Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page B

“how were they all saved, how did they get here ?”
    “We brought them.”
    “How?!”
    “We are tomb robbers.” Nef ran her finger along the stacks. “For the profit of the mind, the extension of the soul, whatever the soul is. We can only try to describe the mystery. Long before Schliemann, who found not one but twenty Troys, our ancestors played finders-keepers with the grandest library in time, one that would never burn, would live forever and allow those who entered to touch and scan, a chance to run after an extra piece of existence. This building is absolute proof against fire. In one form or another, it has traveled from Moses, Caesar, Christ, and will continue on toward the new Apollo and the Moon that the rocket chariot will reach.”
    “But still,” he said. “Those libraries were ruined. Are these duplicates of duplicates? The lost are found, but how?”
    Nef laughed quietly. “It was a hard task. Down through the centuries, a book here or there, a play one place, a poem another. A huge jigsaw, fitted in pieces.”
    She moved on in the comfortable twilight spilling through the library’s tall windows, brushing her fingers over the names and titles.
    “Remember when Hemingway’s wife left his novel manuscript on a train, lost forever?”
    “Did he divorce or kill her?”
    “The marriage survived for a while. But that manuscript is here.”
    He looked at the worn typewriter box labeled: FOOTHILLS; KILIMANJARO.
    “Have you read it?”
    “We’re afraid to. If it is as fine as some of his work, it would break our hearts because it must remain lost. If it’s bad, we might feel worse. Perhaps Papa knew it was best for it to remain lost. He wrote another Kilimanjaro, with Snows instead.”
    “How in hell did you find it?”
    “The week it was lost we advertised. Which is more than Papa did. We sent him a copy. He never replied, and the Snows was published a year later.”
    Again she moved to touch more volumes.
    “Edgar Allan Poe’s final poem, rejected. Herman Melville’s last tale, unseen.”
    “How?”
    “We visited their deathbeds in their last hours. The dying sometimes speak in tongues. If you know the language of deliriums you can transcribe their strange sad truths. We tend them like special guardians late at night, and summon a last vital spark and listen closely and keep their words. Why? Since we are the passengers of time, we thought it only proper to save what might be saved on our passage to eternity, to preserve what might be lost if neglected, and add some small bit of our far-traveling and long life. We have guarded not only Troy and its ruins and sifted the Egyptian sands for wise stones to put beneath our tongues to clear our speech, but we have, like cats, inhaled the breaths of mortals, siphoned and published their whispers. Since we have been gifted with long lives, the least we can do is pass that gift on in inanimate objects—novels, poems, plays—books that rouse to life when scanned by a living eye. You must never receive a gift, ever, without returning the gift twice over. From Jesus of Nazareth to noon tomorrow, our baggage is the library and its silent speech. Each book is Lazarus, yes? And you the reader, by opening the covers, bid Lazarus to come forth. And he lives again, it lives again, the dead words warmed by your glance.”
    “I never thought…,” Cardiff said.
    “Think.” She smiled. “Now,” she said, “I believe it’s time for a picnic, to celebrate we don’t know what. But celebrate we must.”

CHAPTER 25

    The picnic was spread waiting on the back lawn of the EGYPTIAN VIEW ARMS.
    “Speech!” someone called.
    “I don’t know how to begin,” Cardiff said.
    “At the beginning!” There was a gentle laughter.
    Cardiff took a deep breath and plunged in.
    “As you may know, the State Department of Highways has been measuring string from Phoenix east and north and from Gallup north and west. The exact measurements of a new freeway will touch