Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 by Twice Twenty-two (v2.1) Read Free Book Online Page B

water
in the wooden kegs to tilt and slop across prairies, and the chickens
hysterical in their slung-beneath-the-wagon crates, and the dogs running out to
the wilderness ahead and, fearful, running back with a look of empty space in
their eyes? Is this, then, how it was
                   So long ago? On the
rim of the precipice, on the edge of the cliff of stars. In their time the
smell of buffalo, and in our time the smell of the Rocket. Is this, then, how
it was?
                   And she decided, as sleep assumed the dreaming
for her, that yes, yes indeed, very much so, irrevocably, this was as it had
always been and would forever continue to be.
                  
     
     
     
     

5 THE FRUIT
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOWL
     
     
                   William Acton rose to his feet. The clock on
the mantel ticked midnight .
                   He looked at his fingers and he looked at the
large room around him and he looked at the man lying on the floor. William
Acton, whose fingers had stroked typewriter keys and made love and fried ham
and eggs for early breakfasts, had now accomplished a murder with those same
ten whorled fingers.
                   He had never thought of himself as a sculptor
and yet, in this moment, looking down between his hands at the body upon the
polished hardwood floor, he realized that by some sculptural clenching and
remodeling and twisting of human clay he had taken hold of this man named
Donald Huxley and changed his physiognomy, the very frame of his body.
                   With a twist of his fingers he had wiped away
the exacting ghtter of Huxley's gray eyes; replaced it with a blind dullness of
eye cold in socket. The fips, always pink and sensuous, were gaped to show the
equine teeth, the yellow incisors, the nico-tined canines, the gold-inlaid
molars. The nose, pink also, was now mottled, pale, discolored, as were the
ears. Huxley's hands,
                  Upon the floor, were open, pleading for the
first time in their lives, instead of demanding.
                   Yes, it was an artistic conception. On the
whole, the change had done Huxley a share of good. Death made him a handsomer
man to deal with. You could talk to him now and he'd have to listen.
                   William Acton looked at his own fingers.
                   It was done. He could not change it back. Had
anyone heard? He listened. Outside, the normal late sounds of street traflic
continued. There was no banging of the house door, no shoulder wrecking the
portal into kindling, no voices demanding entrance. The murder, the sculpturing
of clay from warmth to coldness was done, and nobody knew.
                   Now what? The clock ticked midnight . His every impulse exploded him in a hysteria toward the door. Rush, get away, run, never come
back, board a train, hail a taxi, get, go, run, walk, saunter, but get the
blazes out of here!
                   His hands hovered before his eyes, floating,
turning.
                   He twisted them in slow deliberation; they
felt airy and feather-light. Why was he staring at them this way? he inquired
of himself. Was there something in them of immense interest that he should
pause now, after a successful throttling, and examine them whorl by whorl?
                   They were ordinary hands. Not thick, not thin,
not long, not short, not hairy, not naked, not manicured and yet not dirty, not
soft and yet not callused, not wrinkled and yet not smooth; not murdering hands
at all—and yet not innocent. He seemed to find them miracles to look upon.
                   It was not the hands as hands he was
interested in, nor the fingers as fingers. In the numb timelessness after an
accomplished violence he found interest only in the tips of his fingers.
                   The clock ticked upon the mantel.