Ray Bradbury - Long After Midnight

Long After Midnight

Ray Bradbury

In his first collection in seven years, the incomparable Ray Bradbury conjures up eerie ghosts of the past, present, and future that will bewitch and disturb his millions of readers.

Meet the parrot to whom Hemingway confided the plot of his last, greatest, and never-written novel; the invisible ice-woman who called herself "Melissa Toad, Witch" and offered perfect love and a magical immunity; the rookie cop who was stunned by a girl's suicide—until he learned "her" secret, plus 19 more hauntings and celebrations.

"Each entry is a miniature and a jewel ... He can establish a mood in a line, can suggest things that go bump in the night in soaring poetic fashion . . . This is rainy-night stuff."

—San Francisco Chronicle

Bantam Books by Ray Bradbury

Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed

DANDELION WINE

DINOSAUR TALES

THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN

THE HALLOWEEN TREE

I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT

THE MACHINERIES OF JOY

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES

A MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY

R IS FOR ROCKET

S IS FOR SPACE

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

BANTAM BOOKS TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • SYDNEY

This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hard-cover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

RL 6, IL age 14 and up

LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT

A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY Knopf edition published September 1976

2nd printing . . . October 1976 Literary Guild selection September 1976

"The Blue Bottle" Copyright 1950 by Love Romances Publishing Inc. "Forever and the Earth" Copyright 1950 by Love Romances Publishing Inc. "Punishment Without Crime" Copyright 1950 by Other Worlds, "The Miracles of Jamie" first appeared in Charm, "The October Game" In Weird Tales, "One Timeless Spring" and "The Pumpernickel" in Collier's, "A Piece of Wood" in Esquire, "The Utterly Perfect Murder^' ("My Perfect Murder") and "The Parrot Who Met Papa" in Playboy Magazine, "Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You!" in Penthouse, "The Wish" in Woman's Day Magazine, and "DrinkEntire: August the Madness of Crowds" in Gallery.

Bantam edition / April 1978

2nd printing .. November 1978 4th printing ... October 1980 3rd printing .... August 1979 5th printing .... August 1982

Cover artwork from the Will Stone Collection, San Francisco, Copyright © Bill Stoneham, Untitled.

All rights reserved. Copyright 1946, 1947, 1951, 1952, © 1971, 1972,

1973, 1976 by Ray Bradbury.

Copyright renewed 1974, 1975 by Ray Bradbury-

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by

mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,

201 East 50th St., New York, N.Y. 10022,

ISBN 0-553-22867-6 Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

H 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

This book, with love,

is dedicated to William F. Nolan, amazing collector, fantastic researcher, dear friend.

Contents

The Blue Bottle

One Timeless Spring

The Parrot Who Met Papa

The Burning Man

The Burning Man

The Messiah

G. B. S. - Mark V

The Utterly Perfect Murder

Punishment Without Crime

Getting Through Sunday Somehow

Drink This: Against the Madness of Crowds

Interval in Sunlight

A Story of Love

The Wish

Forever and the Earth

The Better Part of Wisdom

Darling Adolf

The Miracles of Jamie

The October Game

The Pumpernickel

Long After Midnight

Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Blue Bottle

The sundials were tumbled into white pebbles. The birds of the air now flew in ancient skies of rock and sand, buried, their songs stopped. The dead sea bottoms were currented with dust which flooded the land when the wind bade it reenact an old tale of engulfment. The cities were deep laid with granaries of silence, time stored and kept, pools and fountains of quietude and memory.

Mars was dead.

Then, out of the large stillness, from a great distance, there was an insect sound which grew large among the cinnamon hills and moved in the sun-blazed air until the highway trembled and dust was shook whispering down in the old cities.

The sound ceased.

In the shimmering silence of midday, Albert Beck and Leonard Craig sat in an ancient landcar, eyeing a dead city which did not move under their gaze but waited for their shout:

"Hello!"

A crystal tower dropped into soft dusting rain.

"You there!"

And another tumbled down.

And another and another fell as Beck called, summoning them to death. In shattering flights, stone animals with vast granite wings dived to strike the courtyards and fountains. His cry summoned them like living beasts and the beasts gave answer, groaned, cracked, leaned up, tilted over, trembling, hesitant, then split the air and swept down with grimaced mouths and empty eyes, with sharp, eternally hungry teeth suddenly seized out and strewn like shrapnel on theLtiles.

Beck waited. No more towers fell.

"It's safe to go in now."

Craig didn't move. "For the same reason?"

Beck nodded.

"For a damned bottlel I don't understand. Why does everyone want it?"

Beck got out of the car. "Those that found it, they never told, they never explained. But—it's old. Old as the desert, as the dead seas—and it might contain anything. That's what the legend says. And because it could hold anything—well, that stirs a man's hunger."

"Yours, not mine," said Craig. His mouth barely moved; his eyes were half-shut, faintly amused. He stretched lazily. "I'm just along for the ride. Better watching you than sitting in the heat."

Beck had stumbled upon the old landcar a month back, before Craig had joined him. It was part of the flotsam of the First Industrial Invasion of Mars that had ended when the race moved on toward the stars. He had worked on the motor and run it from city to dead city, through the lands of the idlers and roustabouts, the dreamers and lazers, men caught in the backwash of space, men like himself and Craig who had never wanted to do much of anything and had found Mars a fine place to do it in.

"Five thousand, ten thousand years back the Martians made the Blue Bottle," said Beck. "Blown from Martian glass—and lost and found and lost and found again and again."

He stared into the wavering heat shimmer of the dead city. All my life, thought Beck, I've done nothing and nothing inside the nothing. Others, better men, have done big things, gone off to Mercury, or Venus, or out beyond the System. Except me. Not me. But the Blue Bottle can change all that.

He turned and walked away from the silent car.

Craig was out and after him, moving easily along. "What is it now, ten years you've hunted? You twitch when you sleep, wake up in fits, sweat through the days. You want the damn bottle that bad, and don't know what's in it. You're a fool, Beck."