Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1

‘It proves only that they might have saved us. Everything was confused. We might have escaped, ourselves.’

‘They are not animals, Father Stone. Animals do not save lives, especially of strangers. There is mercy and compassion here. Perhaps, tomorrow, we may prove more.’

‘Prove what? How?’ Father Stone was immensely tired now; the outrage to his mind and body showed on his stiff face. ‘Follow them in helicopters, reading chapter and verse? They’re not human. They haven’t eyes or ears or bodies like ours.’

‘But I feel something about them,’ replied Father Peregrine. ‘I know a great revelation is at hand. They saved us. They think. They had a choice; let us live or die. That proves free will!’

Father Stone set to work building a fire, glaring at the sticks in his hands, choking on the gray smoke. ‘I myself will open a convent for nursling geese, a monastery for sainted swine, and I shall build a miniature apse in a microscope so that paramecium can attend services and tell their beads with their flagella.’

‘Oh, Father Stone.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Father Stone blinked redly across the fire. ‘But this is like blessing a crocodile before he chews you up. You’re risking the entire missionary expedition. We belong in First Town, washing liquor from men’s throats and perfume off their hands!’

‘Can’t you recognize the human in the inhuman?’

‘I’d much rather recognize the inhuman in the human.’

‘But if I prove these things sin, know sin, know a moral life, have free will and intellect, Father Stone?’

‘That will take much convincing.’

The night grew rapidly cold and they peered into the fire to find their wildest thoughts, while eating biscuits and berries, and soon they were bundled for sleep under the chiming stars. And just before turning over one last time Father Stone, who had been thinking for many minutes to find something to bother Father Peregrine about, stared into the soft pink charcoal bed and said, ‘No Adam and Eve on Mars. No Original Sin. Maybe the Martians live in a state of God’s grace. Then we can go back down to town and start work on the Earth Men.’

Father Peregrine reminded himself to say a little prayer for Father Stone, who got so mad and who was now being vindictive, God help him. ‘Yes, Father Stone, but the Martians killed some of our settlers. That’s sinful. There must have been an Original Sin and a Martian Adam and Eve. We’ll find them. Men are men, unfortunately, no matter what their shape, and inclined to sin.’

But Father Stone was pretending sleep.

Father Peregrine did not shut his eyes.

Of course they couldn’t let these Martians go to Hell, could they? With a compromise to their consciences, could they go back to the new colonial towns, those towns so full of sinful gullets and women with scintilla eyes and white oyster bodies rollicking in beds with lonely laborers? Wasn’t that the place for the Fathers? Wasn’t this trek into the hills merely a personal whim? Was he really thinking of God’s Church, or was he quenching the thirst of a spongelike curiosity? Those blue round globes of St Anthony’s fire – how they burned in his mind! What a challenge, to find the man behind the mask, the human behind the inhuman. Wouldn’t he be proud if he could say, even to his secret self, that he had converted a rolling huge pool table full of fiery spheres! What a sin of pride! Worth doing penance for! But then one did many prideful things out of Love, and he loved the Lord so much and was so happy at it that he wanted everyone else to be happy too.

The last thing he saw before sleep was the return of the blue fires, like a flight of burning angels silently singing him to his worried rest.

The blue round dreams were still there in the sky when Father Peregrine awoke in the early morning.

Father Stone slept like a stiff bundle, quietly. Father Peregrine watched the Martians floating and watching him. They were human – he knew it. But he must prove it or face a dry-mouthed, dry-eyed Bishop telling him kindly to step aside.

But how to prove humanity if they hid in the high vaults of the sky? How to bring them nearer and provide answers to the many questions?

‘They saved us from the avalanche.’

Father Peregrine arose, moved off among the rocks, and began to climb the nearest hill until he came to a place where a cliff dropped sheerly to a floor two hundred feet below. He was choking from his vigorous climb in the frosty air. He stood, getting his breath.

‘If I fell from here, it would surely kill me.’

He let a pebble drop. Moments later it clicked on the rocks below.

‘The Lord would never forgive me.’

He tossed another pebble.

‘It wouldn’t be suicide, would it, if I did it out of Love … ?’

He lifted his gaze to the blue spheres. ‘But first, another try.’ He called to them: ‘Hello, hello!’

The echoes tumbled upon each other, but the blue fires did not blink or move.

He talked to them for five minutes. When he stopped, he peered down and saw Father Stone, still indignantly asleep, below in the little camp.

‘I must prove everything.’ Father Peregrine stepped to the cliff rim. ‘I am an old man. I am not afraid. Surely the Lord will understand that I am doing this for Him?’

He drew a deep breath. All his life swam through his eyes and he thought, In a moment shall I die? I am afraid that I love living much too much. But I love other things more.

And, thinking thus, he stepped off the cliff.

He fell.

‘Fool!’ he cried. He tumbled end over end. ‘You were wrong!’ The rocks rushed up at him and he saw himself dashed on them and sent to glory. ‘Why did I do this thing?’ But he knew the answer, and an instant later was calm as he fell. The wind roared around him and the rocks hurtled to meet him.

And then there was a shift of stars, a glimmering of blue light, and he felt himself surrounded by blueness and suspended. A moment later he was deposited, with a gentle bump, upon the rocks, where he sat a full moment, alive, and touching himself, and looking up at those blue lights that had withdrawn instantly.

‘You saved me!’ he whispered. ‘You wouldn’t let me die. You knew it was wrong.’

He rushed over to Father Stone, who still lay quietly asleep. ‘Father, Father, wake up!’ He shook him and brought him round. ‘Father, they saved me!’

‘Who saved you?’ Father Stone blinked and sat up.

Father Peregrine related his experience.

‘A dream, a nightmare; go back to sleep,’ said Father Stone irritably. ‘You and your circus balloons.’

‘But I was awake!’

‘Now, now, Father, calm yourself. There now.’

‘You don’t believe me? Have you a gun? Yes, there, let me have it.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Father Stone handed over the small pistol they had brought along for protection against snakes or other similar and unpredictable animals.

Father Peregrine seized the pistol. ‘I’ll prove it!’

He pointed the pistol at his own hand and fired.

‘Stop!’

There was a shimmer of light, and before their eyes the bullet stood upon the air, poised an inch from his open palm. It hung for a moment, surrounded by a blue phosphorescence. Then it fell, hissing, into the dust.

Father Peregrine fired the gun three times – at his hand, at his leg, at his body. The three bullets hovered, glittering, and, like dead insects, fell at their feet.