Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury Page A

!”
    â€œNo!” someone else cried, and a dozen others whispered, “No!”
    â€œThat’s not possible,” someone said.
    â€œAnything,” said Cardiff, quietly, “in government, is possible.”
    â€œThey can’t do that,” one of the ladies cried.
    â€œBut they can. No freeway in any part of your state has ever been put on the ballot. The highway men, God listen to that, highway men, are their own conscience.”
    â€œAnd you traveled here to warn us?” said Elias Culpepper.
    Cardiff blushed. “No.”
    â€œYou were going to keep it secret!?”
    â€œI wanted to see your town. I planned nothing. I assumed you all knew.”
    â€œWe know nothing,” said Elias Culpepper. “God almighty. You might as well say Vesuvius is threatening to erupt at our city limits!”
    â€œI must admit,” said Cardiff, “that when I saw your faces, had breakfast, lunch, and dinner with you, I knew I couldn’t leave and not tell you.”
    â€œTell us again,” said Elias Culpepper.
    Cardiff looked at Nef, who gave him the merest nod.
    â€œThe State Highway Commission …”
    Lightning struck. Earthquakes shook. A comet hit the Earth. Cats leaped off roofs. Dogs bit their tails and died.
    And the picnic ground, the sweet grass, was empty.
    Sweet Jesus, thought Cardiff, have I done this?
    â€œFool, idiot, stupid dumb idiot fool,” he muttered.
    He opened his eyes and saw Nef standing on a rise of green lawn calling over to him. “Come into the shade. You’ll die of sunstroke.”
    And he went over into the shade.

CHAPTER 26
    My God, Cardiff thought, even the sunflowers have turned away. He could not see their faces, but he was certain they fixed him with a fiery stare.
    â€œI’m empty,” he said at last. “I’ve told all my secrets. Now, Nef, you must give me yours.”
    â€œWell,” she said, and began to take sandwiches out of a hamper, to cut bread and butter it and offer it to him as she spoke.
    â€œEveryone in this town was once somewhere else,” she said. “We came together one by one. Long, long ago, we knocked elbows in Rome or Paris or Athens or Dallas or Portland until, very late in time, we found out that there was a place where we might collect. Sanctuary, Arizona, was one of the names, but that was foolish. I imagine Summerton’s just as foolish, but it fits. It has to do with flowers and survival. We all grew up in Madrid or Dublin or Milwaukee, some in France or Italy. In the very beginning, a long time ago, there were some children, but as time passed the children got fewer. It had nothing to do with wine or flowers, nothing to do with the environment or the families, even though it seems to have been genetic. I guess you’d call us ‘sports.’ That’s a scientific term for something that can’t be explained. The Darwinians said the process was all jumps, hops, genetic leaps, with no links between. Suddenly, members of a family whose ancestors had lived to seventy years were living to ninety, a hundred. Others, even longer. But the peculiar thing, of course, was that there were those of us—young men and women—who did not much change at all, and then simply did not change. While all our friends moved on to sickness and old age, we strange ones stayed behind. It was one long picnic spread over the entire North American continent and Europe. And we, the lonely ones, were the exceptions to the rule of ‘Grow up, grow old, and certainly die.’ For a while, we hardly noticed this peculiar longevity ourselves, except to note that we felt fine and looked good while our friends jumped headlong into the grave. We peculiars lingered in mid-spring with summer always just around the corner, and autumn somewhere far down the road, not even a rumor. Does any of this make sense?”
    Cardiff nodded, fascinated with what she was saying, the flow and