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lay down the track by the river. The voices talked of everything, there was nothing
they could not talk about, he knew from the very cadence and motion and continual
stir of curiosity and wonder in them.
And then one of the men looked up and saw him, for the first or perhaps the seventh
time, and a voice called to Montag:
"All right, you can come out now ! "
Montag stepped back into the shadows.
"It's all right," the voice said. "You're welcome here."
Montag walked slowly toward the fire and the five old men sitting there dressed in
dark blue denim pants and jackets and dark blue suits. He did not know what to say
to them.
"Sit down," said the man who seemed to be the leader of the small group. "Have
some coffee?"
He watched the dark steaming mixture pour into a collapsible tin cup, which was
handed him straight off. He sipped it gingerly and felt them looking at him with
curiosity. His lips were scalded, but that was good. The faces around him were
bearded, but the beards were clean, neat, and their hands were clean. They had
stood up as if to welcome a guest, and now they sat down again. Montag sipped.
"Thanks," he said. "Thanks very much."
"You're welcome, Montag. My name's Granger." He held out a small bottle of
colourless fluid. "Drink this, too. It'll change the chemical index of your perspiration.
Half an hour from now you'll smell like two other people. With the Hound after you,
the best thing is Bottoms up."
Montag drank the bitter fluid.
"You'll stink like a bobcat, but that's all right," said Granger.
"You know my name;" said Montag.
Granger nodded to a portable battery TV set by the fire.
"We've watched the chase. Figured you'd wind up south along the river. When we
heard you plunging around out in the forest like a drunken elk, we didn't hide as we
usually do. We figured you were in the river, when the helicopter cameras swung
back in over the city. Something funny there. The chase is still running. The other
way, though."
"The other way?"
"Let's have a look."
Granger snapped the portable viewer on. The picture was a nightmare, condensed,
easily passed from hand to hand, in the forest, all whirring colour and flight. A voice
cried:
"The chase continues north in the city! Police helicopters are converging on Avenue
87 and Elm Grove Park!"
Granger nodded. "They're faking. You threw them off at the river. They can't admit it.
They know they can hold their audience only so long. The show's got to have a snap
ending, quick! If they started searching the whole damn river it might take all night.
So they're sniffing for a scape-goat to end things with a bang. Watch. They'll catch
Montag in the next five minutes! "
"But how--"
"Watch."
The camera, hovering in the belly of a helicopter, now swung down at an empty
street.
"See that?" whispered Granger. "It'll be you; right up at the end of that street is our
victim. See how our camera is coming in? Building the scene. Suspense. Long shot.
Right now, some poor fellow is out for a walk. A rarity. An odd one. Don't think the
police don't know the habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the
hell of it, or for reasons of insomnia Anyway, the police have had him charted for
months, years. Never know when that sort of information might be handy. And today,
it turns out, it's very usable indeed. It saves face. Oh, God, look there!"
The men at the fire bent forward.
On the screen, a man turned a corner. The Mechanical Hound rushed forward into
the viewer, suddenly. The helicopter light shot down a dozen brilliant pillars that built
a cage all about the man.
A voice cried, "There's Montag ! The search is done!"
The innocent man stood bewildered, a cigarette burning in his hand. He stared at the
Hound, not knowing what it was. He probably never knew. He glanced up at the sky
and the wailing sirens. The cameras rushed down. The Hound leapt up into the air
with a rhythm and a sense of timing that was incredibly beautiful. Its needle shot out.
It was suspended for a moment in their gaze, as if to give the vast audience time to
appreciate everything, the raw look of the victim's face, the empty street, the steel
animal a bullet nosing the target.
"Montag, don't move!" said a voice from the sky.
The camera fell upon the victim, even as did the Hound. Both reached him
simultaneously. The victim was seized by Hound and camera in a great spidering,
clenching grip. He screamed. He screamed. He screamed!
Blackout.
Silence.
Darkness.
Montag cried out in the silence and turned away.
Silence.
And then, after a time of the men sitting around the fire, their faces expressionless,
an announcer on the dark screen said, "The search is over, Montag is dead; a crime
against society has been avenged."
Darkness.
"We now take you to the Sky Room of the Hotel Lux for a half-hour of Just-Before-
Dawn, a programme of-"
Granger turned it off.
"They didn't show the man's face in focus. Did you notice?
Even your best friends couldn't tell if it was you. They scrambled it just enough to let
the imagination take over. Hell," he whispered. "Hell."
Montag said nothing but now, looking back, sat with his eyes fixed to the blank
screen, trembling.
Granger touched Montag's arm. "Welcome back from the dead." Montag nodded.
Granger went on. "You might as well know all of us, now. This is Fred Clement,
former occupant of the Thomas Hardy chair at Cambridge in the years before it
became an Atomic Engineering School. This other is Dr. Simmons from U.C.L.A., a
specialist in Ortega y Gasset; Professor West here did quite a bit for ethics, an
ancient study now, for Columbia University quite some years ago. Reverend Padover
here gave a few lectures thirty years ago and lost his flock between one Sunday and
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