In the clearing, around a bare, skull-like rock, there was a noisy crowd of three or four hundred… people—I must say “people”—it is difficult to call them anything else. Just as on the platforms in our Plaza one sees at first only familiar faces, so here I first saw only our gray-blue unifs. A second more, and there, among the unifs, clearly and simply—black, red, golden, bay, roan, and white people—they must have been people. All were without clothing and all were covered with short, glossy fur, like the fur that can be seen by anyone on the stuffed horse in the Prehistoric Museum. But the females had faces exactly like those of our women: delicately rosy and free of hair, as were also their breasts—large, firm, of splendid geometric form. The males had only parts of their faces hairless— like our ancestors.
All this was so incredible, so unexpected, that I stood calmly (yes, calmly!) and looked. It was the same as with a scale: you overload one side, and then, no matter how much more you add, the arrow won’t move.
Suddenly, I was alone. I-330 was no longer with me—I didn’t know where or how she had disappeared. Around me, only those beings, their furry bodies glowing like satin in the sun. I seized some-one’s hot, firm, raven shoulder. ‘For the Benefactor’s sake, tell me—where did she go? Why, just now, just a moment ago…”
Stern, shaggy eyebrows turned to me. “Sh-sh! Quiet!” And he nodded shaggily toward the center of the clearing, toward the yellow, skull-like stone. There, above the heads, above everyone, I saw her. The sun shone from behind her, directly into my eyes, and all of her stood out sharp, coal-black against the blue cloth of the sky—a charcoal silhouette etched on blue. Just overhead, some clouds floated by. And it seemed that not the clouds, but the stone, and she herself, and with her the crowd and the clearing were gliding as silently as a ship, and the earth itself, grown light, was floating underfoot…
“Brothers…” She spoke. “Brothers! You all know: there, in the city behind the Wall, they are building the Integral. And you know: the day has come when we shall break down the Wall—all walls—to let the green wind blow free from end to end—across the earth. But the Integral is meant to take these walls up there, into the heights, to thousands of other earths, whose fires will rustle to you tonight through the black leaves…”
Waves, foam, wind against the stone: “Down with the Integral! Down!”
“No, brothers, not down. But the Integral must be ours. On the day when it first rises into the sky, we shall be in it. Because the Builder of the Integral is with us. He has come out from behind the Wall, he has come here with me, to be among you. Long live the Builder!”
A moment, and I was somewhere above. Beneath me—heads, heads, heads, wide-open shouting mouths, arms flashing up and falling. It was extraordinary, intoxicating: I felt myself above all others. I was I, a separate entity, a world. I had ceased to be a component, as I had been, and become a unit.
And now—with a dented, crumpled, happy body, as happy as after a love embrace—I am below, right near the stone. Sun, voices from above, I-330 smiling. A golden-haired, satiny-golden woman, spreading the fragrance of grass. In her hands, a cup, apparently of wood. She takes a sip from it with scarlet lips and hands it to me, and greedily, with closed eyes, to quench the fire, I drink the sweet, stinging, cold, fiery sparks.
And then—my blood and the whole world—a thousand times faster. The light earth flies like down. And everything is light, and simple, and clear.
And now, I see the huge, familiar letters, MEPHI, on the stone, and for some reason this is right and necessary—it is the strong, simple thread that links everything together. I see a crude image—perhaps on the same stone: a winged youth with a transparent body and, where the heart should be, a dazzling, crimson-glowing coal. And again—I understand this coal… Or no: I feel it—just as, without hearing, I feel every word (she is speaking from above, from the stone). And I feel that everybody breathes together—and everybody will fly together somewhere, like the birds over the Wall that day…
From behind, from the densely breathing crowd of bodies—a loud voice: “But this is madness!”
And then it seems that I—yes, I believe it was I—jumped up on the stone. Sun, heads, a green serrated line against the blue, and I shout, “Yes, yes, madness! And everyone must lose his mind, everyone must! The sooner the better! It is essential—I know it.”
Next to me, I-330. Her smile—two dark lines: from the ends of her lips—up, at an angle. And the coal is now within me, and all this is instant, easy, just a bit painful, beautiful…
After that, only broken, separate fragments.
Slowly, just overhead—a bird. I see: it is alive, like me. Like a man it turns its head right, left, and black, round eyes drill into me…
Another fragment: a back, with shiny fur the color of old ivory. A dark insect with tiny, transparent wings crawls along the back, and the back twitches to drive it off, then twitches again…
Another fragment: the shadow of the leaves-interlaced, latticed. In the shadow people are lying and chewing something that resembles the legendary food of the ancients—a long yellow fruit and a piece of something dark. A woman thrusts it into my hand, and it is funny: I don’t know whether I can eat it.
Again—a crowd, heads, feet, hands, mouths. Faces flash momentarily and disappear, burst like bubbles. And for a moment—or did it merely seem to me?—transparent, flying wing-ears.
With all my strength I press the hand of I-330. She glances back. “What is it?”
“He is here---It seemed to me…”
“He? Who?”
“S… just a moment ago—in the crowd…”
The coal-black, thin eyebrows rise to the temples: sharp triangle, a smile. I do not understand why she is smiling; how can she smile?
“Don’t you see—don’t you see what it means if he or any of them is here?”
“Silly! Would it occur to anyone there, inside the Wall, that we are here? Try to remember-did you ever think that it was possible? They are hunting for us there—let them! You’re dreaming.”
She smiles lightly, gaily, and I smile. The earth-intoxicated, light, gay—floats…
Twenty-eighth Entry
TOPICS:
Two Women
Entropy and Energy
The Opaque Part of the Body
If your world is like the world of our distant forebears, imagine that you have stumbled upon a sixth, a seventh continent in the ocean—some Atlantis with fantastic labyrinth-cities, people soaring in the air without the aid of wings or aeros, rocks lifted by the power of a glance—in short, things that would never occur to you even if you suffer from dream-sickness. This is how I felt yesterday. Because, you understand—as I have told you before—not one of us has been beyond the Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War.
I know: it is my duty before you, my unknown friends, to tell in greater detail about the strange and unexpected world that revealed itself to me yesterday. But I am still unable to return to that. There is a constant flood of new and new events, and I cannot collect them all: I lift the edges of my unif, I hold out my palms, and yet whole pailfuls spill past, and only drops fall on these pages.
First I heard loud voices behind my door, and recognized the voice of I-330, firm, metallic, and the other—almost inflexible, like a wooden ruler— the voice of U. Then the door flew open with a crash and catapulted both of them into my room. Yes, exactly—catapulted.
I-330 put her hand on the back of my chair and smiled at the other over her right shoulder, only with her teeth. I would not like to be faced with such a smile.
“Listen,” I-330 said to me. “This woman, it appears, has set herself the task of protecting you from me, like a small child. Is that with your permission?”
And the other, her gills quivering, “Yes, he is a child. He is! That is the only reason he doesn’t see that you’re with him… that it’s only in order to… that it is all a game. Yes. And it’s my duty…”
For a moment, in the mirror—t
he broken, jumping line of my eyebrows. I sprang up and, with difficulty restraining within me the other with the shaking hairy fists, with difficulty squeezing out each word through my teeth, I threw at her, straight at the gills, “Out! Th-this very moment! Get out!”
The gills swelled out, brick red, then drooped, turned gray. She opened her mouth to say something, then, saying nothing, snapped it shut and walked out.
I rushed to I-330. “I’ll never—I’ll never forgive myself! She dared—to you? But you don’t think that I think, that… that she… It’s all because she wants to register for me, and I…”
“Fortunately, she won’t have time to register. And I don’t care if there are a thousand like her. I know you will believe me, not the thousand. Because, after what happened yesterday, I am open to you—all of me, to the very end, just as you wanted. I am in your hands, you can—at any moment…”
“What do you mean—at any moment?” And immediately I understood. The blood rushed to my ears, my cheeks. I cried. “Don’t, don’t ever speak to me about it! You know that it was the other I, the old one, and now…”
“Who can tell? A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don’t know how it will end. Or it wouldn’t be worth reading…”
She stroked my head. I could not see her face, but I could tell by her voice: she was looking far, far off, her eyes caught by a cloud, floating soundlessly, slowly, who knows where…
Suddenly she thrust me away—firmly but tenderly. “Listen, I’ve come to tell you that these may be the last days we… You know—the auditoriums have been canceled as of this evening.”
“Canceled?”
“Yes. And as I walked past, I saw—they were preparing something in the auditoriums: tables, medics in white.”
“But what can it mean?”
“I don’t know. No one knows as yet. And that’s the worst of it But I feel—the current is switched on, the spark is running. If not today, then tomorrow… But perhaps they won’t have time enough.”
I have long ceased to understand who “They” are, who are “We.” I do not know what I want— whether I want them to have time enough, or not. One thing is clear to me: I-330 is now walking on the very edge—and any moment…
“But this is madness,” I say. “You—and the One State. It is like putting a hand over the muzzle of a gun and hoping to stop the bullet. It’s utter madness!”
A smile. “ ‘Everyone must lose his mind—the sooner the better.’ Somebody said this yesterday. Do you remember? Out there…”
Yes, I have it written down. Hence, it really happened. Silently I stare into her face: the dark cross is especially distinct on it now.
“Darling, before it is too late… If you want, I will leave everything, I will forget it all—let’s go together there, beyond the Wall, to those… whoever they are.”
She shook her head. Through the dark windows of her eyes, deep within her, I saw a flaming oven, sparks, tongues of fire leaping up, a heaping pile of dry wood. And it was clear to me: it was too late, my words would no longer avail…
She stood up. In a moment she would leave. These might be the last days—perhaps the last minutes… I seized her hand.
“No! Just a little longer—oh, for the sake… for the sake…”
She slowly raised my hand, my hairy hand which I hated so much, toward the light. I wanted to pull it away, but she held it firmly.
“Your hand… You don’t know—few know it— that there were women here, women of the city, who loved the others. You, too, must have some drops of sunny forest blood. Perhaps that’s why I…”
A silence. And strangely—this silence, this emptiness made my heart race madly. And I cried, “Ah! You will not go! You will not go until you tell me about them, because you love… them, and I don’t even know who they are, where they are from. Who are they? The half we have lost? H2 and O? And in order to get H2O—streams, oceans, waterfalls, waves, storms—the two halves must unite…”
I clearly remember every movement she made. I remember how she picked up from the table my glass triangle, and while I spoke, she pressed its sharp edge to her cheek; there was a white line on the cheek, then it had filled with pink and vanished. And how strange that I cannot recall her words, especially at first—only fragmentary images, colors.
I know that in the beginning she spoke about the Two Hundred Years’ War. I saw red on the green of grass, on dark clay, on blue snow—red, undrying pools. Then yellow, sun-parched grasses, naked, yellow, shaggy men and shaggy dogs—together, near swollen corpses, canine, or perhaps human… This, of course, outside the Wall. For the city had already conquered, the city had our present food, synthesized of petroleum.
And almost from the very sky, down to the ground—black, heavy, swaying curtains: slow columns of smoke, over woods, over villages. Stifled howling—black endless lines driven to the city—to be saved by force, to be taught happiness.
“You have almost known all this?”
“Yes, almost.”
“But you did not know—few knew—that a small remnant still survived, remained there, outside the Wall. Naked, they withdrew into the woods. They learned how to live from trees, from animals and birds, from flowers and the sun. They have grown a coat of fur, but under the fur they have preserved their hot, red blood. With you it’s worse: you’re overgrown with figures; figures crawl all over you like lice. You should be stripped of everything and driven naked into the woods. To learn to tremble with fear, with joy, with wild rage, with cold, to pray to fire. And we, Mephi—we want…”
“No, wait! ‘Mephi’? What’s ‘Mephi’?”
“Mephi? It is an ancient name, it’s he who… Do you remember—out there, the image of the youth drawn on the stone? Or no, I’ll try to say it in your language, it will be easier for you to understand. There are two forces in the world—entropy and energy. One leads to blissful quietude, to happy equilibrium; the other, to destruction of equilibrium, to tormentingly endless movement.
Entropy was worshiped as God by our—or, rather, your— ancestors, the Christians. But we anti-Christians, we…”
At this moment, there was a barely audible, a whispered knock at the door, and the man with the squashed face, with the forehead pushed low over his eyes, who had often brought me notes from I-330, burst into the room.
He rushed up to us, stopped, his breath hissing like an air pump, unable to say a word. He must have run at top speed.
“What is it! What happened?” She seized him by the hand.
“They’re coming-here…” he finally panted. “Guards… and with them that—oh, what d’you call him… like a hunchback…”
“S?”
“Yes! They’re right here, in the house. They’ll be here in a moment Quick, quick!”
“Nonsense! There’s time…” She laughed, and in her eyes-sparks, gay tongues of flame.
It was either absurd, reckless courage—or something else, still unknown to me.
’For the Benefactor’s sake! But you must realize— this is…”
“For the Benefactor’s sake?” A sharp triangle-a smile.
“Well,. then… for my sake… I beg you.”
“Ah, and I still had to talk to you about a certain matter… Oh, well, tomorrow…”
She gaily (yes, gaily) nodded to me; the other, coming out for a fraction of a second from under his forehead, nodded too. And then I was alone.
Quick, to the table. I opened my notes, picked up a pen. They must find me at this work, for the benefit of the One State. And suddenly—every hair on my head came alive and separate, stirring: What if they take it and read at least one page—of these, the last ones?
I sat at the table, motionless—and saw the trembling of the walls, the trembling of the pen in my hands, the swaying, blurring of the letters…
Hide it? But where? Everything is glass. Burn it? But they will see from the next rooms, from the hall. And then, I could not, I was no longer able to destroy this anguishe
d—perhaps most precious— piece of myself.
From the distance, in the corridor, voices, steps. I only managed to snatch a handful of the sheets and thrust them under myself. And now I was riveted to the chair, which trembled with every atom. And the floor under my feet—a ship’s deck. Up and down…
Shrinking into a tiny lump, huddling under the shelter of my own brow, I saw stealthily, out of the corner of my eye, how they went from room to room, beginning at the right end of the hallway, and coming nearer, nearer… Some sat benumbed, like me; others jumped up to meet them, throwing their doors wide open—lucky ones! If I could also…
“The Benefactor is the most perfect disinfection, essential to mankind, and therefore in the organism of the One State no peristalsis…” With a jumping pen I squeezed out this utter nonsense, bending ever lower over the table, while in my head there was a crazy hammering, and with my back I heard the door handle click. A gust of air. The chair under me danced…
With an effort I tore myself away from the page and turned to my visitors. (How difficult it is to play games… Who spoke to me of games today?) They were led by S. Glumly, silently, quickly his eyes bored wells in me, in my chair, in the pages quivering under my hand. Then, for a second-familiar, everyday faces on the threshold, one separating from among them—inflated, pink-brown gills…
I recalled everything that had taken place in this room half an hour ago, and it was clear to me that in a moment she… My whole being throbbed and pulsed in that (fortunately, untransparent) part of my body which covered the manuscript.
U approached S from behind, cautiously touched his sleeve, and said in a low voice, “This is D-503, the Builder of the Integral. You must have heard of him. He is always working here, at his table… Doesn’t spare himself at all!”
And I had… What an extraordinary, marvelous woman.
S slid over to me, bent over my shoulder, over the table. I tried to cover the writing with my elbow, but he shouted sternly, “You will show me what you have there, instantly!”
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