Ray Bradbury. The Flying Machine

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

                The Flying Machine
                1953

     In the year A.D. 400, the Emperor Yuan held his throne by the Great Wall of
China,  and the land was green with rain, readying itself toward the harvest, at
peace, the people in his dominion neither too happy nor too sad.
     Early on the morning of the first day of the first week of the second month
of  the new year, the Emperor Yuan was sipping tea and fanning himself against a
warm  breeze  when  a  servant  ran  across  the  scarlet and blue garden tiles,
calling, "Oh, Emperor, Emperor, a miracle!"
     "Yes," said the Emperor, "the air is sweet this morning."
     "No, no, a miracle!" said the servant, bowing quickly.
     "And this tea is good in my mouth, surely that is a miracle."
     "No, no, Your Excellency."
     "Let me guess then - the sun has risen and a new day is upon us. Or the sea
is blue. That now is the finest of all miracles."
     "Excellency, a man is flying!"
     "What?" The Emperor stopped his fan.
     "I saw him in the air, a man flying with wings. I heard a Voice call out of
the  sky, and when I looked up, there he was, a dragon in the heavens with a man
in  its  mouth,  a  dragon  of  paper  and bamboo, coloured like the sun and the
grass."
     "It is early," said the Emperor, "and you have just wakened from a dream."
     "It  is  early, but I have seen what I have seen! Come, and you will see it
too."
     "Sit  down  with  me here," said the Emperor. "Drink some tea. It must be a
strange  thing,  if it is true, to see a man fly. You must have time to think of
it, even as I must have time to prepare myself for the sight." They drank tea.
     "Please,"  said the servant at last, "or he will be gone." The Emperor rose
thoughtfully. "Now you may show me what you have seen."
     They  walked  into a garden, across a meadow of grass, over a small bridge,
through a grove of trees, and up a tiny hill.
     "There!" said the servant.
     The Emperor looked into the sky.
     And  in the sky, laughing so high that you could hardly hear him laugh, was
a  man;  and  the man was clothed in bright papers and reeds to make wings and a
beautiful  yellow  tail, and he was soaring all about like the largest bird in a
universe of birds, like a new dragon in a land of ancient dragons.
     The man called down to them from high in the cool winds of morning. "I fly,
I fly!"
     The servant waved to him. "Yes,yes!"
     The Emperor Yuan did not move. Instead he looked at the Great Wall of China
now  taking  shape  out  of  the farthest mist in the green hills, that splendid
snake  of  stones  which  writhed  with  majesty  across  the  entire land. That
wonderful  wall  which  had protected them for a timeless time from enemy hordes
and preserved peace for years without number. He saw the town, nestled to itself
by a river and a road and a hill, beginning to waken.
     "Tell me," he said to his servant, "has anyone else seen this flying man?"
     "I  am  the  only  one,  Excellency," said the servant, smiling at the sky,
waving.
     The  Emperor  watched  the  heavens another minute and then said, "Call him
down to me."
     "Ho,  come  down,  come  down!  The  Emperor wishes to see you!" called the
servant, hands cupped to his shouting mouth.
     The  Emperor glanced in all directions while the flying man soared down the
morning  wind.  He  saw  a farmer, early in his fields, watchihg the sky, and he
noted where the farmer stood.
     The  flying man alit with a rustle of paper and a creak of bamboo reeds. He
came  proudly  to  the Emperor, clumsy in his rig, at last bowing before the old
man.
     "What have you done?" demanded the Emperor.
     "I have flown in the sky, Your Excellency," replied the man.
     "What have you done?" said the Emperor again.
     "I have just told you!" cried the flier.
     "You  have  told me nothing at all." The Emperor reached out a thin hand to
touch  the pretty paper and the birdlike keel of the apparatus. It smelled cool,
of the wind.
     "Is it not beautiful, Excellency?"
     "Yes, too beautiful."
     "It is the only one in the world!" smiled the man. "And I am the inventor."
     "The only one in the world?" "I swear it!"
     "Who else knows of this?"
     "No one. Not even my wife, who would think me mad with the son. She thought
I  was making a kite. I rose in the night and walked to the cliffs far away. And
when  the  morning  breezes  blew  and  the  sun  rose,  I  gathered my courage,
Excellency, and leaped from the cliff. I flew! But my wife does not know of it."
     "Well for her, then," said the Emperor. "Come along."
     They  walked  back to the great house. The sun was full in the sky now, and
the smell of the grass was refreshing.
     The Emperor, the servant, and the flier paused within the huge garden.
     The Emperor clapped his hands. "Ho, guards!" The guards came running. "Hold
this  man."  The  guards  seized  the  flier.  "Call  the executioner," said the
Emperor.  "What's  this!"  cried  the  flier, bewildered. "What have I done?" He
began to weep, so that the beautiful paper apparatus rustled.
     "Here  is  the  man who has made a certain machine," said the Emperor, "and
yet  asks us what he has created. He does not know himself. It is only necessary
that he create, without knowing why he has done so, or what this thing will do."
     The  executioner  came  running  with  a sharp silver ax. He stood with his
naked, large-muscled arms ready, his face covered with a serene white mask.
     "One  moment," said the Emperor. He turned to a nearby table upon which sat
a  machine  that he himself had created. The Emperor took a tiny golden key from
his  own  neck. He fitted his key to the tiny, delicate machine and wound it up.
Then he set the machine going.
     The  machine  was  a  garden  of metal and jewels. Set in motion, the birds
sangs  in  tiny  metal  trees, wolves walked through miniature forests, and tiny
people ran in and out of sun and shadow, fanning themselves with miniature fans,
listening  to  tiny emerald birds, and standing by impossibly small but tinkling
fountains.
     "Is  It not beautiful?" said the Emperor. "If you asked me what I have done
here,  I  could  answer  you  well.  I have made birds sing, I have made forests
murmur,  I  have set people to walking in this woodland, enjoying the leaves and
shadows and songs. That is what I have done."
     "But, oh, Emperor!" pleaded the flier, on his knees, the tears pouring down
his face. "I have done a similar thing! I have found beauty. I have flown on the
morning  wind. I have looked down on all the sleeping houses and gardens. I have
smelled  the  sea  and even seen it, beyond the hills, from my high place. And I
have  soared  like a bird; oh, I cannot say how beautiful it is up there, in the
sky, with the wind about me, the wind blowing me here like a feather, there like
a  fan,  the  way the sky smells in the morning! And how free one feels! That is
beautiful, Emperor, that is beautiful too!"
     "Yes," said the Emperor sadly, "I know it must be true. For I felt my heart
move  with you in the air and I wondered: What is it like? How does it feel? How
do  the  distant  pools  look from so high? And how my houses and servants? Like
ants? And how the distant towns not yet awake?"
     "Then spare me!"
     "But  there  are times," said the Emperor, more sadly still, "when one must
lose  a little beauty if one is to keep what little beauty one already has. I do
not fear you, yourself, but I fear another man."
     "What man?"
     "Some  other  man  who, seeing you, will build a thing of bright papers and
bamboo  like  this.  But the other man will have an evil face and an evil heart,
and the beauty will be gone. It is this man I fear."
     "Why? Why?"
     "Who  is  to say that someday just such a man, in just such an apparatus of
paper  and  reed,  might  not fly in the sky and drop huge stones upon the Great
Wall of China?" said the Emperor.
     No one moved or said a word.
     "Off with his head," said the Emperor.
     The executioner whirled his silver ax.
     "Burn the kite and the inventor's body and bury their ashes together," said
the Emperor.
     The servants retreated to obey.
     The  Emperor turned to his hand-servant, who had seen the man flying. "Hold
your  tongue. It was all a dream, a most sorrowful and beautiful dream. And that
farmer  in the distant field who also saw, tell him it would pay him to consider
it  only a vision. If ever the word passes around, you and the farmer die within
the hour."
     "You are merciful, Emperor."
     "No,  not  merciful,"  said  the old man. Beyond the garden wall he saw the
guards  burning  the  beautiful  machine  of paper and reeds that smelled of the
morning  wind.  He  saw  he  dark  smoke climb into the sky. "No, only very much
bewildered and afraid." He saw the guards digging a tiny pit wherein to bury the
ashes.  "What  is  the life of one man against those of a million others? I must
take solace from that thought."
     He  took  the  key from its chain about his neck and once more wound up the
beautiful  miniature  garden.  He stood looking out across the land at the Great
Wall,  the  peaceful  town, the green fields, the rivers and streams. He sighed.
The  tiny  garden  whirred  its  hidden and delicate machinery and set itself in
motion;  tiny  people  walked  in forests, tiny faces loped through sun-speckled
glades  in beautiful shining pelts, and among the tiny trees flew little bits of
high  song  and  bright  blue  and yellow colour, flying, flying, flying in that
small sky.
     "Oh,"  said  the Emperor, closing his eyes, "look at the birds, look at the
birds!"