Referent, Ray Bradbury

Referent

ROBY MORRISON fidgeted. Walking in the tropical heat he heard the wet thunder of waves on the shore. There was a green silence on Orthopaedic Island.

It was the year 1997, but Roby did not care.

All around him was the garden where he prowled, all ten years of him. This was Meditation Hour. Beyond the garden wall, to the north, were the High I.Q. Cubicles where he and the other boys slept in special beds.

With morning they popped up like bottle-corks, dashed into showers, gulped food, and were sucked down vacuum-tubes half across the island to Semantics School. Then to Physiology. After Physiology he was blown back underground and released through a seal in the great garden wall to spend this silly hour of meditative frustration, as prescribed by the island Psychologists.

Roby had his opinion of it. ‘Damned silly.’

Today, he was in furious rebellion. He glared at the sea, wishing he had the sea’s freedom to come and go. His eyes were dark, his cheeks flushed, his small hands twitched nervously.

Somewhere in the garden a chime vibrated softly. Fifteen more minutes of meditation. Huh! And then to the Robot Commissionary to stuff his dead hunger as taxidermists stuff birds.

And, after the scientifically pure lunch, through the tube again to Sociology. Of course, late in the warm green afternoon, games would be played in the Main Garden. Games some tremble-brained Psychologist had evolved from a nightmare-haunted sleep.

This was the future! You must live, my lad, as the people of the past, of the year 1920, 1930, and 1942 predicted you would live! Everything fresh, brisk, sanitary, too, too fresh! No nasty old parents about to give one complexes. Everything controlled, dear boy!

Roby should have been in a perfect mood for something unique.
He wasn’t.

When the star fell from the sky a moment later he was only more irritated.

The star was a spheroid. It crashed and rolled to a stop on the hot green grass. A small door popped open in it.

Faintly, this incident recalled a dream to the child. A dream which with superior stubbornness he had refused to record in his Freud Book this morning. The dream-thought was in his mind at the exact instant that the star-door popped wide and some ‘thing’ emerged.

Some ‘thing’.
Young eyes, seeing an object for the first time, have to make a familiar thing of it. Roby didn’t know what this ‘thing’ was, stepping from the sphere. So, scowling, Roby thought of what it most resembled.

Instantly the ‘something’ became a certain thing.
Warm air ran cold. Light flickered, form changed, melted, shifted as the thing evolved into certainty.

Startled, a tall, thin, pale man stood beside the metal star.
The man had pink, terrified eyes. He trembled.

‘Oh, I know you.’ Roby was disappointed. ‘You’re only the Sandman.’
‘Sand – man?’

The stranger quivered like heat rising from boiling metal. His shaking hands went wildly up to touch his long coppery hair as if he’d never seen or felt of it before. The Sandman gazed in horror at his own hands, legs, feet, body, as if they were all new. ‘Sand-man?’

The word was difficult. Talking was new to him, also. He seemed about to flee, but something stopped him.

‘Yeah,’ said Roby. ‘I dream about you every night. Oh, I know what you think. Semantically, our teachers say that ghosts, goblins and fairies, and sandmen are labels, only names for which there aren’t any actual referents, no actual objects or things. But to heck with that. We kids know more than teachers about it. You being here proves the teachers wrong. There are Sandmen after all, aren’t there?’

‘Don’t give me a label!’ cried the Sandman, suddenly. He seemed to understand now. For some reason he was unutterably frightened. He kept pinching, tugging, and feeling his own long new body as if it was a thing of terror. ‘Don’t name me, don’t label me!’

‘Huh?’
‘I’m a referent!’ screamed the Sandman. ‘I’m not a label! I’m just a referent! Let me go!’

Roby’s little green cat-eyes slitted. ‘Say –’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘Did Mr Grill send you? I bet he did! I bet this is another of those psychological tests!’

Roby flushed with dark anger. Always and for ever they were at him. They sorted his games, food, education, took away his friends and his mother, his father, and now – played tricks on him!

‘I’m not from Mr Grill,’ pleaded the Sandman. ‘Listen, before anyone else comes and sees me this way and makes it worse!’

Roby kicked violently. The Sandman danced back, gasping:
‘Listen. I’m not human! You are!’ he shouted. ‘Thought has moulded the flesh of all you here on this world! You’re all dictated to by labels. But I – I am a pure referent!’
‘Liar!’ More kicking from Roby.

The Sandman gibbered with frustration. ‘The truth, child! Centuries of thought have moulded your atoms to your present form; if you could undermine and destroy that belief, the beliefs of your friends, teachers, and parents, you could change form, be a pure referent, too! Like Freedom, Liberty, Humanity, or Time, Space, and Justice!’

‘Grill sent you; he’s always pestering me!’
‘No, no! Atoms are malleable. You’ve accepted certain labels on Earth, called Man, Woman, Child, Head, Hands, Fingers, Feet. You’ve changed from anything into something.’
‘Leave me alone,’ protested Roby. ‘I’ve a test today, I have to think.’ He sat on a rock, hands over his ears.

The Sandman glanced fearfully about, as if expecting disaster. Standing over Roby, he was beginning to tremble and cry. ‘Earth could have been a thousand other ways. Thought, using labels, went round tidying up a disordered cosmos. Now no one bothers trying to think things into other different shapes!’

‘Go away,’ sniffed Roby.

‘I landed near you, not suspecting the danger. I was curious. Inside my spheriod spaceship, thoughts cannot change my shape. I’ve travelled from world to world, over the centuries, and never been trapped like this !’ Tears sprang down his face. ‘And now, by the gods, you’ve labelled me, caught me, imprisoned me with thought!

This Sandman idea. Horrible! I can’t fight it, I can’t change back! And if I can’t change back I’ll never fit into my ship again, I’m much too large. I’ll be stranded on Earth for ever. Release me!’

The Sandman screamed, wept, shouted. Roby’s mind wandered. He debated quietly with himself. What did he want most of all? Escape from this island. Silly. They always caught you. What then? Games, maybe. Like to play regular games, minus psycho-supervision. Yeah, that’d be nice. Kick-the-can, or spin-the-bottle, or even just a rubber ball to bounce on the garden wall and catch, all to himself. Yeah. A red ball.

The Sandman cried, ‘Don’t –’
Silence.
A red rubber ball bounced on the ground.
Up and down bounced the red rubber ball.

‘Hey!’ It took Roby a moment to realize the ball was there. ‘Where’d this come from?’ He hurled it against the wall, caught it. ‘Gee!’
He didn’t notice the absence of a certain stranger who had been shouting at him a few moments before.
The Sandman was gone.

Way off in the hot distance of the garden a bonging noise sounded. A cylinder was rushing up the tube to the wall’s circular door. The door peeled open with a faint hiss. Footsteps rustled measuredly along the path. Mr Grill stepped through a a lush frame of tiger-lilies.

‘Morning, Roby. Oh!’ Mr Grill stopped, his chubby pink face looked as if it had been kicked. ‘What have you there, boy?’ he cried.
Roby bounced the object against the wall.
‘This? A rubber ball.’

‘Eh?’ Grill’s small blue eyes blinked, narrowing. Then he relaxed. ‘Why, of course. For a moment I thought I saw – uh – er –’
Roby bounced the ball some more.

Grill cleared his throat. ‘Lunch time. Meditation Hour is over. And I’m not certain that Minister Locke would enjoy your playing unorthodox games.’
Roby swore under his breath.

‘Oh, well, then, go on. Play. I won’t tattle.’ Mr Grill was in a generous mood.

‘Don’t feel like playing.’ Roby sulked, shoving his sandal-tip into the dirt. Teachers spoiled everything. You couldn’t vomit without permission.
Grill tried to interest the boy. ‘If you come to lunch now, I’ll let you televise your mother in Chicago afterwards.’

‘Time limit, two minutes, ten seconds, no more, no less,’ was Roby’s acid reply.
‘I gather you don’t approve of things, boy.’
‘I’ll run away some day, wait and see!’

‘Tut, lad. We’ll always bring you back, you know.’

‘I didn’t ask to be brought here in the first place.’ Roby bit his lip, staring at his new red rubber ball. He thought he had seen it kind of, sort of, well – move. Funny. He held the ball in his hand. The ball shivered.

Grill patted his shoulder. ‘Your mother is neurotic. Bad environment. You’re better off here on the island. You have a high I.Q. and it is an honour for you to be here with the other little boy geniuses. You’re unstable and unhappy and we’re trying to change that. Eventually you’ll be the exact antithesis of your mother.’
‘I love Mother!’

‘You like her,’ corrected Grill, quietly.
‘I like Mother,’ replied Roby, disquieted. The red ball twitched in his hands, without his touching it. He looked at it with wonder.

‘You’ll only make it harder for yourself if you love her,’ said Grill.
‘You’re a goddam silly,’ said Roby.

Grill stiffened. ‘Don’t swear. Besides, you don’t really mean god and you don’t mean damn. There’s very little of either in the world. Semantics Book Seven, page 418. Labels and Referents.’

‘Now I remember!’ shouted Roby, looking around. ‘There was a Sandman here just now and he said –’

‘Come along,’ said Mr Grill. ‘Lunch time.’

Commissary food emerged from robot-servers on extension