Selected Short Stories of Ray Bradbury: The Veldt

They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery.

Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw.

And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures.

“Are you sure?” His wife sounded peculiarly tense.

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.

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 scenery.

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 scenery.

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.

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.

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.

"I'm afraid." She came to him and put her body against him and cried steadily.

A frantic, watery-eyed nodding.

You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every afternoon and need a little more sedative every night.

So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching the dining-room table produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.

Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fill their every desire.

Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fill their every desire.

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.

Just before he stepped inside, he heard a faraway scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsided quickly.

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.

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.

He knew the principle of the room exactly. You sent out your thoughts. Whatever you thought would appear.

"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."

“All about Africa and everything,” said the father with false joviality.

They went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown leaves up the flue to their slumber rooms.

"It's supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful way."

They're insufferable—let's admit it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring. They're spoiled and we're spoiled.

They're insufferable—let's admit it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring. They're spoiled and we're spoiled.

If you intersperse this Africa with a little variety—oh, Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China—

“Oh, so now you admit you have been conjuring up Africa, do you?"

“Can’t say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing.”

With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered at a distance, eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.

My dear George, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only hears about feelings, vague things. This doesn’t feel good, I tell you. Trust my hunches and my instincts.

One of the original uses of these nurseries was so that we could study the patterns left on the walls by the child's mind, study at our leisure, and help the child.

"But won't the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up abruptly, for good?"

The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two men.
“Now I’m feeling persecuted,” said McClean.

We've been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long.

Lord, how did we ever get in this house? What prompted us to buy a nightmare?

"I think we'd better get downstairs before those kids get engrossed with those damn beasts again."