Montag waited ten minutes in the shadows. Finally a voice called: “All right, you can come out now.”
He shrank back.
It’s okay,” said the voice. “You’re welcome here.”
He let himself stand forth and then he walked tiredly toward the fire, peering at the men and their dirty clothing.
“We’re not very elegant,” said the man who seemed to be the leader of the little group. “Sit down. Have some coffee.”
He watched the dark steaming mixture poured into a collapsible cup which was handed him straight off. He sipped it gingerly. He felt the scald on his lips. The men were watching him. Their faces were unshaved but their beards were much too 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.
The leader said, “My name is Granger, as good a name as any. You don’t have to tell us your name at all.” He remembered something. “Here, before you finish the coffee, better take this.” He held out a small bottle of colorless fluid.
“What is it?”
“Drink it. Whoever you are, you wouldn’t be here unless you were in trouble. Either that, or you’re a Government spy, in which case we are only a bunch of men traveling nowhere and hurting no one. In any event, whoever you are, an hour after you’ve drunk this fluid, you’ll be someone else. It does something to the perspiratory system—changes the sweat content. If you want to stay here you’ll have to drink it, otherwise you’ll have to move on. If there’s a Hound after you, you’d be bad company.”
“I think I took care of the Hound,” said Montag, and drank the tasteless stuff. The fluid stung his throat. He was sick for a moment; there was a blackness in his eyes, and roaring in his head. Then it passed.
“THAT’S BETTER, MR. MONTAG,” said Granger, and snorted at his social error. “I beg your pardon—” He poked his thumb at a small portable TV beyond the fire. “We’ve been watching. They videoed a picture of you, not a very good resemblance. We hoped you’d head this way.”
“It’s been quite a chase.”
“Yes.” Granger snapped the TV on. It was no bigger than a handbag, weighing some seven pounds, mostly screen. A voice from the set cried:
“The chase is now veering south along the river. On the eastern shore the police helicopters are converging on Avenue 87 and Elm Grove Park.”
“You’re safe,” said Granger. “They’re faking. You threw them off at the river, but they can’t admit it. Must be a million people watching that bunch of scoundrels hound after you. They’ll catch you in five minutes.”
“But if they’re ten miles away, how can they … ?”
“Watch.”
He turned the TV picture brighter.
“Up that street there, somewhere, right now, out for an early morning walk. A rarity, an odd one. Don’t think the police don’t know the habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk early in the morning just for the hell of it. Anyway, up that street the police know that every morning a certain man walks alone, for the air, to smoke. Call him Billings or Brown or Baumgartner, but the search is getting nearer to him every minute. See?”
In the video screen, a man turned a corner. The Electric Hound rushed forward, screeching. The police converged upon the man.
The TV voice cried, “There’s Montag now! The search is over!”
The innocent man stood watching the crowd come on. In his hand was a cigarette, half smoked. He looked at the Hound and his jaw dropped and he started to say something when a godlike voice boomed, “All right, Montag, don’t move! We’ve got you, Montag!”
By the small fire, with seven other men, Mr. Montag sat, ten miles removed, the light of the video screen on his face.
“Don’t run, Montag!”
The man turned, bewildered. The crowd roared. The Hound leaped up.
“The poor son-of-a-bitch,” said Granger, bitterly.
A dozen shots rattled out. The man crumpled.
“Montag is dead, the search is over, a criminal is given his due,” said the announcer.
The camera trucked forward. Just before it showed the dead man’s face, however, the screen went black.
“We now switch you to the Sky Room of the Hotel Lux in San Francisco for a half hour of dance music by—”
GRANGER TURNED IT OFF. “They didn’t show the man’s face, naturally. Better if everyone thinks it’s Montag.
Montag said nothing, but simply looked at the blank screen. He could not move or speak.
Granger put out his hand. “Welcome back from the dead, Mr. Montag.” Montag took the hand, numbly. The man said, “My real name is Clement, former occupant of the T.S. Eliot Chair at Cambridge. That was before it became an Electrical Engineering school. This gentleman here is Dr. Simmons from U.C.L.A.”
“I don’t belong here,” said Montag, at last, slowly. “I’ve been an idiot, all the way down the line, bungled and messed and tripped myself up.”
“Anger makes idiots of us all, I’m afraid. You can only be angry so long, then you explode and do the wrong things. It can’t be helped now.”
“I shouldn’t have come here. It might endanger you.”
“We’re used to that. We all make mistakes, or we wouldn’t be here ourselves. When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman in the face, once. He’d come to burn my library back about 40 years ago. I had to run. I’ve been running ever since. And Simmons here …”
“I quoted Donne in the midst of a genetics lecture one afternoon. For no reason at all. Just started quoting Donne. You see? Fools, all of us.”
They glanced at the fire, self-consciously.
“So you want to join us, Mr. Montag?”
“Yes.”
“What have you to offer?”
“Nothing. I thought I had the Book of Job, but I haven’t even got that.”
“The Book of Job would do very well. Where was it?”
“Here.” Montag touched his head.
“Ah,” said Granger-Clement. He smiled and nodded.
“What’s wrong, isn’t it all right?” said Montag.
“Better than all right—perfect! Mr. Montag, you have hit upon the secret of, if you want to give it a term, our organization. Living books, Mr. Montag, living books. Inside the old skull where no one can see.” He turned to Simmons. “Do we have a Book of Job?”
“Only one. A man named Harris in Youngstown.”
“Mr. Montag.” The man reached out and held Montag’s shoulder firmly. “Walk slowly, be careful, take your health seriously. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Job. Do you see how important you are?”
“But I’ve forgotten it!”
“Nonsense, nothing is ever forgotten. Mislaid, perhaps, but not forgotten. We have ways, several new methods of hypnosis, to shake down the clinkers there. You’ll remember, don’t fear.”
“I’ve been trying to remember.”
“Don’t try. Relax. It’ll come when we need it. Some people are quick studies but don’t know it. Some of God’s simplest creatures have the ability called eidetic or photographic memory, the ability to memorize entire pages of print at a glance. It has nothing to do with IQ. No offense, Montag. It varies. Would you like, one day, to read Plato’s Republic?”
“Of course.”
Stewart nodded to a man who had been sitting to one side.
“Mr. Plato, if you please.”
THE MAN BEGAN TO TALK. He looked at Montag idly, his hands filling a corncob pipe, unaware of the words tumbling from his lips. He talked for two minutes without a pause or stumble.
Granger made the smallest move of his fingers. The man cut off. “Perfect word-for-word memory, every word important, every word Plato’s,” said Granger.
“And,” said the man who was Plato, “I don’t understand a damned word of it. I just say it. It’s up to you to understand.”
“Don’t you understand any of it?”
“None of it. But I can’t get it out. Once it’s in, it’s like solidified glue in a bottle, there for good. Mr. Granger says it’s important. That’s good enough for me.”
“We’re old friends,” said Granger. “We hadn’t seen each other since we were boys. We met a few years ago on that track, somewhere between here and Seattle, walking, me running away from firemen, he running from cities.”
“Never liked cities,” said the one who was Plato. “Always felt that cities owned men, that was all, and used men to keep themselves going, to keep machines oiled and dusted. So I got out. And then I met Granger and he found out that I had this eidetic memory, as he calls it, and he gave me a book to read and then we burned the book ourselves so we wouldn’t be caught with it. And now I’m Plato; that’s what I am.”
“He is also Socrates.”
The man nodded.
“And Schopenhauer.”
Another nod.
“And John Dewey.”
“All that in one bottle. You wouldn’t think there was room. But I can open my head like a concertina and play it. There’s plenty of room if you don’t try to think about what you’ve memorized. It’s when you start thinking that all of a sudden it’s crowded. I don’t think about anything except eating, sleeping, and traveling. I let you people do the thinking when you hear what I recite. Oh, there’s plenty of room, believe me.”
“So here we are, Mr. Montag. Mr. Simmons is really Mr. John Donne and Mr. Darwin
