fishes left to dry the men danced and slipped and fell over them titles glittered their golden eyes falling gone kerosene they pumped the cold fluid from the numeral 451 tanks strapped to their shoulders they coated each book they pumped rooms full of it they hurried downstairs monag staggering after them in the kerosene fues come on woman the woman knelt to on the books touching the drenched leather and cardboard reading the guilt titles with her fingers while her eyes accused monac you can't ever have my books she said you know the law said batty where's your common sense none of those books agree with each other you've been locked up here for years with a regular damn Tower of Babel snap out of it the people in those books never lived come on now she shook her head the whole house is going up said batty the men walked clumsily to the the door they glanced back at Montag who stood near the woman you're not leaving her here he protested she won't come forer then baty raised his hand in which was concealed the igniter we do back at the house besides these Fanatics always try suicide the pattern's familiar Montag placed his hand on the woman's elbow you can come with me no she said thank you anyway I'm counting to 10 said batty 1 2 please said monag go on said the woman 3 4 here mon pulled at the woman the woman replied quietly I want to stay here 5 6 you can stop counting she said she opened the fingers of one hand slightly and in the palm of the hand was a single slender object an ordinary kitchen match the sight of it rushed the men out and down away from the house captain batty keeping his dignity backed slowly through the front door his pink face burnt and shiny from a thousand fires and night excitements God thought Montag how true always at night the alarm comes Never by day is it because fire is prettier By Night more spectacle a better show the pink face of batty now showed the faintest panic in the door the woman's hand twitched on the single match stick the of kerosene bloomed up about her Montag felt The Hidden book pound like a heart against his chest go on said the woman and Montag felt himself back away and Away out the door after batty down the steps across the lawn where the path of kerosene lay like the track of some evil snail on the front porch where she had come to We Them quietly with her eyes her quietness a condemnation the woman stood Motionless baty flicked his fingers to spark the kerosene he was too late monag gasped the woman in the porch reached out with contempt to the mall and struck the kitchen match against the railing people ran out of houses all down the street they said nothing on their way back to the Firehouse nobody looked at anyone else Montag sat in the front seat with batty and black they did not even smoke their pipes they sat there looking out the the front of the great salamander as they turned a corner and went silently on Master Ridley said Montag at last what said batty she said Master Ridley she said some crazy thing when we came in the door play the man she said Master Ridley something something something we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out said batty Stone and glanced over at the captain as deont tag startled batty rubbed his chin a man named latima said that to a man named nickas Ridley as they were being burned alive at Oxford for heresy on October 16th 1555 Montag and stonan went back to looking at the street as it moved under the engine Wheels I'm fibit in pieces said batty most fire captains have to be sometimes I surprise myself watch it Stoneman Stoneman break the truck damn said batty you've gone right by the corner we return for the firehouse who is it who would it be said Montag leaning back against the closed door in the dark his wife said at last well put on the light I don't want the light come to bed he heard her roll impatiently the bed springs squealed are you drunk she said so it was the hand that started it all he felt one hand and then the other work his coat free and let it slump to the floor he held his pants out into an abyss and Let Them Fall Into Darkness his hands had been infected and soon it would be his arms he could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders and then the jump over from shoulder blade to shoulder blade like a spark leaping a gap his hands were Rous and his eyes were beginning to feel hunger as if they must look at something any everything his wife said what are you doing he balanced in space with the book in his sweating cold fingers a minute later she said well just don't stand there in the middle of the floor he made a small sound what she asked he made more soft sounds he stumbled toward the bed and shoved the book clumsily under the cold pillow he fell into bed and his wife Cried Out startled he lay far AC Ross the room from her on a winter Island separated by an empty sea she talked to him for what seemed a long while and she talked about this and she talked about that and it was only words like the words he had heard once in a nursery at a friend's house a 2-year-old child building word patterns talking jaram making pretty sounds in the air but Montag said nothing and after a long while when he only made the small sounds he felt her move in the room and come to his bed and stand over him and put her hand down to Fess cheek he knew that when she pulled her hand away from his face it was wet late in the night he looked over at Mildred she was awake there was a tiny dance of Melody in the air her seashell was tamped in her ear again and she was listening to far people in Far places her eyes wide and staring at the fathoms of Blackness above her in the ceiling wasn't there an old joke about the wife who talked so much on the telephone that her desperate husband ran out to the nearest store and telephoned her to ask what was for dinner well then why didn't he buy himself an audio seashell broadcasting station and talk to his wife late at night murmur whisper Shout Scream yell but what would he whisper what would he yell what could he say and suddenly she was so strange he couldn't believe he knew her at all he was in someone else's house like those other jokes people told of the gentleman drunk coming home late late at night unlocking the wrong door entering a wrong room and bed with a stranger and getting up early and going to work and neither of them the wiser Millie he whispered what I didn't mean to startle you what I want to know is well when did we meet and where when did we meet for what she asked I mean originally he knew she must be frowning in the dark he clarified it the first time we ever met where was it and when why it was it she stopped I don't know she said he was cold can't you remember it's been so long only 10 years that's all only 10 don't get excited I'm trying to think she lefted an odd little laugh that went up and up funny how funny not to remember we when you met your husband or wife he lay massaging his eyes his brow and the back of his neck slowly he held both hands over his eyes and applied a steady pressure there as if to crush memory into place it was suddenly more important than any other thing in a lifetime that he know where he had met Mildred it doesn't matter she was up in the bathroom now and he heard the water running and the swallowing sound she made no I guess not he said he tried to count how many times she swallowed and he thought of the visit from the two zinc oxide faced men with the cigarettes and their straight lined mouths and the electronic eyed snake winding down into the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water and he wanted to call out to her how many have you taken tonight the capsules how many will you take later and not know and so on every hour or maybe not tonight tomorrow night and me not sleeping tonight or tomorrow night or any night for a long while now that this is started and he thought of her lying on the bed with the two technicians standing straight over her not bent with concern but only standing straight arms folded and he remembered thinking then that if she died he was certain he wouldn't cry for it would be the dying of an unknown a street face a newspaper image and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry not at death but at the thought of not crying at death a silly empty man near a silly empty woman while the hungry snake made her still more empty how do you get so empty he wondered who takes it out of you and that awful flower the other day the dandelion it had summed up everything hadn't it what a shame you're not in love with anyone and why not well wasn't there a wall between him and Mildred when you came down to it literally not just one wall but so far three and expensive too the uncles the aunts the cousins the nieces the nephews that lived in those walls the gibbering pack of tree Apes that said nothing nothing nothing and said it loud loud loud he had take into calling them relatives from the very first how's Uncle Lewis today who and Aunt Ma the most significant memory he had of mild really was of a little girl in a forest without trees how odd or rather a little girl lost on a plateau where there used to be trees he could feel the memory of their shapes all about sitting in the center of the living room the living room what a good job of labeling that was now no matter when he came in the walls were always talking to Mildred something must be done yes something must be done well let's not stand and talk let's do it I'm so mad I could spit what was it all about Mildred couldn't say who was mad at whom Mildred didn't quite know what were they going to do well said Mildred wait around and see he had waited around to see a great thunderstorm of sound gushed from the walls music bombarded him at such an immense volume that his bones were almost shaken from their tendons he felt his jaw vibrate his eyes wobble in his head he was a victim of concussion when it was all over he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff Whirled in a centrifuge and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness and never quite touched Bottom never never quite no not quite touched bottom and you fell so fast you didn't touch the sides either never quite touched anything the Thunder faded the music died there said Mildred and it was indeed remarkable something had happened even though the people in the walls of the room had barely moved and nothing had really been settled you had the impression that someone had turned on a washing machine or sucked you up in a gigantic vacuum you drowned in music and pure cacophony he came out of the room sweating and on the point of collapse behind him Mildred sat in her chair and the voice went on again well everything will be all right now said an aunt oh don't be too sure said a cousin now don't get angry who's angry You Are I Am you're mad why would I be mad because that's all very well cried Montag but what are they mad about who are these people who's that man and who's that woman are they husband and wife are they divorced engaged what could God nothing's connected up they said Mildred well they they had this fight you see they certainly fight a lot you should listen I think they're married yes they're married why and if it was not that three walls soon to be four walls and the dream complete then it was the open car and Mild driving 100 m an hour across town he shouting at her and she shouting back and both trying to hear what was said but hearing only the scream of the car at least keep it down to the minimum he yelled what she cried keep it down to 55 the minimum he shouted the what she shrieked speed he shouted and she pushed it up to 105 M an hour and tore the breath from his mouth when they stepped out of the car she had the seashell stuffed in her ears Silas only the wind blowing Softly Mildred he stirred in bed he reached over and pulled the tiny musical insect out of her ear Mildred Mildred yes her voice was faked he felt he was one of the creatures electronically inserted between the slots of the phono color walls speaking but the speech not piercing the crystal barrier he could only tant themar hoping she would turn his way and see him they would not touch through the glass Mildred do you know that girl I was telling you about what girl she was almost asleep The Girl Next Door what girl next door you know the high school girl Clarice her name is oh yes said his wife I haven't seen her for a few days 4 days to be exact have you seen her no I meant to talk to you about her strange oh I know the one you mean I thought you would her said Mildred in the dark room what about her as Montag I meant to tell you forgot forgot tell me now what is it I think she's gone gone whole family moved out somewhere but she's gone for good I think she's dead we couldn't be talking about the same girl no the same girl m mclen mlen run over by a car 4 days ago I'm not sure but I think she's dead the family moved out anyway I don't know but I think she's dead you're not sure of it no not sure pretty sure why didn't you tell me sooner forgot 4 days ago I forgot all about it four days ago he said quietly lying there they lay there in the dark room not moving either of them good night she said he heard a faint russle her hand moved the electric thimble moved like a praying mantis on the pillow touched by her hand now it was in her ear again humming he listened and his wife was singing under her breath outside the house a shadow moved an Autumn Wind Rose Up and Faded Away but there was something else in the silence that he heard it was like a breath exhaled upon the window it was like a faint drift of greenish luminescent smoke the motion of a single huge October Leaf blowing across the lawn and Away the Hound he thought it's out there tonight it's out there now if I open the window he did not open the window he had chills and fever in the morning you can't be sick said Mildred he closed his eyes over the hotness yes but you were all right last night no I wasn't all right he heard the relatives shouting in The Parlor Mildred stood over his bed curiously he felt her there he saw her without opening his eyes her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils the rened pouting lips the body is thin as a praying mantis from dieting and her flesh like white bacon he could remember her no other way will you bring me aspirin and water you've got to get up she said it's noon you slept 5 hours later than usual will you turn the Parlor off he asked that's my family will you turn it off for a sick man I'll turn it down she went out of the room and did nothing to The Parlor and came back is that better thanks that's my favorite program she said what about the aspirin you've never been sick before she went away again well I'm sick now I'm not going to work tonight call batty for me you acted funny last night she returned humming where's the aspon he glanced at the water glass she handed him oh she walked to the bath again did something happen a fire is all I had a nice evening she said in the bathroom what doing the Parlor what was on programs what programs some of the best ever who oh you know the bunch yes the bunch the bunch the bunch he pressed at the pain in his eyes and suddenly the odor of kerosene made him vomit Mildred came in humming she was surprised why'd you do that he looked with dismay at the floor we burnt an old woman with her books it's a good thing to runs washable she tetched them off and worked on it I went to Helen's last night couldn't you get the shows in your own parlor sure but it's nice visiting she went out into the Parlor he heard her singing Mildred he called she returned singing snapping her fingers softly aren't you going to ask me about last night he said what about it we burnt a thousand books we burned a woman well the Parlor was exploding with sound we burnt copies of Dante and Swift and Marcus aurelus wasn't he a European something like that wasn't he a radical I never read him he was a radical mild fiddled with the telephone you don't expect me to call Captain batty do you you must don't shout I wasn't shouting he was up in bed suddenly enraged and flushed shaking The Parlor roared in the hot air I can't call him I can't tell him I'm sick why because you're afraid he thought a child fing illness afraid to call because after a moment's discussion the conversation would run so yes Captain I feel better already I'll be in at 10:00 tonight you're not sick said Mildred Montag fell back in bed he reached under his pillow The Hidden book was still there Mildred how would it be if well maybe I quit my job a while you want to give up everything after all these years of working because one night some woman in her books you should have seen her Milly she's nothing to me she shouldn't have had books it was her responsibility she should have thought of that I hate her she's got you going and next thing you know will be out no house no job nothing you weren't there you didn't see he said there must be something in books things we can't imagine to make a woman stay in a burning house there must be something there you don't stay for nothing she was simple-minded she was as rational as you or I more so perhaps and we burnt her that's water under the bridge no not water fire you ever seen a burnt house at smolders for days well this fire will last me the rest of my life God I've been trying to put it out in my mind all night I'm crazy with trying you should have thought of that before becoming a fireman thought he said was I given a choice my grandfather and father were firemen in my sleep I ran after them The Parlor was playing in dance too this is the day you go on the early shift said Mildred you should have gone two hours ago I just noticed it's not just the woman that died said Montag last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past 10 years and I thought about books and for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books a man had to think them up a man had to take a long time to put them down on paper and I'd never even thought that thought before he got out of bed it took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down looking around at the world and life and then I come along in 2 minutes and boom it's all over let me alone said Mildred I didn't do anything let you alone that's all very well but how can I leave myself alone we need not to be let alone we need to be really bothered once in a while how long is it since you were really bothered about something important about something real and then he shut up for he remembered last week and the two white stones staring up at the ceiling and the pump snake with the probing eye and the two silk fafc men with the cigarettes moving in their mouths when they talked but that was another Mildred that was a Mildred so deep inside this one and so bothered really bothered that the two women had never met he turned away Mildred said well now you've done it out front of the house look who's here I don't care there's a phoenix C just drove up and a man in a black shirt with an orange snake stitched on his arm coming up the front walk Captain batty he said Captain batty Montag did not move but stood looking into the cold whiteness of the wall immediately before him go let him in will you tell him I'm tell him yourself she ran a few steps this way a few steps that and stopped eyes wide when the front door speaker called her name softly softly Mrs Montag Mrs Montag someone here someone here Mrs Montag Mrs Montag someone's here faded Montag made sure the book was well hidden behind the pillow climbed slowly back into bed arranged the covers over his knees and across his chest half sitting and after a while Mildred moved and went out of the room and Captain batty strolled in his hands in his pockets shut the relatives up said batty looking around at everything except Montag and his wife this time Mildred ran the yammering voices stopped yelling in The Parlor Captain batty sat down in the most comfortable chair with a peaceful look on his Ruddy face he took time to prepare and light his brass pipe and puff out a great smoke cloud just thought I'd come by and see how the sick man is how' you guess baty smiled his smile which showed the candy pinkness of his gums and the tiny candy whiteness of his teeth I've seen it all you're going to call for a night off Montag sat in bed well said batty take the night off he examined his eternal Matchbox the lid of which said guaranteed 1 million lights in this igniter and began to strike the chemical match abstractedly blow out strike blow out strike speak a few words blow out he looked at the flame he blew he looked at the smoke when will you be well tomorrow the next day maybe first of the week batty puffed his pipe every fireman sooner or later hits this they only need understanding to know how the wheels run need to know the history of our profession they don't feed it to Rookies like they used to damn shame puff only Fire Chiefs remember it now puff I'll let you in on it Mildred fidgeted batty took a full minute to settle himself in and think back for what he wanted to say when did it all start you ask this job of our how did it come about where when well I'd say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War even though our rule book claims it was founded earlier the fact is we didn't get along well until photography came into its own then Motion Pictures in the early 20th century radio television things began to have mass Montag sat in bed not moving and because they had Mass they became simpler said batty once books appeal to a few people here there everywhere they could afford to be different the world was roomy but then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths double triple quadruple population films and radios magazines books leveled down to a sort of taste putting Norm do you follow me I think so batty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air picture 19th century man with his horses dogs carts slow motion then in the 20th century speed up your camera books cut shorter condensations digests tabloids everything boils down to the gag with the snap ending snap ending Mildred nodded Classics cut to fit 15-minute radio shows then cut again to fill a 2-minute book column winding up at last as a 10 to 12 line dictionary resume I exaggerate of course the dictionaries were forever reference but many were those whose so knowledge of Hamlet you know the title certainly Montag it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you Mrs Montag whose sole knowledge as I say of Hamlet was onepage digest in a book that claimed now at last you can read all the classics keep up with your neighbors do you see out in the nursery into the college and back to the nursery there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more mild Rose and began to move around the room picking things up and putting them down baty ignored her and continued speed up the film Montag quick click pick look ey now flick here there Swift PA up down in out why how who what where a bang smack wall Bing Bong boom digest digest digest digest digests politics one column two sentences a headline then in midair all vanishes WHL man's mind round about so fast under the pumping hands of Publishers exploit as broadcasters that centrifuge flings off all unnecessary time wasting thought Mildred smoothed the bed clothes Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she patted his pillow right now she was pulling at his shoulder to try to get him to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it nicely and put it back and perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her hand and say what's this and hold up The Hidden book with a touching innocence school is shortened discipline relaxed philosophies histories languages druged English and spelling gradually gradually neglected finally almost completely ignored life is immediate the job counts pleasure lies all about after work why learn anything say pressing buttons pulling switches fitting nuts and bolts can I fix your pillow said Mildred no whispered Montag the zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn a philosophical hour and thus a Melancholy hour Mildred said here get away said monag light becomes one big pratfall monag everything bang buff and wow wow said mild yanking at the pillow for God's sake let me be cried Montag passionately batty opened his eyes wide Mildred's hand had Frozen behind the pillow her fingers were tracing the book's outline and as the shape became familiar her face looked surprised and then stunned her mouth opened to ask a question emptied the theater save for clowns and furnished the rooms with glass walls in pretty colors running up and down the Walls like confetti or blood or Sherry or saut turn you like baseball don't you manag baseball's a fine game now batty was almost invisible a voice somewhere behind a screen of smoke what's this asked Mildred almost with a delight Montag heaved back against her arms what's this here sit down Montag shouted she jumped away her hands empty we're talking Betty went on as if nothing had happened you like bowling don't you Montag bowling yes and golf golf is a fine game basketball a fine game Billiards Pool football fine games all of them more sports for everyone group spear far and you don't have to think eh organize and organize and super organize super super sports more cartoons in books more pictures the Mind drinks less and less impatience highways full of crowds going somewhere somewhere somewhere nowhere the gasoline Refugee towns turn into motels people in nomadic surges from place to place following the moon Tides living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before Mildred went out of the room and slammed the door The Parlor aunts began to laugh at The Parlor uncles now let's take up the minorities in our civilization shall we bigger the population the more minorities don't step on the toes of the dog lovers the cat lovers doctors lawyers Merchants Chiefs Mormons Baptists unitarians second generation Chinese sweds Italians Germans Texans Brites Irishmen people from Oregon and Mexico the people in this book this play this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters cartographers mechanics anywhere the bigger you Mark at Montag the less you handle controversy remember that all the minor minor minorities with the Nables to be kept clean authors full of evil thoughts lock up your typewriters they did magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca books so the damn snobbish critic said were dishwater No Wonder books start selling the critic said but the public knowing what it wanted spinning happily let the comic books survive and the three-dimensional sex magazines of course there you have it Montag it didn't come from the government down there was no dictum no declaration no censorship to start with no technology Mass exploitation and minority pressure carried the trick thank God today thanks to them you can stay happy all the time you're allowed to read Comics the good old confessions or trade journals yes but what about the firemen then as monag ah batty leaned forward in the Fate mist of smoke from his pipe what more easily explained and natural with school turning out more Runners jumpers Racers tinkerers Grabbers snatchers flyers and swimmers instead of examiners critics knowers and imaginative creators the word intellectual of course became the swear word it deserved to be you always dread the unfamiliar surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally bright did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many Leen Idols hating him and wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours of course it was we must all be alike not everyone born free and equal as the Constitution says but everyone made equal every man the image of every other then all are happy for there are no mountains to make them cower to judge themselves against so a book is a loaded gun in the house next door burn it take the shot from the weapon breach man's mind who knows who might be the target of the well- Red Man me I won't stomach them for a minute and so when houses will find me fire proved completely all over the world you were correct in your assumption the other night there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes they were given the new job as custodians of our peace of mind the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior official censors judges and executors that's you monag and that's me the door to the Parlor opened and Mildred stood there looking in at them looking at batty and then a monag behind her the walls of the room were flooded with green and yellow and orange fireworks sizzling and bursting to some music composed almost completely of track drums tom-toms and symbols her mouth moved and she was saying something but sound covered it batty knocked his pipe into the palm of his pink hand studied the ashes as if they were a symbol to be diagnosed and searched for meaning you must understand that our civilization is so P that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred ask yourself what do we want in this country above all people want to be happy isn't that right haven't you heard it all your life I want to be happy people say well aren't they don't we keep them moving don't we give them fun that's all we live for isn't it for pleasure for titilation and you must admit our culture provides plenty of these yes Monte could lip read what Mildred was saying in the doorway he tried not to look at her mouth because then batty might turn and read what was there too colored people don't like little black sandbo burn it white people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin burn it someone's written a book on Tobacco and cancer of the lungs the cigarette people are Weeping burn the book Serenity Montag peace Montag take your fight outside bet yet into the incinerator funerals are unhappy and Pagan eliminate them too 5 minutes after a person is Dead is on his way to the big flu the incinerators service by helicopters all over the country 10 minutes after death a man's a speck of black dust let's not quibble over individuals with memorian forget them burn all burn everything fire is bright and fire is clean the fireworks die in The Parlor behind Mildred she had stopped talking at the same time a miraculous coincidence monag held his breath there was a girl next door he said slowly she's gone now I think dead I can't even remember her face but she was different how how did she happen baty smiled here or there that's bound to occur Clarice mlen we've recorded on her family we've watched them carefully heredity and environment of funny things you can't rid yourself of all the OD ducks in just a few years the home and bman can undo a lot you try to do at school that's why we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we're almost snatching them from the cradle we had some false alarms on the mlen when they lived in Chicago never found a book uncle had a mixed record antisocial the girl she was a time bomb the family had been feeding her subconscious I'm sure from what I saw a School record she didn't want to know how a thing was done but why that can be embarrassing you ask why do a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed if you keep at it poor girls better off dead yes dead luckily queer ones like her don't happen often we know how to nit most of them in the bud early you can't build a house without nails in wood if you don't want a house built hide the nails in wood if you don't want a man unhappy politically don't give him two sides to a question to worry him give him one bet yet give him none let him forget there is such a thing as War if the government is inefficient top heavy in tax mad better it be all those than the people worry over it peace monag give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs and the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year cram them full of non-combustible data chot them so damn full of facts they feel stuffed but absolutely brilliant with information then they'll feel they're thinking they'll get a sense of motion without moving and they'll be happy cuz facts of that sort don't change don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with that way lies Melancholy any man who could can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again and most men can nowadays is happier than any man who tries to slide rule measure and equate the universe which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely I know I've tried it to hell with it so bring on your clubs and parties your acrobats and magicians your Daredevils jet cars motorcycle helicopters your sex and heroin more of everything to do with automatic reflex if the drama is bad if the film says nothing if the play is hollow sting me with the theera loudly I'll think I'm responding to the play when it's only a tactile reaction to vibration but I don't care I just like solid entertainment baty got up I must be going lecture's over I hope I've clarified things the important thing for you to remember mon tag is we're the happiness boys the Dixie Duo you and I and the others we stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting Theory and thought we have our fingers in The dke Hold Steady don't let the torrent of melancholy and Dre philosophy drown our world we depend on you I don't think you realize how important you are we are to our happy world as it stands now batty shook montag's limp pant Montag still sat as if the house were collapsing about it and he could not move in the bed Mildred had vanished from the door one last thing said B at least once in his career every fireman gets an itch what do the books say he wonders oh to scratch that itch ehy well Montag take my word for it I've had to read a few in my time to know what I was about and the books say nothing nothing you can teach or believe they about non-existent people figments of imagination if they're fiction and if a non-fiction is worse one Professor calling another an idiot one philosopher screaming down another's gullet all of them running about putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun you come away lost well then what if a fireman accidentally really not intending anything takes a book home with him Montag twitched the open door looked at him with its great vacant eye and natural error curiosity alone said bigy we don't get over anxious or mad we let the fireman keep the book 24 hours if he hasn't burned it by then we simply come burn it for him of course montag's mouth was dry well Montag will you take another later shift today will we see you tonight perhaps I don't know said Montag what baty looked fatly surprised monag shut his eyes I'll be in later maybe we'd certainly miss you if you didn't show said batty putting his pipe in his pocket thoughtfully I'll never come in again thought Montag get well and keep well said batty he turned and went out through the open door monag watched through the window as baty drove away in his gleaming yellow flame colored beetle with the black charc colored tires across the street and down the way the other houses stood with their flight fronts what was it clariss said one afternoon no front porches my uncle says they used to be front porches and people sat there sometimes at night talking when they wanted to talk rocking and not talking when they didn't want to talk sometimes they just sat there thought about things turned things over my uncle says The Architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well but my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it the real reason hidden underneath might be they didn't want people sitting like that doing nothing rocking talking that was the wrong kind of social life people talk too much and they had time to think so they ran off with the porches and the gardens too not many Gardens anymore to sit around in and look at the furniture no rocking chairs anymore they're too comfortable get people up and running around my uncle says then my uncle and my uncle her voice faded Montag turned and looked at his wife who sat in the middle of the Parlor talking to an announcer who in turn was talking to her Mrs Montag he was saying this that and the other Mrs Monti something else and still another the Mur attachment which had cost them $100 automatically supplied her name whenever the announcer addressed his Anonymous audience leaving a blank where the proper syllables could be filled in a special spot wavex Scrambler also caused his televised image in the area immediately about his lips to mou the vowels and consonants beautifully he was a friend no doubt of it a good friend Mrs Montag now look right here her head turned though she quite obviously was not listening Montag said it's only a step from not going to work today to not working tomorrow to not working at the firehouse ever again you are going to work tonight though aren't you said Mildred I haven't decided right now I've got an awful feeling I want to smash things and kill things go take the beetle no thanks the keys to the beetle are on the night table I always like to dry fast when I feel that way you get it up around 95 and you feel wonderful sometimes I drive all night and come back and you don't know it it's fun out in the country you hit rabbits sometimes you hit dogs go take the beetle no I don't want to this time I want to hold on to this funny thing God it's gotten big on me I don't know what it is I'm so damned unhappy I'm so mad and I don't know why I feel like I'm putting on weight I feel fat I feel like I've been saving up a lot of things and don't know what I might even start reading books they put you in jail wouldn't they she looked at him as if he were behind the glass wall he began to put on his clothes moving restlessly about the bedroom yes and it might be a good idea before I hurt someone did you your baty did you listen to him he knows all the answers he's right happiness is important fun is everything and yet I kept sitting there saying to myself I'm not happy I'm not happy I am Mildred's mouth beamed and proud others I'm going to do something said monag I don't even know what yet but I'm going to do something big I'm tired of listening to this joke said Mildred turning from him to the announcer again Montag touched the volume control in the wall and the announcer was speechless Millie he paused this is your house as well as mine I feel it's only fair that I tell you something now I should have told you before but I wasn't even admitting it to myself I have something I want you to see something I've put away and hid during the past year now and again once in a while I didn't know why but I did it and I never told you he took hold of a straight back chair and moved it slowly and steadily into the hall near the front door and climbed up on it and stood for a moment like a statue on a pedestal his wife standing under him waiting then he reached up and pulled back the grill of the air conditioning system and reached far back inside to the right and moved still another sliding sheet of metal and took out a book without looking at it he dropped it to the floor he put his hand back up and took out two books and moved his hand down and dropped the two books to the floor he kept moving his hand and dropping books small ones fairly large ones yellow red green ones when he was done he looked down upon some 20 books lying at his wife's feet I'm sorry he said I didn't really think but now it looks as if we're in this together mild backed away as if she were suddenly confronted by a pack of mice that had come up out of the floor he could hear her breathing rapidly and her face was ped out and her eyes were fastened wide she said his name over twice three times then moaning she ran forward seized the book and ran toward the kitchen incinerator he caught her shrieking he held her and she tried to fight away from him scratching no Millie no wait stop it will you you don't know stop it he slapped her face he grabbed her again and shook her she said his name and began to cry Millie he said listen give me a second will you we can't do anything we can't burn these I want to look at them at least look at them once then if what the captain says is true we'll burn them together believe me we'll burn them together you must help me he looked down into her face and took hold of her chin and held her firmly he was looking not only at her but for himself and what he must do in her face whether we like this or not we're in it I never asked for much from you in all these years but I ask it now I plead for it we've got to start somewhere here figuring out why we're in such a mess you and the medicine nights and the car and me and my work we're heading right for the cliff Millie God I don't want to go over this isn't going to be easy we haven't anything to go on but maybe we can piece it out and figure it and help each other I need you much right now I can't tell you if you love me at all you'll put up with this 24 48 hours that's all I ask then it'll be over I promise I swear and if there is something here just one little thing out of a whole mess of things maybe we can pass it on to someone else she wasn't fighting anymore so he let her go she sagged away from him and slid down the wall and sat on the floor looking at the books her foot touched one and she saw this and pulled her foot away that woman the other night Millie you weren't there you didn't see her face and Clarice you never talked to her I talked to her and men like batty are afraid of her I can't understand it why should they be so afraid of someone like her but I kept putting her alongside the firemen in the house last night and I suddenly realized I didn't like them at all and I didn't like myself at all anymore and I thought maybe it would be best if the firemen themselves were burnt guy the front door voice called softly Mrs Montag Mrs Montag someone here someone here Mrs monag Mrs Montag someone here softly they turned to stare at the door and the books toppled everywhere everywhere in heat baby said Mildred it can't be him he's come back she whispered the front door voice called again softly someone here we won't answer Montag lay back against the wall and then slowly sank to a crouching position and began to nudge the books bewilderedly with his th on his forefinger he was shivering and he wanted above all to shove the books up through the ventilator again but he knew he could not face batty again he crouched and then he sat and the voice of the front door spoke again more insistently Montag picked a single small volume from the floor Where Do We Begin he opened the book halfway and peered at it we begin by beginning I guess you'll come in said Mildred and burn us and the books the front door voice faded at last there was a silence Montag felt the presence of someone beyond the door waiting listening then the footsteps going away down the walk and over the lawn let's see what this is said Montag he spoke the words haltingly and with a terrible self-consciousness he read a dozen Pages here or there and came at last to this it is computed that 11,000 persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end Mildred sat across the hall from him what does it mean it doesn't mean anything the captain was right here now said Montag we'll start over again at the beginning part two the Civ and the sand they read the long afternoon through while the cold November rain fell from the sky upon the quiet house they sat in the hall because the Parlor was so empty and gray looking without its wall lit with orange and yellow confetti and skyrockets and women in Gold mesh dresses and Men In Black Velvet pulling 100lb rabbits from Silver hats The Parlor was dead and Mildred kept peering in at it with a blank expression as Montag paced the floor and came back and squatted down and read a page as many as 10 times aloud we cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed as in filling a vessel drop by drop there is at last a drop which makes it run over so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over Montag sat listening to the rain is that what it was in a girl next door I've tried so hard to figure she's dead let's talk about someone alive for goodness sake Montag did not look back at his wife as he went trembling along the hall to the kitchen where he stood a long time watching the rain hit the windows before he came back down the hall in the gray light waiting for the tremble to subside he opened another book that favorite subject myself he squinted at the wall that favorite subject myself I understand that one said Mildred but clarice's favorite subject wasn't herself it was everyone else and me she was the first person in a good many years I've really liked she was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted he lifted the two books these men have been dead a long time but I know their words point one way or another to Clarice outside the front door in the rain a faint scratching Montag froze he saw Mildred thrust herself back to the wall and gasp someone the door why doesn't the door voice tell us I shut it off under the door cill a slow probing sniff an exhalation of electric steam mil laughed it's only a dog that's what you want me to show him away stay where you are silence the cold rain falling and the smell of blue electricity blowing under the locked door let's get back to work said Montag quietly Mildred kicked at a book books aren't people you read and I look all around but there isn't anybody he stared at the parlor that was dead and gray as the Waters of an ocean that might team with life if they switched on the electronic sunow said Mildred my family is people they tell me things I laugh they laugh and the colors yes I know and besides if Captain batty knew about those books she thought about it her face grew amazed and then horrified he might come and burn the house and the family that's awful think of our investment why should I read what for what for why said Montag I saw the damnest snake in the world the other night it was dead but it was alive it could see but it couldn't see you want to see that snake it's an emergency hospital where they filed a report on all the junk the snake got out of you would you like to go and check their file maybe you'd look under gont tag or maybe under fear or War would you like to go to that house that burnt last night and rake ashes for the bones of the woman who set fire to her own house what about Clarice mlen where do we look for her the morg listen the bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house gas been murmuring whistling like an immense invisible fan circling in emptiness Jesus God said monag every hour so many damn things in the sky how and hell did those bombers get up there every single second of Our Lives why doesn't someone want to talk about it we started in one two atomic war since 1990 is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are I've heard rumors the world is starving but we're wellfed is it true the world works hard and we play is that why we're hated so much I've heard the rumors about hate too once in a long while over the years do you know why I don't that's sure maybe the books can get us half out of the cave [ __ ] might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes I don't hear those idiot bastards in your parlor talking about it God Millie don't you see an hour a day two hours with these books and maybe the telephone rang Mildred snatched the phone hey an she laughed yes the white clowns on tonight Montag walked to the kitchen and threw the book down Montag he said you're really stupid Where Do We Go From Here do we turn the books in forget it he opened the book to read over Mildred's laughter poor Millie he thought poor mtag it's to you too but where do you get help where do you find a teacher this late hold on he shut his eyes yes of course again he thed himself thinking of the Green Park a year ago the thought had been with him many times recently but now he remembered how it was that day in the city park when he had seen that old man in the black suit hide something quickly in his coat the old man Le up as if to run and Montag said wait I haven't done anything cried the old man trembling no one said you did they had sat in the green soft light without saying a word for a moment and then monag talked about the weather and then the old man responded with a pale voice it was a strange quiet meeting the old man admitted to being a retired English Professor who had been thrown out upon the world 40 years ago in the last liberal arts college shut for lack of students and patronage his name was Faber and when he finally lost his fear of of Montag he talked in a cadenced voice looking at the sky and the trees and the Green Park and when an hour had passed he said something to Montag and Montag sensed it was a rhymel poem then the old man grew even more courageous and said something else and that was a poem too Faber held his hand over his left coat pocket and spoke these words gently and Montag knew if he reached out he might pull a book of poetry from the man's coat but he did not reach out his hands stayed on his knees numbed and useless I don't talk things sir said Faber I talk the meaning of things I sit here and know I'm alive that was all there was to it really an hour of monologue a poem a comment and then without either acknowledging the fact that Montag was a fireman Faber with a certain trembling wrote his address on a slip of paper for your file he said in case you decide to be angry with me I'm not angry Montag said surprised Mildred shrieked with laughter in the hall monag went to his bedroom closet and flipped through his file wallet to The Heading future investigations question mark Faber's name was there he hadn't turned it in and he hadn't erased it he dialed the call on a second phone the phone on the far end of the line called Faber's name a dozen times before the professor answered in a faint voice Montag identified himself and was met with a lengthy silence yes Mr Montag Professor Faber I have a rather odd question to ask how many copies of the Bible are left in this country I don't know what you're talking about I want to know if there are any copies left at all this is some sort of trap I can't talk talk to just anyone on the phone how many copies of Shakespeare and Plato none you know as well as I do none Faber hung up Monte put down the phone none a thing he knew of course from the firehouse listings but somehow he had wanted to hear it from Faber himself in the hall Mildred's face was suffused with excitement well the ladies are coming over Montag showed her book this is the Old and New Testament and don't start that again it might be the last copy in this part of the world you've got to hand it back tonight don't you Captain batty knows you got it doesn't he I don't think he knows which book I stole but how do I choose a substitute do I turn in Mr Jefferson and Mr thoro which is least valuable if I take a substitute and B does know which book I stole he'll guess we have an entire Library here Mildred's mouth twitched see what you're doing you'll ruin us who's more important me or that Bible she was beginning to shriek now sitting there like a wax doll melting in its own heat he could hear Batty's voice sit down Montag watch delicately like the Petals of a flower like the first page like the second page each becomes a black butterfly beautiful eh like the third page from the second and so on chain smoking chapter by chapter all the silly things the words mean all the false promises all the secondhand Notions and time on philosophies there sat batty perspiring gently the floor littered with swarms of black moths that had died in a single storm Mildred stopped screaming as quickly as she started Montag was not listening there's only one thing to do he said sometime before tonight when I give the book to baty I've got to have a duplicate made you'll be here for the white clown tonight and the ladies coming over cried Mildred Monte stopped at the door with his back turned Millie a silence what Millie does the white clown love you no answer Millie does he licked his lips does your family love you love you very much love you with all their heart and soul Millie he felt her blinking slowly at the back of his neck why you ask a silly question like that he felt he wanted to cry but nothing would happen to his eyes or his mouth if you see that dog outside said Mildred give him a kick for me he hesitated listening at the door he opened it and stepped out the rain had stopped and the sun was setting in the clear sky the street and the lawn and the porch were empty he let his breath go in a great sigh he slammed the door he was on the subway a numb he thought when did the numbness really began in my face in my body the night I kick the pill bottle in the dark like kicking a buried mine the numbness will go away he thought it'll take time that I'll do it or Faber will do it for me someone somewhere will give me back the old face and the old hands the way they were even the smile he thought the old burnt in smile that's gone I'm lost without it the subway fled past him cream tile jet black cream tile Chet black numerals in darkness more darkness and the total adding itself once as a child he had sat upon a yellow Dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day trying to fill a c with sand because some cruel cousin had said sell this SI and you'll get a dime and the faster he poured the faster it sifted through with a hot Whispering his hands were tired the sand was boiling the C was empty seated there in the midst of July without a sound he felt the tears move down his cheeks now as the vacuum underground rushed him through the dead cellers of town jolting him he remembered the terrible logic of that Sy and he looked down and saw that he was carrying the Bible open there were people in the suction train but he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him if you read fast and read all maybe some of the sand will stay in the se but he read and the words fell through and he thought in a few hours there will be batty and here will be me handing this over so no phrase Must Escape me each line must be memorized I will myself to do it he clenched the book in his fists trumpets blared denim's denus shut up thought monag consider the lies of the field denims dous they toil not denims consider the lies of the field shut up shut up dentus he tore the book open and flicked the pages and felt of them as if he were blind he picked at the shape of the individual letters not blinking denims spelled de n they toil not neither do they a fierce Whisper of hot sand through empty s denims does it consider the lies the lies the lies denim's Dental detergent shut up shut up shut up it was a plea a cry so terrible that Montag found himself on his feet the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring moving back from this man with the insane gorged face the gibbering dry mouth the flapping book in his fist the people who had been sitting a moment before tapping their feet to the rhythm of denim's dous denim's Dandy Dental detergent denim's denus denus dous 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 the people whose mouths have been faintly twitching the words dous dous d the train radio vomited upon monag in retaliation a great ton load of music made of tin copper silver chromium and Brass the people were pounded into submission they did not run there was no place to run the great air train fell down its shaft in the earth lies of the field denims lies I said the people stared call the guard the man's off N View the train hissed to would stop no view a cry denim a whisper montag's mouth barely moved lies the train door whistled open Montag stood the door gasped starting shut only then did he leap past the other passengers screaming in his mind plunged through the slicing door only in time he ran on the White Tiles up through the tunnels ignoring the escalators because he wanted to feel his feet move arms swing lungs clench unclench feel his throat go raw with air a voice drifted after him denims denims denims the train hissed like a snake the train vanished in its Hall who is it Montag out here what do you want let me in I haven't done anything I'm alone damn it you swear it I swear the front door opened slowly fa appeared out looking very old in the light and very fragile and very much afraid the old man looked as if he had not been out of the house in years he and the white plaster walls inside were much the same there was white In the Flesh of his mouth and his cheeks and his hair was white and his eyes had faded with white and the vague bless there then his eyes touched on the book under montag's arm and he did not look so old anymore and not quite as fragile slowly his fear went I'm sorry one has to be careful he looked at the book under montag's arm and could not stop so it's true Montag stepped inside the door shut sit down Faber backed up as if he feared the book might vanish if he took his eyes from it behind him the door to a bedroom stood open and in that room a litter of machinery and steel tools were strown upon a desktop Montag had only a glimpse before Faber seeing montag's attention diverted turned quickly and shut the bedroom door and stood holding the knob with a trembling hand his gaze returned unsteadily to Montag who was now seated with the book in his lap the book where did you I stole it Faber for the first time raised his eyes and looked directly into montag's face Your brave no said Montag my wife's dying a friend of mine's already dead someone who may have been a friend was burnt less than 24 hours ago you're the only one I knew might help me to see to see fa's Hands itched on his knees may I sorry Mont gave him the book it's been a long time I'm not a religious man but it's been a long time Faber turned the pages stopping here and there to read it's as good as I remember Lord how they've changed it in our parlors these days Christ is one of the family now I often wonder if God recognizes his own son the way we've dressed him up or is it dressed him down down his regular peppermint stick now all sugar crystal and sacon when he isn't making Bale references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs fa sniffed the book do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land I loved to smell them when I was a boy Lord there were a lot of lovely books once before we let them go fa turned the pages Mr Montag you looking at a coward I saw the way things were going a long time back I said nothing I'm one of the Innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the guilty but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself and when finally they set the structure to burn the books using the fireman I grunted a few times and subsided for there were no others grunting or yelling with me by then now it's too late Faber closed the Bible well suppose you tell me why you came here nobody listens anymore I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me I can't talk to my wife she listens to the walls I just want someone to hear what I have to say and maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense and I want you to teach me to understand what I read fa examined montag's 10 blue Jou face how did you get shaken up what not the torch out of your hands I don't know we have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy something's missing I looked around the only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in 10 or 12 years so I thought books might help you're a hopeless romantic said Faber it would be funny if it were not serious it's not books you need it's some of the things that once were in books the same things could in The Parlor families today the same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisor but are not no no it's not books at all you're looking for take it where you can find it in Old photograph records old Motion Pictures and in Old Friends look for it in nature and look for it in yourself books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget there is nothing magical in in them at all the magic is only in what books say how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us of course you couldn't know this of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this you are intuitively right that's what counts three things are missing number one you know why books such as this are so important because they have quality and what does the word quality mean to me it means texture this book has pores it has features this book can go under the microscope you'd find life under the glass streaming past in infinite profusion the more pores the more truthfully recorded details of Life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper the more literary you are that's my definition anyway telling detail fresh detail the good writers touch life often the mediocre ones run a quick hand over her the bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies so now do you see why books are hated and feared they showed the Poes in the face of Life the comfortable people want only wax moon faces poess hairless expressionless we are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers instead of growing on good rain and black loone even fireworks for all their prettiness come from the chemistry of the Earth yet somehow we think we can grow feeding on flowers and fireworks without completing the cycle back to reality do you know the Legend of Hercules and anus the giant wrestler whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the Earth but when he was held rootless in midair by Hercules he perished easily if there isn't something in that legend for us today in this city in our time then I am completely insane well there we have the first thing I said we need quality texture of information and the second Leisure oh but with plenty of off hours all hours yes the time to think if you're not driving 100 m an hour at a clip where you can't think of anything else but the danger then you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the four wall televisor why the televisor is real it is immediate it has demension it tells you what to think and blasts it in it must be right it's seems so right it rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest what nonsense only the family is people I beg pardon my wife says books aren't real thank God for that you can shut them up say hold on a moment you play God to it but who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlor it grows you any shape it wishes it is an environment as real as the world it becomes and is the truth books can be beaten down with reason but with all my knowledge and skepticism I've never been able to argue with a 100 piece Symphony Orchestra full color three dimensions and being in and part of those incredible parlors as you see my parlor is nothing before plaster walls and here he held out two small rubber plugs for my ear when I ride the subway Jets denims dous they toil not neither do they spin said Montag eyes shut Where Do We Go From Here would books help us only if the third necessary thing could be given us number one as I said quality of information number two Leisure to digest it the number three the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction ction of the first two and I hardly think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could do much this late in the game I can get books you're running a risk that's the good part of Dy when you have nothing to lose you run any risk you want there you've said an interesting thing laughed Faber without having read it are things like that in books but it came off the top of my mind all the better you didn't fancy it up for me or anyone even yourself monag leaned forward this afternoon I thought that if it turned out that books were worthwhile we might get a press and print some extra copies we you and I oh no Faber sat up but let me tell you my plan if you insist on telling me I must ask you to leave but aren't you interested now if you start talking the sort of talk that might get me burnt for my trouble the only way I could possibly listen to you would be if somehow the fireman structure itself could be burnt now if you suggest that we print extra books and arrange to have them hidden in firemen's houses all over the country so that seeds of Suspicion would be swn among these arsonists Trav I'd say plant the books turn in an alarm and see the fireman's houses burn is that what you mean fa raised his brows and looked at Montag as if he were seeing a new man I was joking if you thought it would be a plan worth trying I'd have to take your word it would help you can't guarantee things like that after all when we had all the books we needed we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off but we do need a breather we do need knowledge and perhaps in a thousand years we might take smaller Cliffs to jump off the books are to remind us what asses and fools we are the Caesar's petorian guard with Whispering as the parade Roars down the Avenue remember Caesar Thou Art mortal most of us can't rush around talk to everyone know all the cities of the world we haven't time money or that many friends the things you're looking for Montag are in the world but the only way the average chap will ever see 99% of them is in a book don't ask for guarantees and don't look to be saved in any one thing person machine or Library do your own bit of saving and if you drown at least die knowing you were headed for sure Faber got up and began to Pace the r well asked Montag you're absolutely serious absolutely it's an Insidious plan if I do say so myself Faber glanced nervously at his bedroom door to see the firehouses burn across the land destroyed as hot beds of treason the cell amander devours his tail oh God I will list the fireman's residences everywhere with some sort of underground can't trust people that's the dirty part you and I and who else will set the fires aren't there professors like yourself former writers historians linguists dead or ancient the older the better they'll go unnoticed you know dozens admit it oh there are many actors alone who haven't acted pend Delo or Shaw or Shakespeare for years because their plays are too aware of the world we could use their anger and we could use the honest Rage of those historians who haven't written a line for 40 years true we might form classes in thinking and reading yes but that would just nibble the edges the whole culture is shock through the skeleton needs melting and reshaping good God it isn't as simple as just picking up a book you laid down half a century ago remember the firemen are rarely necessary the public itself stopped reading of its own accord you firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty Blaze but it's a small sow indeed and hardly necessary to keep things in line so few want to be Rebels anymore and out of those few most like myself scare easily can you dance faster than the white clown shout louder than Mr gimmick and The Parlor families if you can you'll win your way mon attack in any event you're a four people are having fun committing suicide murdering a bomber flight had been moving East all the time they talked and only now did the two men stop and listen feeling the great jet sound tremble inside themselves patience monag let the war turn off the families our civilization is flinging itself to Pieces stand back from the centrifuge there has to be someone ready when it blows up what men quoting Milton saying I remember Sophocles reminding the survivors that man has his good side to they will only gather up their stones to hurl at each other Montag go home go to bed why waste your final hours racing about your cage denying you're a squirrel then you don't care anymore I care so much I'm sick and you won't help me good night good night montag's hands picked up the Bible he saw what his hands had done and he looked surprised would you like to own this Faber said I'd give my right arm Montag stood there and waited for the next thing to happen His Hands by themselves like two men working together began to RIT the pages from the book The hands Ted the fly leaf and then the first and then the second page idiot what are you doing paper sprang up as if he'd been struck he fell against Montag Montag warded him off and let his hands continue six more pages fell to the floor he picked them up and waded the paper under Faber's gaze don't oh don't said the old man who can stop me I'm a fireman I can burn you the old man stood looking at him you wouldn't I could the book don't tear it anymore fa sank into a chair his face very white his mouth trembling don't make me feel any more tired what do you want I need you to teach me all right all right Montag put the book down he began to unad the crumpled paper and flatten it out as the old man watched tiredly Faber shook his head as if he were waking up Montag have you any money some $4 $500 why bring it I know a man who printed our College paper half a century ago that was the year I came to class at the start of the new semester and found only one student to sign up for drama from ecis to O'Neal you see how like a beautiful statue of ice it was melting in the sun I remember the newspapers dying like huge mods no one wanted them back no one missed them and then the government seeing how advantageous it was to have people reading only about passionate lips and the fist in the stomach Circle the situation with your fire eaters so monag there's this unemployed printer we might start a few books and wait on the war to break the pattern and give us the push we need a few bombs and the families and the walls of all the houses like Harlequin rats will shut up in the silence our stage whisper might carry they both stood looking at the book on the table I've tried to remember said Montag but hell it's gone when I turned my head God how I want something to say to the captain he's read enough so he has all the answers or seems to have his voice is like butter I'm afraid he'll talk me back the way I was only a week ago pumping a kerosene hose I thought God what fun the old man nodded those who don't build must burn it's as old as history and juvenile delinquents so that's what I am there's some of it in all of us Montag moved toward the front door can you help me in any way tonight with the fire captain I need an umbrella to keep off the rain I'm so damned afraid I'll drown if he gets me again the old man said nothing but glanced once more nervously at his bedroom Montag caught the glass well the old man took a deep breath held it and let it out he took another eyes closed his mouth tight and at last exhaled monac the old man turned at last and said come along I would actually have let you walk right out of my house I am a cowardly old fool saber opened the bedroom door and let monag into a small chamber where stood a table upon which a number of metal tools lay among a Welter of micros opic wire hairs tiny coils bobbins and crystals what's this as Montag proof of my terrible cowardice I've lived alone so many years throwing images on walls with my imagination fiddling with electronics radio transmission has been my hobby my cowardice is of such a passion complimenting the Revolutionary spirit that lives in each Shadow I was forced to design this he picked up a small green metal object no larger than a 22 bullet I paid for all this how playing the stock market of course the last refuge in the world for the dangerous intellectual out of a job well I played the market and built all this and I've waited I've waited trembling half a lifetime for someone to speak to me I dared speak to no one that day in the park when we sat together I knew that someday you might drop by with fire or friendship it was hard hard to guess I've had this little item ready for months but I almost let you go I'm that afraid it looks like a seashell radio and something more it listens if you put it in your earon tag I can sit comfortably home warming my frightened bones and hear and analyze the fireman's World find its weaknesses without danger I'm the queen bee safe in The Hive you will be the Drone the traveling ear eventually I could put out ears into all parts of the city with various men listening and evaluating if the drones die I'm still safe at home tending my Fright with a maximum of comfort and a minimum of chance see how safe I play it how contempt I am Montag placed the green bullet in his ear the old man inserted a similar object in his own ear and moved his lips montage the voice was in montag's head I hear you the old man laughed you're coming over fine too Faber whispered but the voice in montag's head was clear go to the Firehouse when it's time I'll be with you let's listen to this Captain batty together he could be one of us God knows I'll give you things to say we'll give him a good show do you hate me for this electronic cowardice of mine here I am sending you out into the night while I stay behind the lines with my damn ears listening for you to get your head chopped off we all do what we do said Montag he put the Bible in the old man's hands here I'll chance turning in a substitute tomorrow I'll see the unemployed printer yes that much I can do good night Professor not good night I'll be with you the rest of the night a vinegar n tickle in your ear when you need me but good night and good luck anyway the door opened and shut Montag was in the dark street again looking at the world you could feel the war getting ready in the sky that night the way the clouds moved aside and came back and the way the Stars looked a million of them swimming between the clouds like the enemy discs and the feeling that the sky might fall upon the city and turn it to chalk dust and the moon go up in red fire that was how the night felt Montag walked from the subway with the money in his pocket he had visited the bank which was open all night every night with robot tellers in attendance and as he walked he was listening to the seashell radio in one ear we have mobilized a million men quick Victory Is Ours if the war comes music flooded over the voice quickly and it was gone 10 million men mobilized Faber's voice whispered in his other year but say 1 million it's happier favor yes I'm not thinking I'm just doing like I'm told like always you said get the money and I got it I didn't really think of it myself when do I start working things out on my own you've started already by saying what you just said you'll have to take me on faith I took the others on fate yes and look where we're headed you'll have to travel blind for a while here's my arm to hold on to I don't want to change sides and just be told what to do there's no reason to change if I do that you're wise already monag felt his feet moving him on the sidewalk toward his house keep talking would you like me to read I'll read so you can remember I go to bed only 5 hours a night nothing to do so if you like I'll read you to sleep nights they say you retain knowledge even when you're sleeping if someone Whispers it in your ear yes here far away across town in the night The faintest Whisper of a turned page The Book of Job the moon Rose in the sky as Montag walked his lips moving just a trifle he was eating a light supper at 9:00 in the evening when the front door cried out in the hall and Mildred ran from the Parlor like a native fleeing an eruption of vuia Mrs felss and Mrs BS came through the front door and vanished into the volcano's mouth with Martinis in her hands Montag stopped eating they were like a monstrous crystal chandelier tinkling in a thousand Chimes he saw their chesher Cat smiles burning through the walls of the house and now they were screaming at each other above the den Montag found himself at The Parlor door with his food still in his mouth doesn't everyone look nice nice you look fine Milly fine everyone looks swell swell Montag stood watching them patience whispered favor I shouldn't be here whispered Montag almost to himself I should be in my way back to you with the money tomorrow's time enough careful isn't this show wonderful cried Mildred wonderful on one wall a woman smiled and drank orange juice simultaneously how did she do both at once thought Montag insanely in the other walls an x-ray of the same woman revealed the Contracting journey of the refreshing beverage on its way to her delighted stomach abruptly the Rome took off on a rocket flight into the clouds it plunged into a lime green sea where Blue Fish ate red and yellow fish a minute later three White cartoon clouds chopped off each other's limbs to the accompaniment of immense incoming tides of laughter 2 minutes more and the room whipped out of town to the jet cars wildly circling an arena bashing and backing up and bashing each other again Montag saw a number of bodies fly in the air Nelly did you see that I saw it I saw it Montag reached inside the Parlor wall and pulled the main switch the images drained away as if the water had been let from a gigantic Crystal bowl of hysterical fish the three women turned slowly and and looked with unconcealed irritation and then dislike at Montag when do you suppose the war will start he said I notice your husbands AR here tonight oh they come and go come and go said Mrs Phelps in again out again fin again the Army called Pete yesterday he'll be back next week the Army said so quick War 48 hours they said and everyone home that's what the Army said quick War Pete was called yesterday and they said he'd be back next week quick the three women fidgeted and looked nervously at the empty mud colored walls I'm not worried said Mrs Phelps I'll let Pete do all the worrying she gged I'll let old pit do all the worrying not me I'm not worried yes said Millie let old K do the worrying it's always someone else's husband dies they say I've heard that too I've never known any dead man killed in a war killed jumping off buildings yes like Gloria's husband last week but from Wars no not from Wars said Mrs Phelps anyway Pete and I always said no tears nothing like that it's our third marriage each and we're independent be independent we always said he said if I get killed off you just go right ahead and don't cry but get married again and don't think of me that reminds me said M did you see that Clara 5 minute romance last night in your wall well was about this woman who Montag said nothing but stood looking at the women's faces as he had once looked at the faces of Saints in a strange church he had entered when he was a child the faces of those enameled creatures meant nothing to him though he talked to them and stood in that church for a long time trying to be of that religion trying to know what that religion was trying to get enough of the raw incense and special dust of the place into his lungs and thus into his blood to feel touched and concerned by the meaning of the colorful men and women with the porcelain eyes and the blood Ruby lips but there was nothing nothing it was a stroll through another store and his currency strange and unusable there and his passion cold even when he touched the wood and plaster and Clay so it was now in his own parlor with these women twisting in their chairs under his gaze lighting cigarettes blowing smoke touching their sunfired hair and examining their blazing fingernails as if they had caught fire from his look their faces grew haunted with silence Billy forward at the sound of Montag swallowing his final bite of food they listened to his feverish breathing the three empty walls of the room were like the pale brows of sleeping Giants now empty of Dreams Montag felt that if you touched these three staring brows you would feel a fine salt sweat on your fingertips the perspiration gathered with the silence and the sub audible trembling around and about and in the women who were burning with tension any moment they might hiss a long sputtering hiss and explode monag moved his lips let's talk the women jerked and stared how are your children Mrs Phelps he asked you know I haven't any no one in his right mind the good Lord knows would have children said Mrs Phelps not quite sure why she was angry with this man I wouldn't say that said Mrs BS I've had two children by cesarian section no is going through all that Agony for a baby the world must reproduce you know the race must go on besides they sometimes look just like you and that's nice two cesarians turned the trick yes sir oh my doctor said cesarians aren't necessary you've got the hips for it everything's normal but I insisted cesarians are not children or ruinous you're out of your mind said Mrs Phelps I plunk the children in school 9 days out of 10 I put up with them when they come home 3 days a month it's not bad at all you heave them into the Parlor and turn the switch it's like washing clothes stuff laundry in and slam the lid Mrs BS tittered B just as soon kick as kiss me thank God I can kick back the women showed their tongues laughing mild sat a moment and then seeing that Montag was still in the doorway clapped her hands let's talk politics to please guy sounds fine said Mrs Bulls I voted last election same as everyone and I laid it on the line line for president Noble I think he's one of the nicest looking men ever became president how but the man they ran against him he wasn't much was he kind of small and homely and he didn't shave too close or comb his hair very well what possessed the outs to run him you just don't go running a little short man like that against a tall man besides he mumbled half the time I couldn't hear a word he said and the words I did hear I didn't understand fat too and didn't dress to hide it no wonder the landslide was for Winston no even their names helped compare Winston Noble to Hubert hog for 10 seconds and you can almost figure the results damn it cried Montag what do you know about hog and Noble why they were right in that parlor wall not 6 months ago one was always ticking his nose and drove me wild well Mr Montag said Mrs Phillips do you want us to vote for a man like that Mildred beamed you just run away from the door guy and don't make us nervous but Montag was gone and back in a moment with a book in his hand KY damn it all damn it all damn it what have you got there isn't that a book I thought that all special training these days was done by FM Mrs Phelps blinked you reading up on fireman Theory Theory Hell said Montag it's poetry monag a whisper be me me alone Montag felt himself turning in a great circling Roar and Buzz and hum Montag hold on don't did you hear them did you hear these monsters talking about monsters oh God the way they jabber about people and their own children and themselves and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war damn it I stand here and I can't believe it I didn't say a single word about any War I'll have you know said Mrs Phelps as for poetry I hate it said Mrs po have you ever heard any monag paper's voice scraped away at him you'll ruin everything shut up you fool all three women were on their feet sit down they sat I'm going home quavered Mrs BS Montag Montag please in the name of God what are you up to pleaded favor why don't you just read us one of those poems from your little book Mrs Phelps nodded I think that' be very interesting that's not right wailed Mrs BS we can't do that well look at Mr Montag he wants to I know he does and if we listen nice Mr Montag will be happy and then maybe we can go on and do something else she glanced nervously at the long emptiness of the walls enclosing them monag go through with this and I'll cut off I'll leave the Beetle jabbed his ear what good is this what will you prove scare a hell out of them that's what scare The Living Daylights out Mildred looked at the empty air now guy just who are you talking to a Silver Needle pierced his brain Mont listen only one way out play it as a joke cover up pretend you aren't mad at all then walk to your wall incinerator and throw the book in Mildred had already anticipated this in a quavery voice ladies once a year every fireman's allowed to bring one book home from the old days to show his family how silly it all was how nervous that sort of thing can make you how crazy guy surprise tonight is to read you one sample to show how mixed up things were so none of us will ever have to bother our little old heads about that junk again isn't that right darling he crushed the Bren his fists say yes his mouth moved like favors yes Mildred snatched the book with a laugh here read this one no I take it back here's that real funny one you read out loud today ladies you won't understand a word goes umpty Dumpty go ahead and guy that page dear he looked at the opened page a fly stirred its wings softly in his ear readed what's the title Dear do Beach his mouth was numb Now read in a nice clear voice and go slow the room was blazing hot he was all fire he was all coldness they sat in the middle of an empty desert with three chairs and him standing swaying and him waiting for Mrs Phelps to stop straightening her dress hem and Mrs bus to take her fingers away from her hair then he began to read in a low stumbling voice that grew firmer as he progressed from Line to Line and his voice went out across the desert into the whiteness and around the three sitting women there in the great hot emptiness the Sea of Faith was once too at the full and round Earth's Shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled but now I only hear its Melancholy long withdrawing Roar retreating to the breath of the night wind down the vast edges Dreer and naked shingles of the world the chairs creaked under the three women Montag finished it out our love let us be true to one another for the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams so various so beautiful so new hath really neither Joy nor love nor light nor certitude nor peace nor nor help for pain and we are here as on a darkling plane swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies Clash By Night Mrs Phelps was crying the others in the middle of the desert watched her crying grow very loud as her face squeezed itself out of shape they sat not touching her bewildered with her display she sobbed uncontrollably Montag himself was stunned and shaken shh sh sh said Mildred you're all right Clara now Clara snap out of it Clara what's wrong I I sobbed Mrs Fels don't know don't know I just don't know oh oh Mrs bus stood up and glared at Montag you see I knew it that's what I wanted to prove I knew it would happen I've always said poetry and tears poetry and suicide and crying and awful feelings poetry and sickness all that much now that approved to me you're nasty Mr Montag you're nasty fa said now Montag felt himself turn and walked to the wall slot and dropped the book in through the brass Notch to the waiting Flames silly words silly words silly awful hurting words said Mrs BS why do people want to hurt people not enough hurt in the world got to tease people with stuff like that Clara now Clara begged Mildred pulling her arm come on let's be cheery you turn the family on now go ahead let's laugh and be happy now stop crying we'll have a party no said Mrs PS I'm trotting right straight home you want to visit my house and my family well and good but I won't come in this fireman's crazy house again in my lifetime go home Montag fixed his eyes upon her quietly go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out go home and think of the Dozen abortions you've had go home and think of that and your damn cesarian sections too and your children who hate your guts go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it go home go home he yelled before I knock you down and kick you out the door doors slammed and the house was empty Montag stood alone in the winter weather with the Parlor walls the color of dirty snow in the bathroom water ran he heard Mildred shake the sleeping tablets into her hand fool Montag fool fool oh God you silly fool shut up he pulled the green bullet from his ear and jammed it into his pocket it sizzled faintly fool fool he searched the house and found the books where Mildred had stacked them behind the refrigerator some were missing and he knew that she had started on her own slow process of dispersing the dynamite in her house stick by stick he was not angry now only exhausted and bewildered with himself he carried the books into the backyard and hid them in the bushes near the alley fence for tonight only he thought in case she decides to do any more burning he went back through the house Mildred he called at the door of the darken bedroom there was no sound outside crossing the lawn on his way to work he tried not to see how completely dark and deserted Clarice mullen's house was on the way downtown he was so completely alone with his terrible error that he felt the necessity for the strange Warmness and goodness that came from a familiar and gentle voice speaking in the night already in a few short hours it seemed that he had known fa a lifetime now he knew that he was two people that he was above all Montag who knew nothing who did not even know him self a fool but only suspected it and he knew that he was also the old man who talked to him and talked to him as the train was sucked from one end of the night City to the other on One Long sickening gasp of motion in the days to follow and in the nights when there was no moon and in the nights when there was a very bright moon shining on the earth the old man would go on with this talking and this talking dropped by drop Stone by Stone flake by flake his mind would well over at last and he would not be Montag anymore this the old man told him assured him promised him he would be Montag plus favor fire plus water and then one day after everything had mixed and simmered and worked away in silence there would be neither fire nor water but wine out of two separate and opposite things a third and one day he would look back upon the fool and know the fool even now he could feel the start of the long journey the take the going away from the selfie had been it was good listening to the beetle hum the Sleepy mosquito buzz and delicate filigree murmur of the old man's voice at first scolding him and then consoling him in the late hour of night as he emerged from the steaming Subway toward the firehouse World kitty montac kitty don't haggle and nag them you were so recently of them yourself they are so confident that they will run on forever but they won't run on on they don't know that this is all one huge big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space but that someday it'll have to hit they see only the Blaze the pretty fire as you saw it Montag old men who stay at home afraid tending their peanut rittle Bones have no right to criticize yeah you almost killed things at the start watch it I'm with you remember that I understand how it happened I must admit that your blind raging invigorated me God how young I felt but now I want you to feel old I want a little of my cowardice to be distilled in you tonight the next few hours when you see Captain batty tiptoe round him let me hear him for you let me feel the situation out survival is our ticket forget the poor silly women I made them unhappier than they have been in years I think said monag it shocked me to see Mrs phel cry maybe they're right maybe it's best not to face things to run have fun I don't know I feel guilty no you mustn't if there were no war if there was peace in the world I'd say fine have fun but Montag you mustn't go back to being just a fireman all isn't well with the world Montag perspired Montag you listening my feet said Montag I can't move them I feel so damn silly my feet won't move listen easy now said the old man gently I know I know you're afraid of making mistakes don't be mistakes can be profited by man when I was younger I shoved my ignorance in people's faces they beat me with sticks by the time I was 40 my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me if you hide your ignorance no one will hit you and you'll never learn now pick up your feet into the firehouse with you we're twins we're not alone anymore we're not separated out in different parlors with no contact between if you need help when batty PRI at you I'll be sitting right here in your eardrum making notes monag felt his right foot then his left foot move old man he said stay with me the mechanical Hound was gone its kennel was empty and the firehouse stood all about in plaster silence and the orange salamander slept with its kerosene in its belly and the fire throwers crossed upon its flanks and Montag came in through the silence and touched the brass pole and slid up in the dark air looking back at the deserted kennel his heart beating pausing beating fabber was a gray moth asleep in his ear for the moment B stood near the drop hole waiting but with his back turned as if he were not waiting well he said to the men playing cards here comes a very strange Beast which in all tongues is called a fool he put his hand to one side Palm up for a gift monag put the book in it without even glancing at the title baty tossed the book in the trash basket and lit a cigarette who are a little wise the best fools be welcome back Montag I hope you'll be staying with us now that your fever is done and your sickness over sit in for hand of Poker they sat and the cards were dealt in baty's sight monteg felt the guilt of his hands his fingers were like ferrets that had done some evil and now never rested always stirred and picked and hid in Pockets moving from under bat's alcohol Flames stare if batty so much as breathed on them Montag felt that his hands might wither turn over on their sides and never be shocked to life again they would be buried the rest of his life in his coat sleeves forgotten for these were the hands that had acted on their own no part of him here was where the conscience first manifested itself to snatch books Dart off with job and Ruth and Willie Shakespeare and now in the firehouse these hands seemed gloved with blood twice in half an hour monag had to rise from the game and go to the lutrin to wash his hands when he came back he HD his hands under the table batty laughed let's have your hands in sight Montag not that we don't trust you understand but they all laughed well said batty the crisis is passed and all is well the Sheep returns to the fold we're all sheep who have strayed at times truth is truth to the end of Reckoning we've cried they are never alone that are accompanied with Noble thoughts we've shouted to ourselves sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge sir Philip Sydney said but on the other hand words are like leaves and where they most abound much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found Alexander Pope what do you think of that Montag I don't know careful whispered Faber living in another world far away or this a little learning is a dangerous thing drink deep or taste not the puran spring their shallow drafts intoxicate the brain and drinking largely sobers us again pop same essay where does that put you Montag bit his lip I'll tell you said batty smiling at his cards that made you for a little while a drunkard read a few lines and off you go over the cliff bang you're ready to blow up the world chop off heads knock down women and children destroy Authority I know I've been through it all I'm all right said Montag nervously stop blushing I'm not needling really I'm not do you know I had a dream an hour ago I lay down for a catnap and in this dream you and I Montag got into a furious debate on books you towered with rage yelled quotes at me I calmly parried every thrust power I said and you quoting Dr Johnson said knowledge is more than equivalent to force and I said well Dr Johnson also said dear boy that he is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty stick with the fireman Montag all else is dreary chaos don't listen whispered fa he's trying to confuse he's slippery watch out baty chuckled and you said quote truth will come to light murder will not be hid long and I cried in Good Humor oh God he speaks only of his horse and the devil can cite scripture for his purpose and you yelled this age thinks better of a gilded fool than of a threadbear saint in wisdom's school and I was P gently the Dignity of Truth Is Lost with much protesting and you screamed carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer and I said patting your hand what do I give you trench mouth and you shrieked knowledge is power and a dwarf on a giant shoulder sees the farthest of the two and I summed my side up with rare Serenity in the Folly of mistaking a metaphor for a proof a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths and oneself as an oracle is inborn in US Mr Valerie once said montag's head Whirled sickeningly he felt beaten unmercifully on brow Eyes Nose Lips chin on shoulders on up filing arms he wanted to yell no shut up you confusing things stop it Batty's graceful fingers Thrust out to seize his wrist God what a pulse I've got you going ya I monag Jesus God your pulse sounds like the day after the war everything but sirens and bells shall I talk some more I like you look up Panic Swahili Indian English Lit I speak them all a kind of excellent dumb discourse really Montag hold on the moth brushed montag's ear he's muddying the waters oh you were scared silly said batty I was doing a terrible thing in using the very books you clung to to rebut you on every hand on every Point what traitor books can be you think they're backing you up and they turn on you others can use them too and there you are lost in the middle of the Moore in a great Welter of nouns and verbs in adjectives and at the very end of my dream along I came with the salamander and said going my way and you got in and we drove back to the Firehouse in beatific silence all dwindled away to peace baty let montag's wrist go let the hands slump limply on the table alls well all that is well in the end silence monag sat like a carved white stone the echo of the final hammer on his skull died slowly away into the black Cavern where Faber waited for The Echoes to subside and then when the startled dust had settled down about montag's mind Faber began softly all right he's had his say You must take it in I'll say my say too in the next few hours and you'll take it in and you'll try to judge them and make your decisions as to which way to jump or fall but I want it to be your decision not mine and not the captain's but remember that the captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and Freedom the solid unmoving cattle of the majority oh God the terrible tyranny of the majority we all have our hearts to play and it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen Montag opened his mouth to answer favor and was saved to this error in the presence of others when the station bell rang the alarm voice in the ceiling chanted there was a tacking tacking sound as the alarm report telephone typed out the address across the room Captain batty his poker cards in one pink hand walked with exaggerated slowness to the phone and ripped out the address when the report was finished he glanced profun at it and shoved it in his pocket he came back and sat down the others looked at him it can wait exactly 40 seconds well I take all the money away from you said batty happily Montag put his cards down tired Montag going out of this game yes hold on well come to think of it we can finish this hand later just leave your cards face down and hustle the equipment on the double now and batty rose up again Monte you don't look well I'd hate to think you were coming down with another fever I'll be all right you'll be fine this is a special case come on jump for it they left into the air and clutch the brass pole as if it were the last vantage point above a tidal wave passing below and then the brass poed to their dismay slid them down into darkness into the blast and cough and suction of the gaseous dragon roaring to life hey they rounded a corner in Thunder and siren with concussion of tires with Scream of rubber with a shift of kerosene bulk in the glittery brass tank like the food in the stomach of a giant with montag's fingers jolting off the silver rail swinging into cold space with the wind tearing his hair back from his head with the wind whistling in his teeth and him all the while thinking of the women the chaff women in his parlor tonight with the kernels blown out from under them by a neon wind and his silly damned reading of a book to them I like trying to put out fires with water pistols how senseless and insane one rage turned in for another one anger displacing another when would he stop being entirely mad and be quiet be very quiet indeed here we go Montag looked up batty never drove but he was driving tonight slamming the salamander around corners leaning forward high on the driver's Throne his massive black Slicker flapping out behind he seemed a great black bat flying above the entr over the brass numbers taking the full wind here we go to keep the world Happy Montag bat's pink phosphorescent cheeks glimmered in the high darkness and he was smiling furiously here we are the salamander boomed to a halt throwing men off in slits and clumsy hws Montag stood fixing his raw eyes to the cold bright rail under his clenched fingers I can't do it he thought how can I go with this new assignment how can I go on burning things I can't go in this place baty smelling of the wind through which he had rushed was at montag's elbow all right Montag the men ran like cripples in their clumsy boots as quietly as spiders at last Montag raised his eyes and turned batty was watching his face something the matter Montag why said Montag slowly we've stopped in front of my house part three burning bright lights flicked on and house doors opened all down the street to watch the carnival set up Montag and batty stared one with dry satisfaction the other with disbelief at the house before them this m ring in which torches would be juggled and fire eaten well said batty now you did it old manag wanted to fly near the Sun and now that he's burnt his damn Wings he wonders why didn't I hint enough when I sent the Hound around your place montag's face was entirely numb and featureless he felt his head turn like a stone carving to the dark place next door set in its bright border of flowers baty snorted oh no you weren't fooled by that little idiot's routine were you flowers butterflies leaves sunsets or hell it's all in a fire I'll be damned I'd hit the bull's eye look at the sick look on your face a few grass blades and the quarters of the moon what trash what good did she ever do with all that monag sat on the cold Fender of the Dragon moving his head half an inch to the left half an inch to the right left left right left right left she saw everything she didn't do anything to anyone she just let them alone alone hell she chewed around you didn't she one of those damn do gooders with her shocked holier than our silences their one Talent making others feel guilty God damn you they Rise Like A Midnight Sun to sweat you in your bed the front door opened Mildred came down the steps running one suitcase held with a dream like clenching rigidity in her fist as a beetle taxi hissed to the curb Mildred she ran past with her body stiff her face flowered with powder her mouth Gone without lipstick Mildred you didn't put in the alarm she shoved the Val in the waiting Beetle climbed in and sat mumbling poor family poor family oh everything gone everything everything gone now bakey grabbed montag's shoulder as the beetle blasted away and hit 70 M an hour far down the street gone there was a crash like the falling parts of a dream fashioned out of wared glass mirrors and Crystal prisms monag drifted about as if still another incomprehensible storm had turned him to see stonemen and black wielding axes shattering window paines to provide cross ventilation the brush of a death's head moth against a cold black scream Montag this is favor do you hear me what's happening this is happening to me said Montag what a dreadful surprise said batty for everyone nowadays knows absolutely is certain that nothing will ever happen to me others die I go on there are no consequences and no responsibilities except that there are but let's not talk about them eh by the time the consequences catch up with you it's too late isn't it monag Montag can you get away run asked Fab Montag walked but did not feel his feet touch the cement and then the night grasses baty flicked his igniter nearby and the small orange flame drew his fascinated gaze what is there about fire that's so lovely no matter what age we are what draws us to it batty blew out the flame and lit it again it's perpetual motion the thing man wanted to invent but never did or almost perpetual motion if you let it go on it would burn our lifetimes out what is fire it's a mystery scientists give us gobbly go about friction and molecules but they don't really know its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences a problem gets too burdensome then into the furnace with it now Mont you're a burden and the fire will lift you off my shoulders clean quick sure nothing to rot later antibiotic aesthetic practical monag stood looking in now at this queer House made strange by the hour of the Night by murmuring neighbor voices by littered glass and they on the floor their covers torn off and Spilled Out like Swan feathers the incred books that looked so silly and really not worth bothering with for these were nothing but black type and yellow taper and raffled binding Mildred of course she must have watched him hide the books in the garden and brought them back in Mildred Milt I want you to do this job all by your lonesome Montag now with kerosene and a match but peacework with a flamethrower your house you're clean up Montag can't you run get away no cried Montag helplessly the Hound because of the Hound Faber heard and batty thinking it was meant for him heard yes the Hound somewhere about the neighborhood so don't try anything ready ready Montag snacked the safety catch on the flamethrower fire a great nuzzling gout of fire left out to laugh at the books and knock them against the wall he stepped into the bedroom and fired twice and the twin beds went out in a great simmering whisper with more heat and passion and light than he would have supposed them to contain he burnt the bedroom walls and the cosmetic's chest because he wanted to change everything the chairs the tables and in the dining room the silverware and plastic dishes everything that showed that he had lived here in this empty house with a strange woman who would forget him tomorrow who had gone and quite forgotten him already listening to her seashell radio pour in on her and in on her as she rode across town alone and as before it was good to burn he felt himself gush out in the fire snatch Ren rip in half with flame and put away the senseless problem if there was no solution well then now there was no problem either fire was best for everything the books Montag the books Le and danced like roasted Birds their wings ablazed with red and yellow feathers and then he came to the Parlor where the great idiot monsters lay asleep with their white thoughts and their snowy dreams and he shot a bolt at each of the three blank walls and a vacuum hissed out at him the emptiness made an even emptier whistle a senseless scream he tried to think about the vacuum upon which the nothingness is had performed but he could not he held his breath breath so the vacuum could not get into his lungs he cut off its terrible emptiness Drew back and gave the entire room a gift of one huge bright yellow flower of burning the fireproof plastic sheath on everything was cut wide and the house began to shudder with flame when you're quite finished said batty behind him you're under arrest the house fell in red coals and black ash it beded itself down in sleepy pink gray Cinders and a smoke plume blew over it rising and waving slowly back and forth in the sky it was 3:30 in the morning the crowd Drew back into the houses the great tents of the circus had slumped into charcoal and rubble and the show was well over monag stood with the flamethrower in his limp hands great islands of perspiration drenching his armpits his face smeared with soot the other firemen waited behind him in the darkness their faces illumined faintly by the small in Foundation Montag started to speak twice and then finally managed to put his thought together was it my wife turned in the alarm baty nodded but her friends turned in an alarm earlier that I let ride one way or the other you'd have got it it was pretty silly quoting poetry around free and easy like that it was the act of a silly damn snob give him at a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the Lord of all creation you think you can walk on water with your books or the world can get by just fine without them look where they got you in slime up to your lick if I stir the slime with my little finger you'll drown Montag could not move the Great Earthquake had come with fire and leveled the house and Mildred was under there somewhere and his entire life under there and he could not move the earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him and he stood there his knees half bent under the great load of tiredness and bewilderment and outrage letting batty hit him without raising a hand Montag you idiot Montag you damn fool why did you really do it Montag did not here he was far away he was running with his mind he was gone leaving this dead suit covered body to sway in front of another raving fool monag get out of there said Faber Montag listened batty struck him a blow on the head that sent him reeling back the green bullet in which Faber's voice whispered and cried fell to the sidewalk baty snatched it up grinning he held it half in half out of his ear monag heard the distant voice calling monag you all right batty switched the green bullet off and thrust it in his pocket well so there's more here than I thought I saw you tilt your head listening first I thought you had a seashell but when you turned clever later I wondered we'll trace this and drop it on your friend no said Montag he twitched the safety catch on the flamethrower baty glanced instantly at montag's fingers and his eyes widened the faintest bit Montag saw the surprise there and himself glanced to his hands to see what new thing they had done thinking back later he could never decide whether the hands or bat's reaction to the hands gave him the final push toward murder the last Rolling Thunder of the Avalanche stoned down about his ears not touching him batty grinned his most Charming grin well that's one way to get an audience hold a gun on a man and force him to listen to your speech speech away what will it be this time why don't you belt Shakespeare at me you fumbling SN there is no Terror cash us in your threat for I armed so strong in honesty that they T me as an idle wind which I respect not how's that go ahead now You Secondhand literature pull the trigger he took one step toward Montag Montag only said we never burned right handed over guy said batty with a fixed smile and then he was a shrieking Blaze a jumping sprawling gibbering mannequin no longer human or known all riding flame on the lawn as Montag shut one continuous pulse of liquid fire on it there was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red hot stove a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of a yellow foam Montag shut his eyes shouted shouted and fought to get his hands at his ears to clamp and to cut away the sound batty flopped over and over and over and at last Twisted in on himself like a charred wax dull and lay silent the other two firemen did not move Montag kept his sickness down long enough to aim the flamethrower turn around they turned their faces blanched meat streaming sweat he beat their heads knocking off their helmets and bringing them down on themselves they fell and lay without moving the blowing of a single Autumn Leaf he turned and the mechanical Hound was there it was half across the lawn coming from the Shadows moving with such drifting ease that it was like a single solid cloud of black gray smoke blown at him in silence it made a single last leap into the air coming down at Montag from a good three ft over his head its spidered legs reaching the procaine needle snapping out its single anle angry tooth Montag caught it with a bloom of fire a single wondrous Blossom that curled in Petals of yellow and blue and orange about the metal dog CLA it in a new covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him 10 ft back against the bowl of a tree taking the flame gun with him he felt it Scrabble and seize his leg and stabed the needle in for a moment before the fire snapped the Hound up in the air burst its metal bones at the joints and blew out its interior in a single flushing of red color like a sky rocket fast to the Street monley Watching The Dead Alive thing fiddle the air and die even now it seemed want to get back at him and finish the injection which was now working through the Flesh of his leg he felt all of the mingled relief and horror at having pulled back only in time to have just his knee slammed by the fender of a car hurtling by at 90 M an hour he was afraid to get up afraid he might not be able to gain his feet at all with an anesthetized leg a numbness in a numbness hollowed into a numbness and now the street empty the house burnt like an ancient bit of stage scenery the other homes dark the Hound here batty there the two other firemen another place and the salamander he gazed at the immense engine that would have to go too well he thought let's see how badly off you are on your feet now easy easy there he stood and he had only one leg the other was like a chunk of burnt pine log he was carrying along is a Penance for some obscure sin when he put his weight on it a shower of silver needles gushed up the length of the calf and went off in the knee he wept come on come on you you can't stay here a few house lights were going on again down the street whether from the incidents just passed or because of the abnormal silence following the fight Montag did not know he hobbled around the ruins seizing at his bad leg when it lagged talking and whimpering and shouting directions at it and cursing it and pleading with it to work for him now when it was vital he heard a number of people crying out in the darkness and shouting he reached the backyard and the alley baty he thought you're not a problem now you always said don't face a problem burn it well now I've done both goodbye captain and he stumbled along the alley in the dark a shotgun blast went off in his leg every time he put it down and he thought you're a fool a damn fool an awful fool an idiot an awful idiot a damn idiot and a fool a damn fool look at the mess and where's the mop look at the mess and what do you do try Pride damn it and temper and you've junked it all at the very start you vomit on everyone and on yourself but everything at wants but everything one on top of another batty the women mild Clarice everything no excuse though no excuse a fool a damn fool go give yourself up no we'll save what we can we'll do what there is left to do if we have to burn let's take a few more with us here he remembered the books and turned back just on the off chance he found a few books where he had left them near the garden fence Mildred God bless her had missed a few four books still lay hidden where he had put them voices were wailing in the night and Flash beams swirled about other salamanders were roaring their engines far away and police sirens were cutting their way across town with their Sirens monag took the four remaining books and hoed jolted hoed his way down the alley and suddenly fell as if his head had been cut off and only his body lay there something inside had jerked him to a halt and flopped him down he lay where he had fallen and soed his legs folded his face pressed blindly to the gravel batty wanted to die in the middle of the crying monag knew it for the truth bat he had wanted to die he had just stood there not really trying to save himself just stood there joking needling thought Montag and the thought was enough to stifle his sobbing and let him pause for air how strange strange to want to die so much that you let a man walk around armed and then instead of shutting up and staying alive you go on yelling at people and making fun of them until you get them mad and then at a distance running feet Montag sat up let's get out of here come on get up get up you just can't sit but he was still crying and that had to be finished it was going away now he hadn't wanted to kill anyone not even baty his flesh gripped him and shrank as if it had been plunged in acid he gagged he saw batty a torch not moving fluttering out on the grass he bit at his knuckles I'm sorry I'm sorry oh God sorry he tried to piece it all together to go back to the normal pattern of Life a few short days ago before the SI and the sand denim's ders moth voices fireflies the alarms and excursions too much for a few short days too much indeed for a lifetime feet ran in the far end of the alley get up he told himself damn it get up he said to the leg and stood the pains were spikes driven in a kneecap and then only darning needles and then only common ordinary safety pens and after he had shagged along 50 more Hops and jumps filling his hand with slivers from the board fence the prickling was like someone blowing a spray of scalding water on that leg and the leg was at last his own leg again he had been afraid that running might break the loose ankle now sucking all the night into his open mouth and blowing it out pale with all the Blackness left heavily inside himself he set out in a steady jogging PA he carried the books in his hands he thought of Faber Faber was back there in the steaming lump of tar that had no name or identity now he had burnt Faber too he suddenly felt so shocked by this that he felt Faber was really dead baked like a roach in that small green Capsule shoved and lost in the pocket of a man who was now nothing but a Fram skeleton strung with asphalt tendons you must remember burn them or they'll burn you he thought right now it's as simple as that he searched his pockets the money was there and in his other pocket he found the usual seashell upon which the city was talking to itself in the cold black morning police alert wanted fugitive in city has committed murder and crimes against the state name guy monag occupation fireman last scene he ran steadily for six blocks in the alley and then the alley opened out into a wide empty thoroughfare 10 lanes wide it seemed like a boatless river Frozen there in the Raw light of the high white Ark lamps you could drown trying to cross it he felt it was too wide it was too open it was a vast stage without scenery inviting him to run across easily seen in the Blazing illumination easily caught easily shot down the seashell hummed in his ear watch for a man running watch for the Running Man watch for a man alone on foot watch Montag pulled back in the shadows directly ahead lay a gas station a great chunk of porcelain snow shining there and two silver Beetles pulling in to filler now he must be clean and presentable if he wish to walk could not run stroll cly across that wide Boulevard it would give him an extra margin of safety if he washed up and combed his hair before he went on his way to gut where yes he thought where am I running nowhere there was nowhere to go no friend to turn to really except favor and then he realized that he was indeed running toward Faber's house instinctively but Faber couldn't hide him it would be suicide even to try but he knew that he would go to see Faber anyway for a few short minutes fabers would be the place where he might refuel his fast draining belief in his own ability to survive he just wanted to know that there was a manlike Faber in the world he wanted to see the man alive and not burnt back there like a body shelled in another body and some of the money must be left with Faber of course to be spent after Montag ran on his way perhaps he could make the open country and live on or near the rivers and near the highways in the fields and Hills a great whirling whisper made him look to the sky the police helicopters were Rising so far away that it seemed someone had blown the gray head off a dry dandelion flower two dozen of them flurried wavering indecisive 3 miles off like butterflies puzzled by Autumn and then they were plummeting down to land one by one here there softly kneading the streets where turned back to Beatles they shrieked along the boulevards or as suddenly Le back into the air continuing their search and here was the gas station its attendants busy now with customers approaching from the rear Montag entered the men's washroom through the aluminum wall he heard a radio voice saying War has been declared the gas was being pumped outside the men in the Beatles were talking and the attendants were talking about the engines the gas ass the money owed Montag stood trying to make himself feel the shock At the quiet statement from the radio but nothing would happen the war would have to wait for him to come to it in his personal file an hour 2 hours from now he washed his hands and face and toweled himself dry making little sound he came out of the washroom and shut the door carefully and walked into the darkness and at last stood again on the edge of the empty Boulevard there it lay a game for him to win a vast bowling alley in the cool morning the boulevard was as clean as the surface of an arena 2 minutes before the appearance of certain unnamed victims and certain unknown Killers the air over and above the vast concrete River trembled with the warmth of montag's body alone it was incredible how we felt his temperature could cause the whole immediate world to vibrate he was a phosphorescent Target he knew it he felt it and now he must begin his little walk three blocks away a few headlights glared Montag drew a deep breath his lungs were like burning grooms in his chest his mouth was sucked dry from running his throat tasted of bloody iron and there was rusted steel in his feet what about those lights there once you started walking you'd have to gauge how fast those beetles could make it down here well well how far was it to the other curb it seemed like 100 yards probably not 100 but figure for that anyway figure that with him going very slowly at a nice stroll it might take as much as 30 seconds 40 seconds to walk all that way the Beatles one started they could leave three blocks behind them in about 15 seconds so even if halfway across he started to run he put his right foot out and then his left foot foot and then his right he walked on the empty Avenue even if the street were entirely empty of course you couldn't be sure of a safe Crossing for a car could appear suddenly over the rise four blocks farther on and Beyond and past you before you had taken a dozen breaths he decided not to count his steps he looked neither to left nor right the light from the overhead lamp seemed as bright and revealing as the midday sun and just as hot he listened to the sound of the car picking up speed to blocks away on his right its movable headlights jerked back and forth suddenly and caught at Montag keep going Montag faltered got a grip on the books and forced himself not to freeze instinctively he took a few quick running steps then talked out loud to himself and pulled up to stroll again he was now half across the street but the Roar from the Beatles engines wind higher as it put on speed the police of course they see me but slow now slow quiet don't turn don't look don't seem concerned walk that's it walk walk the beetle was rushing the beetle was roaring the beetle raised its speed the beetle was whining the beetle was in high Thunder the beetle came skimming the beetle came in a single whistling trajectory fired from an invisible rifle it was up to 120 mph it was up to 130 at least monag clamped his Jaws the heat of the racing headlights burned his cheeks it seemed and jittered his eyelids and flushed the sour sweat out all over his body he began to shuffle tically and talk to himself and then he broke and just ran he put out his legs as far as they would go and down and then far out again and down and back and out and down and back God God he dropped a book broke Pace almost turned changed his mind plunged on Yelling in concrete emptiness the beetle scuttling after its running food 200 100 ft away 90 80 70 Montag gasping flailing his hands legs up down out up down out Closer Closer hooting calling his eyes burnt white now as his head jerked about to confront the flashing glare now the beetle was swallowed in its own light now it was nothing but a torch hurtling upon him all sound all Blair now almost on top of him he stumbled and fell I'm done it's over but the falling made a difference an instant before reaching him the wild Beetle cut and swerved out it was gone Montag lay flat his head down wisps of laughter trailed back to him with the blue exhaust from the beetle his right hand was extended above him flat across the extreme tip of his middle finger he saw now as he lifted that hand a faint 16th of an inch of BL black tread where the tire had touched in passing he looked at that black line with disbelief getting to his feet that wasn't the police he thought he looked down the boulevard it was clear now a car full of children all ages God knew from 12 to 16 out whistling yelling harrying had seen a man a very extraordinary sight a man strolling of Rarity and simply said let's get him not knowing he was the Fugitive Mr monag simply a number of children out for a long night of roaring five or 600 miles in a few moonlit hours their faces icy with wind and coming home or not coming at dawn alive or not alive that made the adventure they would have killed me thought Montag swaying the air still torn and stirring about him in dust touching his bruised cheek for no reason at all in the world they would have killed me he walked toward the far curb telling each foot to go and keep going somehow he had picked up the spilled books he didn't remember bending or touching them he kept moving them from hand to hand as if they were a poker hand he could not figure I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarice he stopped and his mind said it again very loud I wonder if they were the ones who killed chorice he wanted to run after them yelling his eyes watered the thing that had saved him was falling flat the driver of that car sing mon tag down instinctively considered the probability that running over a body at such a high speed might turn the car upside down and spill them out if Montag had remained an upright Target Montag gasped far down the boulevard for blocks away the beetle had slowed spun about on two wheels and was now racing back slanting over on the wrong side of the street piing up speed but Montag was gone hidden in the safety of the dark alley for which he had set out on a long journey an hour or was it a minute ago he stood shivering in the night looking back out as the beetle ran by and skidded back to the center of the Avenue whirling laughter in the air all about it gone farther on as Montag moved in darkness he could see the the helicopters falling falling like the first flakes of snow in The Long Winter to come the house was silent Montag approached from the rear creeping through a thick night moistened scent of daffodils and roses and wet grass he touched the screen door in back found it open slipped in moved across the porch listening Mrs black are you asleep in there he thought this isn't good but your husband did it to others and never asked and never wondered and never worried and now since you're a fireman's wife it's your house and your turn for all the houses your husband burnt and the people he hurt without thinking the house did not reply he hid the books in the kitchen and moved from the house again to the alley and looked back and the house was still dark and quiet sleeping on his way across town with the helicopters fluttering like torn Bits of Paper In The Sky he foed the alarm at a lonely phone booth outside a store that was closed for the night then he stood in the cold night air waiting and at a distance he heard the fire sirens start up and run and the salamanders coming coming to burn Mr Black's house while he was away at work to make his wife stand shivering in the morning air while the roof let go and dropped in upon the fire but now she was still asleep good night Mrs black he thought favor another wrap a whisper and a long waiting then after a minute a small light flickered inside Faber's small house after another pause the back door opened they stood looking at each other in the halflight Faber and monag as if each did not believe in the other's existence then Faber moved and put out his hand and grabbed monag and moved him in and sat him down and went back and stood in the door listening the sirens were wailing off in the morning dist systems he came in and shut the door Montag said I been a fool all down the line I can't stay long I'm on my way God knows where at least you were a fool about the right things said Faber I thought you were dead the audio capsule I gave you burned I heard the captain talking to you and suddenly there was nothing I almost came out looking for you the captain's dead he found the audio capsule he heard your voice he was going to trace it I killed him with the flamethrower Faber sat down and did not speak for a time my God how did this happen said Montag it was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know I'm drowning how many times can a man go down and still be alive I can't breathe there's BTY dead and he was my friend once and there's Millie gone I thought she was my wife but now now I don't know and the house all burnt and my job gone and myself on the run and I planted a book in a fireman's house on the way good Christ the things I've done in a single week you did what you had to do it was coming on for a long time yes I believe that if there's nothing else I believe it saved itself up to happen I could feel it for a long time I was saving something up I went around doing one thing and feeling another God it was all there it's a wonder it didn't show on me like fat and now here I am messing up your life too they might follow me here I feel alive for the first time in years said Faber I feel I'm doing what I should have done a lifetime ago for a little while I'm Not Afraid maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you I suppose I'll have to do even more violent things exposing myself so I won't fall down on the job and turn scared again what are your plans to keep running you know the wars on I heard God isn't it funny said the old man it seems so remote because we have our own troubles I haven't had time to think Montag Drew out $100 I want this to stay with you use it anyway that'll help when I'm gone but I might be dead by noon use this Faber nodded you'd better head for the river if you can't follow along it and if you hit the old railroad lines going out into the country follow them even though practically everything's Airborne these days and most of the tracks are abandoned the rails are still there rusting I've heard there are still hobo camps all across the country here and there walking camps they call them but if you keep walking far enough and keep an eye peeled they say there's lots of Old Harvard degrees on the track between here and Los Angeles most of them are wanted and hunted in the cities they survive I guess there aren't many of them and I guess the government's never considered them a great enough danger to go in and track them down you might hold up with them for a time and get in touch with me in St Louis I'm leaving on the 5:00 a.m. bus this morning to see a retired printer there I'm getting out in the open myself at last this money will be put to good use thanks and God bless you do you want to sleep a few minutes I'd better run let's check he took Montag quickly into the bedroom and lifted a picture frame aside revealing a television screen the size of a postal card I always wanted something very small something I could walk to something I could blot out with the palm of my hand if necessary nothing that could shout me down nothing monstrous be so you see he snapped it on monag the TV set said and lit up m o n t a the name was spelled out by a voice guy monag still running police helicopters are up a new mechanical Hound has been brought from another District Montag and Faber looked at each other mechanical Hound never fails never since its first use in tracking Quarry has this incredible invention made a mistake tonight this network is proud to have the opportunity to follow the Hound by camera helicopter as it starts on its way to the Target saber poured two glasses of whiskey we'll need these they drank no so sensitive the mechanical Hound can remember an identify 10,000 odor indexes on 10,000 men without resetting Faber trembled the least bit and looked about at his house the walls the door the door knob and the chair where Montag now sat Montag saw the look they both looked quickly about the house and Montag felt his nostrils dilate and he knew that he was trying to track himself and his nose was suddenly good enough to sense the path he had made in the air of the room and the sweat of his hand hung from the door knob invisible but as numerous as the jewels of a small chandelier he was a luminous cloud a ghost that made breathing once more impossible he saw Faber stop up his own breath for fear of drawing that ghost into his own body perhaps being being contaminated with the Phantom exhalations and odors of a running man the mechanical Hound is now Landing by a helicopter at the sight of the burning and there on the small screen was the burnt house and the crowd and something with a sheet over it and out of the sky fluttering came the helicopter like a grotesque flower so they must have their game out thought monag the circus must go on even with War beginning within the hour he watched the scene fascinated not wanting to move it seemed so remote and no part of him it was a play apart and separate wondrous to watch not without its strange pleasure that's all for me he thought that's all taking place just for me by God if he wished he could linger here in comfort and follow the entire hunt on through its Swift phases down alleys across streets over empty running Avenues Crossing Lots and playgrounds with pauses here or there for the necessary commercials up other alleys to the burning House of Mr and Mrs black and so on finally to this house with Faber and himself seated drinking while the electric Hound snuffed down the last trail silent as a drift of death itself skitting to a halt outside that window there then if he wished monag might rise walk to the window keep one eye on the TV screen open the window lean out look back and see him self dramatized described made over standing there limed in the bright small television screen from outside a drama to be watched objectively knowing that in other parlors he was large as life in full color dimensionally perfect and if he kept his eye peeled quickly he would see himself an instant before Oblivion being punctured for the benefit of how many civilian parlor sitters who had been wakened from sleep a few minutes ago by the Frantic sirening of their living room walls to come watch the big game the hunt the oneman carnival would he have time for a speech as the Hound seized him in view of 10 or 20 or 30 million people mightn't he sum up his entire life in the last week in one single phrase or a word that would stay with them long after the Hound had turned clenching him in its metal plier jaws and trotted off in darkness while the camera remained stationary watching the creature dwindle in the distance a splendid Fade Out out what could he say in a single word a few words they would sear all their faces and wake them up there whispered Faber out of a helicopter glided something that was not machine not animal not dead not alive glowing with a pale green Luminosity it stood near the smoking ruins of montag's house and the men brought his discarded flamethrower to it and put it down under the muzzle of the Hound there was a whing click picking humming monag shook his head and got up and drank the rest of his drink it's time I'm sorry about this about what me my house I deserve everything run for God's sake perhaps I can delay them here wait there's no use you being discovered when I leave burn the spread of this bed that I touched burn the chair in the living room in your room in your wall incinerator wipe down the furniture with alcohol wipe the door knobs burn the throw rug in The Parlor turn the air conditioning on full in all the rooms and spray with moth spray if you have it then turn on your lawn sprinklers as high as they'll go and hose off the sidewalks with any luck at all we can kill the trail in here anyway Faber shook his hand I'll tend to it good luck if we're both in good health next week the week after get in touch general delivery St Lewis I'm sorry there's no way I can go with you this time by earphone that was good for both of us but my equipment was limited you see I never thought I would use it what a silly old man no thought there stupid stupid so I haven't another grain bullet the right kind to put in your head go now one last thing quick a suitcase get it fill it with your dirtiest clothes an old suit the dirtier the better a shirt some old sneakers and socks Faber was gone and back in a minute they sealed the cardboard Val with clear t to keep the ancient odor of Mr Faber in of course said Faber sweating at the job Montag D the exterior of the Poli with whiskey I don't want the Hound picking up two odors at once may I take this whiskey I'll need it later Christ I hope this works they shook hands again and going out the door glanced at the TV the Hound was on its way followed by hovering helicopter cameras silently silently sniffing the great night wind it was running down the first alley goodbye and Montag was out the back door lightly running with the half empty valiz behind him he heard the lawn sprinkling system jump up filling the dark air with rain that fell gently and then with a steady pour all about washing on the sidewalks and draining into the alley he carried a few drops of this rain with him on his face he thought he heard the old man call goodbye but was UNC he ran very fast away from the house down toward the river Montag ran he could feel the Hound like Autumn some cold and dry and Swift like a wind that didn't stir grass that didn't jar windows or disturb Leaf Shadows on the white sidewalks as it passed the Hound did not touch the world it carried its Silence with it so you could feel the silence building up a pressure behind you all across town Montag felt the pressure rising and ran he stopped for breath on his way to the river to peer through dimly lit Windows of wakened houses and saw the Silhouettes of people inside watching their parlor walls and there on the walls the mechanical Hound a breath of neon Vapor spidered along here and gone here and gone now at Elm Terrace Lincoln Oak Park and up the alley toward Faber's house go past thought monag don't stop go on don't turn in on the Parlor wall Faber's house with its sprinkler system pulsing in the night air the Hound paused quivering no Montag held to the window sill this way here the procaine needle flicked out and in out and in a single clear drop of the stuff of Dreams fell from the needle as it vanished in The Hound's muzzle Montag held his breath like a doubled fist in his chest the mechanical Hound turned and plunged away from Faber's House Down The Alley again Montag sned his gaze to the sky the helicopters were closer a great blowing of insects to a single light source with an effort monag reminded himself again that this was no fictional episode to be watched on his run to the river it was in actuality his own chess game he was witnessing move by move he shouted to give himself the necessary push away from this last house window and the fascinating Seance going on in there hell and he was away and gone the alley a street the alley a street and the smell of the river leg out leg down a leg out and down 20 million mon tags running soon if the camera is caught in 20 million mon tags running running like an ancient flickery Keystone comedy cops robbers Chasers and the chased hunters and hunted he had seen it a thousand times behind him now 20 million silently baing hounds ricocheted across parlors three cushions shooting from right wall to Center wall to left wall gone right wall Center wall left wall gone Montag jammed his seashell to his ear police suggest entire population in the elm Terrace area do as follows everyone in every house every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows The Fugitive cannot Escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house ready of course why had they done it before why in all the years hadn't this game been tried everyone up everyone out he couldn't be missed the only man running alone in the night City the only man proving his legs at the count of 10 now 1 2 he felt the city rise three he felt the city turn to thousands of doors faster leg up leg down four the people sleep walking in their hallways five he felt their hands on the door knobs the smell of the river was cool and like a solid rain his throat was burnt to rust and his eyes were wept dry with running he yelled as if this yell would jet him on fling him the last 100 yards 6 7 8 the door knobs turned on 5,000 doors nine he ran out away from the last row of houses on a slope leading down to a solid moving Blackness 10 the doors opened he imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards into alleys and into the sky faces hid by curtains pale night frightened faces like gray animals peering from Electric chaos faces with gray colorless eyes gray tongues and gray thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face but he was at the river he touched it just to be sure it was real he weighed it in and stripped in darkness to the skin splashing his body arms legs and head with raw liquor drank it and snuffed some up his nose then he dressed in fa's old clothes and shoes he tossed his own clothing into the river and watched it swept away then holding the suitcase he walked out in the river until there was no bottom and he was Swept Away In The Dark he was 300 yard down stream when the Hound reached the river overhead the great racketing fans of the helicopters hovered a storm of light fell upon the river and Montag dived under the great illumination as if the sun had broken the clouds he felt the river pull him farther on its way into darkness then the light switched back to the land the helicopter swerved over the city again as if they had picked up another Trail they were gone the Hound was gone now there was only the Cold River and Montag floating in a sudden peacefulness away from the city and the lights and the chase away from everything he felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors he felt as if he had left a great Seance and all the murmuring ghosts he was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was Unreal because it was new the black land slid by and he was going into the country among the hills for the first time in a dozen years the stars were coming out above him in great processions of Wheeling fire he saw a great Juggernaut of stars form in the sky and threatened to roll over and crush him he floated on his back when the valise filled and sank the river was mild and leisurely going away from the people who ate Shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and Vapors for supper the river was very real it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last the Leisure to consider this month this year and a lifetime of years he listened to his heart slow his thoughts stopped rushing with his blood he saw the moon low in the sky now the moon there and the light of the Moon caused by what by the sun of course and what lights the sun its own fire and the Sun goes on day after day burning and burning the Sun and time the sun and time and burning burning the river bobbled him along gently burning the Sun and every clock on the earth it all came together and became a single thing in his mind after a long time of floating on the land and a short time of floating in the river he knew why he must never burn again in his life the Sun burnt every day it burnt time the world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway without any help from him so if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt time that meant that everything burnt one of them had to stop burning the sun wouldn't certainly so it looked as if it had to be monac and the people he had worked with until a few short hours ago somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping one way or another in books and Records in people's heads any way at all so long as it was safe free from mes silverfish rust and dry rot and men with matches the world was full of burning of all types and sizes now the Guild of the asbestos Weaver must open sharp very soon he felt his heel bump land touch Pebbles and rocks scraped sand the river had moved him toward Shore he looked in at the great black creature without eyes or light without shape with only a size that went A Thousand Miles without wanting to stop with its grass Hills and forests that were waiting for him he hesitated to leave the comforting flow of the water he expected the Hound there suddenly the trees might blow under a great wind of helicopters but there was only the normal Autumn Wind high up going by like another River Why would wasn't the Hound running why had the search beard Inland Montag listened nothing nothing Millie he thought all this country here listen to it nothing and nothing so much silence Millie I wonder how you'd take it would you shout shut up shut up Millie Millie and he was sad Millie was not here and the Hound was not here but the dry smell of hay blowing from some distant field put Montag on the LA he remembered a farm he had visited when he was very young one of the rare few times he discovered that somewhere behind the seven veils of unreality beyond the walls of parlors and Beyond the tin mod of the city cows chewed grass and pigs sat in warm ponds at noon and dogs barked after white sheep on a hill now the dry smell of hay the motion of the waters made him think of sleeping in fresh hay in a lonely Barn away from the loud highways behind a quiet Farmhouse and under an ancient windmill that worred like the sound of the passing years overhead he lay in the High Barn Loft all night listening to distant animals and insects and trees the little motions and stirrings during the night he thought below the Loft he would hear a sound like feet moving perhaps he would tense and sit up the sound would move away he would lie back and look out the Loft window very late in the night and see the lights go out in The Farmhouse itself until a very young and beautiful woman would sit in an unlit window braiding her hair it would be hard to see her but her face would be like the face of the girl so long ago in his past now so very long ago the girl who had known the weather had never been burnt by the fireflies the girl who had known what dandelions meant rubbed off on your chin then she would be gone from the warm window and appear again upstairs in her Moon whitened room and then to the sound of death the sound of the Jets cutting the sky in two black pieces Beyond the Horizon he would lie in The Loft hidden and safe watching those strange new stars over the rim of the earth fleeing from the soft color of dawn in the morning he would not have needed sleep for all the warm odors and sights of a complete country night would have rested and slept him while his eyes were wide and his mouth when he thought DET tested was half a smile and there at the bottom of the Hal Loft stair waiting for him would be the incredible thing he would step carefully down in the pink light of early morning so fully aware of the world that he would be afraid and stand over the small miracle and at last Bend to touch it a cool glass of fresh milk and a few apples and pears laid at the foot of the steps this was all he wanted now some signs that the immense world would accept him and given the long time he needed to think all the things that must be thought a glass of milk an apple a pear he stepped from the river the land rushed at him a tidal wave he was crushed by darkness and the look of the country in the million odors on a wind that iced his body he fell back under the breaking curve of darkness and sound and smell his ears roaring he Whirled the Stars poured over his sight like flaming meteors he wanted to plunge in the river again and let it idle and safely on down somewhere this dark land Rising was like that day in his childhood swimming when from nowhere the largest wave in the history of remembering slammed him down in salt mud and green Darkness water burning mouth and nose wretching his stomach screaming too much water too much land out of the black wall before him a whisper a shape in the shape two eyes the Knight looking at him the forest seeing him the Hound after all the running and rushing and sweating it out and half drowning to come this far work this hard and think yourself safe and sigh with relief and come out on the land at last only to find the H Montag gave one last agonized out as if this were too much for any man the shape exploded away the eyes vanished the leaf piles flew up in a dry shower Montag was alone in the wilderness a deer he smelled the heavy musk like perfume mingled with blood and the gumed exhalation of the animals breath all cardamom and Moss and Ragweed odor in this huge night where the trees ran at him pulled away ran pulled away to the pulse of the heart behind his eyes there must have been a billion leaves on the land he waited in them a dry River smelling of hot cloves and warm dust and the other smells there was a smell like a cut potato from all the land raw and cold and white from having the moon on it most of the night there was a smell like pickles from a bottle and a smell like parsley on the table at home there was a faint yellow odor like mustard from a jar there was a smell like carnation from the yard next door he put down his hand and felt a weed rise up like a child brushing him his fingers smelled of licorice he stood breathing and the more he breathed the land in the more he was filled up with all the details of the land he was not empty there was more than enough here to fill him there would always be more than enough he walked in the shallow tide of leaves stumbling and in the middle of the strangeness of familiarity his foot H something that rang dully he moved his hand on the ground a yard this way a yard that the railroad track the track that came out of the city and rusted across the land through forests and woods deserted now by the river here was the path to wherever he was going here was the single familiar thing the magic charm he might need a little while to touch to feel beneath his feet as he moved on into the Bramble bushes and the lakes of smelling and feeling and touching Among The Whispers And The blowing down of leaves he walked on the track and he was surprised to learn how certain he suddenly was of a single fact he could not prove once long ago Clarice had walked here where he was walking now half an hour later cold and moving carefully on the tracks fully aware of his entire body his face his mouth his eyes stuffed with Blackness his ears stuffed with sound his legs prickled with burds and nettles he saw the fire ahead the fire was gone then back again like a winking eye he stopped afraid he might blow the fire out with a single breath but the fire was there and he approached wearily from a long way off it took the better part of 15 minutes before he drew very close indeed to it and then he stood looking at it from cover that small motion the white and red color a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him it was not burning it was warming he saw many Hands Held to its warmth hands without arms hidden in darkness above the hands motionless faces that were only moved and tossed and flickered with Fire Light he hadn't known fire could look this way he had never thought in his life that it could give as well as take even its smell was different how long he stood he did not know but there was a foolish and yet delicious sense of knowing himself as an animal come from the forest drawn by the fire he was a thing of brush and liquid eye of fur and muzzle and hoof he was a thing of horn and blood that would smell like Autumn if you bled it out on the ground he stood a long long time listening to the warm crackle of the Flames there was a silence gathered all about that fire and the silence was in the men's face and time was there time enough to sit by this rusting track under the trees and look at the world and turn it over with the eyes as if it were held to the center of the bonfire a piece of Steel these men were all shaping it was not only the fire that was different it was the silence Montag moved toward the special silence that was concerned with all of the world and then voices began and they were talking and he could hear nothing of what the voices said but the Rose and fell quietly and the voices were turning the world over and looking at it the voices knew the land and the trees and the city which lay down the track by the river the voices talked of everything there was nothing they could not talk about he knew from the very Cadence and motion and continual Stir of curiosity and wonder in them and then one of the men looked up and saw it for the first or perhaps the seventh time and a voice called to monag all right you can come out now Montag stepped back in the shadows it's all right the voice said you're welcome here Montag walked slowly toward the fire and the five old men sitting there dressed in the dark blue denim pants and jackets and dark blue shirts he did not know what to say to them sit down said the man who seemed to be the leader of the small group have some coffee he watched the dark steaming mixture pour into a collapsible tin cup which was handed him straight off he sipped it gingerly and felt them looking at him with curiosity his lips were scaled but that was good the faces around him were bearded but the Beards were clean neat and their hands were clean they had stood up as if to welcome a guest and now they sat down again Montag sipped thanks he said thanks very much you're welcome monag my name's Granger he held out a small bottle of colorless fluid drink this too it'll change the chemical index of your perspiration half an hour from now you'll smell like two other people with the Hound after you the best thing is bottom is up Montag drank the bitter fluid you'll stink like a bobcat but that's all right said Granger you know my name said Montag Granger nodded to a portable battery TV set by the fire we've watched the chase figured you'd wind up South along the river when we heard you plunging around out in the forest like a drunken elk we didn't hide as we usually do we figured you were in the river when the helicopter cameras swung back in over the city something funny there the chase is still running the other way though the other way let's have a look Granger snapped the portable viewer on the picture was a nightmare condensed easily passed from hand to hand in the forest all woring color in Flight a voice cried the chase continues North in the city police helicopters are converging on Avenue 87 and Elm Grove Park Ranger nodded they're faking you threw them off at the river they can't admit it they know they can hold their audience only so long the shows got to have a snap ending quick if they started searching the whole damn River it might take all night so they're sniffing for a scapegoat to end things with a bag watch they'll catch monag in the next 5 minutes but how watch the camera hovering in the belly of a helicopter now swung down at an empty Street see that whispered Granger it'll be you right up at the end of that street is our victim see how our camera is coming in building the scene suspense long shot right now some poor fellow is out for a walk a rarity on odd one don't think the police don't know the habits of queer ducks like that men who walk mornings for the hell of it or for reasons of insomnia anyway the police have had him charted for months years never know when that sort of information might be handy and today it turns out it's very usable indeed it saves face oh god look there the men at the fire bent forward on the screen a man turned a corner the mechanical Hound rushed forward into the viewer suddenly the helicopter lights shot down a dozen brilliant tillar that built a cage all about the man a voice cried there's monag the search is done the innocent man stood bewildered a cigarette burning in his hat he stared at the Hound not knowing what it was he probably never knew he glanced up at the sky and the Wailing Sirens the camera rushed down the Hound Le up into the air with a rhythm and a sense of timing that was incredibly beautiful it's needle shot out it was suspended for a moment in their gaze as if to give the vast audience time to appreciate everything the raw look of the victim's face The Empty Street the steel animal a bullet nosing the target Montag don't move said a voice from the sky the camera fell upon the victim even as did the Hound both reached him simultaneously the victim was seized by hound and Camera in a great spidering clenching grip he screamed he screamed he screamed blackout silence Darkness Montag cried out in the silence and turned away silence and then after a time of the men sitting around the fire their faces expressionless an announcer on the dark screen said the Search is Over monag is dead a crime against Society has been Avenged Darkness we now take you to the skyro of the hotel LS for a half hour of Just Before Dawn a program of Granger turned it off they didn't show the man's face in Focus did you notice even your best friends couldn't tell if it was you they scrambled it just enough to let the imagination take over hell he whispered hell Montag said nothing but now looking back sat with his eyes fixed to the blank screen trembling Granger touched montag's arm welcome back from the dead Montag nodded Granger went on you might as well know all of us now this is Fred Clement former occupant of the Thomas Hardy chair at Cambridge in the years before it became an atomic engineering school this other is Dr Simmons from UCLA a specialist in Ortega easset Professor West here did quite a bit for ethics an ancient study now for Columbia University quite some years ago Reverend C over here gave a few lectures 30 years ago and lost his flock between one Sunday and the next for his views he's been buming with us some time now myself I wrote a book called the fingers in the glove the proper relationship between the individual and society and here I am welcome monag I don't belong with you said Montag at last slowly I've been an idiot all the way we're used to that we all made the right kind of mistakes or we wouldn't be here when we were separate individuals all we had was rage I struck a fireman when he came to burn my library years ago I've been running ever since you want to join us Montag yes what have you to offer nothing I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little of Revelation but I haven't even that now the Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine where was it here Montag touched his head ah Granger smiled and nodded what's wrong isn't that all right said Montag better than all right perfect Granger turned to the Reverend do we have a book of Ecclesiastes one a man named Harris in Youngstown monag Granger took montag's shoulder firmly walk carefully guard your health if anything should happen to Harris you are the Book of Ecclesiastes see how important You' become in the last minute but I've forgotten no nothing's ever lost we have ways to shake down your clinker for you but I tried to remember don't try it'll come when we need it all of us have photographic memories but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there Simmons here has worked on it for 20 years and now we've got the method down to where we can recall anything that's been read once would you like someday Montag to read Plato's Republic of course I am Plato's Republic like to read Marcus Aurelius Mr Simmons is Marcus how do you do said Mr Simmons hello said Montag I want you to meet Jonathan Swift the author of that evil political book Gulliver's Travels and this other fellow is Charles Darwin and this one is schopenhauer and this one is Einstein and this one here at my elbow is Mr Albert schwitzer a very kind philosopher indeed here we all are mon tag Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and gatama Buddha and F fucious and Thomas love peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr Lincoln if you please we are also Matthew Mark luuk and jar everyone laughed quietly it can't be said Montag it is replied Granger smiling we're book burners too we read the books and burnt them afraid they'd be found micro filming didn't pay off we were always traveling we didn't want to bury the film and come back later always the chance of Discovery better to keep it in the old heads why no one can see it or suspect it we are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law Byron tomay makavelli or Christ it's here and the hours late and the war is begun and we are out here and the city is there all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colors what do you think monag I think I was blind trying to go with things my way way planting books in firemen's houses and sending in alarms you did what you had to do carried out on a national scale it might have worked beautifully but our way is simpler and we think better all we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need intact and safe we're not out to incite or anger anyone yet for if we are destroyed the knowledge is dead perhaps for good we are model citizens in our own special way we walk the old tracks we lie in the Hills at night and the city people let us be We're stopped and searched occasionally but there's nothing on our persons to incriminate us the organization is flexible very loose and fragmentary some of us have had plastic surgery on our faces and fingerprints right now we have a horrible job we're waiting for the war to begin and as quickly end it's not pleasant but then we're not in control with the odd minority crying in the wilderness when the war's over perhaps we can be of some use in the world do you really think they'll listen then if not we'll just have to wait we'll pass the books on to our children by word of mouth and let our children wait in turn on the other people a lot will be lost that way of course but you can't make people listen they have to come around in their own time wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them it can't last how many of you are there thousands on the roads the abandoned rail tracks tonight bums on the outside libraries inside it wasn't planned at first each man had a book he wanted to remember and did then over a period of 20 years or so we met each other traveling and got the loose Network together and set out a plan the most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves is that we were not important we mustn't be tants we were not to feel Superior to anyone else in the world we're nothing more than dust Jack ETS for books of no significance otherwise some of us live in small towns chapter one of the Rose Walden in Green River chapter 2 in Willow Farm M well there's one town in Maryland only 27 people no bomb will ever touch that town is the complete essays of a man named Bertrand Russell pick up that town almost and flip the pages so many pages to a person and when the war's over someday some year the books can be written again the people will be called in one by one to recite what they know and we'll set it up in type until another Dark Age when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again but that's the wonderful thing about man he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing what do we do tonight ask monag wait said Granger and move Downstream a little ways just in case began throwing dust and dirt in the fire the other men helped and Montag helped and there in the wilderness the men all moved to their hands putting out the fire together they stood by the river in the Starlight Montag saw the Luminous style of his waterproof watch five 5:00 in the morning another year ticked by in a single hour and Dawn waiting beyond the far Bank of The River Why do you trust me said Montag a man moved in the darkness the look of you is enough you haven't seen yourself in a mirror lately beyond that the city has never cared so much about us to bother with an elaborate Chase like this to find us a few crackpots with verses and their heads can't touch them and they know it and we know it everyone knows it so long as the vast population doesn't wander about quoting the Magna card and the Constitution it's all right the firemen were enough to check that now and then no the cities don't bother us and you look like hell they moved along the bank of the river going south Montag tried to see the men's faces the old faces he remembered from the Fire Light blinded and tired he was looking for a brightness a resolve a triumph over tomorrow that hardly seemed to be there perhaps he had expected their faces to burn and glitter with the knowledge They Carried to Glow as lanterns glow with the light in them but all the light had come from the campfire and these men had seemed no different than any others who had run a long race searched a long search seen good things destroyed and now very late were gathered to wait for the end of the party and the blowing out of the lamps they weren't at all certain that The Things They Carried in their heads might make every future Dawn glow with a purer light they were short of nothing sa that the books were on file behind their quiet eyes the books were waiting with their Pages uncut for the customers who might come by in later years some with clean and some with Dirty Fingers Montag squinted from one face to another as they walked don't judge a book by its cover someone said and they all laughed quietly moving Downstream there was a shriek and the Jets from the city were gone overhead long before the men looked up Montag stared back at the city far down the river only a faint glow now my wife's back there I'm sorry to hear that the cities won't do well in the next few days said Granger it's strange I don't miss her it's strange I don't feel much of anything said monag even if she dies I realized a moment ago I don't think I'll feel sad it isn't right something must be wrong with me listen said Granger taking his arm and walking with him holding aside the bushes to let him pass when I was a boy my grandfather died and he was a sculptor he was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world and he helped clean up the slum in our town and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his life time he was always busy with his hands and when he died I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all but for all the things he did I cried CU he would never do them again he would never never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did or tell us jokes the way he did he was part of us and when he died all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did he was individual he was an important man I've never gotten over his death often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died how many jokes are missing from the world and how many homing pigeons Untouched by his hands he shaked the world he didn't DS to the world the world was bankrupted of 10 million fine actions the night he passed on Montag walked in silence Millie Millie he whispered Millie what my wife my wife poor Millie poor poor Millie I can't remember anything I think of her hands but I don't see them doing anything at all they just hang there at her sides or they lay there on her lap or there's a cigarette in them but that's all Montag turned and glanced back what did you give to the city Montag ashes what did the others give to each other nothingness Granger stood looking back with Mont back everyone must leave something behind when he dies my grandfather said a child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made or a garden planted something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted you're there it doesn't matter what you do he said so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away the difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real Gardener is in the touching he said the lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all the gardener will be there a lifetime Granger moved his hand my grandfather showed me some V2 rocket films once 50 years ago have you ever seen the atom bomb mushroom from 200 Mi up it's a pin prick it's nothing with the Wilderness all around it my grandfather ran off the V2 rocket film a dozen times and then hoped that someday our cities would open up more and let the Green in the land in the wilderness in more to remind people that we're allotted a little space on Earth and that we survive in that Wilderness that can take back what it is given as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big when we forget how close the Wilderness is in the night my grandpa said someday it will come in and get us for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be you see ranger turned to Montag grandfather's been dead for all these years but if you lifted my skull by God in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big Ridges of his thumb print he touched me as I said earlier he was a sculptor I hate a Roman named status quo he said to me stuff your eyes with wonder he said live as if you drop dead in 10 seconds see the world it's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories ask no guarantees ask for no security there never was such an animal and if there were it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day sleeping his life away to hell with that he said shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass look cried montac and the War began and ended in that instant later the men around Montag could not say if they had really seen anything perhaps the mest flourish of light and motion in the sky perhaps the bombs were there and the Jets 10 Mi 5 mil 1 mile up for the mest instant like grain thrown over the heavens by a great sewing hand and the bombs drifting with Dreadful swiftness yet s slowness down upon the morning City they had left behind the bombardment was to all intents and purposes finished once the Jets had cited their target alerted their bombarder at 5,000 m an hour as quick as The Whisper of a sigh the war was finished once the Bomb release was yanked it was over now a full 3 seconds all of the time in history before the bombs struck the enemy ships themselves were gone half around the visible world like bullets and which a Savage Islander might not believe because they were invisible yet the heart is suddenly shattered the body falls in separate motions and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air the brain squanders its few precious memories and puzzled dies this was not to be believed it was merely a gesture Montag saw the flirt of a great metal fist over the Far City and he knew the scream of the Jets that would follow would say after the deed disintegrate leave no stone on another perish die Montag held the bombs in the sky for a single moment with his mind in his hands reaching helplessly up at them run he cried to fav to Clarice run to Mildred get out get out of there but Clarice he remembered was dead and Fa was out there in the deep valleys of the country somewhere the 5:00 a.m. bus was on its way from one desolation to another though the Desolation had not yet arrived was still in the air it was certain as man could make it before the bus had run another 50 yards on the highway its destination would be meaningless and its Point of Departure changed from the tropolis to junkyard and Mildred get out run he saw her in her hotel room somewhere now in a half second remaining with the bombs a yard a foot an inch from her building he saw her leaning toward the great shimmering walls of color and motion where the family talked and talked and talked to her where the family prattled and chatted and said her name and smiled at her and said nothing of the bomb that was an inch now a/ inch now a/4 inch from the top of the hotel leaning into the wall as if all of the Hunger of looking would find the secret of her Sleepless unease there Mildred leaning anxiously nervously as if to plunge drop fall into that swarming immensity of color to drown in its bright happiness the first bomb struck Mildred perhaps who would ever know perhaps the great broadcasting stations with their beams of color and light and talk and chatter when first into Oblivion Montag falling flat going down saw or felt or imagined he saw or felt the walls go dark in Millie's face H her screaming the because in the millionth part of time left she saw her own face reflected there in a mirror instead of a crystal ball and it was such a wildly empty face all by itself in the room touching nothing starved and eating of itself but at last she recognized it as her own and looked quickly up at the ceiling as it and the entire structure of the hotel blasted down upon her carrying her with a million pounds of brick metal plaster and wood to meet other people in the hives below all on the their quick way down to the cellar where the explosion rid itself of them in its own unreasonable way I remember monag clung to the earth I remember Chicago Chicago a long time ago Millie and I that's where we met I remember now Chicago a long time ago the concussion knocked the air across and down the river turned the men over like dominoes in a line blew the water in lifting sprays and blew the dust and made the trees above them MN with a great wind passing away South Montag crushed himself down squeezing himself small eyes tight he blinked once and in that instant saw the city instead of the bombs in the air they had displaced each other for another of those impossible instants the city stood rebuilt and unrecognizable taller than than it had ever hoped or strived to be taller than man had built it erected at last in grouts of shattered concrete and sparkles of torn metal into a mural hung like a reversed Avalanche a million colors a million Oddities a door where a window should be a top for a bottom a side for a back and then the city rolled over and fell down dead the sound of its death came after Montag lying there eyes gritted shut with dust a fine wet cement of dust in his now shut mouth gasping and cry now thought again I remember I remember I remember something else what is it yes yes part of Ecclesiastes part of Ecclesiastes and Revelation part of that book part of it quick now quick before it gets away before the shock wears off before the wind dies book of Ecclesiastes here he said it over to himself silently lying flat to the trembling Earth he said the words of it many times and they were perfect without trying and there was no denim's denus anywhere it was just the preacher by himself standing there in his mind looking at him there said a voice the men lay gasping like fish laid out on the grass they held to the Earth as children hold to familiar things no no matter how cold or dead no matter what has happened or will happen their fingers were clawed into the dirt and they were all shouting to keep their eard drums from bursting to keep their sanity from bursting mouths open Montag shouting with them a protest against the winds that ripped to their faces and tore at their lips making their noses bleed Montag watched the great dust settle and the great silence moveed down upon their world and lying there it seemed that he saw every single grain of dust to every blade of grass and that he heard every cry and shout and Whisper going up in the world now silence fell down in the sifting dust and all the Leisure they might need to look around to gather the reality of this day into their senses Montag looked at the river we'll go on the river he looked at the old railroad tracks or we'll go that way or we'll walk in the highways now and we'll have time to put things into ourselves and someday after it sets in us a long time it'll come out our hands and our mouths and a lot of it will be wrong but just enough of it will be right we'll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks around and talks the way it really looks I want to see everything now and while none of it will be me when it goes in after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me look at the world out there my God my God look at it out there outside me out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me where it's in the blood where it pumps around a thousand times 10,000 a day I get hold of it so it'll never run off I'll hold onto the world tight someday I've got one finger on it now that's a beginning the wind died the other men lay a while on the dawn edge of sleep not yet ready to rise up and begin the days obligations its fires and Foods its sty and details of putting foot after foot and hand after hand they lay blinking their Dusty eyelids you could hear them breathing fast then slower then slow Montag sat up he did not move any further however the other men did likewise the sun was touching the black Horizon with a faint red tip the air was cold and smelled of a coming rain silently Granger arose felt of his arms and legs swearing swearing incessantly under his breath tears dripping from his face he shuffled down to the river to look up stream it's flat he said a long time later City looks like a heap of baking powder it's gone and a long time after that I wonder how many knew it was coming I wonder how many were surprised and across the world thought Montag how many other cities dead and here in our country how many 100 a thousand someone struck a match and touched it to a piece of dry paper taken from his pocket and shoved this under a bit of grass and leaves and after a while added tiny Twigs which were wet and sputtered but finally caught and the fire grew larger in the early morning as the sun came up and the men slowly turned from looking up River and were drawn to the fire awkwardly with nothing to say and the sun colored the back of their necks as they bent down Granger unfolded an oil skin with some bacon in it we'll have a bite then we'll turn around and walk Upstream they'll be needing us up that way someone produced a small frying pan and the bacon went into it and the frying pan was set on the fire as after a moment the bacon began to flutter and dance in the pan and The Sputter of it filled the morning air with its Aroma the men watched this ritual silently grer looked into the fire phoenix what there was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ every few hundred years he built a p and burnt himself up he must have been first cousin to Mayor but every time he burned himself up he sprang out of the ashes he got himself born all over again and it looks like we're doing the same thing over and over but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had we know the damn silly thing we just did we know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it someday we'll stop making the godamn funeral PES and jumping in the middle of them we pick up a few more people that remember every generation he took the pan off the fire and let the bacon cool and they ate it slowly thoughtfully now let's get on Upstream said Granger and hold on to one thought you're not important you're not anything someday the load we're carrying with us may help someone but even when we had the books on hand a long time ago we didn't use what we got out of them we went right on insulting The Dead We went right on spitting the graves of all the poor ones who died before us we're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year and when they ask us what we're doing you can say we're remembering that's where we'll win out in the long run and someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest godamn steam of all in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up come on now we're going to go build a mirror Factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them they finished eating and put out the fire the day was brightening all about them as if a pink lamp had been given more Wick in the trees the birds that had flown away quickly now came back and settled down Montag began walking and after a moment found that the others had fallen in behind him going north he was surprised and moved aside to let Granger pass but Granger looked at him and nodded him on Mon went ahead he looked at the river and the sky and the rusting track going back down to where the Farms lay where the barns stood full of hay where a lot of people had walked by in the night on their way from the city later in a month or 6 months and certainly not more than a year he would walk along here again alone and keep right on going until he caught up with the people but now there was a long morning's walk until noon and if the men were silent it was because there was everything to think about and much to remember perhaps later in the morning when the sun was up and it warmed them they would begin to talk or just say the things they remembered to be sure they were there to be absolutely certain that things were safe in them Montag felt the slow Stir of words the slow simmer and when it came his turn what could he say what could he offer on a day like this to make the trip a little easier to every thing there is a season yes a time to break down and a time to build up yes a time to keep silence and a time to speak yes all that but what else what else something something and on either side of the river was there a tree of life which bear 12 manner of fruits and yielded her fruit every month and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the Nations yes thought Montag that's the one I'll save for noon for noon when we reach the city afterward I didn't know it but I was literally writing a dime novel in the spring of 1950 it cost me $9.80 in dimes to write and finish the first draft of the fireman which later became Fahrenheit 451 in all the years from 1941 to that time I had done most of my typing in the family garages either in Venice California where we lived because we were poor not because it was the in place to be or behind the tra house where my wife margarite and I raised our family I was driven out of my garage by my loving children who insisted on coming around to the rear window and singing and tapping on the pains father had to choose between finishing a story or playing with the girls I chose to play of course which endangered the family income an office had to be found we couldn't afford one finally I located just the place the typing room in the basement of the library at the University of California at Los Angeles there in neat rows were a score or more of old Remington or Underwood typewriters which rented out at a dime a half hour you thrust your dime in the clock ticked madly and you typed wildly to finish before the half hour ran out thus I was twice driven by children to leave home and by a typewriter timing device to be a maniac at the keys time was indeed money I finished the first draft in roughly 9 days at 25,000 words it was half the novel that eventually would become between investing dimes and going insane when the typewriter jammed for there went your precious time and whipping pages in and out of the device I wandered upstairs there I strolled lost in love down the corridors and through the stacks touching books pulling volumes out turning Pages thrusting volumes back drowning in all the good stuffs that are the essence of libraries what a place don't you agree to write a novel about burning books in the future so much for pasts what about Fahrenheit 451 in this day and age have I changed my mind about much that it said to me when I was a younger writer only if by change you mean has my love of libraries widened and deepened to which the answer answer is a yes that ricochets off the stacks and dusts talcum off the librarian's cheek since writing this book I have spun more stories novels essays and poems about writers than any other writer in history that I can think of I've written poems about Melville Melville and Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson and Charles Dickens Hawthorne po Edgar Rice burrow and along the way I compared Jules Vern and his mad Captain to Melville and his equally obsessed Mar I have scribbled poems about Librarians taken night trains with my favorite authors across the Continental Wilderness staying up all night gabbling and drinking drinking and chatting I warned Melville in one poem to stay away from Land it never was his stuff and turned Bernard Shaw into a robot so as to conveniently Stow him aboard a rocket and wake him on a long journey to Alphas andari to hear his prefaces piped off his tongue and into my delighted ear I have written a time machine story in which I hum back to sit at the Death Beds of wild Melville and po to tell of my love and warm their bones in their last hours but enough as you can see I am Madness maddened when it comes to books writers and the great Granary silos where their wits are stored recently with the Studio Theater Playhouse in Los Angeles at hand I called all my characters from f451 out of the Shadows what's new I said to Montag Faber batty since last we met in 1953 I asked they answered they wrote new scenes revealed odd parts of their as yet undiscovered souls and dreams the result was a two act drama staged with good results and in the main fine reviews batty came farthest out of the Wings in answer to my question how did it start why did you make the decision to become fire chief a burner of books bat's surprising answer came in a scene where he takes our hero guy Montag home to his apartment entering Montag is stunned to discover the thousands upon thousands of books lining the walls of the fire chief's hidden Library Montag turns and cries out to his superior but you're the chief burner you can't have books on your premises to which the chief with a dry light smile replies it's not owning books that's a crime man tag it's reading them yes that's right I own books but don't read them Montag in shock awaits bat's explanation don't you see the beauty Montag I never read them not one book not one chapter not one page not one paragraph I do play with ironies don't I to have thousands of books and never crack one to turn your back on the lot and say no it's like having a house full of beautiful women and smiling not touching one so you see I'm not a criminal at all all if you ever catch me reading one yes then turn me in but this place is as pure as a 12-year-old virgin girl's cream white Summer Night bedroom these books die on the shelves why because I say so I do not give them sustenance no hope with hand or eye or tongue they are no better than dust Montag protests I don't see how you can be tempted cries the fire chief oh that that was long ago the apple is eaten and gone the snake has returned to its tree the garden has grown to weed and rust once Montag hesitates then continues once you must have loved books very much touy the fire chief responds below the belt on the chin through the heart ripping the gut oh look at me monag The Man Who Loved books no the boy who was wild for them insane for them rein the stack like a chimpanzee gone mad for them I ate them like salad books were my sandwich for lunch my Tiffin and dinner and midnight munch I tore out the pages ate them with salt doused them with relish gnaw on their bindings turn the chapters with my tongue books by the Dozen the score and the billion I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years philosophy Artistry politics social science the poem the essay the grandiose play you name them I at him and then and then the fire chief's voice Fades Monte prompts and then why life happened to me the fire chief shuts his eyes to remember life the usual the same the love that wasn't quite right the dream that went sour the sex that fell apart the deaths that came swiftly to friends not deserving the murder of someone or another the insanity of someone close the slow death of a mother the abrupt suicide of a father a stampede of elephants an onslaught of disease and nowhere nowhere the right book for the right time to stuff in the crumbling wall of the breaking Dam to hold back the Deluge give or take a metaphor lose or find a simile and by the far edge of 30 in the near rim of 31 I pick myself up every bone broken every centimeter of Flesh AB braided bruised a scarred I looked in the mirror and found an old man lost behind the frightened face of a young man saw a hatred there for everything in anything you name it I damn it and opened the pages of my fine library books and found what what what Montag guesses the pages were empty bulls eye black oh the words were there all right but they ran over my eyes like hot oil signifying nothing offering no help no Solace no peace no Harbor no true love no bed no light Montag thinks back 30 years ago the final Library burnings On Target baty nods and having no job in being a failed romantic or whatever in hell I put in for fireman first class first up the steps first into the library first in the Burning furnus Heart of his ever blazing Countryman douse me with kerosene hand me my torch end of lecture there you go Montag out the door Montag leaves with more curiosity than ever about books well on his way to becoming an outcast soon to be pursued and almost destroyed by the mechanical Hound my robot clone of Aon and doy's great Baskerville beast in my play Old Man Faber the teacher not quite in Residence speaking to Montag through the long night via the seashell tampion ear radio is victimized by the fire chief how batty suspects Montag is being instructed by such a secret device knocks it out of his ear and shouts at the far removed teacher coming to get you we're at the door we're up the stairs gotcha which so terrifies Faber his heart destroys him all good stuff tempting this late in time I'd had to fight not to stuff it in this new printing of the novel finally many readers have written protesting Clarissa's disappearance wondering what happened to her froat truo felt the same curiosity and in his film version of my novel rescued Clarice from Oblivion and located her with the book people wandering in the forest reciting their Litany of books to themselves I felt the same need to save her for after all she verging on silly Star Struck chatter was in many ways responsible for montag's beginning to wonder about books and what was in them in my play therefore Clarice emerges to welcome Montag and give a somewhat happier ending to what was in essence pretty Grim stuff the novel however remains true to its for former self I don't believe in tampering with any Young Writers material especially when that young writer was once myself Montag batty Mildred Faber Clarice all stand move enter and exit as they did 32 years ago when I first wrote them down at a dime a half hour in the basement of the UCLA Library I have changed not one thought or word a last Discovery I write all of my novels and stories as you have seen in a great surge of delightful passion only recently glancing at the novel I realized that monag is named after a paper manufacturing company and Faber of course is a maker of pencils What A sly thing my subconscious was to name them thus and not tell me Koda about 2 years ago a letter arrived from a solemn young Vasser lady telling me how much she enjoyed enoyed reading my experiment in space mythology the Martian Chronicles but she added wouldn't it be a good idea in this late in time to rewrite the book inserting more women's characters and roles a few years before that I got a certain amount of maale concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Tom's and why didn't I do them over along about then came a note from a southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pit squeak Mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story the fog horn in a high school reader in my story I had described a lighthouse as having late at night an illumination coming from it that was a godlight looking up at it from the Viewpoint of any sea creature one would have felt that one was in the presence the editors had deleted God light and in the presence some five years back the editors of yet another Anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 count them short stories in it had you cram 400 short stories by Twain Irving Po mopol and beer into one book Simplicity itself skin debone demaro scarify melt render down and Destroy every adjective that counted every verb that moved every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito out every simile that would have made a subm [ __ ] mouth twitch gone any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a First Rate writer lost every story slenderized starved blue penciled leeched and bled white resembled every other story Twain red like Poe read like Shakespeare read like dooi read like in the finale Edgar guest every word of more than three syllables had been razored every image that demanded so much as one instance attention shot dead you begin to get the Damned and incredible picture how did I react to all of the above by firing the whole lot by sending rejection slips to each and every one by ticketing the Assembly of idiots to the far reaches of Hell the point is obvious there is more than one way to burn a book and the world is full of people running about with lit matches every minority be it Baptist Unitarian Irish Italian octogenarians Zen Buddhist Zionist 7th Day Adventist women's Li Republican mat Sheen Force word gospel feels it has the will the right the duty to D the kerosene like the fuse every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blamage plain porridge unleavened literature licks his Guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares speak above a whisper or write above a nurs r fire captain batty in my novel Fahrenheit 451 described how the books were were burned first by minorities each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book then that until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever shut the door they're coming through the window shut the window they're coming through the door are the words to an old song they fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher sensors every month only 6 weeks ago I discovered that over the years some cubbyhole editors at Valentine books fearful of contaminating the young had bit by bit censored some 75 separate sections from the novel students reading the novel which after all deals with censorship and book burning in the future wrote to tell me of this Exquisite irony Judy Lind Del re one of the new Valentine editors is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the dams and Hells back in place a final test for old job 2 here I sent a play leviath of 99 off to a university theater a month ago my play is based on the mid dick mythology dedicated to Melville and concerns a rocket crew and a blind space Captain who Venture forth to encounter a great white Comet and destroy the Destroyer my drama premieres as an opera in Paris this Autumn but for now the university wrote back that they hardly dared to do mplay it had no women in it and the erra ladies on campus would descend with ball bats if the drama Department even tried grinding my B cuspids into powder I suggested that would mean from now on on no more Productions of boys in the band no women or the women no men or counting heads male and female a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen again especially if you count lines and find that all the good stuff went to the males I wrote back maybe they should do my play one week and the women the next they probably thought I was joking and I'm not sure that I wasn't for it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities be they draw for giant or tan or dolphin nuclear head or water conversationalist Pro computerist or neolite simpleton or Sage to interfere with Aesthetics the real world is the playing Ground for each and every group to make or unmake laws but the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin run and Rule if Mormons do not like my plays let them write their own if the Irish hate my Dublin stories let them rent typewriters if teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mush milk teeth let them eat stale cake dunked in Weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture if the Cho intellectuals wish to recut my wonderful ice cream suit so it shapes Zoot May the belt unravel and the pants fall but let's face it digression is the soul of wit take philosophic sides away from dant Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stay is his Dry Bones Laurence Stern said it once digressions incontestably are the sunshine the life the soul of reading take them out and one cold Eternal winter would rain in every page restore them to the writer he steps forth like a bridegroom bids them all hail brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail in some do not insult me with the beheadings finger choppings or the lung deflations you plan for my works I need my head to shake or nod my hand to wave or make into a fist my lungs to shout or whisper with I will not go gently onto a shelf de gutted to become a non book All You umpires back to the bleachers referees hit the showers it's my game I pitch I hit I catch I run the bases at Sunset I've won or lost at Sunrise I'm out again giving it the old tra and no one can help me not even you