Free Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Page A

books.
    "These men have been dead a long time, but I know their words point, one way or another, to Clansse."
    Outside the front door, in the rain, a faint scratching.
    Montag froze. He saw Mildred thrust herself back to the wall and gasp.
    "I shut it off."
    "Someone--the door--why doesn't the door-voice tell us--"
    Under the door-sill, a slow, probing sniff, an exhalation of electric steam.
    Mildred laughed. "It's only a dog, that's what! You want me to shoo him away?"
    "Stay where you are!"
    Silence. The cold rain falling. And the smell of blue electricity blowing under the locked door.
    "Let's get back to work," said Montag quietly.
    Mildred kicked at a book. "Books aren't people. You read and I look around, but there isn't anybody!"
    He stared at the parlour that was dead and grey as the waters of an ocean that might teem with life if they switched on the electronic sun.
    "Now," said Mildred, "my `family' is people. They tell me things; I laugh, they laugh!
    And the colours!"
    "Yes, I know."
    "And besides, if Captain Beatty knew about those books--" She thought about it. Her face grew amazed and then horrified. "He might come and bum the house and thèfamily.' That's awful! Think of our investment. Why should I read? What for?"
    "What for! Why!" said Montag. "I saw the damnedest snake in the world the other night. It was dead but it was alive. It could see but it couldn't see. You want to see that snake. It's at Emergency Hospital where they filed a report on all the junk the snake got out of you! Would you like to go and check their file? Maybe you'd look under Guy Montag or maybe under Fear or War. Would you like to go to that house that burnt last night? And rake ashes for the bones of the woman who set fire to her own house! What about Clarisse McClellan, where do we look for her? The morgue!
    Listen!"
    The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house, gasping, murmuring, whistling like an immense, invisible fan, circling in emptiness.
    "Jesus God," said Montag. "Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it? We've started and won two atomic wars since 1960.
    Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumours; the world is starving, but we're well-fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumours about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! I don't hear those idiot bastards in your parlour talking about it. God, Millie, don't you see? An hour a day, two hours, with these books, and maybe..."
    The telephone rang. Mildred snatched the phone.
    "Ann!" She laughed. "Yes, the White Clown's on tonight!"
    Montag walked to the kitchen and threw the book down. "Montag," he said, "you're really stupid. Where do we go from here? Do we turn the books in, forget it?" He opened the book to read over Mildred's laughter.
    Poor Millie, he thought. Poor Montag, it's mud to you, too. But where do you get help, where do you find a teacher this late?
    Hold on. He shut his eyes. Yes, of course. Again he found himself thinking of the green park a year ago. The thought had been with him many times recently, but now he remembered how it was that day in the city park when he had seen that old man in the black suit hide something, quickly in his coat .
    ... The old man leapt up as if to run. And Montag said, "Wait ! "
    "I haven't done anything! " cried the old man trembling.
    "No one said you did."
    They had sat in the green soft light without saying a word for a moment, and then Montag talked about the weather, and then the old man responded with a pale