Ray Bradbury. The Ghost in the Machine

                Ray Bradbury
                http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal

                The Ghost in the Machine
                1996

     The  talk  in the village in the year 1853 was, of course, about the madman
above,  in  his  sod-and-brick  hut,  with an untended garden and a wife who had
fled, silent about his madness, never to return.
     The people of the village had never drunk enough courage to go see what the
special madness was or why the wife had vanished, tear-stained, leaving a vacuum
into which atmospheres had rushed to thunder-clap.
     And yet...
     On a sweltering hot day with no cloud to offer shadow comfort and no threat
of  rain  to  cool  man  or  beast,  the  Searcher arrived. Which is to say, Dr.
Mortimer  Goff,  a man of many parts, most of them curious and self-serving, but
also traveling the world for some baroque event, or miraculous revelation.
     The good doctor came tramping up the hill, stumbling over cobbles that were
more  stone  than  paving,  having  abandoned  his  coach-and-horses, fearful of
crippling them with such a climb.
     Dr.  Goff  it turned out, had come from London, inhaling fogs, bombarded by
storms,  and  now,  stunned  by  too  much  light and heat, this good if curious
physician  stopped,  exhausted,  to  lean  against a fence, sight further up the
hill, and ask:
     "Is this the way to the lunatic?"
     A farmer who was more scarecrow than human raised his eyebrows and snorted,
"That would be Elijah Wetherby."
     ''If lunatics have names, yes."
     "We  call  him  crazed  or  mad,  but  lunatic will do. It sounds like book
learning. Are you one of _ those?"_
     "I own books, yes, and chemical retorts and a skeleton that was once a man,
and a permanent pass to the London Historical and Scientific Museum-"
     "All  well  and  good,"  the  farmer interrupted, "but of no use for failed
crops  and a dead wife. Follow your nose. And when you find the fool or whatever
you  name  him, take him with you. We're tired of his shouts and commotions late
nights  in  his iron foundry and anvil menagerie. Rumor says he will soon finish
some monster that will run to kill us all."
     "Is that true?" asked Dr. Goff.
     "No,  it lies easy on my tongue. Good day, Doctor, and God deliver you from
the lightning bolts that wait for you above."
     With this the farmer spaded the earth to bury the conversation.
     So the curious doctor, threatened, climbed on, under a dark cloud which did
not stop the sun.
     And at last arrived at a hut that seemed more tomb than home, surrounded by
land more graveyard than garden.
     Outside the ramshackle sod-and-brick dwelling a shadow stepped forth, as if
waiting, and became an old, very old, man.
     "Well, there you are at last!" it cried.
     Dr. Goff reared back at this. "You sound, sir, as if you _ expected_ me!"
     "I did," said the old man, "some years ago! What _ took_ you so long?"
     "You are not exactly cheek by jowl with London, sir."
     "I  am  not,"  the  old  man agreed and added, "The name is Wetherby. The _
Inventor"_
     "Mr.  Wetherby,  the Inventor. I am Dr. Goff, the so-called Searcher, for I
move  in  behalf of our good Queen, turning rocks, digging truffles, curious for
stuffs that might delight her Majesty or fill her museums, shops, and streets in
the greatest city in the world. Have I reached the right place?"
     "And just in time, for I am now in my eightieth year and of inconsequential
vigor.  If you had arrived next year, you might have found me in the churchyard.
Do come in!"
     At this moment, Dr. Goff heard a gathering of people behind him, all with a
most unpleasant muttering, so at Mr. Wetherby's beckoning, he was glad to enter,
sit,  and  watch an almost rare whiskey being poured without invitation. When he
had quaffed the glass, Dr. Goff swiveled his gaze about the room.
     "Well, where _ is_ it?"
     "Where is what, sir?"
     "The  lunatic  device,  the  insane  machine that goes nowhere but in going
might run down a child, a lamb, a priest, a nun, or an old blind dog, _ where?"_
     "So  I am that famous, am I?" The old man let a few crumbs of laughter fall
from  his  toothless  mouth.  "Well,  sir.  I  keep it locked in the goats' shed
behind: the outhouse of machines. Finish that to strengthen your sanity when you
at last behold the delight and grievance of my long inventive life. So!"
     The  doctor  drank,  was replenished and soon out the door, across a small,
smooth  circle  of  turf, and to a shed whose door was triple-kept with numerous
padlocks and keys. Old Wetherby entered, lit many candles, and beckoned the good
doctor in.
     He pointed as to a manger. The medical Searcher looked, expecting a mother,
crib, and holy babe by the way Wetherby gestured and cried:
     "There she _ be!"_
     "Is it female, then?"
     "Come to think, she _ is!"_
     And there in the candlelight was Wetherby's mechanical pride.
     Dr. Goff coughed, to hide his chagrin.
     "That, sir, is but a metal _ frame!"_
     "But what a frame to hold _ velocities!_ Ha!"
     And  the  old man, young with fevers, rushed to seize a largish wheel which
he  transported  to  fit  to  the  front  part of the frame. Then he fetched yet
another circular object to fit into the frame's rear.
     "Well?" he cried.
     "I see two wheels, _ half _ a cart, and no horse!"
     "We  will shoot all horses!" exclaimed Wetherby. "My invention, by the tens
of  thousands, will shy off all horses and banish manures. Do you know, each day
in London a thousand tons of horse clods must be cleared, fertilizer wasted, not
spread on neighbor fields but dumped as sludge down-Thames. God, how I talk!"
     "But, sir, continue. Those look to be spinning wheels, borrowed from nearby
farms?"
     "They  are,  but spliced and strengthened with metal to sustain" - Wetherby
touched  himself  -  "one  hundred twenty pounds. And here's the saddle for that
weight."  Whereupon  he  fitted  a  saddle mid-frame. "And here the stirrups and
ribbon to run the back wheel." So saying, he affixed a longish leather ribbon to
one stirrup's rotary and tightened it on a spool at the rear.
     "Do you begin to perceive, Doctor?"
     "I am stranded in ignorance, sir.
     "Well, then, be alert, for I now enthrone myself."
     And the old man, light as a chimpanzee, slung himself in place on a leather
seat mid-frame between the silent spinning wheels.
     "I still see no horse, sir."
     _"I_ am the horse, Doctor. I am the horse a-gallop!"
     And  the  old  man thrust his feet in the stirrups to chum them up, around,
and  down; up, around, and down; as the rear wheels, provoked, did likewise, up,
down, around, with a lovely hum, fastened in place on the platform planks.
     "Aha."  The  doctor's  face  brightened.  "This  is a device to manufacture
electrical   power?   Something   from   Benjamin   Franklin's   storm-lightning
notebooks?!"
     "Gods,  no.  It  _  could_ make lightnings, yes! But this, sir, not seeming
one, _ is_ a horse, and I its night rider! So!"
     And  Wetherby  pumped and wheezed, wheezed and pumped, and the rear wheels,
locked in place, spun faster, faster, with a siren whine.
     "All very well," snorted the good doctor, "but the horse, if it is, and the
rider,  if  you  _  are,_  seem  to be going nowhere! What will you _ call_ your
machine?"
     "I  have  had many nights and years to think." Wetherby pumped and wheezed.
"The Velocitor, perhaps." Pumpwheeze. "Or the Precipitor, but no, that sounds as
if  I  might  be  thrown  from  my  'horse.'  The  Galvanizer, yes? Or why not-"
Wheeze-pump. "The Landstride or Diminisher, for-" Wheeze-pump. "It does diminish
time  and  distance. Doctor, you know Latin, eh? So, feet to wheel, wheel run by
feet _ name_ it!''
     "The Elijah, your given name, sir, the Elijah."
     "But  he  saw  a wheel way in the middle of the air and it was a wheel in a
wheel, is that not so?"
     "When  last  I  was  in church, yes. And you are grounded, that is plain to
see.  Why  not Velocipede, then? Having to do with speed and the applied toe and
ankle?"
     "Close-on, Dr. Goff, close-on. Why do you stare so fixedly?"
     "It  comes  to  mind  that  great  times  call  forth great inventions. The
inventor  is child to his year and day. This is not a great time for such as you
and  yours.  Did  this  century  call  you  forth as its mightiest of all men of
genius?"
     Old Wetherby let his machine coast for a moment and smiled.
     "No,  I  and  my  Tilda here, I call her Tilda, will instead be the gravity
that  calls  forth  the century. We will influence the year, the decade, and the
millennium!"
     "It  is hard for me to believe," said the medical gentleman, "that you will
build   a   road   from   your   sill  to  the  city  on  which  to  glide  your
not-inconsiderable dream."
     "Nay,  Doctor,  the reverse is true. The city, and the world when they know
me1 and this will run a concourse here to deliver me to fame."
     "Your  head  knocks heaven, Mr. Wetherby," said the doctor dryly. "But your
roots ache for sustenance, water, minerals, air. You stroke and pump wildly, but
go nowhere. Once off that rack, will you not fall on your side, destroyed?"
     "Nay,  nay."  Wetherby, in gusts, pumped again. "For I have discovered some
physics,  as  yet  nameless.  The faster you propel this bodily device, the less
tendency to fall left or right but continue straight, if no obstacles prevent!"
     "With  only _ two_ wheels beneath? Prove it. Release your invention, set it
free in flight, let us see you sustain your forward motion without breaking your
bum!"
     "Oh,  God,  shut  up!"  cried  Wetherby  as  his kindling legs thrashed the
pedals,  racketing round as he leaned into a phantom wind, eyes clenched against
an invisible storm, and churned the wheels to a frenzy. "Don't you hear? Listen.
That  whine,  that  cry,  that whisper. The ghost in the machine, which promises
things  most  new,  unseen, unrealized, only a dream now but _ tomorrow -_ Great
God,  don't  you _ see?!_ If I were on a _ real_ path this would be swifter than
gazelles,  a  panic of deer! All pedestrians vanquished. All coach-and-horses in
dust!  Not  twenty  miles  a day, but thirty, forty miles in a single glorious _
hour!_  Stand  off,  Time.  Beware, meadow-beasts! Here glides, in full plummet,
Wetherby with _ nothing_ to stop him!"
     "Aye,"  said  the  Searcher dryly, "you pump up a storm on that stand. But,
set free, how would you balance on only _ two_ wheels!?"
     "Like  this!"  cried Wetherby, and with a thrust of his hands and an uplift
of  frame,  seized  the Traveler, the Motion Machine, the Pathfinder, up free of
its  stand and in an instant plunged through the room and out the door, with Dr.
Goff, in full pursuit, yelling:
     "Stop! You'll kill yourself!"
     "No, exhilarate my heart, oxygenate my blood!" cried Wetherby, and there he
was  in  a  chicken-yard  he  had trampled flat, paths some sixty feet around on
which  he  now flailed his metal machine with scythings of ankle, toe, heel, and
leg,  sucking  air,  gusting out great laughs. "See? I do _ not_ fall! Two legs,
two wheels, and: _ presto!"_
    
     "My  God!"  cried  Dr. Goff, eyes thrust forth like hardboiled eggs. "God's
truth! How so?!"
     "I  fly  forward  faster than I fall downward, an unguessed law of physics.
But lo! I almost fly. Fly! Good-bye horses, doomed and dead!"
     And  with  _"dead"_  he was overcome with such a delirium of pant and pump,
perspiration  raining  off him in showers, that with a great cry, he wobbled and
was  flung,  a  meteor  of flesh, over and down on a coop where the chickens, in
dumb  feather-duster  alarms,  exploded  in  shrieks  as  Wetherby  slid  in one
direction  while  his  vehicle, self-motivated, wheels a-spin, mounted Dr. Goff,
who jumped aside, fearful of being spliced.
     Wetherby, helped to his feet, protested his trajectory:
     "Ignore that! Do you at last understand?"
     "Fractures, wounds, broken skulls, yes!"
     "No,  a future brave with motion, 'tween my legs. You have come a long way,
Doctor. Will you adopt and further my machine?"
     "Well,"  said  the  doctor, already out of the yard, into the house, and to
the front door, his face confused, his wits a patch of nettles. "Ah," he said.
     "Say you will, Doctor. Or my device dies, and I _ with_ it!"
     "But..  ."  said  the  doctor and opened the outer door, only to draw back,
alarmed. "What have I done!" he cried.
     Peering over his shoulder, Wetherby expressed further alarm. "Your presence
is known, Doctor; the word has spread. A lunatic has come to visit a lunatic."
     And  it was true. On the road and in the front garden yard were some twelve
or  twenty  farmers  and  villagers,  some with rocks, some with clubs, and with
looks of malice or outright hostility caught in their eyes and mouths.
     _"There_ they are!" someone cried.
     "Have you come to take him away?" someone else shouted.
     "Yah" echoed the struggling crowd, moving forward.
     Thinking quickly, Dr. Goff replied, "Yes. I will take him away!" And turned
back to the old man.
     "Take me where, Doctor?" whispered Wetherby, clutching his elbow.
     "One  moment!"  cried  the  doctor  to  the  crowd,  which then subsided in
murmurs. "Let me think."
     Standing  back,  cudgeling  his  bald spot, and then massaging his brow for
rampant inspiration, Dr. Goff at last exhaled in triumph.
     "I  have  it,  by  George.  A  genius  of  an  idea, which will please both
villagers, to be rid of you, and you, to be rid of them."
     "What, what, Doctor?"
     "Why,  sir,  you are to come down to London under cover of night and I will
let you through the side door of my museum with your blasphemous toy of Satan .
     "To what purpose?"
     "Purpose? Why, sir, I have found the path, the smooth surface, the road you
spoke of at some future time!"
     "The road, the path, the surface?"
     "The museum floors, marble, smooth, lovely, wondrous, ohmigod, for all your
needs!"
     "Needs?"
     "Don't  be  thick.  Each night, as many nights as you wish, to your heart's
content,  you  can  ride that wheeled demon round and round, past the Rembrandts
and  Turners  and  Fra  Angelicos,  through the Grecian statues and Roman busts,
careful  of  porcelains, minding the crystals, but pumping away like Lucifer all
night till dawn!"
     "Oh, dear God," murmured Wetherby, "why didn't _ I_ think?"
     "If you _ had_ you would've been too shy to _ ask!"_
    
     "The  only  place  in  the  world  with roads like future roads, paths like
tomorrow's paths, boulevards without cobbles, pure as Aphrodite's cheeks! Smooth
as Apollo's rump!"
     And  here  Wetherby unlocked his eyes to let fall tears, pent up for months
and long hilltop years.
     "Don't cry," said Dr. Goff.
     "I must, with joy, or burst. Do you mean it?"
     "My good man, here's my _ hand!"_
     They shook and the shaking let free at least one drop of rain from the good
doctor's cheek, also.
     "The excitement will kill me," said Wetherby, wiping the backs of his fists
across his eyes.
     "No better way to die! Tomorrow night?"
     "But  what will people say as I lead my machine through the streets to your
museum?"
     "If  anyone  sees,  say you're a gypsy who's stolen treasure from a distant
year. Well, well, Elijah Wetherby, I'm off."
     "Be careful downhill."
     "Careful."
     Half out the door, Dr. Goff tripped on a cobble and almost fell as a farmer
said:
     "Did you see the lunatic?"
     "I did."
     "Will you take him to a madhouse?"
     "Yes.  Asylum."  Dr.  Goff adjusted his cuffs. "Crazed. Worthless. You will
see him no more!"
     "Good!" said all as he passed.
     "Grand," said Goff and picked his way down the stone path, listening.
     And  uphill  was  there  not  a final, joyful, wheel-circling cry from that
distant yard?
     Dr. Goff snorted.
     "Think on it," he said, half aloud, "no more horses, no
     more _ manure!_ Think!"
     And, thinking, fell on the cobbles, lurching toward London and the future.