Рэй Брэдбери - I Sing the Body Electric!

And the linens that tethered her limbs had symbols on them of three sorts, one a girl of ten, one a boy of nine, one a boy of thirteen.

A series of bandages for each of us! We gave each other a startled glance and a sudden bark of laughter. Nobody said the bad joke, but all thought: She's all wrapped up in us!

And we didn't care. We loved the joke. We loved whoever had thought to make us part of the ceremony we now went through as each of us seized arid began to unwind each of his or her particular serpentines of delicious stuffs!

The lawn was soon a mountain of linen. The woman beneath the covering lay there, waiting. «Oh, no,» cried Agatha. «She's dead, too!» She ran. I stopped her. «Idiot. She's not dead or alive. Where's your key?» «Key?» «Dummy,» said Tim, «the key the man gave you to wind her up!»

Her hand had already spidered along her blouse to where the symbol of some possible new religion hung. She had strung it there, against her own skeptic's muttering, and now she held it in her sweaty palm.

«Go on,» said Timothy. «Put it in!» «But where?» «Oh for God's sake! As the man said, in her right armpit or left ear. Gimme!»

And he grabbed the key and impulsively moaning with impatience and not able to find the proper insertion slot, prowled over the prone figure's head and bosom and at last, on pure

instinct, perhaps for a lark, perhaps just giving up the whole damned mess, thrust the key through a final shroud of bandage at the navel.

On the instant: spunnng! The Electrical Grandmother's eyes flicked wide!

Something began to hum and whir. It was as if Tim had stirred up a hive of hornets with an ornery stick.

«Oh,» gasped Agatha, seeing he had taken the game away, «let me!» She wrenched the key. Grandma's nostrils flared! She might snort up steam, snuff out fire! «Me!» I cried, and grabbed the key and gave it a huge… twist!

The beautiful woman's mouth popped wide. «Me!» «Me!» «Me!»

Grandma suddenly sat up.

We leapt back.

We knew we had, in a way, slapped her alive.

She was born, she was born!

Her head swiveled all about. She gaped. She mouthed. And the first thing she said was:

Laughter.

Where one moment we had backed off, now the mad sound drew us near to peer as in a pit where crazy folk are kept with snakes to make them well.

It was a good laugh, full and rich and hearty, and it did not mock, it accepted. It said the world was a wild place, strange, unbelievable, absurd if you wished, but all in all, quite a place. She would not dream to find another. She would not ask to go back to sleep.

She was awake now. We had awakened her. With a glad shout, she would go with it all.

And go she did, out of her sarcophagus, out of her winding sheet, stepping forth, brushing off, looking around as for a mirror. She found it.

The reflections in our eyes.

She was more pleased than disconcerted with what she found there. Her laughter faded to an amused smile.

For Agatha, at the instant of birth, had leapt to hide on the porch. The Electrical Person pretended not to notice.

She turned slowly on the green lawn near the shady street, gazing all about with new eyes, her nostrils moving as if she breathed the actual air and this the first morn of the lovely Garden and she with no intention of spoiling the game by biting the apple

Her gaze fixed upon my brother. «You must be—?» «Timothy. Tim,» he offered. «And you must be—?»

«Tom,» I said.

How clever again of the Fantoccini Company. They knew. She knew. But they had taught her to pretend not to know. That way we could feel great, we were the teachers, telling her what she already knew! How sly, how wise.

«And isn't there another boy?» said the woman.

«Girl!» a disgusted voice cried from somewhere on the porch.

«Whose name is Alicia—?»

«Agatha!» The far voice, started in humiliation, ended in proper anger.

«Algernon, of course.»

«Agatha!» Our sister popped up, popped back to hide a flushed face.

«Agatha.» The woman touched the word with proper affection. «Well, Agatha, Timothy, Thomas, let me look at you.»

«No,» said I, said Tim, «Let us look at you. Hey…» Our voices slid back in our throats. We drew near her.

We walked in great slow circles round about, skirting the edges of her territory. And her territory extended as far as we could hear the hum of the warm summer hive. For that is exactly what she sounded like. That was her characteristic tune. She made a sound like a season all to herself, a morning early in June when the world wakes to find everything absolutely perfect, fine, delicately attuned, all in balance, nothing disproportioned. Even before you opened your eyes you knew it would be one of those days. Tell the sky what color it must be, and it was indeed.

Tell the sun how to crochet its way, pick and choose among leaves to lay out carpetings of bright and dark on the fresh lawn, and pick and lay it did. The bees have been up earliest of all, they have already come and gone, and come and gone again to the meadow fields and returned all golden fuzz on the air, all pollen-decorated, epaulettes at the full, nectar-dripping. Don't you hear them pass? hover? dance their language? telling where all the sweet gums are, the syrups that make bears frolic and lumber in bulked ecstasies, that make boys squirm with unpronounced juices, that make girls leap out of beds to catch from the corners of their eyes their dolphin selves naked aflash on the warm air poised forever in one eternal glass wave.

So it seemed with our electrical friend here on the new lawn in the middle of a special day.

And she a stuff to which we were drawn, lured, Spelled, doing our dance, remembering what could not be remembered, needful, aware of her attentions.

Timothy and I, Tom, that is.

Agatha remained on the porch.

But her head flowered above the rail, her eyes followed all that was done and said.

And what was said and done was Tim at last exhaling:

«Hey… your eyes… »

Her eyes. Her splendid eyes.

Even more splendid than the lapis lazuli on the sarcophagus lid and on the mask that had covered her bandaged face. These most beautiful eyes in the world looked out upon us calmly, shining.

«Your eyes,» gasped Tim, «are the exact same color, are like—» «Like what?» «My favorite aggies…» «What could be better than that?» she said.

And the answer was, nothing.

Her eyes slid along on the bright air to brush my ears, my nose, my chin. «And you, Master Tom?»

«Me?»

«How shall we be friends? We must, you know, if we're going to knock elbows about the house the next year…»

«I…» I said, and stopped.

«You,» said Grandma, «are a dog mad to bark but with taffy in his teeth. Have you ever given a dog taffy? It's so sad and funny, both. You laugh but hate yourself for laughing. You cry and run to help, and laugh again when his first new bark comes out.»

I barked a small laugh remembering a dog, a day, and some taffy.

Grandma turned, and there was my old kite strewn on the lawn. She recognized its problem.

«The string's broken. No. The ball of string's lost. You can't fly a kite that way. Here.»

She bent. We didn't: know what might happen. How could a robot grandma fly a kite for us? She raised up, the kite in her hands.

«Fly,» she said, as to a bird. And the kite flew. That is to say, with a grand flourish, she let it rip on the wind. And she and the kite were one.

For from the tip of her index finger there sprang a thin bright strand of spider web, all half- invisible gossamer fishline which, fixed to the kite, let it soar a hundred, no, three hundred, no, a thousand feet high on the summer swoons.