Bradbury Stories (45 page)

Yes, yes! He wept and ground his teeth and leaned up from the cliff rim to shake his fists at the vanishing craft in the sky.

“Traitors! Come back!”

You can't leave old England, can't leave Pip and Humbug, Iron Duke and Trafalgar, the Horse Guard in the rain, London burning, buzz bombs and sirens, the new babe held high on the palace balcony, Churchill's funeral cortege still in the street, man,
still
in the street! and Caesar not gone to his Senate, and strange happenings this night at Stonehenge! Leave all this, this,
this
!?

Upon his knees, at the cliff's edge, the last and final king of England, Harry Smith wept alone.

The helicopter was gone now, called toward august isles where summer sang its sweetness in the birds.

The old man turned to see the countryside and thought, why this is how it was one hundred thousand years ago. A great silence and a great wilderness and now, quite late, the empty shell towns and King Henry, Old Harry, the Ninth.

He rummaged half blindly about in the grass and found his lost book bag and chocolate bits in a sack and hoisted his Bible, and Shakespeare and much-thumbed Johnson and much-tongued Dickens and Dryden and Pope, and stood out on the road that led all round England.

Tomorrow: Christmas. He wished the world well. Its people had gifted themselves already with sun, all over the globe. Sweden lay empty. Norway had flown. None lived any longer in God's cold climes. All basked upon the continental hearths of His best lands in fair winds under mild skies. No more fights just to survive. Men, reborn like Christ on such as tomorrow, in southern places, were truly returned to an eternal and fresh-grown manger.

Tonight, in some church, he would ask forgiveness for calling them traitors.

“One last thing, Harry. Blue.”

“Blue?” he asked himself.

“Somewhere down the road find some blue chalk. Didn't English men once color themselves with such?”

“Blue men, yes, from head to foot!”

“Our ends are in our beginnings, eh?”

He pulled his cap tight. The wind was cold. He tasted the first snowflakes that fell to brush his lips.

“O remarkable boy!” he said, leaning from an imaginary window on a golden Christmas morn, an old man reborn and gasping for joy, “Delightful boy, there, is the great bird, the turkey, still hung in the poulterer's window down the way?”

“It's hanging there now,” said the boy.

“Go buy it! Come back with the man and I'll give you a shilling. Come back in less than five minutes and I'll give you a crown!”

And the boy went to fetch.

And buttoning his coat, carrying his books, Old Harry Ebenezer Scrooge Julius Caesar Pickwick Pip and half a thousand others marched off along the road in winter weather. The road was long and beautiful. The waves were gunfire on the coast. The wind was bagpipes in the north.

Ten minutes later, when he had gone singing beyond a hill, by the look of it, all the lands of England seemed ready for a people who someday soon in history might arrive . . .

“W
E ALL HAVE THAT SPECIAL DREAM
when we are young,” said Bishop Kelly.

The others at the table murmured, nodded.

“There is no Christian boy,” the Bishop continued, “who does not some night wonder: am I Him? Is this the Second Coming at long last, and am I It? What, what, oh, what, dear God, if I
were
Jesus? How grand!”

The Priests, the Ministers, and the one lonely Rabbi laughed gently, remembering things from their own childhoods, their own wild dreams, and being great fools.

“I suppose,” said the young priest, Father Niven, “that Jewish boys imagine themselves Moses?”

“No, no, my dear friend,” said Rabbi Nittler. “The Messiah! The
Messiah
!”

More quiet laughter, from all.

“Of course,” said Father Niven out of his fresh pink-and-cream face, “how stupid of me. Christ
wasn't
the Messiah, was he? And your people are still waiting for Him to arrive. Strange. Oh, the ambiguities.”

“And nothing more ambiguous than this.” Bishop Kelly rose to escort them all out onto a terrace which had a view of the Martian hills, the ancient Martian towns, the old highways, the rivers of dust, and Earth, sixty million miles away, shining with a clear light in this alien sky.

“Did we ever in our wildest dreams,” said the Reverend Smith, “imagine that one day each of us would have a Baptist Church, a St. Mary's Chapel, a Mount Sinai Synagogue here, here on Mars?”

The answer was no, no, softly, from them all.

Their quiet was interrupted by another voice which moved among them. Father Niven, as they stood at the balustrade, had tuned his transistor radio to check the hour. News was being broadcast from the small new American-Martian wilderness colony below. They listened:

“—rumored near the town. This is the first Martian reported in our community this year. Citizens are urged to respect any such visitor. If—”

Father Niven shut the news off.

“Our elusive congregation,” sighed the Reverend Smith. “I must confess, I came to Mars not only to work with Christians, but hoping to invite
one
Martian to Sunday supper, to learn of his theologies,
his
needs.”

“We are still too new to them,” said Father Lipscomb. “In another year or so I think they will understand we're not buffalo hunters in search of pelts. Still, it
is
hard to keep one's curiosity in hand. After all, our
Mariner
photographs indicated no life whatsoever here. Yet life there is, very mysterious and half-resembling the human.”

“Half, Your Eminence?” The Rabbi mused over his coffee. “I feel they are even more human than ourselves. They have
let
us come in. They have hidden in the hills, coming among us only on occasion, we guess, disguised as Earthmen—”

“Do you really believe they have telepathic powers, then, and hypnotic abilities which allow them to walk in our towns, fooling us with masks and visions, and none of us the wiser?”

“I do so believe.”

“Then this,” said the Bishop, handing around brandies and crème-dementhes, “is a true evening of frustrations. Martians who will not reveal themselves so as to be Saved by Us the Enlightened—”

Many smiles at this.

“—and Second Comings of Christ delayed for several thousand years. How long must we wait, O Lord?”

“As for myself,” said young Father Niven, “I never wished to
be
Christ, the Second Coming. I just always wanted, with all my heart, to
meet
Him. Ever since I was eight I have thought on that. It might well be the first reason I became a priest.”

“To have the inside track just in case He ever
did
arrive again?” suggested the Rabbi, kindly.

The young Priest grinned and nodded. The others felt the urge to reach and touch him, for he had touched some vague small sweet nerve in each. They felt immensely gentle.

“With your permission, Rabbi, gentlemen,” said Bishop Kelly, raising his glass. “To the First Coming of the Messiah, or the Second Coming of Christ. May they be more than some ancient, some foolish dreams.”

They drank and were quiet.

The Bishop blew his nose and wiped his eyes.

The rest of the evening was like many another for the Priests, the Reverends, and the Rabbi. They fell to playing cards and arguing St. Thomas Aquinas, but failed under the onslaught of Rabbi Nittler's educated logic. They named him Jesuit, drank nightcaps, and listened to the late radio news:

“—it is feared this Martian may feel trapped in our community. Anyone meeting him should turn away, so as to let the Martian pass. Curiosity seems his motive. No cause for alarm. That concludes our—”

While heading for the door, the Priests, Ministers, and Rabbi discussed translations they had made into various tongues from Old and New Testaments. It was then that young Father Niven surprised them:

“Did you know I was once asked to write a screenplay on the Gospels? They needed an
ending
for their film!”

“Surely,” protested the Bishop, “there's only
one
ending to Christ's life?”

“But, Your Holiness, the Four Gospels tell it with four variations. I compared. I grew excited. Why? Because I rediscovered something I had almost forgotten. The Last Supper isn't really the Last Supper!”

“Dear me, what is it then?”

“Why, Your Holiness, the first of several, sir. The first of several! After the Crucifixion and Burial of Christ, did not Simon-called-Peter, with the Disciples, fish the Sea of Galilee?”

“They did.”

“And their nets were filled with a miracle of fish?”

“They were.”

“And seeing on the shore of Galilee a pale light, did they not land and approach what seemed a bed of white-hot coals on which fresh-caught fish were baking?”

“Yes, ah, yes,” said the Reverend Smith.

“And there beyond the glow of the soft charcoal fire, did they not sense a Spirit Presence and call out to it?”

“They did.”

“Getting no answer, did not Simon-called-Peter whisper again, ‘Who is there?' And the unrecognized Ghost upon the shore of Galilee put out its hand into the firelight, and in the palm of that hand, did they not see the mark where the nail had gone in, the stigmata that would never heal?

“They would have fled, but the Ghost spoke and said, ‘Take of these fish and feed thy brethren.' And Simon-called-Peter took the fish that baked upon the white-hot coals and fed the Disciples. And Christ's frail Ghost then said, ‘Take of my word and tell it among the nations of all the world and preach therein forgiveness of sin.'

“And then Christ left them. And, in my screenplay, I had Him walk along the shore of Galilee toward the horizon. And when anyone walks toward the horizon, he seems to ascend, yes? For all land rises at a distance. And He walked on along the shore until He was just a small mote, far away. And then they could see Him no more.

“And as the sun rose upon the ancient world, all His thousand footprints that lay along the shore blew away in the dawn winds and were as nothing.

“And the Disciples left the ashes of that bed of coals to scatter in sparks, and with the taste of Real and Final and True Last Supper upon their mouths, went away. And in my screenplay, I had my
CAMERA
drift high above to watch the Disciples move some north, some south, some to the east, to tell the world what Needed to Be Told about One Man. And their footprints, circling in all directions, like the spokes of an immense wheel, blew away out of the sand in the winds of morn. And it was a new day.
THE END
.”

The young Priest stood in the center of his friends, cheeks fired with color, eyes shut. Suddenly he opened his eyes, as if remembering where he was:

“Sorry.”

“For what?” cried the Bishop, brushing his eyelids with the back of his hand, blinking rapidly. “For making me weep twice in one night? What, self-conscious in the presence of your own love for Christ? Why, you have given the Word back to me,
me
! who has known the Word for what seems a thousand years! You have freshened my soul, oh good young man with the heart of a boy. The eating of fish on Galilee's shore
is
the True Last Supper. Bravo. You deserve to meet Him. The Second Coming, it's only fair, must be for you!”

“I am unworthy!” said Father Niven.

“So are we all! But if a trade of souls were possible, I'd loan mine out on this instant to borrow yours fresh from the laundry. Another toast, gentlemen? To Father Niven! And then, good night, it's late, good night.”

The toast was drunk and all departed; the Rabbi and the Ministers down the hill to their holy places, leaving the Priests to stand a last moment at their door looking out at Mars, this strange world, and a cold wind blowing.

Midnight came and then one and two, and at three in the cold deep morning of Mars, Father Niven stirred. Candles flickered in soft whispers. Leaves fluttered against his window.

Suddenly he sat up in bed, half-startled by a dream of mob-cries and pursuits. He listened.

Far away, below, he heard the shutting of an outside door.

Throwing on a robe, Father Niven went down the dim rectory stairs and through the church where a dozen candles here or there kept their own pools of light.

He made the rounds of all the doors, thinking: Silly, why lock churches? What is there to steal? But still he prowled the sleeping night . . .

. . . and found the front door of the church unlocked, and softly being pushed in by the wind.

Shivering, he shut the door.

Soft running footsteps.

He spun about.

The church lay empty. The candle flames leaned now this way, now that in their shrines. There was only the ancient smell of wax and incense burning, stuffs left over from all the market-places of time and history; other suns, and other noons.

In the midst of glancing at the crucifix above the main altar, he froze.

There was a sound of a single drop of water falling in the night.

Slowly he turned to look at the baptistery in the back of the church.

There were no candles there, yet—

A pale light shone from that small recess where stood the baptismal font.

“Bishop Kelly?” he called, softly.

Walking slowly up the aisle, he grew very cold, and stopped because—

Another drop of water had fallen, hit, dissolved away.

It was like a faucet dripping somewhere. But there were no faucets. Only the baptismal font itself, into which, drop by drop, a slow liquid was falling, with three heartbeats between each sound.

At some secret level, Father Niven's heart told itself something and raced, then slowed and almost stopped. He broke into a wild perspiration. He found himself unable to move, but move he must, one foot after the other, until he reached the arched doorway of the baptistery.