Рэй Брэдбери - Zaharoff/Richter Mark V

In the twilight just before sunrise, it was the most ordinary-looking building he had seen since the chicken farm of his youth. It stood in the middle of an empty field full of cricket weeds and cacti, mostly dust and some neglected footpaths in the half darkness.

Charlie Crowe left the Rolls-Royce engine run-fling at the curb behind him and babbled going along the shadowed path, leading the way for Rank Gibson, who glanced back at the gently purring car.

«Shouldn't you―»

«No, no,» Charlie Crowe cut in. «No one would steal a Rolls-Royce, now, would they? How far would they get, to the next corner? Before someone else stole it from them! Come along!»

«What's the hurry, we've got all morning!»

«That's what you think, chum. We've got―» Charlie Crowe eyed his watch. «Twenty minutes, maybe fifteen for the fast tour, the coming disaster, the revelations, the whole bit!»

«Don't talk so fast and slow down, you'll give me a heart attack.»

«Save it for breakfast. Here. Put this in your pocket.»

Hank Gibson looked at the coupon-green diploma.

«Insurance?»

«On your house, as of yesterday.»

«But we don't need―»

«Yes, you do, but don't know it. Sign the duplicate. Here. Can you see? Here's my flashlight and my pen. Thatsa boy. Give one to me. One for you―»

«Christ―»

«No swearing. You're all protected now, no matter what. Jig time.»

And before he knew it, Hank Gibson was elbow-fetched through a paint-flaked door inside to yet another locked door, which opened when Charlie Crowe pointed his electric laser at it. They stepped into-

«An elevator! What's an elevator doing in a shack in an empty lot at five in the morning―»

«Hush.»

The floor sank under them and they traveled what might have been seventy or eighty feet straight down to where another door whispered aside and they stepped out into a long hall of a dozen doors on each side with a few dozen pleasantly glowing lights above. Before he could exclaim again, Hank Gibson was hustled past these doors that bore the names of cities and countries.

«Damn,» cried Hank Gibson, «I hate being rushed through one god-awful mystery after an-other. I'm working on a novel and a feature for my newspaper. I've no time―»

«For the biggest story in the world? Bosh! You and I will write it, share the profits! You can't resist. Calamities. Chaos. Holocausts!»

«You were always great for hyperbole―»

«Quiet. It's my turn to show and tell.» Charlie Crowe displayed his wristwatch. «We're wasting time. Where do we start?» He waved at the two dozen shut doors surrounding them with labels marked CONSTANTINOPLE, MEXICO CITY, LIMA, SAN FRANCISCO on one side.

Eighteen ninety-seven, 1914, 1938, 1963 on the other. Also, a special door marked HAUSSMANN, 1870.

«Places and dates, dates and places. How in hell should I know why or how to choose?»

«Don't these cities and dates ring any bells, stir any dust? Peek here. Glance there. Go on.»

Hank Gibson peeked.

To one side, through a glass window on the topmost part of a door marked 1789, he saw:

«Looks like Paris.»

«Press the button there under the glass.»

Hank Gibson pressed the button.

«Now look!»

Hank Gibson looked.

«My God, Paris. In flames. And there's the guillotine!»

«Correct. Now. Next door. Next window.»

Hank Gibson moved and peeked.

«Paris again, by God. Do I press the button?»

«Why not?»

He pressed.

«Jesus, it's still burning. But this time it's 1870. The Commune?»

«Paris fighting Hessians outside the city, Parisians killing Parisians inside the city. Nothing like the French, eh? Move!»

They reached a third window. Gibson peered.

«Paris. But not burning. There go the taxicabs. I know. Nineteen sixteen. Paris saved by one thousand Paris taxis carrying troops to fend off the Germans outside the city!»

«A-One! Next?»

At a fourth window.

«Paris intact. But over here. Dresden? Berlin? London? All destroyed.»

«Right. How do you like the three-dimension virtual reality? Superb! Enough of cities and war. Across the hall. Go down the line. All those doors with different kinds of devastation.»

«Mexico City? I was there once, in '46.»

«Press.»

Hank Gibson pressed the button.

The city fell, shook, fell.

«The earthquake of '84?»

«Eight-five, to be exact.»

«Christ, those poor people. Bad enough they're poor. But thousands killed, maimed, made poorer. And the government―»

«Not giving a damn. Move.»

They stopped at a door marked ARMENIA 1988.

Gibson squinted in, pressed the button.

«Major country, Armenia. Major country-gone.»

«Biggest quake in that territory in half a century.»

They paused at two more windows: TOKYO, 1932, and SAN FRANCISCO,1905. Both whole, entire, intact at first glance. Touch the button: all fall down!

Gibson turned away, shaken and pale.

«Well?» said his friend Charlie. «What's the sum?»

Gibson stared along the hall to left and right.

«War and Peace? Or Peace destroying itself without War?»

«Touché!»

«Why are you showing me all this?»

«For your future and mine, untold riches, in-credible revelations, amazing truths. Andale. Vamoose!»

Charlie Crowe flashed his laser pen at the largest door at the far end of the hall. The double locks hissed; the door sank away to one side, revealing a large boardroom with a huge table forty feet in length, surrounded by twenty leather chairs on each side and something like a throne, some-what elevated, at the far end.

«Go sit up at the end,» said Charlie.

Hank Gibson moved slowly

«Oh, for Christ sake, shake a leg. We've only seven more minutes before the end of the world.»

«End―?»

«Just joking. Ready?»

Hank Gibson sat. «Fire away.»

The table, the chairs, and the room shook.

Gibson leaped up.

«What was that?»

«Nothing.» Charlie Crowe checked his watch. «At least not yet. Sit back. What have you seen?»

Gibson settled in his chair uneasily, grasping the arms. «Damned if I know. History?»

«Yes, but what kind ?»

«War and Peace. Peace and War. Bad Peace, of course. Earthquakes and fire.»

«Admirable. Now, who's responsible for all that destruction, two kinds?»

«What,war?Politicians, I guess. Ethnic mobs. Greed. Jealousy. Munitions manufacturers. The Krupp works in Germany. Zaharoff, wasn't that his name? The big munitions king, the grand mullah of all the warmongers, films of him on the newsreels in cinemas when I was a kid. Zaharoff?»

«Yes! What about the other side of the hall? The earthquakes.»

«God did it.»

«Only God? No helpers?»

«How can anyone help an earthquake?»

«Partially. Indirectly. Collaboratively.»

«An earthquake is an earthquake. A city just happens to be in its way. Underfoot.»

«Wrong, Hank.»

«Wrong!?»

«What if I told you that those cities were not accidentally built there? What if I told you w had planned to build them there, on purpose, to be destroyed?»

«Nuts!»

«No, Hank, creative annihilation. We were up to these tricks as far back as the Tang dynasty earthquakewise on the one hand. Citywise? Paris 1789 warwise.»

«We? We? Who's we ?»

«Me, Hank, and my cohorts, not in crimson and gold, but good dark cloth and decent ties and fine architectural school graduates. We did it, Hank We built the cities so as to tear them down. To knock them apart with earthquakes or kill their with bombs and war, war and bombs.»