The Veldt - Ray Bradbury, ebook, Temp
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Rej Bredberi. Vel'd (original in english)Ocenite etot tekstNe chital10987654321Rej Bredberi. Vel'd (original in english)Ray Bradbury. The Veldt"George, I wish you'd look at the nursery.""What's wrong with it?""I don't know.""Well, then.""I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in tolook at it.""What would a psychologist want with a nursery?""You know very well what he'd want." His wife paused in the middle ofthe kitchen and watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper forfour."It's just that the nursery is different now than it was.""All right, let's have a look."They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, whichhad cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothedand fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them.Their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the nursery light flickedon when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in thehalls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a softautomaticity."Well," said George Hadley.They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was forty feetacross by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost half again asmuch as the rest of the house. "But nothing's too good for our children,"George had said.The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot highnoon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and LydiaHadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recedeinto crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldtappeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to thefinal pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky witha hot yellow sun.George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow."Let's get out of this sun," he said. "This is a little too real. But Idon't see anything wrong.""Wait a moment, you'll see," said his wife.Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor atthe two people in the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell oflion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rustysmell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. Andnow the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the paperyrustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickeredon George Hadley's upturned, sweating face."Filthy creatures," he heard his wife say."The vultures.""You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they're on theirway to the water hole. They've just been eating," said Lydia. "I don't knowwhat.""Some animal." George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burninglight from his squinted eyes. "A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe.""Are you sure?" His wife sounded peculiarly tense."No, it's a little late to be sure," be said, amused. "Nothing overthere I can see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for what'sleft.""Did you bear that scream?" she asked.'No.""About a minute ago?""Sorry, no."The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled withadmiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracleof efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one.Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, theystartled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone,not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like aquick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishlyand startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, andyour mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heatedpelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of anexquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and thesound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and thesmell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terriblegreen-yellow eyes."Watch out!" screamed Lydia.The lions came running at them.Lydia bolted and ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside,in the hall, with the door slammed he was laughing and she was crying, andthey both stood appalled at the other's reaction."George!""Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!""They almost got us!""Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that's all they are. Oh, theylook real, I must admit - Africa in your parlor - but it's all dimensional,superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behindglass screens. It's all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here's myhandkerchief.""I'm afraid." She came to him and put her body against him and criedsteadily. "Did you see? Did you feel? It's too real.""Now, Lydia...""You've got to tell Wendy and Peter not to read any more on Africa.""Of course - of course." He patted her."Promise?""Sure.""And lock the nursery for a few days until I get my nerves settled.""You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him amonth ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours - the tantrum bethrew! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery.""It's got to be locked, that's all there is to it.""All right." Reluctantly he locked the huge door. "You've been workingtoo hard. You need a rest.""I don't know - I don't know," she said, blowing her nose, sitting downin a chair that immediately began to rock and comfort her. "Maybe I don'thave enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don't we shutthe whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?""You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?""Yes." She nodded."And dam my socks?""Yes." A frantic, watery-eyed nodding."And sweep the house?""Yes, yes - oh, yes!''"But I thought that's why we bought this house, so we wouldn't have todo anything?""That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife andmother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give abath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrubbath can? I cannot. And it isn't just me. It's you. You've been awfullynervous lately.""I suppose I have been smoking too much.""You look as if you didn't know what to do with yourself in this house,either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more everyafternoon and need a little more sedative every night. You're beginning tofeel unnecessary too.""Am I?" He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was reallythere."Oh, George!" She looked beyond him, at the nursery door. "Those lionscan't get out of there, can they?"He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumpedagainst it from the other side."Of course not," he said.At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a special plasticcarnival across town and bad televised home to say they'd be late, to goahead eating. So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching the dining-room tableproduce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior."We forgot the ketchup," he said."Sorry," said a small voice within the table, and ketchup appeared.As for the nursery, thought George Hadley, it won't hurt for thechildren to be locked out of it awhile. Too much of anything isn't good foranyone. And it was clearly indicated that the children had been spending alittle too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his neck,still, like a hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Remarkable howthe nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds andcreated life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, andthere were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun -sun. Giraffes - giraffes. Death and death.That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table bad cut forhim. Death thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for deaththoughts. Or, no, you were never too young, really. Long before you knewwhat death was you were wishing it on someone else. When you were two yearsold you were shooting people with cap pistols.But this - the long, hot African veldt-the awful death in the jaws of alion. And repeated again and again."Where are you going?"He didn't answer Lydia. Preoccupied, be let the lights glow softly onahead of him, extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. Helistened against it. Far away, a lion roared.He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, heheard a faraway scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsidedquickly.He stepped into Africa. How many times in the last year had he openedthis door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and hisMagical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cowjumping over a very real-appearing moon-all the delightful contraptions of amake-believe world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling,or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing. But now,is y...
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