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‘Wait a moment, you’ll see,’ said his wife.
Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odour at the two people in the middle of the baked veldland. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered on George Hadley’s upturned, sweating face.
‘Filthy creatures,’ he heard his wife say.
‘The vultures.’
‘You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they’re on their way to the water hole. They’ve just been eating,’ said Lydia. ‘I don’t know what.’
‘Some animal.’ George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burning light from his squinted eyes. ‘A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe.’
‘Are you sure?’ His wife sounded peculiarly tense.
‘No, it’s a little late to be sure,’ he said amused. ‘Nothing over there I can see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for what’s left.’
‘Did you hear that scream?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘About a minute ago?’
‘Sorry, no.’
The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one. Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scene. Well, here it was!
And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.
The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terrible green-yellow eyes.
‘Watch out!’ screamed Lydia.
The lions came running at them.
Lydia bolted and ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside, in the hall, with the door slammed, he was laughing and she was crying, and they both stood appalled at the other’s reaction.
‘George!’
‘Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!’
‘They almost got us!’
‘Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that’s all they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit – Africa in your parlour – but it’s all dimensional super-reactionary, super-sensitive colour film and mental tape film behind glass screens. It’s all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here’s my handkerchief.’
‘I’m afraid.’ She came to him and put her body against him and cried steadily. ‘Did you see? Did you feel? It’s too real.’
‘Now, Lydia …’
‘You’ve got to tell Wendy and Peter not to read any more on Africa.’
‘Of course – of course.’ He patted her.
‘Promise?’
‘Sure.’
‘And lock the nursery for a few days until I get my nerves settled.’
‘You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours – the tantrum he threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery.’
‘It’s got to be locked, that’s all there is to it.’
‘All right.’ Reluctantly he locked the huge door. ‘You’ve been working too hard. You need a rest.’
‘I don’t know – I don’t know,’ she said, blowing her nose, sitting down in a chair that immediately began to rock and comfort her. ‘Maybe I don’t have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don’t we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?’
‘You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded.
‘And darn my socks?’
‘Yes.’ A frantic, watery-eyed nodding.
‘And sweep the house?’
‘Yes, yes – oh, yes!’
‘But I thought that’s why we bought this house, so we wouldn’t have to do anything?’
‘That’s just it. I feel I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veld? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn’t just me. It’s you. You’ve been awfully nervous lately.’
‘I suppose I have been smoking too much.’
‘You look as if you didn’t know what to do with yourself in this house, either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every afternoon and need a little more sedative every night. You’re beginning to feel unnecessary too.’
‘Am I?’ He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was really there.
‘Oh, George!’ She looked beyond him, at the nursery door. ‘Those lions can’t get out of there, can they?’
He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped against it from the other side.
‘Of course not,’ he said.
At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a special plastic carnival across town and had televised home to say they’d be late, to go ahead eating. So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching the dining-room table produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.
‘We forgot the ketchup,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ said a small voice within the table, and ketchup appeared.
As for the nursery, thought George Hadley, it won’t hurt for the children to be locked out of it awhile. Too much of anything isn’t good for anyone. And it was clearly indicated that the children had been spending a little too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his neck, still, like a hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children’s minds and created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun – sun. Giraffes – giraffes. Death and death.
That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table had cut for him. Death thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death thoughts. Or, no, you were never too young really. Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else. When you were two years old you were shooting people with cap pistols.
But this – the long, hot African veld – the awful death in the jaws of a lion. And repeated again and again.
‘Where are you going?’
He didn’t answer Lydia. Preoccupied, he let the lights glow softly on ahead of him, extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. He listened against it. Far away, a lion roared.
He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, he heard a far-away scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsided quickly.
He stepped into Africa. How many times in the last year had he opened this door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr Doolittle, or the cow jumping over a very real-appearing moon – all the delightful contraptions of a make-believe world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling, or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing. But now, this yellow hot Africa, this bake oven with murder in the heat. Perhaps Lydia was right. Perhaps they needed a little vacation from the fantasy which was growing a bit too real for ten-year-old children. It was all right to exercise one’s mind with gymnastic fantasies, but when the lively child mind settled on one pattern …? It seemed that, at a distance, for the past month, he had heard lions roaring, and smelled their strong odour seeping as far away as his study door. But, being busy, he had paid it no attention.
George Hadley stood on the African grassland alone. The lions looked up from their feeding, watching him. The only flaw to the illusion was the open door through which he could see his wife, far down the dark hall, like a framed picture, eating her dinner abstractedly.
‘Go away,’ he said to the lions.
They did not go.
He knew the principle of the room exactly. You sent out your thoughts. Whatever you thought would appear.
‘Let’s have Aladdin and his lamp,’ he snapped.
The veldland remained, the lions remained.
‘Come on, room! I demand Aladdin!’ he said.
Nothing happened. The lions mumbled in their baked pelts.
‘Aladdin!’
He went back to dinner. ‘The fool room’s out of order,’ he said. ‘It won’t respond.’
‘Or –’
‘Or what?’
‘Or it can’t respond,’ said Lydia, ‘because the children have thought about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room’s in a rut.’
‘Could be.’
‘Or Peter’s set it to remain that way.’
‘Set it?’
‘He may have got into the machinery and fixed something.’
‘Peter doesn’t know machinery.’
‘He’s a wise one for ten. That IQ of his –’
‘Nevertheless –’
‘Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad.’
The Hadleys turned. Wendy and Peter were coming in the front door, cheeks like peppermint candy, eyes like bright blue agate marbles, a smell of ozone on their jumpers from their trip in the helicopter.
‘You’re just in time for supper,’ said both parents.
‘We’re full of strawberry ice cream and hot dogs,’ said the children, holding hands. ‘But we’ll sit and watch.’
‘Yes, come tell us about the nursery,’ said George Hadley.
The brother and sister blinked at him and then at each other. ‘Nursery?’
‘All about Africa and everything,’ said the father with false joviality.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Peter.
‘Your mother and I were just travelling through Africa with rod and reel; Tom Swift and his Electric Lion,’ said George Hadley.
‘There’s no Africa in the nursery,’ said Peter simply.
‘Oh, come on, Peter. We know better.’
‘I don’t remember any Africa,’ said Peter to Wendy. ‘Do you?’
‘No.’
‘Run see and come tell.’
She obeyed.
‘Wendy, come back here!’ said George Hadley, but she was gone. The house lights followed her like a flock of fireflies. Too late, he realized he had forgotten to lock the nursery door after his last inspection.
‘Wendy’ll look and come tell us,’ said Peter.
‘She doesn’t have to tell me, I’ve seen it.’
‘I’m sure you’re mistaken, Father.’
‘I’m not, Peter. Come along now.’
But Wendy was back. ‘It’s not Africa,’ she said breathlessly.
‘We’ll see about this,’ said George Hadley, and they all walked down the hall together and opened the nursery door.
There was a green, lovely forest, a lovely river, a purple mountain, high voices singing, and Rima, lovely and mysterious, lurking in the trees with colourful flights of butterflies, like animated bouquets, lingering in her long hair. The African veldland was gone. The lions were gone. Only Rima was here now, singing a song so beautiful that it brought tears to your eyes.
