Ray Bradbury - The Toynbee Convector

Ray Bradbury

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by Alfred A. Knopf June 1988

Some of these stories originally appeared in Gallery, Omni, Playboy, Twilight Zone , and Weird Tales . “ A Touch of Petulance ” originally appeared in Dark Forces , published by Viking Penguin Inc. The Last Circus and The Love Affair were originally published by Lord John Press.

Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1988

Cover design by Mike Topping.

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2014 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Ray Bradbury asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Ebook Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN: 9780007539802

Version: 2014–07–17

And this one, with love ,

to my granddaughters

JULIA

and

CLAIRE

and

GEORGIA

and

MALLORY

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Toynbee Convector

Trapdoor

On the Orient, North

One Night in Your Life

West of October

The Last Circus

The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair

I Suppose You Are Wondering Why We Are Here?

Lafayette, Farewell

Banshee

Promises, Promises

The Love Affair

One for His Lordship, and One for the Road!

At Midnight, in the Month of June

Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned

By the Numbers!

A Touch of Petulance

Long Division

Come, and Bring Constance!

Junior

The Tombstone

The Thing at the Top of the Stairs

Colonel Stonesteel’s Genuine Home-made Truly Egyptian Mummy

Keep Reading

About the Author

Praise

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

“Good! Great! Bravo for me!”

Roger Shumway flung himself into the seat, buckled himself in, revved the rotor and drifted his Dragonfly Super-6 helicopter up to blow away on the summer sky, heading south toward La Jolla.

“How lucky can you get?”

For he was on his way to an incredible meeting.

The time traveler, after 100 years of silence, had agreed to be interviewed. He was, on this day, 130 years old. And this afternoon, at four o’clock sharp, Pacific time, was the anniversary of his one and only journey in time.

Lord, yes! One hundred years ago, Craig Bennett Stiles had waved, stepped into his Immense Clock , as he called it, and vanished from the present. He was and remained the only man in history to travel in time. And Shumway was the one and only reporter, after all these years, to be invited in for afternoon tea. And? The possible announcement of a second and final trip through time. The traveler had hinted at such a trip.

“Old man,” said Shumway, “Mr. Craig Bennett Stiles—here I come!”

The Dragonfly, obedient to fevers, seized a wind and rode it down the coast.

The old man was there waiting for him on the roof of the Time Lamasery at the rim of the hang glider’s cliff in La Jolla. The air swarmed with crimson, blue, and lemon kites from which young men shouted, while young women called to them from the land’s edge.

Stiles, for all his 130 years, was not old. His face, blinking up at the helicopter, was the bright face of one of those hang-gliding Apollo fools who veered off as the helicopter sank down.

Shumway hovered his craft for a long moment, savoring the delay.

Below him was a face that had dreamed architectures, known incredible loves, blueprinted mysteries of seconds, hours, days, then dived in to swim upstream through the centuries. A sunburst face, celebrating its own birthday.

For on a single night, one hundred years ago, Craig Bennett Stiles, freshly returned from time, had reported by Telstar around the world to billions of viewers and told them their future.

“We made it!” he said. “We did it! The future is ours. We rebuilt the cities, freshened the small towns, cleaned the lakes and rivers, washed the air, saved the dolphins, increased the whales, stopped the wars, tossed the solar stations across space to light the world, colonized the moon, moved on to Mars, then Alpha Centauri. We cured cancer and stopped death. We did it—Oh Lord, much thanks—we did it. Oh, future’s bright and beauteous spires, arise!”

He showed them pictures, he brought them samples, he gave them tapes and LP records, films and sound cassettes of his wondrous roundabout flight. The world went mad with joy. It ran to meet and make that future, fling up the cities of promise, save all and share with the beasts of land and sea.

The old man’s welcoming shout came up the wind. Shumway shouted back and let the Dragonfly simmer down in its own summer weather.

Craig Bennett Stiles, 130 years old, strode forward briskly and, incredibly, helped the young reporter out of his craft, for Shumway was suddenly stunned and weak at this encounter.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” said Shumway.

“You are, and none too soon,” laughed the time traveler. “Any day now, I may just fall apart and blow away. Lunch is waiting. Hike!”

A parade of one, Stiles marched off under the fluttering rotor shadows that made him seem a flickering newsreel of a future that had somehow passed.

Shumway, like a small dog after a great army, followed.

“What do you want to know?” asked the old man as they crossed the roof, double time.

“First,” gasped Shumway, keeping up, “why have you broken silence after a hundred years? Second, why to me ? Third, what’s the big announcement you’re going to make this afternoon at four o’clock, the very hour when your younger self is due to arrive from the past—when, for a brief moment, you will appear in two places, the paradox: the person you were, the man you are, fused in one glorious hour for us to celebrate?”

The old man laughed. “How you do go on!”

“Sorry.” Shumway blushed. “I wrote that last night. Well. Those are the questions.”

“You shall have your answers.” The old man shook his elbow gently. “All in good—time.”

“You must excuse my excitement,” said Shumway. “After all, you are a mystery. You were famous, world-acclaimed. You went, saw the future, came back, told us, then went into seclusion. Oh, sure; for a few weeks, you traveled the world in ticker-tape parades, showed yourself on TV, wrote one book, gifted us with one magnificent two-hour television film, then shut yourself away here. Yes, the time machine is on exhibit below, and crowds are allowed in each day at noon to see and touch. But you yourself have refused fame—”