Ray Bradbury. The Veldt
"George, I wish you'd look at the nursery."
"What's wrong with it?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then."
"I
just want you to look at it, is
all, or call a psychologist in to
look at
it."
"What would a psychologist want with
a nursery?"
"You know very well what he'd
want." His wife paused in the middle of
the kitchen
and watched the stove busy humming to
itself, making supper for
four.
"It's just that the nursery is different
now than it was."
"All right, let's have a look."
They
walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which
had cost them thirty thousand dollars
installed, this house which clothed
and fed and
rocked them to sleep and played and sang
and was good to them.
Their approach
sensitized a switch somewhere and the
nursery light flicked
on when they
came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the
halls, lights
went on and off
as they left them
behind, with a soft
automaticity.
"Well," said George Hadley.
They
stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was
forty feet
across by
forty feet long and thirty feet
high; it had cost half again as
much as the
rest of the house. "But nothing's too good for
our children,"
George had
said.
The nursery was silent. It was empty
as a jungle glade at hot high
noon. The walls
were blank and two
dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia
Hadley stood
in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede
into crystalline
distance, it seemed, and
presently an African
veldt
appeared, in
three dimensions, on all
sides, in color reproduced to the
final pebble
and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with
a hot yellow
sun.
George Hadley felt the perspiration start
on his brow.
"Let's get out of this sun," he
said. "This is a little too real. But I
don't see
anything wrong."
"Wait a moment, you'll see,"
said his wife.
Now
the hidden odorophonics were
beginning to blow a wind of odor at
the two people
in the middle of the baked veldtland.
The hot straw smell of
lion grass, the
cool green smell of the hidden
water hole, the great rusty
smell of
animals, the smell of dust like a red
paprika in the hot air. And
now the sounds:
the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery
rustling of
vultures. A shadow passed through the
sky. The shadow flickered
on George
Hadley's upturned, sweating face.
"Filthy creatures," he heard his
wife say.
"The vultures."
"You see, there are the lions, far
over, that way. Now they're on their
way to the
water hole. They've just been eating," said Lydia. "I don't know
what."
"Some animal." George Hadley put
his hand up to shield off the burning
light from his
squinted eyes. "A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe."
"Are you sure?" His wife sounded
peculiarly tense.
"No, it's a little late to be sure,"
be said, amused. "Nothing over
there I can
see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for
what's
left."
"Did you bear that scream?" she
asked.
'No."
"About a minute ago?"
"Sorry, no."
The
lions were coming.
And again George Hadley
was filled with
admiration for
the mechanical genius who had conceived
this room. A miracle
of efficiency
selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one.
Oh, occasionally
they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they
startled you,
gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone,
not only your own
son and daughter, but for
yourself when you felt like a
quick jaunt to
a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!
And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly
and startlingly
real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and
your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell
of their heated
pelts, and the
yellow of them
was in your eyes like the
yellow of an
exquisite
French tapestry, the yellows of lions and
summer grass, and the
sound of the
matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the
smell of meat
from the panting, dripping mouths.
The lions
stood looking at
George and Lydia Hadley with
terrible
green-yellow
eyes.
"Watch out!" screamed Lydia.
The lions came running at them.
Lydia bolted and ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside,
in the hall,
with the door slammed he was laughing
and she was crying, and
they both stood
appalled at the other's reaction.
"George!"
"Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet
Lydia!"
"They almost got us!"
"Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that's all they are. Oh, they
look real, I must admit - Africa in your parlor - but
it's all dimensional,
superreactionary, supersensitive color
film and mental tape film behind
glass screens.
It's all odorophonics
and sonics, Lydia.
Here's my
handkerchief."
"I'm afraid." She came to him
and put her body against him and
cried
steadily.
"Did you see? Did you feel? It's too real."
"Now, Lydia..."
"You've got to tell Wendy and Peter
not to read any more on Africa."
"Of course - of course." He
patted her.
"Promise?"
"Sure."
"And lock the nursery for a few days
until I get my nerves settled."
"You
know how difficult Peter is
about that. When I punished him a
month ago by
locking the nursery for even a few hours - the tantrum be
threw! And
Wendy too. They live for the nursery."
"It's got to be locked, that's all
there is to it."
"All right." Reluctantly he locked the huge door. "You've been
working
too hard. You
need a rest."
"I don't know - I don't know,"
she said, blowing her nose, sitting down
in a chair that immediately began to rock and
comfort her. "Maybe I don't
have enough to
do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why
don't we shut
the whole house
off for a few days and take a vacation?"
"You mean you want to fry my eggs for
me?"
"Yes." She nodded.
"And dam my socks?"
"Yes." A frantic, watery-eyed
nodding.
"And sweep the house?"
"Yes, yes - oh, yes!''
"But I thought that's why we bought this house, so we wouldn't have to
do
anything?"
"That's just it. I feel like I don't
belong here. The house is wife and
mother now, and
nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a
bath and scrub
the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub
bath can? I
cannot. And it isn't just me.
It's you. You've been awfully
nervous
lately."
"I suppose I have been smoking too
much."
"You look as if you didn't know what
to do with yourself in this house,
either. You
smoke a little more every morning and drink a
little more every
afternoon
and need a little more sedative every night. You're
beginning to
feel
unnecessary too."
"Am I?" He paused and tried to
feel into himself to see what was really
there.
"Oh, George!" She looked beyond him, at the nursery door.
"Those lions
can't get out
of there, can they?"
He
looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped
against it from
the other side.
"Of course not," he said.
At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and
Peter were at a special plastic
carnival across town and bad televised home to say
they'd be late, to go
ahead eating.
So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching
the dining-room table
produce warm dishes
of food from its mechanical interior.
"We forgot the ketchup," he
said.
"Sorry," said a small voice
within the table, and ketchup appeared.
As
for the nursery, thought George
Hadley, it won't hurt for
the
children to be
locked out of it awhile. Too much of anything
isn't good for
anyone.
And it was clearly indicated that
the children had been spending a
little too much time on
Africa. That sun. He could
feel it on his neck,
still, like a
hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Remarkable how
the
nursery caught the telepathic
emanations of the children's minds and
created life to
fill their every desire. The
children thought lions, and
there were
lions. The children thought zebras, and
there were zebras. Sun -
sun. Giraffes -
giraffes. Death and death.
That last. He chewed tastelessly on the
meat that the table bad cut for
him. Death
thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for
death
thoughts. Or,
no, you were never too young, really.
Long before you knew
what death was
you were wishing it on someone else. When
you were two years
old you were
shooting people with cap pistols.
But this - the long, hot African veldt-the
awful death in the jaws of a
lion. And
repeated again and again.
"Where are you going?"
He
didn't answer Lydia. Preoccupied,
be let the lights glow softly on
ahead of him,
extinguish behind him as he padded
to the nursery door. He
listened
against it. Far away, a lion roared.
He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he
stepped inside, he
heard a faraway
scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsided
quickly.
He stepped into Africa. How many
times in the last year had he opened
this door and
found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock
Turtle, or Aladdin and his
Magical Lamp,
or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr.
Doolittle, or the cow
jumping over a
very real-appearing moon-all the delightful contraptions of a
make-believe
world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling,
or seen
fountains of red fireworks, or heard
angel voices singing. But now,
is yellow hot
Africa, this bake oven with murder in
the heat. Perhaps Lydia
was right.
Perhaps they needed a little vacation
from the fantasy which was
growing a bit
too real for ten-year-old children.
It was all right to
exercise one's
mind with gymnastic fantasies, but when the lively child mind
settled on one
pattern... ? It seemed that, at a
distance, for the past
month, he had
heard lions roaring, and smelled their strong
odor seeping as
far away as his
study door. But, being busy, he had paid it no attention.
George Hadley stood on the African
grassland alone. The lions looked up
from their
feeding, watching him. The only flaw to the illusion was the open
door through which
he could see his wife, far down the dark
hall, like a
framed picture,
eating her dinner abstractedly.
"Go away," he said to the lions.
They did not go.
He knew the principle of the room
exactly. You sent out your thoughts.
Whatever you
thought would appear. "Let's have Aladdin
and his lamp," he
snapped. The
veldtland remained; the lions remained.
"Come on, room! I demand
Aladin!" he said.
Nothing happened. The lions mumbled in
their baked pelts.
"Aladin!"
He
went back to dinner. "The fool room's out of
order," he said. "It
won't
respond."
"Or--"
"Or what?"
"Or
it can't respond," said
Lydia, "because the children have thought
about Africa
and lions and killing so many days that the room's in a rut."
"Could be."
"Or Peter's set it to remain that
way."
"Set it?"
"He may have got into the machinery
and fixed something."
"Peter doesn't know machinery."
"He's a wise one for ten. That I.Q. of
his -"
"Nevertheless -"
"Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad."
The
Hadleys turned. Wendy and
Peter were coming in the front
door,
cheeks
like peppermint candy, eyes like bright
blue agate marbles, a smell
of ozone on
their jumpers from their trip in the helicopter.
"You're just in time for
supper," said both parents.
"We're full of strawberry ice cream and
hot dogs," said the children,
holding hands.
"But we'll sit and watch."
"Yes, come tell us about the
nursery," said George Hadley.
The
brother and sister
blinked at him
and then at each
other.
"Nursery?"
"All
about Africa and
everything," said the
father with false
joviality.
"I don't understand," said
Peter.
"Your
mother and I were just traveling through Africa with rod
and
reel; Tom Swift
and his Electric Lion," said George Hadley.
"There's no Africa in the
nursery," said Peter simply.
"Oh, come now, Peter. We know
better."
"I don't remember any Africa,"
said Peter to Wendy. "Do you?"
"No."
"Run see and come tell."
She obeyed
"Wendy, come
back here!" said George
Hadley, but she was gone. The
house lights
followed her like a flock of
fireflies. Too late, he realized
he had
forgotten to lock the nursery door after his last inspection.
"Wendy'll look and come tell
us," said Peter.
"She doesn't have to tell me. I've
seen it."
"I'm sure you're mistaken,
Father."
"I'm not, Peter. Come along
now."
But Wendy was back. "It's not
Africa," she said breathlessly.
"We'll see about this," said George Hadley, and they all walked down
the hall
together and opened the nursery door.
There
was a green, lovely forest, a
lovely river, a purple mountain,
high
voices singing, and Rima, lovely and mysterious, lurking in the
trees
with colorful flights of butterflies, like
animated bouquets, lingering in
her long
hair. The African veldtland was
gone. The lions were gone. Only
Rima was here
now, singing a song so beautiful that it brought tears to your
eyes.
George Hadley looked in at the changed scene. "Go to
bed," he said to
the children.
They opened their mouths.
"You heard me," he said.
They
went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown
leaves up the
flue to their slumber rooms.
George Hadley walked through the singing glade and picked up
something
that lay
in the comer near where the lions had been. He walked slowly back
to his wife.
"What is that?" she asked.
"An old wallet of mine," he
said.
He showed it to her. The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of
a lion. There
were drops of saliva on it, it bad been chewed, and there were
blood smears on
both sides.
He closed the nursery door and locked it,
tight.
In the middle of the night he was still
awake and he knew his wife was
awake. "Do
you think Wendy changed it?" she said at last, in the dark room.
"Of course."
"Made it from a
veldt into a forest and put Rima
there instead of
lions?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know. But it's staying
locked until I find out."
"How did your wallet get there?"
"I don't know
anything," he said,
"except that I'm beginning to be
sorry we bought
that room for the children. If children are neurotic at all,
a room like
that -"
"It's
supposed to help them work
off their neuroses in a
healthful
way."
"I'm starting to wonder." He
stared at the ceiling.
"We've given
the children everything they ever
wanted. Is this our
reward-secrecy,
disobedience?"
"Who was it said,
'Children are carpets, they should be stepped on
occasionally'?
We've never lifted a hand. They're insufferable - let's admit
it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as
if we were offspring.
They're spoiled
and we're spoiled."
"They've been acting funny ever since you forbade them
to take the
rocket to New
York a few months ago."
"They're not old enough to do that
alone, I explained."
"Nevertheless, I've
noticed they've been decidedly
cool toward us
since."
"I think I'll have David McClean come tomorrow morning to
have a look
at
Africa."
"But it's not Africa now, it's Green
Mansions country and Rima."
"I have a feeling it'll be Africa
again before then."
A moment later they heard the screams.
Two screams. Two people screaming
from downstairs. And then a roar of
lions.
"Wendy and Peter aren't in their
rooms," said his wife.
He lay
in his bed with his beating heart. "No," he said.
"They've
broken into the
nursery."
"Those screams - they sound
familiar."
"Do they?"
"Yes, awfully."
And although their beds tried very hard, the two
adults couldn't be
rocked to sleep
for another hour. A smell of cats was in the night air.
"Father?" said Peter.
"Yes."
Peter looked at his shoes. He never
looked at his father any more, nor
at his mother.
"You aren't going to lock up the nursery for good, are you?"
"That all depends."
"On what?" snapped Peter.
"On you and your sister. If you intersperse this Africa with a little
variety - oh,
Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China -"
"I thought we were free to play as we
wished."
"You are, within reasonable
bounds."
"What's wrong with Africa,
Father?"
"Oh, so now you admit you have been
conjuring up Africa, do you?"
"I wouldn't want the nursery locked
up," said Peter coldly. "Ever."
"Matter of
fact, we're thinking of
turning the whole house off for
about a month.
Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence."
"That
sounds dreadful! Would I
have to tie my own shoes instead
of
letting the
shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and
comb my hair
and
give myself a
bath?"
"It would be fun for a change, don't
you think?"
"No, it would be horrid. I didn't
like it when you took out the picture
painter last
month."
"That's because I wanted you to learn
to paint all by yourself, son."
"I don't want to do anything but look
and listen and smell; what else
is there to
do?"
"All right, go play in Africa."
"Will you shut off the house sometime
soon?"
"We're considering it."
"I don't think you'd better consider
it any more, Father."
"I won't have any threats from my
son!"
"Very well." And Peter strolled
off to the nursery.
"Am I on time?" said David
McClean.
"Breakfast?" asked George
Hadley.
"Thanks, had some. What's the
trouble?"
"David, you're a psychologist."
"I should hope so."
"Well, then, have a look at our
nursery. You saw it a year ago when you
dropped by; did
you notice anything peculiar about it then?"
"Can't say I
did; the
usual violences, a tendency
toward a slight
paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by
parents
constantly, but, oh, really nothing."
They walked down the ball.
"I locked the nursery up," explained the
father,
"and the children broke back into it during the night. I let them
stay so they
could form the patterns for you to see."
There was a terrible screaming from the
nursery.
"There it is," said George
Hadley. "See what you make of it."
They walked in on the children without
rapping.
The screams had faded. The lions were
feeding.
"Run outside a moment,
children," said George Hadley. "No, don't change
the mental
combination. Leave the walls as they are. Get!"
With the children gone, the two men
stood studying the lions clustered
at a distance,
eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.
"I wish I knew
what it was," said George
Hadley. "Sometimes I can
almost see. Do
you think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and -"
David
McClean laughed dryly. "Hardly." He turned to study all
four
walls.
"How long has this been going on?"
"A little over a month."
"It certainly doesn't feel
good."
"I want facts, not feelings."
"My dear George, a psychologist
never saw a fact in his life. He only
hears about
feelings; vague things. This doesn't feel good, I tell you.
Trust my
hunches and my instincts. I have a nose for something bad. This is
very bad. My
advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn down and your
children
brought to me every day during the next year for treatment."
"Is it that bad?"
"I'm afraid so. One of the original
uses of these nurseries was so that
we could study
the patterns left on the walls by the
child's mind, study at
our leisure,
and help the child. In this case,
however, the room has become
a channel
toward-destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them."
"Didn't you sense this before?"
"I sensed only that you bad spoiled your children
more than most. And
now you're
letting them down in some way. What way?"
"I wouldn't let them go to New
York."
"What else?"
"I've taken a few machines from the
house and threatened them, a month
ago, with
closing up the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close
it for a few
days to show I meant business."
"Ah, ha!"
"Does that mean anything?"
"Everything. Where
before they had a
Santa Claus now they have a
Scrooge.
Children prefer Santas. You've let this room and this house replace
you and your wife in your children's affections. This room is their
mother
and father, far more important in their lives
than their real parents. And
now you come
along and want to shut it off. No wonder
there's hatred here.
You can feel it
coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you'll have to
change your life.
Like too many others, you've built it around creature
comforts. Why,
you'd starve tomorrow if
something went wrong in
your
kitchen. You
wouldn't know bow to tap an egg.
Nevertheless, turn everything
off. Start new.
It'll take time. But we'll make good children out of bad in
a year, wait
and see."
"But won't the shock be too much for
the children, shutting the room up
abruptly, for
good?"
"I don't want them going any deeper
into this, that's all."
The lions were finished with their red
feast.
The lions were standing on the edge
of the
clearing watching the two
men.
"Now I'm feeling
persecuted," said McClean.
"Let's get out of here. I
never have
cared for these damned rooms. Make me nervous."
"The
lions look real, don't they?" said George Hadley. I don't suppose
there's any way
-"
"What?"
"- that they could become real?"
"Not that I know."
"Some flaw in the machinery, a
tampering or something?"
"No."
They went to the door.
"I don't imagine the room will like
being turned off," said the father.
"Nothing ever likes to die - even a
room."
"I wonder if it hates me for wanting
to switch it off?"
"Paranoia is thick around here
today," said David McClean.
"You can
follow it like
a spoor. Hello." He bent and picked
up a bloody scarf. "This
yours?"
"No." George Hadley's face was
rigid. "It belongs to Lydia."
They went to the fuse box together and
threw the switch that killed the
nursery.
The two children were in hysterics. They
screamed and pranced and threw
things. They
yelled and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture.
"You can't do that to the nursery,
you can't!''
"Now, children."
The children flung themselves onto a
couch, weeping.
"George," said
Lydia Hadley, "turn
on the nursery, just for a few
moments. You
can't be so abrupt."
"No."
"You can't be so cruel..."
"Lydia, it's off, and it stays off.
And the whole damn house dies as of
here and now.
The more I see of the mess we've put ourselves in, the more it
sickens
me. We've been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for
too long. My
God, how we need a breath of honest air!"
And he
marched about the house turning off the
voice clocks, the
stoves, the heaters, the shoe shiners, the shoe lacers, the body scrubbers
and swabbers and massagers, and every other machine be could put his hand
to.
The house was full of dead bodies, it
seemed. It felt like a mechanical
cemetery. So
silent. None of the humming hidden
energy of machines waiting
to function at
the tap of a button.
"Don't let them
do it!" wailed Peter at the
ceiling, as if he was
talking to the house, the nursery. "Don't let Father kill everything." He
turned to his
father. "Oh, I hate you!"
"Insults won't get you
anywhere."
"I wish you were dead!"
"We were, for a long
while. Now we're going to really start living.
Instead of
being handled and massaged, we're going to live."
Wendy was still crying and Peter joined
her again. "Just a moment, just
one moment,
just another moment of nursery," they wailed.
"Oh, George," said the wife,
"it can't hurt."
"All right - all right, if they'll just shut up. One minute,
mind you,
and then off
forever."
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" sang the
children, smiling with wet faces.
"And then we're going on a vacation. David McClean is coming back in
half an hour to
help us move out and get to the airport. I'm going to dress.
You turn the
nursery on for a minute, Lydia, just a minute, mind you."
And
the three of them
went babbling off while he
let himself be
vacuumed
upstairs through the air flue and set about
dressing himself. A
minute later
Lydia appeared.
"I'll be glad when we get away,"
she sighed.
"Did you leave them in the
nursery?"
"I wanted to dress
too. Oh, that horrid Africa. What
can they see in
it?"
"Well, in five minutes we'll be on
our way to Iowa.
Lord, how did we
ever get in
this house? What prompted us to buy a nightmare?"
"Pride, money, foolishness."
"I think we'd
better get downstairs before
those kids get engrossed
with those
damned beasts again."
Just then they heard the children calling,
"Daddy, Mommy, come quick -
quick!"
They
went downstairs in the
air flue and ran down
the hall. The
children were
nowhere in sight. "Wendy? Peter!"
They ran into the nursery. The veldtland was empty save for the lions
waiting,
looking at them. "Peter, Wendy?"
The door slammed.
"Wendy, Peter!"
George Hadley and his wife whirled and ran
back to the door.
"Open the door!" cried George
Hadley, trying the knob. "Why,
they've
locked it from
the outside! Peter!" He beat at the door. "Open up!"
He heard Peter's voice outside, against
the door.
"Don't let them switch off the
nursery and the house," he was saying.
Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at the
door. "Now, don't be ridiculous,
children. It's
time to go. Mr. McClean'll be here in a minute and..."
And then they heard the sounds.
The lions on three sides
of them, in the yellow veldt
grass, padding
through the dry
straw, rumbling and roaring in their throats.
The lions.
Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and
they turned and looked back at
the
beasts edging
slowly forward crouching, tails stiff.
Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.
And
suddenly they realized
why those other
screams bad sounded
familiar.
"Well, here I am,"
said David McClean in the nursery
doorway, "Oh,
hello." He
stared at the two children seated in the center of the open glade
eating a little
picnic lunch. Beyond them was the water
hole and the yellow
veldtland;
above was the hot sun. He began to
perspire. "Where are your
father and
mother?"
The children looked up and smiled.
"Oh, they'll be here directly."
"Good, we
must get going." At a distance
Mr. McClean saw the lions
fighting and clawing and then quieting
down to feed in silence under the
shady trees.
He squinted at the lions with his hand tip
to his eyes.
Now
the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink.
A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean's hot
face. Many shadows flickered.
The vultures
were dropping down the blazing sky.
"A cup of tea?" asked Wendy in
the silence.
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