pretty blind and ferocious trying to go at it the way I did, planting books and calling firemen."
"You did what you thought you had to do. But our way is simpler and better and the thing we wish to do is keep the knowledge intact and safe and not to excite or anger anyone; for then, if we are destroyed, the knowledge is most certainly dead. We are model citizens in our own special way — we walk the tracks, we lie in the hills at night, we bother no one, and the city people let us be.
We're stopped and searched for books, occasionally, but we have none, and our faces have been changed by plastic surgery, as have our fingerprints. So we wait quietly for the day when the machines are dented junk and then we hope to walk by and say. 'Here we are,' to those who survive this war, and we'll say, 'Have you come to your senses now? Perhaps a few books will do you some good.' "
"But will they listen to you?"
"Perhaps not. Then we'll have to wait some more. Maybe a few hundred years. Maybe they'll never listen; we can't make them. So we'll pass the books on to our children, in their minds, and let them wait, in turn, on other people. Some day someone will need us. This can't last forever."
"How many of you are there?"
"Thousands on the road, on the rails, bums on the outside, libraries on the inside. It wasn't really planned; it grew. Each man had a book he wanted to remember and did. Then we discovered each other and over twenty years or so got a loose network together and made a plan.
The important thing we had to learn was that we were not important, we were not to be pedants, we were not to feel superior, we were nothing more than covers for books, of no individual significance whatever. Some of us live in small towns— chapter one of Walden in Nantucket, chapter two in Reading, chapter three in Waukesha, each according to his ability. Some can learn a few lines, some a lot."
"The books are safe then."
"Couldn't be safer. Why, there's one village in North Carolina, some 200 people, no bomb'll ever touch their town, which is the complete Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. You could pick up that town, almost, and flip the pages, a page to a person. People who wouldn't dream of being seen with a book gladly memorized a page. You can't be caught with that.
And when the war's over and we've time and need, the books can be written again. The people will be called in one by one to recite what they know and it'll be in print again until another Dark Age, when maybe we'll have to do the whole damned thing over again, man being the fool he is."
"What do we do tonight?" asked Montag.
"Just wait, that's all."
MONTAG looked at the men's faces, old, all of them, in the firelight, and certainly tired. Perhaps he was looking for a brightness, a resolve, a triumph over tomorrow that wasn't really there. Perhaps he expected these men to be proud with the knowledge they carried, to glow with the wisdom as lanterns glow with the fire they contain.
But all the light came from the camp-fire here, and these men seemed no different than any other man who has run a long run, searched a long search, seen precious things destroyed, seen old friends die, and now, very late in time, were gathered together to watch the machines die, or hope they might die, even while cherishing a last paradoxical love for those very machines which could spin out a material with happiness in the warp and terror in the woof, so inter-blended that a man might go insane trying to tell the design to himself, and his place in it.
They weren't at all certain that what they carried in their heads might make every future dawn dawn brighter. They were sure of nothing save that the books were on file behind their solemn eyes and that if man put his mind to them properly, something of dignity and happiness might be regained.
Montag looked from one face to another.
"Don't judge a book by its cover," said
"You did what you thought you had to do. But our way is simpler and better and the thing we wish to do is keep the knowledge intact and safe and not to excite or anger anyone; for then, if we are destroyed, the knowledge is most certainly dead. We are model citizens in our own special way — we walk the tracks, we lie in the hills at night, we bother no one, and the city people let us be.
We're stopped and searched for books, occasionally, but we have none, and our faces have been changed by plastic surgery, as have our fingerprints. So we wait quietly for the day when the machines are dented junk and then we hope to walk by and say. 'Here we are,' to those who survive this war, and we'll say, 'Have you come to your senses now? Perhaps a few books will do you some good.' "
"But will they listen to you?"
"Perhaps not. Then we'll have to wait some more. Maybe a few hundred years. Maybe they'll never listen; we can't make them. So we'll pass the books on to our children, in their minds, and let them wait, in turn, on other people. Some day someone will need us. This can't last forever."
"How many of you are there?"
"Thousands on the road, on the rails, bums on the outside, libraries on the inside. It wasn't really planned; it grew. Each man had a book he wanted to remember and did. Then we discovered each other and over twenty years or so got a loose network together and made a plan.
The important thing we had to learn was that we were not important, we were not to be pedants, we were not to feel superior, we were nothing more than covers for books, of no individual significance whatever. Some of us live in small towns— chapter one of Walden in Nantucket, chapter two in Reading, chapter three in Waukesha, each according to his ability. Some can learn a few lines, some a lot."
"The books are safe then."
"Couldn't be safer. Why, there's one village in North Carolina, some 200 people, no bomb'll ever touch their town, which is the complete Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. You could pick up that town, almost, and flip the pages, a page to a person. People who wouldn't dream of being seen with a book gladly memorized a page. You can't be caught with that.
And when the war's over and we've time and need, the books can be written again. The people will be called in one by one to recite what they know and it'll be in print again until another Dark Age, when maybe we'll have to do the whole damned thing over again, man being the fool he is."
"What do we do tonight?" asked Montag.
"Just wait, that's all."
MONTAG looked at the men's faces, old, all of them, in the firelight, and certainly tired. Perhaps he was looking for a brightness, a resolve, a triumph over tomorrow that wasn't really there. Perhaps he expected these men to be proud with the knowledge they carried, to glow with the wisdom as lanterns glow with the fire they contain.
But all the light came from the camp-fire here, and these men seemed no different than any other man who has run a long run, searched a long search, seen precious things destroyed, seen old friends die, and now, very late in time, were gathered together to watch the machines die, or hope they might die, even while cherishing a last paradoxical love for those very machines which could spin out a material with happiness in the warp and terror in the woof, so inter-blended that a man might go insane trying to tell the design to himself, and his place in it.
They weren't at all certain that what they carried in their heads might make every future dawn dawn brighter. They were sure of nothing save that the books were on file behind their solemn eyes and that if man put his mind to them properly, something of dignity and happiness might be regained.
Montag looked from one face to another.
"Don't judge a book by its cover," said
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