Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (33 page)

 
          
           
In the year a.d. 400, the Emperor Yuan held his throne by the
Great Wall of China
, and the land was green with rain, readying
itself toward the harvest, at peace, the people in his dominion neither too
happy nor too sad.

 
          
           
Early on the morning of the first day of the first week of the second month of
the new year, the Emperor Yuan was sipping tea and fanning himself against a
warm breeze when a servant ran across the scarlet and blue garden tiles,
calling, "Oh, Emperor, Emperor, a miracle!"

 
          
           
"Yes," said the Emperor, "the air
is
sweet this morning."

 
          
           
"No, no, a miracle!" said the servant, bowing quickly.

 
          
           
"And this tea is good in my mouth, surely that is a miracle."

 
          
           
"No, no, Your Excellency."

 
          
           
"Let me guess then—the sun has risen and a new day is upon us. Or the sea
is blue.
That
now is the finest of
all miracles."

 
          
           
"Excellency, a man is flying!"

 
          
           
"What?" The Emperor stopped his fan.

 
          
           
"I saw him in the air, a man flying with wings. I heard a voice call out
of the sky, and when I looked up, there he was, a dragon in the heavens with a
man in its mouth, a dragon of paper and bamboo, colored like the sun and the
grass."

 
          
           
"It is early," said the Emperor, "and you have just wakened from
a dream."

 
          
           
"It is early, but I have seen what I have seen! Come, and you will see it
too."

 
          
           
"Sit down with me here," said the Emperor. "Drink some tea. It
must be a strange thing, if it is true, to see a man fly. You must have time to
think of it, even as I must have time to prepare myself for the sight."

 
          
           
They drank tea.

 
          
           
"Please," said the servant at last, "or he will be gone."

 
          
           
The Emperor rose thoughtfully. "Now you may show me what you have
seen."

 
          
           
They walked into a garden, across a meadow of grass, over a small bridge,
through a grove of trees, and up a tiny hill.

 
          
           
"There!" said the servant.

 
          
           
The Emperor looked into the sky.

 
          
           
And in the sky, laughing so high that you could hardly hear him laugh, was a
man; and the man was clothed in bright papers and reeds to make wings and a
beautiful yellow tail, and he was soaring all about like the largest bird in a
universe of birds, like a new dragon in a land of ancient dragons.

 
          
           
The man called down to them from high in the cool winds of morning. "I
fly, I fly!"

 
          
           
The servant waved to him. "Yes,
yes
!"

 
          
           
The Emperor Yuan did not move. Instead he looked at the
Great Wall of China
now taking shape out of the farthest mist
in the green hills, that splendid snake of stones which writhed with majesty
across the entire land. That wonderful wall which had protected them for a
timeless time from enemy hordes and preserved peace for years without number.
He saw the town, nestled to itself by a river and a road and a hill, beginning
to waken.

 
          
           
"Tell me," he said to his servant, "has anyone else seen this
flying man?"

 
          
           
"I am the only one, Excellency," said the servant, smiling at the
sky, waving.

 
          
           
The Emperor watched the heavens another minute and then said, "Call him
down to me."

 
          
           
"Ho, come down, come down! The Emperor wishes to see you!" called the
servant, hands cupped to his shouting mouth.

 
          
           
The Emperor glanced in all directions while the flying man soared down the
morning wind. He saw a farmer, early in his fields, watching the sky, and he
noted where the farmer stood.

 
          
           
The flying man alit with a rustle of paper and a creak of bamboo reeds. He came
proudly to the Emperor, clumsy in his rig, at last bowing before the old man.

 
          
           
"What have you done?" demanded the Emperor.

 
          
           
"I have flown in the sky, Your Excellency," replied the man.

 
          
           
"What
have
you done?" said
the Emperor again.

 
          
           
"I have just told you!" cried the flier.

 
          
           
"You have told me nothing at all." The Emperor reached out a thin
hand to touch the pretty paper and the birdlike keel of the apparatus. It
smelled cool, of the wind.

 
          
           
"Is it not beautiful, Excellency?"

 
          
           
"Yes, too beautiful."

 
          
           
"It is the only one in the world!" smiled the man. "And I am the
inventor."

 
          
           
"The
only
one in the
world?"

 
          
           
"I swear it!"

 
          
           
"Who else knows of this?"

 
          
           
"No one. Not even my wife, who would think me mad with the sun. She
thought I was making a kite. I rose in the night and walked to the cliffs far
away. And when the morning breezes blew and the sun rose, I gathered my
courage, Excellency, and leaped from the cliff. I flew! But my wife does not
know of it."

 
          
           
"Well for her, then," said the Emperor. "Come along."

 
          
           
They walked back to the great house. The sun was full in the sky now, and the
smell of the grass was refreshing. The Emperor, the servant, and the flier
paused within the huge garden.

 
          
           
The Emperor clapped his hands. "Ho, guards!"

 
          
           
The guards came running.

 
          
           
"Hold this man."

 
          
           
The guards seized the flier.

 
          
           
"Call the executioner," said the Emperor.

 
          
           
"What's this!" cried the flier, bewildered. "What have I
done?" He began to weep, so that the beautiful paper apparatus rustled.

 
          
           
"Here is the man who has made a certain machine," said the Emperor,
"and yet asks us what he has created. He does not know himself. It is only
necessary that he create, without knowing why he has done so, or what this
thing will do."

 
          
           
The executioner came running with a sharp silver ax. He stood with his naked,
large-muscled arms ready, his face covered with a serene white mask.

 
          
           
"One moment," said the Emperor. He turned to a near-by table upon
which sat a machine that he himself had created. The Emperor took a tiny golden
key from his own neck. He fitted his key to the tiny, delicate machine and
wound it up. Then he set the machine going.

 
          
           
The machine was a garden of metal and jewels. Set in motion, the birds sangs in
tiny metal trees, wolves walked through miniature forests, and tiny people ran
in and out of sun and shadow, fanning themselves with miniature fans, listening
to tiny emerald birds, and standing by impossibly small but tinkling fountains.

 
          
           
"Is
it
not beautiful?" said
the Emperor. "If you asked me what I have done here, I could answer you
well. I have made birds sing, I have made forests murmur, I have set people to
walking in this woodland, enjoying the leaves and shadows and songs. That is
what I have done."

 
          
           
"But, oh, Emperor!" pleaded the flier, on his knees, the tears
pouring down his face. "I have done a similar thing! I have found beauty.
I have flown on the morning wind. I have looked down on all the sleeping houses
and gardens. I have smelled the sea and even
seen
it, beyond the hills, from my high place. And I have soared
like a bird; oh, I cannot say how beautiful it is up there, in the sky, with
the wind about me, the wind blowing me here like a feather, there like a fan,
the way the sky smells in the morning! And how free one feels!
That
is beautiful, Emperor, that is
beautiful too!"

 
          
           
"Yes," said the Emperor sadly, "I know it must be true. For I
felt my heart move with you in the air and I wondered: What is it like? How
does it feel? How do the distant pools look from so high? And how my houses and
servants? Like ants? And how the distant towns not yet awake?"

 
          
           
"Then spare me!"

 
          
           
"But there are times," said the Emperor, more sadly still, "when
one must lose a little beauty if one is to keep what little beauty one already
has. I do not fear you, yourself, but I fear another man."

 
          
           
"What man?"

 
          
           
"Some other man who, seeing you, will build a thing of bright papers and
bamboo like this. But the other man will have an evil face and an evil heart,
and the beauty will be gone. It is this man I fear."

 
          
           
"Why? Why?"

 
          
           
"Who is to say that someday just such a man, in just such an apparatus of
paper and reed, might not fly in the sky and drop huge stones upon the Great
Wall of China?" said the Emperor.

 
          
           
No one moved or said a word.

 
          
           
"Off with his head," said the Emperor.

 
          
           
The executioner whirled his silver ax.

 
          
           
"Burn the kite and the inventor's body and bury their ashes
together," said the Emperor.

 
          
           
The servants retreated to obey.

 
          
           
The Emperor turned to his hand-servant, who had seen the man flying. "Hold
your tongue. It was all a dream, a most sorrowful and beautiful dream. And that
farmer in the distant field who also saw, tell him it would pay him to consider
it only a vision. If ever the word passes around, you and the farmer die within
the hour."