Read Online Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury - Free Book Online

summer
suit, with white shoes and a white tie and his face pink and scrubbed, waiting
by the side of the road. He waved.
                 Neva
braked the car.
                 "Going
in to town?" called the boy, cheerily. "Got lost. Folks at a picnic,
left without me. Sure glad you came along. It's spooky out here."
                 "Climb
in!"
                 The
boy climbed and they were off, the boy in the back seat, and Doug and Neva up
front glancing at him, laughing, and then getting quiet.
                 The
small boy kept silent for a long while behind them, sitting straight upright
and clean and bright and fresh and new in his white suit.
                 And
they drove along the empty road under a sky that was dark now with a few stars
and the wind getting cool.
                 And
at last the boy spoke and said something that Doug didn't hear but he saw Neva
stiffen and her face grow as pale as the ice cream from which the small boy's
suit was cut
                 "What?"
asked Doug, glancing back.
                 The
small boy stared directly at him, not blinking, and his mouth moved all to
itself as if it were separate from his face.
                 The
car's engine missed fire and died.
                 They
were slowing to a dead stop.
                 Doug
saw Neva kicking and fiddling at the gas and the starter. But most of all he
heard the small boy say, in the new and permanent silence:
                 "Have
either of you ever wondered—"
                 The
boy took a breath and finished:
                 "—if
there is such a thing as genetic evil in the world?"

The Burning Man
 
                  
                 "Sit
down, young man," said the Official.
                 "Thanks."
The young man sat.
                 "I've
been hearing rumors about you," the Official said pleasantly. "Oh,
nothing much. Your nervousness. Your not getting on so well. Several months now
I've heard about you, and I thought I'd call you in. Thought maybe you'd like
your job changed. Like to go overseas, work in some other War Area? Desk job
killing you off, like to get right in on the old fight?"
                 "I
don't think so," said the young sergeant.
                 "What do you want?"
                 The
sergeant shrugged and looked at his hands. "To live in peace. To learn
that during the night, somehow, the guns of the world had rusted, the bacteria
had turned sterile in their bomb casings, the tanks had sunk like prehistoric
monsters into roads suddenly made tar pits. That's what I'd like."
                 " Thaf s what we'd all like, of course," said the Official.
"Now stop all that idealistic chatter and tell me where you'd like to be
sent. You have your choice —the Western or the Northern War Zone." The
Official tapped a pink map on his desk.
                 But
the sergeant was talking at his hands, turning them over, looking at the
fingers: "What would you officers do, what would we men do, what would the world do if we all woke tomorrow with
the guns in flaking ruin?"
                 The
Official saw that he would have to deal carefully with the sergeant. He smiled
quietly. "That's an interesting question. I like to talk about such
theories, and my answer is that there'd be mass panic. Each nation would think
itself the only unarmed nation in the world, and would blame its enemies for
the disaster. There'd be waves of suicide, stocks collapsing, a million
tragedies."
                 "But after that," the sergeant said.
"After they realized it was true, that every nation was disarmed and there
was nothing more to fear, if we were all clean to start over fresh and new,
what then?"
                 "They'd
rearm as swiftly as possible."
                 "What
if they could