Pillar of Fire - 1

Total number of words is 4791
Total number of unique words is 1272
56.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words
71.6 of words are in the 5000 most common words
77.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.
PILLAR OF FIRE
By RAY BRADBURY
We cannot tell you what kind of a story this
is. We simply cannot present it as we present
other stories. It is too tremendous for that.
We are very glad--and proud--to share it with you.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

He came out of the earth, hating. Hate was his father; hate was his
mother.
It was good to walk again. It was good to leap up out of the earth, off
of your back, and stretch your cramped arms violently and try to take a
deep breath!
He _tried_. He cried out.
He couldn't breathe. He flung his arms over his face and tried to
breathe. It was impossible. He walked on the earth, he came out of the
earth. But he was dead. He couldn't breathe. He could take air into
his mouth and force it half down his throat, with withered moves of
long-dormant muscles, wildly, wildly! And with this little air he
could shout and cry! He wanted to have tears, but he couldn't make them
come, either. All he knew was that he was standing upright, he was
dead, he shouldn't be walking! He couldn't breathe and yet he stood.
The smells of the world were all about him. Frustratedly, he tried to
smell the smells of autumn. Autumn was burning the land down into ruin.
All across the country the ruins of summer lay; vast forests bloomed
with flame, tumbled down timber on empty, unleafed timber. The smoke of
the burning was rich, blue, and invisible.
He stood in the graveyard, hating. He walked through the world and yet
could not taste nor smell of it. He heard, yes. The wind roared on
his newly opened ears. But he was dead. Even though he walked he knew
he was dead and should expect not too much of himself or this hateful
living world.
He touched the tombstone over his own empty grave. He knew his own name
again. It was a good job of carving.
WILLIAM LANTRY
That's what the grave stone said.
His fingers trembled on the cool stone surface.
BORN 1898--DIED 1933
Born _again_...?
What year? He glared at the sky and the midnight autumnal stars moving
in slow illuminations across the windy black. He read the tiltings of
centuries in those stars. Orion thus and so, Aurega here! and where
Taurus? _There!_
His eyes narrowed. His lips spelled out the year:
"2349."
An odd number. Like a school sum. They used to say a man couldn't
encompass any number over a hundred. After that it was all so damned
abstract there was no use counting. This was the year 2349! A numeral,
a sum. And here he was, a man who had lain in his hateful dark coffin,
hating to be buried, hating the living people above who lived and lived
and lived, hating them for all the centuries, until today, now, born
out of hatred, he stood by his own freshly excavated grave, the smell
of raw earth in the air, perhaps, but he could not smell it!
"I," he said, addressing a poplar tree that was shaken by the wind, "am
an anachronism." He smiled faintly.
* * * * *
He looked at the graveyard. It was cold and empty. All of the stones
had been ripped up and piled like so many flat bricks, one atop
another, in the far corner by the wrought iron fence. This had been
going on for two endless weeks. In his deep secret coffin he had heard
the heartless, wild stirring as the men jabbed the earth with cold
spades and tore out the coffins and carried away the withered ancient
bodies to be burned. Twisting with fear in his coffin, he had waited
for them to come to him.
Today they had arrived at his coffin. But--late. They had dug down to
within an inch of the lid. Five o'clock bell, time for quitting. Home
to supper. The workers had gone off. Tomorrow they would finish the
job, they said, shrugging into their coats.
Silence had come to the emptied tombyard.
Carefully, quietly, with a soft rattling of sod, the coffin lid had
lifted.
William Lantry stood trembling now, in the last cemetery on Earth.
"Remember?" he asked himself, looking at the raw earth. "Remember those
stories of the last man on earth? Those stories of men wandering in
ruins, alone? Well, you, William Lantry, are a switch on the old story.
Do you _know_ that? You are the last _dead_ man in the whole damned
world!"
There were no more dead people. Nowhere in any land was there a dead
person. Impossible? Lantry did not smile at this. No, not impossible
at all in this foolish sterile, unimaginative, antiseptic age of
cleansings and scientific methods! People died, oh my god, yes.
But--_dead_ people? Corpses? They didn't exist!
What _happened_ to dead people?
The graveyard was on a hill. William Lantry walked through the dark
burning night until he reached the edge of the graveyard and looked
down upon the new town of Salem. It was all illumination, all color.
Rocket ships cut fire above it, crossing the sky to all the far ports
of earth.
In his grave the new violence of this future world had driven down and
seeped into William Lantry. He had been bathed in it for years. He knew
all about it, with a hating dead man's knowledge of such things.
Most important of all, he knew what these fools did with dead men.
He lifted his eyes. In the center of the town a massive stone finger
pointed at the stars. It was three hundred feet high and fifty feet
across. There was a wide entrance and a drive in front of it.
In the town, theoretically, thought William Lantry, say you have a
dying man. In a moment he will be dead. What happens? No sooner is his
pulse cold when a certificate is flourished, made out, his relatives
pack him into a car-beetle and drive him swiftly to--
The Incinerator!
That functional finger, that Pillar of Fire pointing at the stars.
Incinerator. A functional, terrible name. But truth is truth in this
future world.
Like a stick of kindling your Mr. Dead Man is shot into the furnace.
_Flume!_
William Lantry looked at the top of the gigantic pistol shoving at the
stars. A small pennant of smoke issued from the top.
There's where your dead people go.
"Take care of yourself, William Lantry," he murmured. "You're the last
one, the rare item, the last dead man. All the other graveyards of
earth have been blasted up. This is the last graveyard and you're the
last dead man from the centuries. These people don't believe in having
dead people about, much less walking dead people. Everything that can't
be used goes up like a matchstick. Superstitions right along with it!"
He looked at the town. All right, he thought, quietly. I hate you. You
hate me, or you _would_ if you knew I existed. You don't believe in
such things as vampires or ghosts. Labels without referents, you cry!
You snort. All right, snort! Frankly, I don't believe in _you_, either!
I don't _like_ you! You and your Incinerators.
He trembled. How very close it had been. Day after day they had hauled
out the other dead ones, burned them like so much kindling. An edict
had been broadcast around the world. He had heard the digging men talk
as they worked!
"I guess it's a good idea, this cleaning up the graveyards," said one
of the men.
"Guess so," said another. "Grisly custom. Can you imagine? Being
buried, I mean! Unhealthy! All them germs!"
"Sort of a shame. Romantic, kind of. I mean, leaving just this one
graveyard untouched all these centuries. The other graveyards were
cleaned out, what year was it, Jim?"
"About 2260, I think. Yeah, that was it, 2260, almost a hundred years
ago. But some Salem Committee they got on their high horse and they
said, 'Look here, let's have just ONE graveyard left, to remind us of
the customs of the barbarians.' And the gover'ment scratched its head,
thunk it over, and said, 'Okay. Salem it is. But all other graveyards
go, you understand, all!'"
"And away they went," said Jim.
"Sure, they sucked out 'em with fire and steam shovels and
rocket-cleaners. If they knew a man was buried in a cow-pasture, they
fixed him! Evacuated them, they did. Sort of cruel, I say."
"I hate to sound old-fashioned, but still there were a lot of tourists
came here every year, just to see what a real graveyard was like."
"Right. We had nearly a million people in the last three years
visiting. A good revenue. But--a government order is an order. The
government says no more morbidity, so flush her out we do! Here we go.
Hand me that spade, Bill."
* * * * *
William Lantry stood in the autumn wind, on the hill. It was good to
walk again, to feel the wind and to hear the leaves scuttling like mice
on the road ahead of him. It was good to see the bitter cold stars
almost blown away by the wind.
It was even good to know fear again.
For fear rose in him now, and he could not put it away. The very fact
that he was walking made him an enemy. And there was not another
friend, another dead man, in all of the world, to whom one could turn
for help or consolation. It was the whole melodramatic living world
against one William Lantry. It was the whole vampire-disbelieving,
body-burning, graveyard-annihilating world against a man in a dark
suit on a dark autumn hill. He put out his pale cold hands into the
city illumination. You have pulled the tombstones, like teeth, from
the yard, he thought. Now I will find some way to push your damnable
Incinerators down into rubble. I will make dead people again, and I
will make friends in so doing. I cannot be alone and lonely. I must
start manufacturing friends very soon. Tonight.
"War is declared," he said, and laughed. It was pretty silly, one man
declaring war on an entire world.
The world did not answer back. A rocket crossed the sky on a rush of
flame, like an Incinerator taking wing.
Footsteps. Lantry hastened to the edge of the cemetery. The diggers,
coming back to finish up their work? No. Just someone, a man, walking
by.
As the man came abreast the cemetery gate, Lantry stepped swiftly out.
"Good evening," said the man, smiling.
Lantry struck the man in the face. The man fell. Lantry bent quietly
down and hit the man a killing blow across the neck with the side of
his hand.
Dragging the body back into shadow, he stripped it, changed clothes
with it. It wouldn't do for a fellow to go wandering about this future
world with ancient clothing on. He found a small pocket knife in the
man's coat; not much of a knife, but enough if you knew how to handle
it properly. He knew how.
He rolled the body down into one of the already opened and exhumed
graves. In a minute he had shoveled dirt down upon it, just enough to
hide it. There was little chance of it being found. They wouldn't dig
the same grave twice.
He adjusted himself in his new loose-fitting metallic suit. Fine, fine.
Hating, William Lantry walked down into town, to do battle with the
Earth.

II
The incinerator was open. It never closed. There was a wide entrance,
all lighted up with hidden illumination, there was a helicopter landing
table and a beetle drive. The town itself was dying down after another
day of the dynamo. The lights were going dim, and the only quiet,
lighted spot in the town now was the Incinerator. God, what a practical
name, what an unromantic name.
William Lantry entered the wide, well-lighted door. It was an entrance,
really; there were no doors to open or shut. People could go in and
out, summer or winter, the inside was always warm. Warm from the fire
that rushed whispering up the high round flue to where the whirlers,
the propellors, the air-jets pushed the leafy grey ashes on away for a
ten mile ride down the sky.
There was the warmth of the bakery here. The halls were floored with
rubber parquet. You couldn't make a noise if you wanted to. Music
played in hidden throats somewhere. Not music of death at all, but
music of life and the way the sun lived inside the Incinerator; or the
sun's brother, anyway. You could hear the flame floating inside the
heavy brick wall.
William Lantry descended a ramp. Behind him he heard a whisper and
turned in time to see a beetle stop before the entrance way. A bell
rang. The music, as if at a signal, rose to ecstatic heights. There was
joy in it.
From the beetle, which opened from the rear, some attendants stepped
carrying a golden box. It was six feet long and there were sun symbols
on it. From another beetle the relatives of the man in the box stepped
and followed as the attendants took the golden box down a ramp to a
kind of altar. On the side of the altar were the words, "WE THAT WERE
BORN OF THE SUN RETURN TO THE SUN". The golden box was deposited upon
the altar, the music leaped upward, the Guardian of this place spoke
only a few words, then the attendants picked up the golden box, walked
to a transparent wall, a safety lock, also transparent, and opened it.
The box was shoved into the glass slot. A moment later an inner lock
opened, the box was injected into the interior of the Flue and vanished
instantly in quick flame.
The attendants walked away. The relatives without a word turned and
walked out. The music played.
William Lantry approached the glass fire lock. He peered through the
wall at the vast, glowing, never-ceasing heart of the Incinerator. It
burned steadily, without a flicker, singing to itself peacefully. It
was so solid it was like a golden river flowing up out of the earth
toward the sky. Anything you put into the river was borne upward,
vanished.
Lantry felt again his unreasoning hatred of this thing, this monster,
cleansing fire.
A man stood at his elbow. "May I help you, sir?"
"What?" Lantry turned abruptly. "What did you say?"
"May I be of service?"
"I--that is--" Lantry looked quickly at the ramp and the door. His
hands trembled at his sides. "I've never been in here before."
"Never?" The Attendant was surprised.
That had been the wrong thing to say, Lantry realized. But it was said,
nevertheless. "I mean," he said. "Not really. I mean, when you're a
child, somehow, you don't pay attention. I suddenly realized tonight
that I didn't really _know_ the Incinerator."
The Attendant smiled. "We never know anything, do we, really? I'll be
glad to show you around."
"Oh, no. Never mind. It--it's a wonderful place."
"Yes, it is." The Attendant took pride in it. "One of the finest in the
world, I think."
"I--" Lantry felt he must explain further. "I haven't had many
relatives die on me since I was a child. In fact, none. So, you see I
haven't been here for many years."
"I see." The Attendant's face seemed to darken somewhat.
What've I said now, thought Lantry. What in God's name is wrong?
What've I done? If I'm not careful I'll get myself shoved right into
that damnable fire-trap. What's wrong with this fellow's face? He seems
to be giving me more than the usual going over.
"You wouldn't be one of the men who've just returned from Mars, would
you?" asked the Attendant.
"No. Why do you ask?"
"No matter." The Attendant began to walk off. "If you want to know
anything, just ask me."
"Just one thing," said Lantry.
"What's that?"
"This."
Lantry dealt him a stunning blow across the neck.
He had watched the fire-trap operator with expert eyes. Now, with the
sagging body in his arms, he touched the button that opened the warm
outer lock, placed the body in, heard the music rise, and saw the inner
lock open. The body shot out into the river of fire. The music softened.
"Well done, Lantry, well done."
* * * * *
Barely an instant later another Attendant entered the room. Lantry
was caught with an expression of pleased excitement on his face. The
Attendant looked around as if expecting to find someone, then he walked
toward Lantry. "May I help you?"
"Just looking," said Lantry.
"Rather late at night," said the Attendant.
"I couldn't sleep."
That was the wrong answer, too. Everybody slept in this world. Nobody
had insomnia. If you did you simply turned on a hypno-ray, and, sixty
seconds later, you were snoring. Oh, he was just _full_ of wrong
answers. First he had made the fatal error of saying he had never been
in the Incinerator before, when he knew damned well that all children
were brought here on tours, every year, from the time they were four,
to instill the idea of the clean fire death and the Incinerator in
their minds. Death was a bright fire, death was warmth and the sun. It
was not a dark, shadowed thing. That was important in their education.
And he, pale thoughtless fool, had immediately gabbled out his
ignorance.
And another thing, this paleness of his. He looked at his hands and
realized with growing terror that a pale man also was non-existent in
this world. They would suspect his paleness. That was why the first
attendant had asked, "Are you one of those men newly returned from
Mars?" Here, now, this new Attendant was clean and bright as a copper
penny, his cheeks red with health and energy. Lantry hid his pale hands
in his pockets. But he was fully aware of the searching the Attendant
did on his face.
"I mean to say," said Lantry. "I didn't _want_ to sleep. I wanted to
think."
"Was there a service held here a moment ago?" asked the Attendant,
looking about.
"I don't know, I just came in."
"I thought I heard the fire lock open and shut."
"I don't know," said Lantry.
The man pressed a wall button. "Anderson?"
A voice replied. "Yes."
"Locate Saul for me, will you?"
"I'll ring the corridors." A pause. "Can't find him."
"Thanks." The Attendant was puzzled. He was beginning to make little
sniffing motions with his nose. "Do you--_smell_ anything?"
Lantry sniffed. "No. Why?"
"I _smell_ something."
Lantry took hold of the knife in his pocket. He waited.
"I remember once when I was a kid," said the man. "And we found a cow
lying dead in the field. It had been there two days in the hot sun.
That's what this smell is. I wonder what it's from?"
"Oh, I know what it is," said Lantry quietly. He held out his hand.
"Here."
"What?"
"Me, of course."
"You?"
"Dead several hundred years."
"You're an odd joker." The Attendant was puzzled.
"Very." Lantry took out the knife. "Do you know what this is?"
"A knife."
"Do you ever use knives on people any more?"
"How do you mean?"
"I mean--killing them, with knives or guns or poison?"
"You _are_ an odd joker!" The man giggled awkwardly.
"I'm going to kill you," said Lantry.
"Nobody kills anybody," said the man.
"Not any more they don't. But they used to, in the old days."
"I know they did."
"This will be the first murder in three hundred years. I just killed
your friend. I just shoved him into the fire lock."
That remark had the desired effect. It numbed the man so completely, it
shocked him so thoroughly with its illogical aspects that Lantry had
time to walk forward. He put the knife against the man's chest. "I'm
going to kill you."
"That's silly," said the man, numbly. "People don't do that."
"Like this," said Lantry. "You see?"
The knife slid into the chest. The man stared at it for a moment.
Lantry caught the falling body.

III
The Salem flue exploded at six that morning. The great fire chimney
shattered into ten thousand parts and flung itself into the earth and
into the sky and into the houses of the sleeping people. There was fire
and sound, more fire than autumn made burning in the hills.
William Lantry was five miles away at the time of the explosion. He
saw the town ignited by the great spreading cremation of it. And he
shook his head and laughed a little bit and clapped his hands smartly
together.
Relatively simple. You walked around killing people who didn't believe
in murder, had only heard of it indirectly as some dim gone custom
of the old barbarian races. You walked into the control room of the
Incinerator and said, "How do you work this Incinerator?" and the
control man told you, because everybody told the truth in this world
of the future, nobody lied, there was no reason to lie, there was no
danger to lie _against_. There was only one criminal in the world, and
nobody knew HE existed yet.
Oh, it was an incredibly beautiful set-up. The Control Man had told
him just how the Incinerator worked, what pressure gauges controlled
the flood of fire gasses going up the flue, what levers were adjusted
or readjusted. He and Lantry had had quite a talk. It was an easy free
world. People trusted people. A moment later Lantry had shoved a knife
in the Control Man also and set the pressure gauges for an overload
to occur half an hour later, and walked out of the Incinerator halls,
whistling.
Now even the sky was palled with the vast black cloud of the explosion.
"This is only the first," said Lantry, looking at the sky. "I'll tear
all the others down before they even suspect there's an unethical man
loose in their society. They can't account for a variable like me.
I'm beyond their understanding. I'm incomprehensible, impossible,
therefore I do not exist. My God, I can kill hundreds of thousands of
them before they even realize murder is out in the world again. I can
make it look like an accident each time. Why, the idea is so huge, it's
unbelievable!"
The fire burned the town. He sat under a tree for a long time, until
morning. Then, he found a cave in the hills, and went in, to sleep.
* * * * *
He awoke at sunset with a sudden dream of fire. He saw himself pushed
into the flue, cut into sections by flame, burned away to nothing. He
sat up on the cave floor, laughing at himself. He had an idea.
He walked down into the town and stepped into an audio booth. He dialed
OPERATOR. "Give me the Police Department," he said.
"I beg your pardon?" said the operator.
He tried again. "The Law Force," he said.
"I will connect you with the Peace Control," she said, at last.
A little fear began ticking inside him like a tiny watch. Suppose the
operator recognized the term Police Department as an anachronism, took
his audio number, and sent someone out to investigate? No, she wouldn't
do that. Why should she suspect? Paranoids were non-existent in this
civilization.
"Yes, the Peace Control," he said.
A buzz. A man's voice answered. "Peace Control. Stephens speaking."
"Give me the Homicide Detail," said Lantry, smiling.
"The _what_?"
"Who investigates murders?"
"I beg your pardon, what are you talking about?"
"Wrong number." Lantry hung up, chuckling. Ye gods, there was no such
a thing as a Homicide Detail. There were no murders, therefore they
needed no detectives. Perfect, perfect!
The audio rang back. Lantry hesitated, then answered.
"Say," said the voice on the phone. "Who _are_ you?"
"The man just left who called," said Lantry, and hung up again.
He ran. They would recognize his voice and perhaps send someone out
to check. People didn't lie. _He_ had just lied. They knew his voice.
He had lied. Anybody who lied needed a psychiatrist. They would come
to pick him up to see why he was lying. For no _other_ reason. They
suspected him of nothing else. Therefore--he must run.
Oh, how very carefully he must act from now on. He knew nothing of this
world, this odd straight truthful ethical world. Simply by looking
pale you were suspect. Simply by not sleeping nights you were suspect.
Simply by not bathing, by smelling like a--dead cow?--you were suspect.
Anything.
He must go to a library. But that was dangerous, too. What were
libraries like today? Did they have books or did they have film spools
which projected books on a screen? Or did people have libraries at
home, thus eliminating the necessity of keeping large main libraries?
He decided to chance it. His use of archaic terms might well make him
suspect again, but now it was very important he learn all that could be
learned of this foul world into which he had come again. He stopped a
man on the street. "Which way to the library?"
The man was not surprised. "Two blocks east, one block north."
"Thank you."
Simple as that.
He walked into the library a few minutes later.
"May I help you?"
He looked at the librarian. May I help you, may I help you. What a
world of helpful people! "I'd like to 'have' Edgar Allan Poe." His
verb was carefully chosen. He didn't say 'read'. He was too afraid
that books were passรฉ, that printing itself was a lost art. Maybe all
'books' today were in the form of fully delineated three-dimensional
motion pictures. How in hell could you make a motion picture out of
Socrates, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud?
"What was that name again?"
"Edgar Allan Poe."
"There is no such author listed in our files."
"Will you please check?"
She checked. "Oh, yes. There's a red mark on the file card. He was one
of the authors in the Great Burning of 2265."
"How ignorant of me."
"That's all right," she said. "Have you heard much of him?"
"He had some interesting barbarian ideas on death," said Lantry.
"Horrible ones," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Ghastly."
"Yes. Ghastly. Abominable, in fact. Good thing he was burned. Unclean.
By the way, do you have any of Lovecraft?"
"Is that a sex book?"
Lantry exploded with laughter. "No, no. It's a man."
She riffled the file. "He was burned, too. Along with Poe."
"I suppose that applies to Machen and a man named Derleth and one named
Ambrose Bierce, also?"
"Yes." She shut the file cabinet. "All burned. And good riddance." She
gave him an odd warm look of interest. "I bet you've just come back
from Mars."
"Why do you say that?"
"There was another explorer in here yesterday. He'd just made the Mars
hop and return. He was interested in supernatural literature, also. It
seems there are actually 'tombs' on Mars."
"What are 'tombs'?" Lantry was learning to keep his mouth closed.
"You know, those things they once buried people in."
"Barbarian custom. Ghastly!"
"_Isn't_ it? Well, seeing the Martian tombs made this young explorer
curious. He came and asked if we had any of those authors you
mentioned. Of course we haven't even a smitch of their stuff." She
looked at his pale face. "You _are_ one of the Martian rocket men,
aren't you?"
"Yes," he said. "Got back on the ship the other day."
"The other young man's name was Burke."
"Of course. Burke! Good friend of mine!"
"Sorry I can't help you. You'd best get yourself some vitamin shots and
some sun-lamp. You look terrible, Mr. ----?"
"Lantry. I'll be good. Thanks ever so much. See you next Hallows' Eve!"
"Aren't you the clever one." She laughed. "If there _were_ a Hallows'
Eve, I'd make it a date."
"But they burned _that_, too," he said.
"Oh, they burned everything," she said. "Good night."
"Good night." And he went on out.
* * * * *
Oh, how carefully he was balanced in this world! Like some kind of
dark gyroscope, whirling with never a murmur, a very silent man. As
he walked along the eight o'clock evening street he noticed with
particular interest that there was not an unusual amount of lights
about. There were the usual street lights at each corner, but the
You have read 1 text from English literature.
Next - Pillar of Fire - 2
  • Parts
  • Pillar of Fire - 1
    Total number of words is 4791
    Total number of unique words is 1272
    56.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words
    71.6 of words are in the 5000 most common words
    77.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
    Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.
  • Pillar of Fire - 2
    Total number of words is 4834
    Total number of unique words is 1186
    54.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words
    71.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words
    78.5 of words are in the 8000 most common words
    Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.
  • Pillar of Fire - 3
    Total number of words is 4003
    Total number of unique words is 1026
    57.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words
    73.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words
    79.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
    Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.