Рэй Брэдбери: Jack-In-The-Box

He was suddenly sick; he was sick again.

Turning, he almost fell flat down the stairs.

He slammed the forbidden door, fell against it

«You'll go blind.» He crushed his hands to his eyes. «You shouldn't have seen, you shouldn't, you shouldn't!»

He fell to his knees, he lay on the floor twisted tight, covered up. He need wait but a moment-the blindness would come.

Five minutes later he stood at an ordinary Highlands window, looking out at his own familiar Garden World.

He saw once more the elms and hickory trees and the stone wall, and that forest which he had taken to be an endless wall itself, beyond which lay nothing but nightmare nothingness, mist, rain, and eternal night. Now it was certain, the Universe did not end with the forest. There were other worlds than those contained in Highland or Lowland.

He tried the forbidden door again. Locked.

Had he really gone up? Had he really discovered those halfgreen, half-blue vastnesses? Had God seen him? Edwin trembled. God. God, who smoked mysterious black pipes and wielded magical walking sticks. God who might be watching even now!

Edwin murmured, touching his cold face.

«I can still see. Thank you, thank you. I can _still_ see!»

At nine-thirty, half an hour late, he rapped on the school door.

«Good morning, Teacher!»

The door swung open. Teacher waited in her tall gray, thickclothed monk's robe, the cowl hiding her face. She wore her usual silver spectacles. Her gray-gloved hands beckoned.

«You're late.»

Beyond her the land of books burned in bright colors from the hearth. There were walls bricked with encyclopedias, and a fireplace in which you could stand without bumping your head. A log blazed fiercely.

The door closed, and there was a warm quiet. Here was the desk, where God had once sat, he'd walked this carpet, stuffing his pipe with rich tobacco, and scowled out that vast, stained-glass window. The room smelled of God, rubbed wood, tobacco, leather, and silver coins. Here, Teacher's voice sang like a solemn harp, telling of God, the old days, and the World when it had shaken with God's determination, trembled at his wit, when the World was abuilding under God's hand, a blueprint, a cry, and timber rising. God's fingerprints still lay like half-melted snowflakes on a dozen sharpened pencils in a locked glass display. They must never never be touched lest they melt away forever.

Here, here in the Highlands, to the soft sound of Teacher's voice running on, Edwin learned what was expected of him and his body. He was to grow into a Presence, he must fit the odors and the trumpet voice of God. He must some day stand tall and burning with pale fire at this high window to shout dust off the beams of the Worlds; he must be God Himself! Nothing must prevent it. Not the sky or the trees or the Things beyond the trees.

Teacher moved like a vapor in the room.

«Why are you late, Edwin?»

«I don't know.»

«I'll ask you again. Edwin why are you late?»

«One-one of the forbidden doors was open…»

He heard the hiss of Teacher's breath. He saw her slowly slide back and sink into the large hand-carved chair, swallowed by darkness, her glasses flashing light before they vanished. He felt her looking out at him from shadow and her voice was numbed and so like a voice he heard at night, his own voice crying just before he woke from some nightmare. «Which door? Where?» she said. «Oh, it must be locked!»

«The door by the Dali-Picasso people,» he said, in panic. He and Teacher had always been friends. Was that finished now? Had he spoiled things? «I climbed the stair. I had to, I had to! I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please, don't tell Mother!»

Teacher sat lost in the hollow chair, in the hollow cowl. Her glasses made faint firefly glitters in the well where she moved alone. «And what did you see up there?» she murmured.

«A big blue room!»

«Did you?»

«And a green one, and ribbons with bugs running on them, hut I didn't, I didn't stay long, I swear, I swear!»

«Green room, ribbons, yes ribbons, and the little bugs running along them, yes,» she said, and her voice made him sad.

He reached out for her hand, but it fell away to her lap and groped back, in darkness, to her breast. «I came right down, I locked the door, I won't go look again, ever!» he cried.

Her voice was so faint he could hardly hear what she said. «But now you've seen, and you'll want to see more, and you'll always he curious now.» The cowl moved slowly back and forth. Its deepness turned toward him, questioning. «Did you-_like_ what you saw?»

«I was scared. It was big.»

«Big, yes, too big. Large, large, so large, Edwin. Not like our world. Big, large, uncertain. Oh, why did you do this! You knew it was wrong!»

The fire bloomed and withered on the hearth while she waited for his answer and finally when he could not answer she said, as if her lips were barely moving, «Is it your Mother?»

«I don't know!»

«Is she nervous, is she mean, does she snap at you, does she hold too tight, do you want time alone, is that it, is that it, is that it?»

«Yes, yes!» he sobbed, wildly.

«Is that why you ran off, she demands all your time, all your thoughts?» Lost and sad, her voice. «Tell me…»

His hands had gone sticky with tears. «Yes!» He bit his fingers and the backs of his hands. «Yes!» It was wrong to admit such things, but he didn't have to say them now, she said them, she said them, and all he must do is agree, shake his head, bite his knuckles, cry out between sobs.

Teacher was a million years old.

«We learn,» she said, wearily. Rousing from her chair, she moved with a slow swaying of gray robes to the desk where her gloved hand searched a long time to find pen and paper. «We learn, Oh God, but slowly, and with pain, we learn. We think we do right, but all the time, all the time, we kill the Plan…» She hissed hef breath, jerked her head up suddenly. The cowl looked completely empty, shivering.

She wrote words on the paper.

«Give this to your mother. It tells her you must have two full hours every afternoon to yourself, to prowl where you wish. Anywhere. Except _out there_. Are you listening, child?»

«Yes.» He dried his face. «But―»

«Go on.»

«Did Mother lie to me about _out there_, and the Beasts?»

«Look at me,» she said. «I've been your friend, I've never beaten you, as your mother sometimes must. We're both here to help you understand and grow so you won't be destroyed as God was.»

She arose, and in rising, turned the cowl such a way that color from the hearth washed over her face. Swiftly, the firelight erased her many wrinkles.

Edwin gasped. His heart gave a jolting thump. «The fire!»

Teacher froze.

«The fire!» Edwin looked at the fire and back to her face. The cowl jerked away from his gaze, the face vanished in the deep well, gone. «Your face,» said Edwin numbly. «You look like Mother!»

She moved swiftly to the books, seized one down. She talked to the shelves in her high, singing monotonous voice. «Women look alike, you know that! Forget it! Here, here!» And she brought him the book. «Read the first chapter! Read the diary!»

Edwin took the book but did not feel its weight in his hands. The fire rumbled and sucked itself brilliantly up the flue as he began to read and as he read Teacher sank back down and settled and quieted and the more he read the more the gray cowl nodded and became serene, the hidden face like a clapper gone solemn in its bell. Firelight ignited the gold animal lettering of the shelved books as he read and he spoke the words but was really thinking of these books from which pages had been razored, and clipped, certain lines erased, certain pictures torn, the leather jaws of some books glued tight, others like mad dogs, muzzled in hard bronze straps to keep him away. All this he thought while his lips moved through the fire-quiet: