Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines, Ray Bradbury

With Lowe and Gratitude to Chris Lane, whose imaginative sketches for
LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND caused this book to be born.

It was the night following the day when the seagull was seen over the desert that Ahmed, the son of Ahmed, fell from his camel and was lost as the caravan moved on into the dusk.

The gull had flown over at noon, coming from somewhere, going nowhere, circling back toward some invisible land that, they said, was rich with grass and water and had known nothing but water and grass for nine thousand years.

Looking up, Ahmed said:
“What does that bird seek? Here is no water and no grass, so where does it go?”

His father had answered:
“It was lost but now found again, returns to the sea from whence it came.”

The gull circled a final time, crying.
“Oh,” whispered Ahmed. “Shall we fly one day?”

“In another year,” said his father, “but no one knows its name. Come. You must walk before you ride and ride before you fly. In the night, will your camel grow wings?”

And it was during that night that Ahmed stared at the sky and counted the stars until he was dizzy with counting. Then, drunk with light, he swayed as he inhaled the night wind. Crazed with delight at all that he saw in the heavens, he toppled and fell and was buried in the cooling sands. So, unseen by his father or the caravan of marching beasts, he was left to die among the dunes in the hours after midnight.

When Ahmed swam up through the sands, there were only the hoofprints of the great camels sifting away down the wind, at last gone, whispering.

I die, thought Ahmed. For what am I punished? Being only twelve, I do not recall any terrible crimes I committed. In another life, was I evil, a devil unseen and now discovered?
It was then that his foot scraped something beneath the shifting sands.

He hesitated, then fell to his knees to plunge his hands deep, as if searching for hidden silver or buried gold.

Something more than treasure rose to view as he swept the sand to let the night wind blow it away.

A strange face stared up at him, a bas-relief in bronze, the face of a nameless man or a buried myth, immense, grimacing underfoot, magnificent and serene.

“Oh, ancient god, whatever your name,” whispered Ahmed. “Help this lost son of a good father, this evil boy who meant no harm but slept in school, ran errands slowly, did not pray from his heart, ignored his mother, and did not hold his family in great esteem. For all this I know I must suffer. But here in the midst of silence, at the desert’s heart, where even the wind knows not my name? Must I die so young? Am I to be forgotten without having been?”

The bronze bas-relief face of the old god glared up at him as the sand hissed over its empty mouth.

Ahmed said, “What prayers must I offer, what sacrifice must I give, so that you, old one, may warm your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your mouth to speak?”

The ancient god said only night and time and wind in syllables that Ahmed understood not.
And so he wept.

Just as all men do not laugh or all women move alike, so all boys do not weep alike. It is a language that the ancient gods know. For the tears that fall come from the soul out of the eyes unto the earth.

And the tears of Ahmed rained upon the bronze bas-relief face of the ancient spirit and rinsed its shut lids so they trembled.

Ahmed did not see, but continued weeping, and his small rain touched the half-seen ears of the buried god and they opened to hear the night and the wind and the weeping, and the ears—moved!
But Ahmed did not see and his last tears watered the mouth of the god, to anoint the bronze tongue.

So at last the entire face was washed and shook to let bark a laugh so sharp that Ahmed, shocked, flailed back and cried:
“What!”

“Indeed, what?” said the gaped mouth of the god.
“Who are you?” cried Ahmed.

“Company in the desert night, friend to silence, companion to dusk, inheritor of the dawn,” said the cold mouth. But the eyes were friendly, seeing Ahmed so young and afraid. “Boy, your name?”

“Ahmed of the caravans.”

“And I? Shall I tell you my life?” asked the bronze face gazing up from the moonlit sands.
“Oh, do!”

“I am Gonn-Ben-Allah. Gonn the Magnificent. Keeper of the Ghosts of the lost names!”

“Can names be ghosts and lost?” Ahmed wiped his eyes to bend closer. “Great Gonn, how long were you buried here?”

“Hark,” whispered the bronze mouth. “I have been to my own funeral ten thousand times your days.”
“I cannot count that far.”

“Nor should you,” answered Gonn-Ben-Allah. “For I am found. Your tears move my eyes to see, my ears to hear, my mouth to speak long before the Sack of Rome or Caesar’s death, back to the caves and the lions and the lack of fire. List! Would you save yet more of me and all of you?”

“I would!”

“Then no more tears! No more cries! With your robes, sweep off the dunes from the pavements of my limbs. Rouse Gonn the Great to the stars. My funeral bones bring forth, and clothe them with your breath so that long before dawn, great Gonn will be reborn from your sighs and shouts and prayers! Beginl”

And Ahmed rose and sighed and prayed and shouted with joy and used his robes as broom to sweep and quicken this newfound friend of such a size the stars, seeing him, danced in their pivots and shivered in their burning gyres.

And what Ahmed’s breath did not move, then his bare feet kicked away in the wind until the great bronze torso burst free. And then the snaking arms, the blunt fists, legs, and incredible feet, so that the naked god was unclothed of ancient dunes and lay under the burning gazes of Aldebaran, Orion, and Alpha Centauri. Starlight finished the revelation, even as Ahmed’s breath, a fount, went dry.

“I am!” cried Gonn-Ben-Allah.

And he lay there, three men wide and two dozen tall, his torso a monument, his arms obelisks, his legs cenotaphs, his face a noble half-Sphinx, part sun god Ra, Arabian wits in fiery eyes, and a storm of Allah’s voice in his cavern mouth.

“I,” said Gonn-Ben-Allah, “am!”
“Oh, you must have been a great god,” said Ahmed.

“I strode the earth and shadowed continents. Now help me rise! Speak my hieroglyphs. The claw prints of the birds that from solstice to solstice touched my clay with prayers in codes, read and say!”

And Ahmed spoke to the sands:
“Now, Gonn of old, be young. Arise. Warm limbs, warm blood, warm heart, warm soul, warm breath. Come up, Gonn, up! Away from death!”

The great Gonn stirred and settled and then with a great shout shot into the heavens to sway above Ahmed, his limbs sunk deep as architectural pilings in the tidal sands. Set free, he laughed, for now it was a goodness beyond reckoning or word.

“There is reason, boy, why you stared and fell to print the dust and waken me. I have waited an eternity for you, the keeper of the skies, the inheritor of the dream, the one who flies without flying.”

And Gonn-Ben-Allah moved his arms to touch the horizons.

“The dream has stayed forever. Oh, the clouds, men have said. Oh, the stars and the wind that moves not stars but clouds. Oh, the storms that wander Earth to seize our breath. Oh, the lightnings we would borrow and hurricanes race. What jealous despairs we lie with nights and angered, know not flight!

“So you, boy, are the Storm Keeper.”
And Gonn touched Ahmed’s brow.
“Lead me with your dreams, which now must be remembered.”

“How can I remember what is not?” Ahmed felt his eyes, his mouth, his ears.
“Step, walk, run. Then leap, bound, fly. …”

And as they watched, a great weather of darkness arose from that north from which all coldness comes, and that west which swallows the sun and that east which follows the death of the sun and darkens the sky.

There were blizzards and hurricanes in the clouds and storms of lightning in its attics and the sounds of endless funerals lamenting as they fell off the edge of the world. The great blackness loomed over Ahmed and Gonn-Ben-Allah.

“What is that?” cried Ahmed.

“That,” said Gonn, “is the Enemy.”
“Is there such a thing?”

“One half of everything is the Enemy,” said Gonn. “Just as one half of everything is the Saviour, the bright rememberer of noon.”

“And what is the name of that Enemy?”
“Why, child, it is Time, and Time Again.”

“But, oh, mighty Gonn, does Time have a shape? I did not know you could see Time.”

“Once it happens, yes. Time has shapes and shadows to be seen. That, on the rim of the world, is Time to Be. A remembrance forward of things that will be erased, destroyed, if you do not grapple with it, seize it, shape it with your soul, sound it with your voice. Then Time becomes the companion to light and ceases to exist as the enemy of dreams.”

“It is so big,” said Ahmed, “I’m afraid!”

“Yes,” said Gonn, “for it’s Time itself we fight, Time and the way the wind blows, Time and the way the sea moves to cover, hide, wipe away, erode, change. We fight to be born or not be born. The Unborn One is always there. If we can fire it with our