Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 (19 page)

 
          
The
stars, the moon, the wind, the clock ticking, and the chiming of the hours into
dawn, the sun rising, and here it was another morning, another day, and Mr.
Koberman
coming along the sidewalk from his night’s work.
Douglas
stood off like a small mechanism whirring
and watching with carefully microscopic eyes.

 
          
At
noon
, Grandma went to the store to buy
groceries.

 
          
As
was his custom every day when Grandma was gone,
Douglas
yelled outside Mr.
Koberman’s
door for a full three minutes. As usual, there was no response. The silence was
horrible.

 
          
He
ran downstairs, got the pass-key, a silver fork, and the three pieces of
colored glass he had saved from the shattered window. He fitted the key to the
lock and swung the door slowly open.

 
          
The
room was in half light, the shades drawn. Mr.
Koberman
lay atop his bedcovers, in slumber clothes, breathing gently, up and down. He
didn’t move. His face was motionless.

 
          
“Hello,
Mr.
Koberman
!”

 
          
The
colorless walls echoed the man’s regular breathing.

 
          
“Mr.
Koberman
, hello!”

 
          
Bouncing
a golf ball,
Douglas
advanced. He yelled.
Still
no answer.
“Mr.
Koberman
!”

 
          
Bending
over Mr.
Koberman
,
Douglas
picked the tines of the silver fork in the
sleeping man’s face.

 
          
Mr.
Koberman
winced. He twisted. He groaned bitterly.

 
          
Response.
Good. Swell.

 
          
Douglas
drew a piece of blue glass from his pocket.
Looking through the blue glass fragment he found himself in a blue room, in a
blue world different from the world he knew.
As different as
was the red world.
Blue furniture, blue bed, blue ceiling and walls,
blue wooden eating utensils atop the blue bureau, and the sullen dark blue of
Mr.
Koberman’s
face and arms and his blue chest
rising, falling.
Also .
 . .

 
          
Mr.
Koberman’s
eyes were wide, staring at him with a
hungry darkness.

 
          
Douglas
fell back, pulled the blue glass from his
eyes.

 
          
Mr.
Koberman’s
eyes were shut.

 
          
Blue
glass again—open
. Blue glass away—shut. Blue
glass again—open
. Away—shut.
Funny.
Douglas
experimented, trembling. Through the glass
the eyes seemed to peer hungrily, avidly through Mr.
Koberman’s
closed lids. Without the blue glass they seemed tightly shut.

 
          
But
it was the rest of Mr.
Koberman’s
body. . . .

 
          
Mr.
Koberman’s
bedclothes dissolved off him. The blue glass
had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was the clothes themselves, just
being
on
Mr.
Koberman
.
Douglas
cried out.

 
          
He
was looking through the wall of Mr.
Koberman’s
stomach, right
inside
him!

 
          
Mr.
Koberman
was solid.

 
          
Or, nearly so, anyway.

 
          
There
were strange shapes and sizes within him.

 
          
Douglas
must have stood amazed for five minutes,
thinking about the blue worlds, the red worlds, the yellow worlds side by side,
living together like glass panes around the big white stair window. Side by side,
the colored panes, the different worlds; Mr.
Koberman
had said so himself.

 
          
So
this was why the colored window had been broken.

 
          
“Mr.
Koberman
, wake up!”

 
          
No
answer.

 
          
“Mr.
Koberman
, where do you work at night? Mr.
Koberman
, where do you work?”

 
          
A
little breeze stirred the blue window shade.

 
          
“In a red world or a green world or a yellow one, Mr.
Koberman
?”

 
          
Over
everything was a blue glass silence.

 
          
“Wait
there,” said
Douglas
.

 
          
He
walked down to the kitchen, pulled open the great squeaking drawer and picked
out the sharpest, biggest knife.

 
          
Very
calmly he walked into the
hall,
climbed back up the
stairs again, opened the door to Mr.
Koberman’s
room,
went in, and closed it, holding the sharp knife in one hand.

 
          
Grandma
was busy fingering a piecrust into a pan when
Douglas
entered the kitchen to place something on
the table.

 
          
“Grandma,
what’s this?”

 
          
She
glanced up briefly, over her glasses. “I don’t know.”

 
          
It
was square, like a box, and elastic. It was bright orange in color. It had four
square tubes, colored blue, attached to it. It smelled funny.

 
          
“Ever
see anything like it, Grandma?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“That’s
what
I
thought.”

 
          
Douglas
left it there, went from the kitchen. Five
minutes later he returned with something else.
“How about
this?”

 
          
He
laid down a bright pink linked chain with a purple triangle at one end.

 
          
“Don’t
bother me,” said Grandma. “It’s only a chain.”

 
          
Next
time he turned with two hands full.
A ring, a square, a
triangle, a pyramid, a rectangle, and—other shapes.
All of them were
pliable, resilient, and looked as if they were made of gelatin. “This isn’t
all,” said
Douglas
, putting them down. “There’s more where
this came from.”

 
          
Grandma
said, “Yes, yes,” in a far-off tone, very busy.

 
          
“You
were wrong, Grandma.”

 
          
“About what?”

 
          
“About
all people being the same inside.”

 
          
“Stop
talking nonsense.”

 
          
“Where’s
my piggy-bank?”

 
          
“On the mantel, where you left it.”

 
          
“Thanks.”

 
          
He
tromped into the parlor, reached up for his piggybank. Grandpa came home from
the office at five.

 
          
“Grandpa,
come upstairs.”

 
          
“Sure, son.
Why?”

 
          
“Something to show you.
It’s not nice; but it’s
interesting.”

 
          
Grandpa
chuckled, following his grandson’s feet up to Mr.
Koberman’s
room.

 
          
“Grandma
mustn’t know about this; she wouldn’t like it,” said
Douglas
. He pushed the door wide open. “There.”

 
          
Grandfather
gasped.

 
          
Douglas
remembered the next few hours all the rest
of his life.
Standing over Mr.
Koberman’s
naked body, the coroner and his assistants.
Grandma, downstairs, asking
somebody, “What’s going on up there?” and Grandpa saying, shakily, “I’ll take
Douglas
away on a long vacation so he can forget
this whole ghastly affair.
Ghastly, ghastly affair!”

 
          
Douglas
said, “Why should it be bad? I don’t see
anything bad. I don’t feel bad.”

 
          
The
coroner shivered and said, “
Koberman’s
dead, all
right.”

 
          
His
assistant sweated. “Did you see those
things
in the pans of water and in the wrapping paper?”

 
          
“Oh,
my God, my God, yes, I saw them.”

 
          
“Christ.”

 
          
“The
coroner bent over Mr.
Koberman’s
body again. “This
better be kept secret, boys. It wasn’t murder. It was a mercy the boy acted.
God knows what might have happened if he hadn’t.”

 
          
“What
was
Koberman
?
A vampire?
A monster?”

 
          
“Maybe.
I don’t know.
Something—not
human.”
The coroner moved his hands deftly over the suture.

 
          
Douglas
was proud of his work. He’d gone to much
trouble. He had watched Grandmother carefully and remembered.
Needle and thread and all.
All in all, Mr.
Koberman
was as neat a job as any chicken ever popped into
hell by Grandma.

 
          
“I
heard the boy say that
Koberman
lived even after all
those
things
were taken out of him.”
The coroner looked at the triangles and chains and pyramids floating in the
pans of water.
“Kept on
living.
God.”

 
          
“Did
the boy say that?”

 
          
“He
did.”

 
          
“Then,
what
did
kill
Koberman
?”

 
          
The
coroner drew a few strands of sewing thread from their bedding.

 
          
“This. . . .”
he said.

 
          
Sunlight
blinked coldly off a half-revealed treasure trove; six dollars and seventy
cents’ worth of silver dimes inside Mr.
Koberman’s
chest.

 
          
“1
think
Douglas
made a wise investment,” said the coroner,
sewing the flesh back up over the “dressing” quickly.