There Will Come Soft Rains - Ray Bradbury, ebook, Temp
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RAY BRADBURY(1920- )Like his fellow American writer of "science fiction," Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury is a phenomenon, not easily defined. Since he sold his first story (to a pulp magazine) at the age of twenty-one, he has published hundreds of short stories and has become one of our most widely read American writers here and abroad. Marginalized, at least in part, because of his association with what is perceived to be a nonliterary tradition, Bradbury is, in fact, in such stories as the finely crafted, elegiac work included here, in a vital and on-going tradition that includes Hawthorne and Poe; and, more generally, such visionaries as H. G. Wells, Karel Capek, Aldous Huxley, and Stanislaw Lem. At his best, Bradbury is a poet of ominous prophecies?whose vision of a hellish future begins to seem, as the twentieth century reels to a close, ever more like realistic fiction and not fantasy.Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Ray Bradbury has lived most of his adult life in California. His major titles are The Martian Chronicles (1950), from which this selection has been taken, The Illustrated Man (1951), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Dandelion Wine (1957), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978). The Stories of Ray Bradbury appeared in 1980.The title "There Will Come Soft Rains" is a line from a poem by Sara Teasdale, used to devastating irony here.There Will Come Soft RainsIn the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected--------------------------------------------------------------------------------from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk."Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today ..." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a--------------------------------------------------------------------------------photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.The five spots of paint?the man, the woman, the children, the ball?remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.Twelve noon.A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall panels flipped open and the copper scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel jaws, was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped into the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner.The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house realized, that only silence was here.If sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odor and the scent of maple syrup.The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its--------------------------------------------------------------------------------eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour.Two o'clock, sang a voice.Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray leaves in an electrical wind.Two-fifteen.The dog was gone.In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.Two thirty-five.Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.At four o'clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls.Four-thirty.The nursery walls glowed.Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films clocked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched weed, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes.It was the children's hour.Five o'clock. The bath filled with clear hot water. Six, seven, eight o'clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. In the metal stand opposite the--------------------------------------------------------------------------------hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting.Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling:"Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?"The house was silent.The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random." Quiet music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favorite. . . ."There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.Not one would mind, either bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone. "The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music...
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