"Off hours, yes. But time to think? If you're not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can't think of anything else but the danger, then you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the four-wall televisor. Why? The televisor is 'real.' It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!' "
"Only the 'family' is 'people.' "
"I beg pardon?"
"My
wife says books aren't 'real.' "
"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full color, three dimensions, and being in and part of those incredible parlors. As you see, my parlor is nothing but four plaster walls. And here." He held out two small rubber plugs. "For my ears when I ride the subway jets."
"Denham's Dentifrice; they toil not, neither do they spin," said Montag, eyes shut. "Where do we go from here? Would books help us?"
"Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said, quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two. And I hardly think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could do much this late in the game. . . ."
"I can get books."
"You're running a risk."
"That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want."
"There, you've said an interesting thing," laughed Faber, "without having read it!"
"Are things like that in books? But it came off the top of my mind!"
"All the better. You didn't fancy it up for me or anyone, even yourself."
Montag leaned forward. "This afternoon I thought that if it turned out that books were worthwhile, we might get a press and print some extra copies--"
"We?"
"You and I."
"Oh, no!" Faber sat up.
"But let me tell you my plan--"
"If you insist on telling me, I must ask you to leave."
"But aren't you interested?"
"Not if you start talking the sort of talk that might get me burnt for my trouble. The only way I could possibly listen to you would be if somehow the fireman structure itself could be burnt. Now if you suggest that we print extra books and arrange to have them hidden in firemen's houses all over the country, so that seeds of suspicion would be sown among these arsonists, bravo, I'd say!"
"Plant the books, turn in an alarm, and see the firemen's houses burn, is that what you mean?"
Faber raised his brows and looked at Montag as if he were seeing a new man. "I was joking."
"If you thought it would be a plan worth trying, I'd have to take your word it would help."
"You can't guarantee things like that! After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine percent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore."
Faber got up and began to pace the room.
"Well?" asked Montag.
"You're absolutely serious?"
"Absolutely."