Read Ebook: Referent by Bradbury Ray Napoli Vincent Illustrator

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Ebook has 113 lines and 5914 words, and 3 pages

"Don't feel like playing." Roby sulked, shoving his sandal-tip into the dirt. Teachers spoiled everything. You couldn't vomit without permission.

Grill tried to interest the boy. "If you come to lunch now I'll let you televise your mother in Chicago afterward."

"Time limit, two minutes, ten seconds, no more no less," was Roby's acid reply.

"I gather you don't approve of things, boy."

"I'll run away some day, wait and see!"

"Tut, lad. We'll always bring you back, you know."

"I love mother!"

"I like mother," replied Roby, disquieted. The red ball twitched in his hand, without his touching it. He looked at it with wonder.

"You'll only make it harder for yourself if you love her," said Grill.

"You're god-damn silly," said Roby.

Grill stiffened. "Don't swear. Besides, you don't really mean god and you don't mean damn. There's very little of either in the world. Semantics Book Seven, page 418, Labels and Referents."

"Now, I remember," shouted Roby, looking around. "There was a Sandman here just now and he said--"

"Come along," said Mr. Grill. "Lunch time."

Commissary food emerged from robot-servers on extension springs. Roby accepted the ovoid plate and milk-globe silently. Where he had hidden it, the red rubber ball pulsed and beat like a heart under his belt. A gong rang. He gulped food swiftly. The tumble for the tube began. They were blown like feathers across the island to Sociology and then, later in the afternoon, back again for games. Hours passed.

Roby slipped away to the garden to be alone. Hatred for this insane, never-stopping routine, for his teachers and his fellow students flashed through him in a scouring torrent. He sat alone and thought of his mother, a long great distance away. In great detail he recalled how she looked and what she smelled like and how her voice was and how she touched and held and kissed him. He put his head down into his hands and began to fill the palms of his hands with small tears.

He dropped the red rubber ball.

He didn't care. He only thought of his mother.

The jungle shivered. Something shifted, quickly.

A woman ran through the deep grass!

She ran away from Roby, slipped, cried out, and fell.

Roby leaped from his rock, gave chase. He caught up with and stood over the woman.

"Mother!" he screamed.

Her face shivered and changed, like melting snow, then took on a hard cast, became definite and handsome.

"I'm not your mother," she said.

He didn't hear. He only heard his own breath moving over his shaking lips. He was so weak with shock he could hardly stand. He put out his hands toward her.

"Can't you understand?" her face was cold. "I'm not your mother. Don't label me! Why must I have a name! Let me get back to my ship! I'll kill you if you don't!"

Roby swayed. "Mother, don't you know me? I'm Roby, your son!" He wanted only to cry against her, tell her of the long months of imprisonment. "Please, please, Mom, please remember me!"

Sobbing, he moved forward and fell against her.

Her fingers tightened on his throat.

She strangled him.

He tried to scream. The scream was caught, pressed back into his bursting lungs. He flailed his legs.

Deep in her cold, hard, angry face, Roby found the answer even as her fingers tightened and things grew dark.

Deep in her face he saw a vestige of the Sandman.

The Sandman. The star falling on the summer sky. The silver sphere, the ship toward which this 'woman' had been running. The disappearance of the Sandman, the appearance of the red ball, the vanishing of the red ball and now the appearance of his mother. It all fitted!

Matrixes. Moulds. Thought habits. Patterns. Matter. The history of man, his body, all things in the universe.

She was killing him.

She would make him stop thinking, then she would be free.

Thoughts. Darkness. He could barely move, now. Weak, weak. He had thought 'it' was his mother. It wasn't. Nevertheless 'it' was killing him. What if Roby thought something else? Try, anyway. Try it. He kicked. In the wild darkness he thought, hard, hard.

With a wail, his 'mother' withered before him.

He concentrated.

Her fingers dwindled from his throat. Her bright face crumbled. Her body shrank to another size.

He was free. He rose up, gasping.

Through the jungle he saw the silver sphere lying in the sun. He staggered toward it, then cried out with the sharp thrill of the plan that formed in his mind.

He laughed triumphantly. He stared once more at 'it'. What was left of the woman form changed before his eyes, like melting wax. He reshaped it into something new.

The garden wall trembled. A vacuum cylinder was hissing up through the tube. Mr. Grill was coming. Roby would have to hurry or his plan would be ruined.

The garden trembled with the approaching thunder of the cylinder. Roby laughed. To hell with Mister Grill! To hell with this island!

He thrust himself into the ship. There was much he could learn, it would come in time. He was just on the skirt of knowledge now, but that little knowledge had saved his life, and now it would do even more.

A voice cried out behind him. A familiar voice. So familiar that it made Roby shudder. Roby heard small boy feet crash the underbrush. Small feet on a small body. A small voice pleading!

Roby grasped the ship controls. Escape. Complete and unsuspected. Simple. Wonderful. Grill would never know.

The sphere door slammed. Motion.

The star, Roby inside, rose on the summer sky.

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