So they must have their game out, thought Montag. The circus must go on, even with war beginning within the hour. . . .
He watched the scene, fascinated, not wanting to move. It seemed so remote and no part of him; it was a play apart and separate, wondrous to watch, not without its strange pleasure. That’s all for me, you thought, that’s all taking place just for me, by God.
If he wished, he could linger here, in comfort, and follow the entire hunt on through its swift phases, down alleys, across streets, over empty running avenues, crossing lots and playgrounds, with pauses here or there for the necessary commercials, up other alleys to the burning house of Mr. and Mrs. Black, and so on finally to this house with Faber and himself seated, drinking while the Electric Hound snuffed down the last trail, silent as a drift of death itself, skidding to a halt outside that window there.
Then, if he wished, Montag might rise, walk to the window, keep one eye on the TV screen, open the window, lean out, look back, and see himself dramatized, described, made over, standing there, limned in the bright small television screen from outside, a drama to be watched objectively, knowing that in other parlors he was large as life, in full color, dimensionally perfect! and if he kept his eye peeled quickly he would see himself, an instant before oblivion, being punctured for the benefit of how many civilian parlor-sitters who had been wakened from sleep a few minutes ago by the frantic sirening of their living room walls to come watch the big game, the hunt, the one-man carnival.
Would he have time for a speech? As the Hound seized him, in view of ten or twenty or thirty million people, mightn’t he sum up his entire life in the last week in one single phrase or a word that would stay with them long after the Hound had turned, clenching him in its metal-plier jaws, and trotted off in darkness, while the camera remained stationary, watching the creature dwindle in the distance, a splendid fade-out! What could he say in a single word, a few words, that would sear all their faces and wake them up?
“There,” whispered Faber.
Out of a helicopter glided something that was not machine, not animal, not dead, not alive, glowing with a pale-green luminosity. It stood near the smoking ruins of Montag’s house and the men brought his discarded flame thrower to it and put it down under the muzzle of the Hound. There was a whirring, clicking, humming.
Montag shook his head and got up and drank the rest of his drink. “It’s time. I’m sorry about this.”
“About what? Me? My house? I deserve everything. Run, for God’s sake. Perhaps I can delay them here—”
“Wait. There’s no use you being discovered. When I leave, burn the spread of this bed that I touched. Burn the chair in the living room, in your wall incinerator. Wipe down the furniture with alcohol, wipe the doorknobs. Burn the throw-rug in the parlor. Turn the air conditioning on full in all the rooms and spray with moth spray if you have it. Then, turn on your lawn sprinklers as high as they’ll go and hose off the sidewalks. With any luck at all, we can kill the trail in here, anyway.”
Faber shook his hand. “I’ll tend to it. Good luck. If we’re both in good health, next week, the week after, get in touch, General Delivery, St. Louis. I’m sorry there’s no way I can go with you this time, by earphone. That was good for both of us. But my equipment was limited. You see, I never thought I would use it. What a silly old man. No thought there. Stupid, stupid. So I haven’t another green bullet, the right kind, to put in your head. Go now!”
“One last thing. Quick. A suitcase, get it, fill it with your dirtiest clothes, an old suit, the dirtier the better, a shirt, some old sneakers and socks. . . .”
Faber was gone and back in a minute. They sealed the cardboard valise with clear tape. “To keep the ancient odor of Mr. Faber in, of course,” said Faber, sweating at the job.
Montag doused the exterior of the valise with whiskey. “I don’t want that Hound picking up two odors at once. May I take this whiskey? I’ll need it later. Christ, I hope this works!”
They shook hands again and going out the door glanced at the TV. The Hound was on its way, followed by hovering helicopter cameras, silently, silently, sniffing the great night wind. It was running down the first alley.
“Goodbye!”
And Montag was out the back door lightly, running with the half-empty valise. Behind him he heard the lawn-sprinkling system jump up, filing the dark air with rain that fell gently and then with a steady pour all about, washing on the sidewalks and draining into the alley. He carried a few drops of this rain with him on his face. He thought he heard the old man call goodbye, but he wasn’t certain.
He ran very fast away from the house, down toward the river.
Montag ran.
He could feel the Hound, like autumn, come cold and dry and swift, like a wind that didn’t stir grass, that didn’t jar windows or disturb leaf shadows on the white sidewalks as it passed. The Hound did not touch the world. It carried its silence with it, so you could feel the silence building up a pressure behind you all across town. Montag felt the pressure rising, and ran.
He stopped for breath, on his way to the river, to peer through dimly lit windows of wakened houses, and saw the silhouettes of people inside watching their parlor walls and there on the walls the Mechanical Hound, a breath of neon vapor, spidered along, here and gone, here and gone! Now at Elm Terrace, Lincoln, Oak, Park, and up the alley toward Faber’s house!
Go past, thought Montag, don’t stop, go on, don’t turn in!
On the parlor wall, Faber’s house, with its sprinkler system pulsing in the night air.
The Hound paused, quivering.
No! Montag held to the windowsill. This way! Here!
The procaine needle flicked out and in, out and in. A single clear drop of the stuff of dreams fell from the needle as it vanished in the Hound’s muzzle.
Montag held his breath, like a doubled fist, in his chest.
The Mechanical Hound turned and plunged away from Faber’s house down the alley again.
Montag snapped his gaze to the sky. The helicopters were closer, a great blowing of insects to a single light source.
With an effort, Montag reminded himself again that this was no fictional episode to be watched on his run to the river; it was in actuality his own chess game he was witnessing, move by move.
He shouted to give himself the necessary push away from this last house window, and the fascinating séance going on in there! Hell! and he was away and gone! The alley, a street, the alley, a street, and the smell of the river. Leg out, leg down, leg out and down. Twenty million Montags running, soon, if the cameras caught him.
Twenty million Montags running, running like an ancient flickery Keystone Comedy, cops, robbers, chasers and the chased, hunters and hunted, he had seen it a thousand times. Behind him now twenty million silently baying Hounds, ricocheted across parlors, three-cushion shooting from right wall to center wall to left wall, gone, right wall, center wall, left wall, gone!
Montag jammed his Seashell to his ear:
“Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows. The fugitive cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house. Ready!”
Of course! Why hadn’t they done it before! Why, in all the years, hadn’t this game been tried! Everyone up, everyone out! He couldn’t be missed! The only man running alone in the night city, the only man proving his legs!
“At the count of ten now! One! Two!”
He felt the city rise.
“Three!”
He felt the city turn to its thousands of doors.
“Four!”
The people sleepwalking in their hallways.
“Five!”
He felt their hands on the doorknobs!
The smell of the river was cool and like a solid rain. His throat was burnt rust and his eyes were wept dry with running. He yelled as if this yell would jet him on, fling him the last hundred yards.
“Six, seven, eight!”
The doorknobs turned on five thousand doors.
“Nine!”
He ran out away from the last row of houses, on a slope leading down to a solid moving blackness.
“Ten!”
The doors opened.
He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like gray animals peering from electric caves, faces with gray colorless eyes, gray tongues and gray thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face.
But he was at the river.
He touched it, just to be sure it was real. He waded in and stripped in darkness to the skin, splashed his body, arms, legs, and head with raw liquor; drank it and snuffed some up his nose. Then he dressed in Faber’s old clothes and shoes. He tossed his own clothing into the river and watched it swept away. Then, holding the suitcase, he walked out in the river until there was no bottom and he was swept away in the dark.
He was three hundred yards downstream when the Hound reached the river. Overhead the great
