Flushed with shame, I held the paper out to him. He read it, and I saw a smile slip out of his eyes, flick down his face, and settle somewhere in the right corner of his lips, with a faint quiver of its tail…
“Somewhat ambiguous. Nevertheless… Well, continue: we shall not disturb you any more.”
He plashed away, like paddles on water, toward the door, and every step he made returned to me gradually my feet, my hands, my fingers. My soul again spread equally throughout my body. I was able to breathe.
And the last thing: U lingered a moment in my room, came over to me, bent to my ear, and in a whisper, “It’s your luck that I…”
What did she mean by that?
Later in the evening I learned that they had taken away three numbers. However, no one speaks aloud about this, or about anything that is happening these days (the educational influence of the Guardians invisibly present in our midst). Conversations deal chiefly with the rapid fall of the barometer and the change of weather.
Twenty-ninth Entry
TOPICS:
Threads on the Face
Sprouts
Unnatural Compression
Strange: the barometer is falling, but there is still no wind. Quiet Somewhere above, the storm that is still inaudible to us has started. Clouds are rushing madly. They are still few—separate jagged fragments. And it seems as if a city has already been overthrown up above, and pieces of walls and towers are tumbling down, growing before our eyes with terrifying speed—nearer and nearer; but they will still fly through blue infinity before they drop to the very bottom, where we are.
And here, below, there is silence. In the air-thin, incomprehensible, almost invisible threads. Every autumn they are carried here from outside, from beyond the Wall. Slowly, they float—and suddenly you feel something alien, Invisible on your face; you want to brush it off, but no, you cannot; you cannot rid yourself of it.
There are especially many of these threads along the Green Wall, where I walked this morning. I-330 asked me to meet her in the Ancient House-in our old “apartment” I was approaching the opaque mass of the Ancient House when I heard behind me someone’s short, rapid steps and hurried breathing. I glanced back: O was trying to catch up with me.
All of her was firmly rounded in some special, somehow complete way. Her arms, the cups of her breasts, her entire body, so familiar to me, filled out, rounded, stretched her unif; in a moment, it seemed, they would break the thin doth and burst into the sunlight. And I thought: Out there, in the green jungles, the sprouts push as stubbornly through the earth in spring—hurrying to send out branches, leaves, to bloom.
For several seconds she was silent, her blue eyes looking radiantly into my face.
“I saw you on Unanimity Day.”
“I saw you too…” And I remembered instantly how she had stood below, in the narrow passageway, pressing herself to the wall and shielding her stomach with her arms. Involuntarily, I glanced at it, round under the unif.
She evidently caught my glance. All of her turned roundly pink. A pink smile: “I am so happy, so happy… I am full—you know, to the brim. I walk about and hear nothing around me, listening all the time within, inside me…”
I was silent. There was something foreign on my face, disturbing, but I could not rid myself of it. Then suddenly, still glowing with blue radiance, she seized my hand—and I felt her lips on it… It was the first time in my life this happened to me. Some unknown, ancient caress—causing me such shame and pain that I (too roughly, perhaps) pulled away my hand.
’You’ve lost your mind! No, that isn’t… I mean, you… Why such happiness? Have you forgotten what awaits you? If not now, in a month, in two months…”
The light went out of her; all her roundness crumpled, shriveled at once. And in my heart—an unpleasant, a painful compression, connected with a sense of pity. (But the heart is nothing but an ideal pump; compression, shrinkage, the sucking in of fluid by a pump are technical absurdities. It is clear, then, how essentially preposterous, unnatural, and morbid are the “loves,” “pities,” and all the other nonsense that causes such compressions!)
Silence. On the left, the foggy green glass of the Wall. Ahead, the dark red massive house. And these two colors, adding up, produced within me what I thought a brilliant idea.
“Wait! I know how to save you. I’ll free you of the need to die after seeing your child. You will be able to nurse it—you understand—you’ll watch it grow in your arms, round out, fill up, and ripen like a fruit…”
She trembled violently and clutched at me.
“Do you remember that woman… that time, long ago, during our walk? Well, she is here now, in the Ancient House. Come with me to her; I promise, everything will be arranged at once.”
I saw already in my mind’s eye how, together with I-330, we led her through the corridors—I saw her there, among the flowers, grasses, leaves… But she recoiled from me; the horns of her rosy crescent quivered and bent down.
“It’s that one,” she said.
“I mean…” I was embarrassed for some reason. “Well, yes, it is.”
“And you want me to go to her—to ask her—to… Don’t even dare to speak to me about it again!”
Stooping, she walked rapidly away. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she turned and cried, “So I will die—I don’t care! And it doesn’t concern you—what does it matter to you?”
Silence. Pieces of blue walls and towers tumble from above, grow larger with terrifying speed, but they must still fly hours—perhaps days—through infinity. The invisible threads float slowly, settle on my face, and it’s impossible to shake them off, to rid myself of them.
I slowly walk to the Ancient House. In my heart, an absurd, agonizing compression…
Thirtieth Entry
TOPICS:
The Final Number
Galileo’s Mistake
Would It Not Be Better?
Here is my conversation with I-330 yesterday, at the Ancient House, in the midst of motley, noisy colors—reds, greens, bronze-yellows, whites, oranges—stunning the mind, breaking up the logical flow of thought… And all the time, under the frozen, marble smile of the pug-nosed ancient poet.
I reproduce this conversation to the letter—for it seems to me that it will be of vast, decisive importance to the destiny of the One State —nay, of the entire universe. Besides, perhaps, my unknown readers, you will find in it a certain vindication of me…
I-330 flung everything at me immediately, without preliminaries. “I know: the Integral is to make its first, trial flight the day after tomorrow. On that day we shall seize it”
“What? The day after tomorrow?”
“Yes. Sit down, calm yourself. We cannot lose a minute. Among the hundreds rounded up at random by the Guardians last night there were twelve Mephi. If we delay a day or two, they’ll perish.”
I was silent.
“To observe the test, they have to send you electricians, mechanics, doctors, meteorologists. Exactly at twelve—remember this—when the lunch bell will ring and everyone will go to the dining room, we shall remain in the corridor, lock them in, and the Integral is ours… Do you understand— it must be done, at any cost. The Integral in our hands will be the weapon that will help us finish everything quickly, painlessly, at once. Their aeros —ha! Insignificant gnats against a falcon. And then— if it becomes essential—we can simply direct the motor exhausts downward, and by their work alone…”
I jumped up. “It’s unthinkable! Absurd! Don’t your realize that what you’re planning is revolution?”
“Yes, revolution! Why is this absurd?”
“It is absurd because there can be no revolution. Because our—I am saying this, not you—our revolution was the final one. And there can be no others. Everyone knows this…”
The mocking, sharp triangle of eyebrows. “My dear—you are a mathematician. More—you are a philosopher, a mathematical philosopher. Well, then: name me the final number
.”
“What do you mean? I… I don’t understand: what final number?”
“Well, the final, the ultimate, the largest”
“But that’s preposterous! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number?”
“Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite. The final one is for children: children are frightened by infinity, and it’s important that children sleep peacefully at night…”
“But what sense, what sense is there in all of this—for the Benefactor’s sake! What sense, if everybody is already happy?”
“Let us suppose… Very well, suppose it’s so. And what next?”
“Ridiculous! An utterly childish question. Tell children a story—to the very end, and they will still be sure to ask, ‘And what next? And why?’ ”
“Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers are invariably children. Exactly, just like children, we must always ask, ‘And what next?’ ”
“There’s nothing next! Period. Throughout the universe—spread uniformly—everywhere…”
“Ah: uniformly, everywhere! That’s exactly where it is—entropy, psychological entropy. Is it not clear to you, a mathematician, that only differences, differences in temperatures—thermal contrasts —make for life? And if everywhere, throughout the universe, there are equally warm, or equally cool bodies… they must be brought into collision—to get fire, explosion, Gehenna. And we will bring them into collision.”
“But I-330, you must understand—this was exactly what our forebears did during the Two Hundred Years’ War…”
“Oh, and they were right—a thousand times right But they made one mistake. They later came to believe that they had the final number—which does not, does not exist in nature. Their mistake was the mistake of Galileo: he was right that the earth revolves around the sun, but he did not know that the whole solar system also revolves— around some other center; he did not know that the real, not the relative, orbit of the earth is not some naive circle…”
“And you?”
“We? We know for the time being that there is no final number. We may forget it. No, we are even sure to forget it when we get old—as everything inevitably gets old. And then we, too, shall drop—like leaves in autumn from the tree—like you, the day after tomorrow… No, no, my dear, not you. For you are with us, you are with us!”
Fiery, stormy, flashing—I have never yet seen her like that—she embraced me with all of herself. I disappeared…
At the last, looking firmly, steadily into my eyes, “Remember, then: at twelve.”
And I said, “Yes, I remember.”
She left. I was alone—among the riotous, many-voiced tumult of blue, red, green, bronze-yellow, orange colors…
Yes, at twelve… And suddenly an absurd sensation of something alien settled on my face—impossible to brush off. Suddenly—yesterday morning, U—and what she had shouted into I-330’s face… Why? What nonsense.
I hurried outside—and home, home…
Somewhere behind me I heard the piercing cries of birds over the Wall. And before me, in the setting sun—the spheres of cupolas, the huge, flaming cubes of houses, the spire of the Accumulator Tower like lightning frozen in the sky. And all this, all this perfect, geometric beauty will have to be… by me, by my own hands… Is there no way out, no other road?
Past one of the auditoriums (I forget the number). Inside it, benches piled up in a heap; in the middle, tables covered with sheets of pure white glass cloth; on the white, a stain of the sun’s pink blood. And concealed in all of this—some unknown, and therefore frightening tomorrow. It is unnatural for a thinking, seeing being to live amidst irregulars, unknowns, X’s… As if you were blindfolded and forced to walk, feeling your way, stumbling, and knowing that somewhere—just nearby—is the edge; a single step, and all that will remain of you will be a flattened, mangled piece of flesh. Am I not like this now?
And what if—without waiting—I plunge myself, head down? Would it not be the only, the correct way—disentangling everything at once?
Thirty-first Entry
TOPICS:
The Great Operation
I Have Forgiven Everything
A Train Collision
Saved! At the very last moment, when it seemed there was no longer anything to grasp at, when it seemed that everything was finished…
It is as though you have already ascended the stairs to the Benefactor’s dread Machine, and the glass Bell has come down over you with a heavy clank, and for the last time in your life—quick, quick—you drink the blue sky with your eyes…
And suddenly—it was only a “dream.” The sun is pink and gay, and the wall is there—what joy to stroke the cold wall with your hand; and the pillow—what an endless delight to watch and watch the hollow left by your head on the white pillow…
This was approximately what I felt when I read the One State Gazette this morning. It had been a terrible dream, and now it was over. And I, fainthearted nonbeliever, I had already thought of willful death. I am ashamed to read the last lines I had written yesterday. But it is all the same now: let them stay as a reminder of the incredible thing that might have happened—and now will not happen… no, it will not happen!
The front page of the One State Gazette glowed with a proclamation:
REJOICE!
For henceforth you shall be perfect! Until this day, your own creations—machines—were more perfect than you.
How?
Every spark of a dynamo is a spark of the purest reason; each movement of a piston is a flawless syllogism. But are you not possessors of the same unerring reason?
The philosophy of cranes, presses, and pumps, is as perfect and clear as a compass-drawn circle. Is your philosophy less compass-drawn?
The beauty of a mechanism is in its rhythm—as steady and precise as that of a pendulum. But you, nurtured from earliest infancy on the Taylor system-have you not become pendulum-precise?
Except for one thing:
Machines have no imagination.
Have you ever seen the face of a pump cylinder break into a distant, foolish, dreamy smile while it works?
Have you ever heard of cranes restlessly turning from side to side and sighing at night, during the hours designated for rest?
No!
And you? Blush with shame! The Guardians have noticed more and more such smiles and sighs of late. And—hide your eyes—historians of the One State ask for retirement so that they need not record disgraceful events.
But this is not your fault—you are sick. The name of this sickness is IMAGINATION.
It is a worm that gnaws out black lines on the forehead. It is a fever that drives you to escape ever farther, even if this “farther” begins where happiness ends. This is the last barricade on our way to happiness.
Rejoice, then: this barricade has already been blown up.
The road is open.
The latest discovery of State Science is the location of the center of imagination—a miserable little nodule in the brain in the area of the pans Varolii. Triple-X-ray cautery of this nodule—and you are cured of imagination—
FOREVER.
You are perfect. You are machinelike. The road to one hundred per cent happiness is free. Hurry, then, everyone—old and young—hurry to submit to the Great Operation. Hurry to the auditoriums, where the Great Operation is being performed. Long live the Great Operation! Long live the One State ! Long live the Benefactor!
You… If you were reading all this not in my notes, resembling some fanciful ancient novel, if this newspaper, still smelling of printers’ ink, were trembling in your hands as it does in mine; if you knew, as I know, that this is the most actual reality, if not today’s, then tomorrow’s—would you not feel as I do? Wouldn’t your head reel, as mine does? Wouldn’t these eerie, sweet, icy needle pricks run down your back, your arms? Would it not seem to you that you’re a giant, Atlas—and if you straight
en up, you will inevitably strike the glass ceiling with your head?
I seized the telephone receiver. “I-330… Yes, yes, 330.” And then I cried out breathlessly, “You’re home, yes? Have you read it? You’re reading it? But this is, this is… It’s remarkable!”
“Yes…” A long, dark silence. The receiver hummed faintly, pondered something… “I must see you today. Yes, at my place, after sixteen. Without fail.”
Dearest! Dear, such a dear! “Without fail…” I felt myself smiling and could not stop. And now I would carry this smile along the street—high, like a light.
Outside, the wind swept at me. It whirled, howled, whipped, but I felt all the more exultant: whistle, scream—it doesn’t matter now—you can no longer topple walls. And if cast-iron, flying clouds tumble overhead—let them tumble: they cannot blot out the sun. We have forever chained it to the zenith—we, Joshuas, sons of Nun.
At the corner a dense group of Joshuas stood with their foreheads glued to the glass wall. Inside, a man already lay stretched out on the dazzling white table. From under the white the bare soles of his feet formed a yellow angle; white doctors were bent over his head; a white hand stretched to another hand a hypodermic syringe filled with something.
“And you, why don’t you go in?” I asked, addressing no one, or, rather, everyone.
“And what about you?” A spherical head turned to me.
“I will, later. I must first…”
Somewhat embarrassed, I withdrew. I really had to see her, 330, first. But why “first”? This I could not answer.
The dock. Icy-blue, the Integral shimmered, sparkled. In the machine compartment the dynamo hummed gently, caressingly, repeating some word over and over again—and the word seemed familiar, one of my own. I bent over it and stroked the long, cold tube of the engine. Dear… so dear. Tomorrow you will come alive; tomorrow, for the first time in your life, you will be shaken by the fiery, flaming sparks within your womb…
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