Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 by The Machineries of Joy (v2.1) Page B

earth sinking back into seas of
saber-grass, marigold, marguerite and morning-glory. They had taken it with
remarkable calm at first, perhaps because they had not liked the city for so
many years, and had had so many friends who were not truly friends, and had
lived a boxed and separate life of their own within a mechanical hive.
                   The husband arose and looked out the window
and observed very calmly, as if it were a weather condition, "Everyone's
gone," knowing this just by the sounds the city had ceased to make.
                   They took their time over breakfast, for the
boy was still asleep, and then the husband sat back and said, "Now I must
plan what to do."
                   "Do? Why . . . why, you'll go to work, of
course."
                   "You still don't believe it, do
you?" He laughed. "That I won't be rushing off each day at eight-ten,
that Jim won't go to school again ever. School's out for all of us! No more
pencils, no more books, no more boss's sassy looks! We're let out, darling, and
we'll never come back to the silly damn dull routines. Come on!"
                   And he had walked her through the still and
empty city streets.
                   "They didn't die," he said.
"They just . . . went away."
                   "What about the other cities?"
                   He went to an outdoor phone booth and dialed
Chicago, then New York, then San Francisco.
                   Silence. Silence. Silence.
                   "That's it," he said, replacing the
receiver.
                   "I feel guilty," she said. "Them
gone and us here. And . . . I feel happy. Why? I should be unhappy."
                   "Should you? It's no tragedy. They
weren't tortured or blasted or burned. They went easily and they didn't know.
And now we owe nothing to no one. Our only responsibility is being happy.
Thirty more years of happiness, wouldn't that be good?"
                   "But . . . then we must have more
children!"
                 “To
repopulate the world?" He shook his head slowly, calmly. "No. Let Jim
be the last. After he's grown and gone let the horses and cows and ground
squirrels and garden spiders have the world. They'll get on. And someday some
other species that can combine a natural happiness with a natural curiosity
will build cities that won't even look; like cities to us, and survive. Right
now, let's go pack a basket, wake Jim, and get going on that long thirty-year
summer vacation. I'll beat you to the house!"
                   He took a sledge hammer from the small rail
car, and while he worked alone for half an hour fixing the rusted rails into
place the woman and the boy ran along the shore. They came back with dripping
shells, a dozen or more, and some beautiful pink pebbles, and sat and the boy
took school from the mother, doing homework on a pad with a pencil for a time,
and then at high noon the man came down, his coat off, his tie thrown aside,
and they drank orange pop, watching the bubbles surge up, glutting, inside the
bottles. It was quiet. They listened to the sun tune the old iron rails. The
smell of hot tar on the ties moved about them in the salt wind, as the husband
tapped his atlas map lightly and gently.
                   "Well go to Sacramento next month. May,
then work up toward Seattle. Should make that by July first, July's a good
month in Washington, then back down as the weather cools, to Yellowstone, a few
miles a day, hunt here, fish there . . ."
                   The boy, bored, moved away to throw sticks
into the sea and wade out like a dog to retrieve them.
                   The man went on: "Winter in Tucson, then,
part of the winter, moving toward Florida, up the coast in the spring, and
maybe New York by June. Two years from now, Chicago in the summer. Winter,
three years from now,