{"id":8220,"date":"2024-10-23T11:22:03","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T15:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lecturia.org\/?p=8220"},"modified":"2025-10-25T10:19:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T14:19:24","slug":"ray-bradbury-the-exiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/short-stories\/ray-bradbury-the-exiles\/8220\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray Bradbury: The Exiles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Synopsis:<\/strong> In \u201cThe Exiles,\u201d<\/em> a short story by Ray Bradbury first published in 1950 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction<\/em> and later included in the collection The Illustrated Man<\/em> (1951), Mars has become a refuge for banned writers and literary characters. Exiled from an Earth where their works have been censored and destroyed, these beings survive on the Red Planet, conjuring spells and nightmares to protect themselves. When a rocket from Earth approaches carrying a scientific and skeptical crew, the clash between reason and the supernatural becomes inevitable. In an atmosphere thick with witchcraft and ghosts, the astronauts face hallucinations and terrors that test their sanity, while the exiles prepare for their final battle for survival.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Ray<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Exiles<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Ray Bradbury
(Full story)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their eyes were fire and the breath flamed out the witches\u2019 mouths as they bent to probe the caldron with greasy stick and bony finger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They danced drunkenly on the shore of an empty sea, fouling the air with their three tongues, and burning it with their cats\u2019 eyes malevolently aglitter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Round about the cauldron go,
In the poison\u2019d entrails throw.\u2026
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They paused and cast a glance about. \u2018Where\u2019s the crystal? Where\u2019s the needles?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Here!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Good!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Is the yellow wax thickened?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Pour it in the iron mold!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Is the wax figure done?\u2019 They shaped it like molasses adrip on their green hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Shove the needle through the heart!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The crystal, the crystal, fetch it from the tarot bag. Dust it off, have a look!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They bent to the crystal, their faces white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018See, see, see \u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


A rocket ship moved through space from the planet Earth to the planet Mars. On the rocket ship men were dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain raised his head, tiredly. \u2018We\u2019ll have to use the morphine.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018But, Captain\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You see yourself this man\u2019s condition.\u2019 The captain lifted the wool blanket and the man restrained beneath the wet sheet moved and groaned. The air was full of sulfurous thunder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I saw it \u2013 I saw it.\u2019 The man opened his eyes and stared at the port where there were only black spaces, reeling stars, Earth far removed, and the planet Mars rising large and red. \u2018I saw it \u2013 a bat, a huge thing, a bat with a man\u2019s face, spread over the front port. Fluttering and fluttering, fluttering and fluttering.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Pulse?\u2019 asked the captain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The orderly measured it. \u2018One hundred and thirty.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018He can\u2019t go on with that. Use the morphine. Come along, Smith.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They moved away. Suddenly the floor plates were laced with bone and white skulls that screamed. The captain did not dare look down, and over the screaming he said, \u2018Is this where Perse is?\u2019 turning in at a hatch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A white-smocked surgeon stepped away from a body. \u2018I just don\u2019t understand it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018How did Perse die?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We don\u2019t know, Captain. It wasn\u2019t his heart, his brain, or shock. He just \u2013 died.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain felt the doctor\u2019s wrist, which changed to a hissing snake and bit him. The captain did not flinch. \u2018Take care of yourself. You\u2019ve a pulse too.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The doctor nodded. \u2018Perse complained of pains \u2013 needles, he said \u2013 in his wrists and legs. Said he felt like wax, melting. He fell. I helped him up. He cried like a child. Said he had a silver needle in his heart. He died. Here he is. We can repeat the autopsy for you. Everything\u2019s physically normal.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018That\u2019s impossible! He died of something<\/em>?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain walked to a port. He smelled of menthol and iodine and green soap on his polished and manicured hands. His white teeth were dentrificed, and his ears scoured to a pinkness, as were his cheeks. His uniform was the color of new salt, and his boots were black mirrors shining below him. His crisp crew-cut hair smelled of sharp alcohol. Even his breath was sharp and new and clean. There was no spot to him. He was a fresh instrument, honed and ready, still hot from the surgeon\u2019s oven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men with him were from the same mold. One expected huge brass keys spiraling slowly from their backs. They were expensive, talented, welloiled toys, obedient and quick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain watched the planet Mars grow very large in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We\u2019ll be landing in an hour on that damned place, Smith, did you see any bats, or have other nightmares?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes, sir. The month before our rocket took off from New York, sir. White rats biting my neck, drinking my blood. I didn\u2019t tell. I was afraid you wouldn\u2019t let me come on this trip.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Never mind,\u2019 sighed the captain. \u2018I had dreams too. In all of my fifty years I never had a dream until that week before we took off from Earth. And then every night I dreamed I was a white wolf. Caught on a snowy hill. Shot with a silver bullet. Buried with a stake in my heart.\u2019 He moved his head toward Mars. \u2018Do you think, Smith, they<\/em> know we\u2019re coming?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We don\u2019t know if there are<\/em> Martian people, sir.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Don\u2019t we? They began frightening us off eight weeks ago, before we started. They\u2019ve killed Perse and Reynolds now. Yesterday they made Grenville go blind. How? I don\u2019t know. Bats, needles, dreams, men dying for no reason. I\u2019d call it witchcraft in another day. But this is the year 2120, Smith. We\u2019re rational men. This all can\u2019t be happening. But it is! Whoever they are, with their needles and their bats, they\u2019ll try to finish us all.\u2019 He swung about. \u2018Smith, fetch those books from my file. I want them when we land.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two hundred books were piled on the rocket desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Thank you, Smith. Have you glanced at them? Think I\u2019m insane? Perhaps. It\u2019s a crazy hunch. At that last moment I ordered these books from the Historical Museum. Because of my dreams. Twenty nights I was stabbed, butchered, a screaming bat pinned to a surgical mat, a thing rotting underground in a black box; bad, wicked dreams. Our whole crew dreamed of witch-things and were-things, vampires and phantoms, things they couldn\u2019t<\/em> know anything about. Why? Because books on such ghastly subjects were destroyed a century ago. By law. Forbidden for anyone to own the grisly volumes. These books you see here are the last<\/em> copies, kept for historical purposes in the locked museum vaults.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith bent to read the dusty titles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Tales of Mystery and Imagination<\/em>, by Edgar Allan Poe. Dracula<\/em>, by Bram Stoker. Frankenstein<\/em>, by Mary Shelley. The Turn of the Screw<\/em>, by Henry James. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow<\/em>, by Washington Irving. Rappaccini\u2019s Daughter<\/em>, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge<\/em>, by Ambrose Bierce. Alice in Wonderland<\/em>, by Lewis Carroll. The Willows<\/em>, by Algernon Blackwood. The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, by L. Frank Baum. The Weird Shadow Over Innsmoutb<\/em>, by H. P. Lovecraft. And more! Books by Walter de la Mare, Wakefield, Harvey, Wells, Asquith, Huxley \u2013 all forbidden authors. All burned in the same year that Halloween was outlawed and Christmas was banned! But, sir, what good are these to us on the rocket?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 sighed the captain, \u2018yet.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three hags lifted the crystal where the captain\u2019s image flickered, his tiny voice tinkling out of the glass:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 sighed the captain, \u2018yet.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three witches glared redly into one another\u2019s faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We haven\u2019t much time,\u2019 said one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Better warn Them<\/em> in the City.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018They\u2019ll want to know about the books. It doesn\u2019t look good. That fool of a captain!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018In an hour they\u2019ll land their rocket.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The three hags shuddered and blinked up at the Emerald City by the edge of the dry Martian sea. In its highest window a small man held a blood-red drape aside. He watched the wastelands where the three witches fed their caldron and shaped the waxes. Farther along, ten thousand other blue fires and laurel incenses, black tobacco smokes and fir weeds, cinnamons and bone dusts rose soft as moths through the Martian night. The man counted the angry, magical fires. Then, as the three witches stared, he turned. The crimson drape, released, fell, causing the distant portal to wink, like a yellow eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Mr Edgar Allan Poe stood in the tower window, a faint vapor of spirits upon his breath. \u2018Hecate\u2019s friends are busy tonight,\u2019 he said, seeing the witches, far below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A voice behind him said, \u2018I saw Will Shakespeare at the shore, earlier, whipping them on. All along the sea Shakespeare\u2019s army alone, tonight, numbers thousands: the three witches, Oberon, Hamlet\u2019s father, Puck \u2013 all, all of them \u2013 thousands! Good lord, a regular sea of people.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Good William.\u2019 Poe turned. He let the crimson drape fall shut. He stood for a moment to observe the raw stone room, the black-timbered table, the candle flame, the other man, Mr Ambrose Bierce, sitting very idly there, lighting matches and watching them burn down, whistling under his breath, now and then laughing to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We\u2019ll have to tell Mr Dickens now,\u2019 said Mr Poe. \u2018We\u2019ve put it off too long. It\u2019s a matter of hours. Will you go down to his home with me, Bierce?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bierce glanced up merrily. \u2018I\u2019ve just been thinking \u2013 what\u2019ll happen to us?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018If we can\u2019t kill the rocket men off, frighten them away, then we\u2019ll have to leave, of course. We\u2019ll go on to Jupiter, and when they come to Jupiter, we\u2019ll go on to Saturn, and when they come to Saturn, we\u2019ll go to Uranus, or Neptune, and then on out to Pluto\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Where then?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Poe\u2019s face was weary; there were fire coals remaining, fading, in his eyes, and a sad wildness in the way he talked, and a uselessness of his hands and the way his hair fell lankly over his amazing white brow. He was like a satan of some lost dark cause, a general arrived from a derelict invasion. His silky, soft, black mustache was worn away by his musing lips. He was so small his brow seemed to float, vast and phosphorescent, by itself, in the dark room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We have the advantages of superior forms of travel,\u2019 he said. \u2018We can always hope for one of their atomic wars, dissolution, the dark ages come again. The return of superstition. We could go back then to Earth, all of us, in one night.\u2019 Mr Poe\u2019s black eyes brooded under his round and luminant brow. He gazed at the ceiling. \u2018So they\u2019re coming to ruin this<\/em> world too? They won\u2019t leave anything<\/em> undefiled, will they?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Does a wolf pack stop until it\u2019s killed its prey and eaten the guts? It should be quite a war. I shall sit on the sidelines and be the scorekeeper. So many Earthmen boiled in oil, so many Mss. Found in Bottles burned, so many Earthmen stabbed with needles, so many Red Deaths put to flight by a batter of hypodermic syringes \u2013 ha!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poe swayed angrily, faintly drunk with wine. \u2018What did we do? Be with<\/em> us, Bierce, in the name of God! Did we have a fair trial before a company of literary critics? No! Our books were plucked up by neat, sterile, surgeon\u2019s pliers, and flung into vats, to boil, to be killed of all their mortuary germs. Damn them all!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I find our situation amusing,\u2019 said Bierce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were interrupted by a hysterical shout from the tower stair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Mr Poe! Mr Bierce!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes, yes, we\u2019re coming!\u2019 Poe and Bierce descended to find a man gasping against the stone passage wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Have you heard the news?\u2019 he cried immediately, clawing at them like a man about to fall over a cliff. \u2018In an hour they\u2019ll land! They\u2019re bringing books with them \u2013 old<\/em> books, the witches said! What\u2019re you doing in the tower at a time like this? Why aren\u2019t you acting?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poe said: \u2018We\u2019re doing everything we can, Blackwood. You\u2019re new to all this. Come along, we\u2019re going to Mr Charles Dickens\u2019 place\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2014to contemplate our doom, our black doom,\u2019 said Bierce, with a wink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


They moved down the echoing throats of the castle, level after dim green level, down into mustiness and decay and spiders and dreamlike webbing. \u2018Don\u2019t worry,\u2019 said Poe, his brow like a huge white lamp before them, descending, sinking. \u2018All along the dead sea tonight I\u2019ve called the others. Your friends and mine, Blackwood \u2013 Bierce. They\u2019re all there. The animals and the old women and the tall men with the sharp white teeth. The traps are waiting; the pits, yes, and the pendulums. The Red Death.\u2019 Here he laughed quietly. \u2018Yes, even the Red Death. I never thought \u2013 no, I never thought the time would come when a thing like the Red Death would actually be<\/em>. But they<\/em> asked for it, and they shall have it!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018But are we strong enough?\u2019 wondered Blackwood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018How strong is strong? They won\u2019t be prepared for us, at least. They haven\u2019t the imagination. Those clean young rocket men with their antiseptic bloomers and fish-bowl helmets, with their new religion. About their necks, on gold chains, scalpels. Upon their heads, a diadem of microscopes. In their holy fingers, steaming incense urns which in reality are only germicidal ovens for steaming out superstition. The names of Poe, Bierce, Hawthorne, Blackwood \u2013 blasphemy to their clean lips.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside the castle they advanced through a watery space, a tarn that was not a tarn, which misted before them like the stuff of nightmares. The air filled with wing sounds and a whirring, a motion of winds and blacknesses. Voices changed, figures swayed at campfires. Mr Poe watched the needles knitting, knitting, knitting, in the firelight; knitting pain and misery, knitting wickedness into wax marionettes, clay puppets. The caldron smells of wild garlic and cayenne and saffron hissed up to fill the night with evil pungency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Get on with it!\u2019 said Poe. \u2018I\u2019ll be back!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All down the empty seashore black figures spindled and waned, grew up and blew into black smoke on the sky. Bells rang in mountain towers and licorice ravens spilled out with the bronze sounds and spun away to ashes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Over a lonely moor and into a small valley Poe and Bierce hurried, and found themselves quite suddenly on a cobbled street, in cold, bleak, biting weather, with people stomping up and down stony courtyards to warm their feet; foggy withal, and candles flaring in the windows of offices and shops where hung the Yuletide turkeys. At a distance some boys, all bundled up, snorting their pale breaths on the wintry air, were trilling, \u2018God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,\u2019 while the immense tones of a great clock continuously sounded midnight. Children dashed by from the baker\u2019s with dinners all asteam in their grubby fists, on trays and under silver bowls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a sign which read SCROOGE, MARLEY AND DICKENS Poe gave the Marley-faced knocker a rap, and from within, as the door popped open a few inches, a sudden gust of music almost swept them into a dance. And there, beyond the shoulder of the man who was sticking a trim goatee and mustaches at them, was Mr Fezziwig clapping his hands, and Mrs Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile, dancing and colliding with other merrymakers, while the fiddle chirped and laughter ran about a table like chandelier crystals given a sudden push of wind. The large table was heaped with brawn and turkey and holly and geese; with mince pies, suckling pigs, wreaths of sausages, oranges and apples; and there was Bob Cratchit and Little Dorrit and Tiny Tim and Mr Fagin himself, and a man who looked as if he might be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato \u2013 who else but Mr Marley, chains and all, while the wine poured and the brown turkeys did their excellent best to steam!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What do you want?\u2019 demanded Mr Charles Dickens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We\u2019ve come to plead with you again, Charles; we need your help,\u2019 said Poe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Help? Do you think I would help you fight against those good men coming in the rocket? I don\u2019t belong here, anyway. My books were burned by mistake. I\u2019m no supernaturalist, no writer of horrors and terrors like you, Poe; you, Bierce, or the others. I\u2019ll have nothing to do with you terrible people!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You are a persuasive talker,\u2019 reasoned Poe. \u2018You could go to meet the rocket men, lull them, lull their suspicions and then \u2013 then we would take care of them.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Dickens eyed the folds of the black cape which hid Poe\u2019s hands. From it, smiling, Poe drew forth a black cat. \u2018For one<\/em> of our visitors.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018And for the others?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poe smiled again, well pleased. \u2018The Premature Burial?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You are a grim man, Mr Poe.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I am a frightened and an angry man. I am a god, Mr Dickens, even as you are a god, even as we all are gods, and our inventions \u2013 our people, if you wish \u2013 have not only been threatened, but banished and burned, torn up and censored, ruined and done away with. The worlds we created are falling into ruin. Even gods must fight!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018So?\u2019 Mr Dickens tilted his head, impatient to return to the party, the music, the food. \u2018Perhaps you can explain why we are here? How did we come here?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018War begets war. Destruction begets destruction. On Earth, a century ago, in the year 2020 they outlawed our books. Oh, what a horrible thing \u2013 to destroy our literary creations that way! It summoned us out of \u2013 what? Death? The Beyond? I don\u2019t like abstract things. I don\u2019t know. I only know that our worlds and our creations called us and we tried to save them, and the only saving thing we could do was wait out the century here on Mars, hoping Earth might overweight itself with these scientists and their doubtings; but now they\u2019re coming to clean us out of here, us and our dark things, and all the alchemists, witches, vampires, and were-things that, one by one, retreated across space as science made inroads through every country on Earth and finally left no alternative at all but exodus. You must help us. You have a good speaking manner. We need you.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I repeat, I am not of you, I don\u2019t approve of you and the others,\u2019 cried Dickens angrily. \u2018I was no player with witches and vampires and midnight things.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What of A Christmas Carol<\/em>?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Ridiculous! One<\/em> story. Oh, I wrote a few others about ghosts, perhaps, but what of that? My basic works had none of that nonsense!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Mistaken or not, they grouped you with us. They destroyed your books \u2013 your worlds too. You must hate them, Mr Dickens!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I admit they are stupid and rude, but that is all. Good day!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Let Mr Marley come, at least!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018No!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The door slammed. As Poe turned away, down the street, skimming over the frosty ground, the coachman playing a lively air on a bugle, came a great coach, out of which, cherry-red, laughing and singing, piled the Pickwickians, banging on the door, shouting Merry Christmas good and loud, when the door was opened by the fat boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Mr Poe hurried along the midnight shore of the dry sea. By fires and smoke he hesitated, to shout orders, to check the bubbling caldrons, the poisons and the chalked pentagrams. \u2018Good!\u2019 he said, and ran on. \u2018Fine!\u2019 he shouted, and ran again. People joined him and ran with him. Here were Mr Coppard and Mr Machen running with him now. And there were hating serpents and angry demons and fiery bronze dragons and spitting vipers and trembling witches like the barbs and nettles and thorns and all the vile flotsam and jetsam of the retreating sea of imagination, left on the melancholy shore, whining and frothing and spitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Machen stopped. He sat like a child on the cold sand. He began to sob. They tried to soothe him, but he would not listen. \u2018I just thought,\u2019 he said. \u2018What happens to us on the day when the last<\/em> copies of our books are destroyed?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The air whirled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Don\u2019t speak of it!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We must,\u2019 wailed Mr Machen. \u2018Now, now, as the rocket comes down, you, Mr Poe; you, Coppard; you, Bierce \u2013 all of you grow faint. Like wood smoke. Blowing away. Your faces melt\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Death! Real<\/em> death for all of us.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We exist only through Earth\u2019s sufferance. If a final edict tonight destroyed our last few works we\u2019d be like lights put out.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coppard brooded gently. \u2018I wonder who I am. In what Earth mind tonight do I exist? In some African hut? Some hermit, reading my tales? Is he the lonely candle in the wind of time and science? The flickering orb sustaining me here in rebellious exile? Is it him? Or some boy in a discarded attic, finding me, only just in time! Oh, last night I felt ill, ill, ill to the marrows of me, for there is a body of the soul as well as a body of the body, and this soul body ached in all of its glowing parts, and last night I felt myself a candle, guttering. When suddenly I sprang up, given new light! As some child, sneezing with dust, in some yellow garret on Earth once more found a worn, time-specked copy of me! And so I\u2019m given a short respite!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A door banged wide in a little hut by the shore. A thin short man, with flesh hanging from him in folds, stepped out and, paying no attention to the others, sat down and stared into his clenched fists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There\u2019s the one I\u2019m sorry for,\u2019 whispered Blackwood. \u2018Look at him, dying away. He was once more real than we, who were men. They took him, a skeleton thought, and clothed him in centuries of pink flesh and snow beard and red velvet suit and black boot; made him reindeers, tinsel, holly. And after centuries of manufacturing him they drowned him in a vat of Lysol, you might say.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men were silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What must it be on Earth?\u2019 wondered Poe. \u2018Without Christmas? No hot chestnuts, no tree, no ornaments or drums or candles \u2013 nothing; nothing but the snow and wind and the lonely, factual people.\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They all looked at the thin little old man with the scraggly beard and faded red velvet suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Have you heard his story?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I can imagine it. The glitter-eyed psychiatrist, the clever sociologist, the resentful, froth-mouthed educationalist, the antiseptic parents\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A regrettable situation,\u2019 said Bierce, smiling, \u2018for the Yuletide merchants who, toward the last there, as I recall, were beginning to put up holly and sing Noel the day before Halloween. With any luck at all this year they might have started on Labor Day!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bierce did not continue. He fell forward with a sigh. As he lay upon the ground he had time to say only, \u2018How interesting.\u2019 And then, as they all watched, horrified, his body burned into blue dust and charred bone, the ashes of which fled through the air in black tatters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Bierce, Bierce!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Gone!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018His last book gone. Someone on Earth just now burned it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018God rest him. Nothing of him left now. For what are we but books, and when those are gone, nothing\u2019s to be seen.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A rushing sound filled the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They cried out, terrified, and looked up. In the sky, dazzling it with sizzling fire clouds, was the rocket! Around the men on the seashore lanterns bobbed; there was a squealing and a bubbling and an odor of cooked spells. Candle-eyed pumpkins lifted into the cold clear air. Thin fingers clenched into fists and a witch screamed from her withered mouth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Ship, ship, break, fall!
Ship, ship, burn all!
Crack, flake, shake, melt!
Mummy dust, cat pelt!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Time to go,\u2019 murmured Blackwood. \u2018On to Jupiter, on to Saturn or Pluto.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Run away?\u2019 shouted Poe in the wind. \u2018Never!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019m a tired old man!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poe gazed into the old man\u2019s face and believed him. He climbed atop a huge boulder and faced the ten thousand gray shadows and green lights and yellow eyes on the hissing wind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The powders!\u2019 he shouted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A thick hot smell of bitter almond, civet, cumin, wormseed and orris!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rocket came down \u2013 steadily down, with the shriek of a damned spirit! Poe raged at it! He flung his fists up and the orchestra of heat and smell and hatred answered in symphony! Like stripped tree fragments, bats flew upward! Burning hearts, flung like missiles, burst in bloody fireworks on the singed air. Down, down, relentlessly down, like a pendulum the rocket came. And Poe howled, furiously, and shrank back with every sweep and sweep of the rocket cutting and ravening the air! All the dead sea seemed a pit in which, trapped, they waited the sinking of the dread machinery, the glistening ax; they were people under the avalanche!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The snakes!\u2019 screamed Poe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And luminous serpentines of undulant green hurtled toward the rocket. But it came down, a sweep, a fire, a motion, and it lay panting out exhaustions of red plumage on the sand, a mile away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018At it!\u2019 shrieked Poe. \u2018The plan\u2019s changed! Only one chance! Run! At it! At it! Drown them with our bodies! Kill them!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as if he had commanded a violent sea to change its course, to suck itself free from primeval beds, the whirls and savage gouts of fire spread and ran like wind and rain and stark lightning over the sea sands, down empty river deltas, shadowing and screaming, whistling and whining, sputtering and coalescing toward the rocket which, extinguished, lay like a clean metal torch in the farthest hollow. As if a great charred caldron of sparkling lava had been overturned, the boiling people and snapping animals churned down the dry fathoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Kill them!\u2019 screamed Poe, running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The rocket men leaped out of their ship, guns ready. They stalked about, sniffing the air like hounds. They saw nothing. They relaxed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain stepped forth last. He gave sharp commands. Wood was gathered, kindled, and a fire leaped up in an instant. The captain beckoned his men into a half circle about him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A new world,\u2019 he said, forcing himself to speak deliberately, though he glanced nervously, now and again, over his shoulder at the empty sea. \u2018The old world left behind. A new start. What more symbolic than that we here dedicate ourselves all the more firmly to science and progress.\u2019 He nodded crisply to his lieutenant. \u2018The books.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firelight limned the faded gilt titles: The Willows, The Outsider, Behold, The Dreamer, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Land of Oz, Pellucidar, The Land That Time Forgot, A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>, and the monstrous names of Machen and Edgar Allan Poe, and Cabell and Dunsany and Blackwood and Lewis Carroll; the names, the old names, the evil names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A new world. With a gesture, we burn the last of the old.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain ripped pages from the books. Leaf by seared leaf, he fed them into the fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A scream!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaping back, the men stared beyond the firelight at the edges of the encroaching and uninhabited sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another scream! A high and wailing thing, like the death of a dragon and the thrashing of a bronzed whale left gasping when the waters of a leviathan\u2019s sea drain down the shingles and evaporate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the sound of air rushing in to fill a vacuum, where, a moment before, there had been something<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain neatly disposed of the last book by putting it into the fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The air stopped quivering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rocket men leaned and listened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Captain, did you hear it?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Like a wave, sir. On the sea bottom! I thought I saw something. Over there. A black wave. Big. Running at us.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You were mistaken.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There, sir!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018See it? There! The city! Way over! That green city near the lake! It\u2019s splitting in half. It\u2019s falling!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men squinted and shuffled forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith stood trembling among them. He put his hand to his head as if to find a thought there. \u2018I remember. Yes, now I do. A long time back. When I was a child. A book I read. A story. Oz, I think it was. Yes, Oz, The Emerald City of Oz \u2026<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Oz? Never heard of it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes, Oz, that\u2019s what it was. I saw it just now, like in the story. I saw it fall.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Smith!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes, sir?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Report for psychoanalysis tomorrow.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes, sir!\u2019 A brisk salute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Be careful.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then men tiptoed, guns alert, beyond the ship\u2019s aseptic light to gaze at the long sea and the low hills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Why,\u2019 whispered Smith, disappointed, \u2018there\u2019s no one here at all, is there? No one here at all.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wind blew sand over his shoes, whining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE END<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In \u201cThe Exiles,\u201d a short story by Ray Bradbury first published in 1950 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and later included in the collection The Illustrated Man (1951), Mars has become a refuge for banned writers and literary characters. Exiled from an Earth where their works have been censored and destroyed, these beings survive on the Red Planet, conjuring spells and nightmares to protect themselves. When a rocket from Earth approaches carrying a scientific and skeptical crew, the clash between reason and the supernatural becomes inevitable. In an atmosphere thick with witchcraft and ghosts, the astronauts face hallucinations and terrors that test their sanity, while the exiles prepare for their final battle for survival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[574,552,570],"class_list":["post-8220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-stories","tag-ray-bradbury-en","tag-science-fiction","tag-united-states","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":559,"label":"Short stories"}],"post_tag":[{"value":574,"label":"Ray Bradbury"},{"value":552,"label":"Science fiction"},{"value":570,"label":"United States"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Ray-Bradbury-Los-desterrados.jpg",1024,1024,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Juan Pablo Guevara","author_link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/author\/spartakku\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":559,"name":"Short stories","slug":"short-stories","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":559,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":424,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":559,"category_count":424,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Short stories","category_nicename":"short-stories","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":574,"name":"Ray Bradbury","slug":"ray-bradbury-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":574,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":43,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":552,"name":"Science fiction","slug":"science-fiction","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":552,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":123,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":570,"name":"United States","slug":"united-states","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":570,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":296,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}