Bradbury, Ray - Chapbook 13 by Ahmed, the Oblivion Machines (v2.1)

 
    The gull circled a final time, crying.
    "Oh," whispered Ahmed. "Shall
we fly one day?"
    "In another year," said his father,
"but no one knows its name. Come. You must walk be fore you ride and
ride before you fly. In the night, will your camel grow wings?"
    And it was during that night that Ahmed stared at the sky and
counted the stars until he was dizzy with counting. Then, drunk with light, he swayed as
he inhaled the night wind. Crazed with delight at all that he saw in the heavens, he
toppled and fell and was buried in the cooling sands. So, unseen by his father
or the caravan of marching beasts, he was left to die among the dunes
in the hours after midnight .
    When Ahmed swam up through the sands, there were only the hoofprints of the great cam els sifting away down the wind, at
last gone, whispering.
    I die, thought Ahmed. For what am I pun ished? Being only twelve, I do not recall any terrible
crimes I committed. In another life, was I evil, a devil unseen and now discovered?
    It was then that his foot scraped something beneath the shifting
sands.
    He hesitated, then fell to his knees to plunge his
hands deep, as if searching for hidden silver or buried gold.
    Something more than treasure rose to view as he swept the sand
to let the night wind blow it away.
    A strange face stared up at him, a bas-relief in bronze, the face of a nameless man or a buried myth, immense,
grimacing underfoot, magnificent and serene.
    "Oh, ancient god, whatever your
name," whispered Ahmed. "Help this lost son of a good father, this evil boy
who meant no harm but slept in school, ran errands slowly, did not pray from his heart,
ignored his mother, and did not hold his family in great esteem. For all this
I know I
must suffer. But here in the midst of silence, at the desert's heart,
where even the wind knows
not my name? Must I die so young? Am I to be forgotten without having been?"
    The bronze bas-relief face of the old god glared up at him as
the sand hissed over its empty mouth.
    Ahmed said, "What prayers must I offer, what sacrifice must I
give, so that you, old one, may warm your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your mouth to
speak?"
    The ancient god said only night and time and wind in syllables that
Ahmed understood not.
    And so he wept.
    Just as all men do not laugh or all women move alike, so all
boys do not weep alike. It is a language that the ancient gods know. For the tears that fall come
from the soul out of the eyes unto the earth.
    And the tears of Ahmed rained upon the bronze bas-relief face
of the ancient spirit and rinsed its shut lids so they trembled.
    Ahmed did not see, but continued weeping,
     

And so he wept.

 
    and his small rain
touched the half-seen ears of the buried god and they opened to hear the night and the wind
and the weeping, and the ears— moved!
    But Ahmed did not see and his last tears wa tered the mouth of the
god, to anoint the bronze tongue.
    So at last the entire face was washed and shook to let bark a
laugh so sharp that Ahmed, shocked, flailed back and cried:
    "What!"
    "Indeed, what?" said the
gaped mouth of the god.
    "Who are you?" cried Ahmed.
    "Company in the desert night, friend to
si lence,
companion to dusk, inheritor of the dawn," said the cold mouth. But the eyes
were friendly,
seeing Ahmed so young and afraid. "Boy, your name?"
    "Ahmed of the
caravans."
    "And I? Shall I tell you my life?" asked the bronze face gazing up from the moonlit sands.
    "Oh, do!"
    "I am Gonn -Ben-Allah. Gonn the
Magnifi cent. Keeper
of the Ghosts of the lost names!"
    "Can names be ghosts and lost?"
Ahmed wiped
his eyes to bend closer. "Great Gonn , how long
were you buried here?"
    "Hark," whispered the bronze mouth.
"I have
been to my own funeral ten thousand times your days."
    "I cannot count that far."
    "Nor should you," answered Gonn -Ben-Allah. "For I am found. Your tears move my
eyes to see,
my ears to hear, my mouth to speak long before the Sack of Rome or Caesar's death, back to the caves and
the