Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 4. Griffith George Chetwynd
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not have left the room as there was but one exit.... Yet I-330 was not there! I looked around everywhere. I even opened the cupboard and felt of the different ancient dresses; nobody....
I feel somewhat ridiculous, my dear planetary readers, relating to you this most improbable adventure. But what else can I do since it all happened exactly as I relate it? Was not the whole day from early morning, full of improbable adventures? Does it not all resemble the ancient disease of dream-seeing? If this be so, what does it matter if I relate one absurdity more, or one less? Moreover, I am convinced that sooner or later I shall be able to include all these absurdities in some kind of a logical sequence. This thought comforts me as I hope it will comfort you.
... How overwhelmed I am! If only you knew how overwhelmed!
Record Fourteen
“Mine”
Impossible
A Cold Floor
I shall continue to relate my adventures of yesterday. I was busy during the personal hour before retiring to bed, and thus I was unable to record everything last night. But everything is graven in me; especially, for some reason, and apparently forever, I shall remember that unbearably cold floor....
I was expecting O-90 last evening as it was her regular day. I went downstairs to the controller on duty to get a permit for the lowering of my curtains.
“What is the matter with you?” asked the controller. “You seem so peculiar tonight.”
“I ... I am sick.”
Strictly speaking, I told her the truth. I certainly am sick. All this is an illness. Presently I remembered; of course, my certificate! I touched it in my pocket. Yes, there it was, rustling. Then all this did happen! It did actually happen!
I held out the paper to the controller. As I did so, I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. Without looking directly at her, I noticed with what an expression of surprise she gazed at me.
Then at twenty-one-thirty o’clock.... In the room to the left the curtains were lowered, and in the room to the right my neighbor was sitting over a book. His head is bald and covered with bulging lumps. His forehead is enormous—a yellow parabola. I was walking up and down the room—suffering. How could I meet her, after all that happened! O-90, I mean. I felt plainly to my right, how the eyes of my neighbor were staring at me. I clearly saw the wrinkles on his forehead like a row of yellow, illegible lines; and for some reason I was certain that those lines dealt with me.
A quarter of an hour before twenty-two, the cheerful, rosy whirlwind was in my room; the firm ring of her rosy arms closed about my neck. Then I felt how that ring grew weaker and weaker, and then it broke and her arms dropped....
“You are not the same, not the same man! You are no longer mine!”
“What curious terminology: ‘mine.’ I never belonged—” I faltered. It suddenly occurred to me: true, I belonged to no one before, but now—Is it not clear that now I do not live any more in our rational world but in the ancient delirious world, in a world of square-root of minus one?
The curtains fell. There to my right my neighbor let his book drop at that moment from the table to the floor. And through the last narrow space between the curtain and the floor I saw a yellow hand pick up the book. Within I felt: “Only to seize that hand with all my power.”
“I thought ... I wanted to meet you during the hour for the walk. I wanted ... I must talk to you about so many things, so many....”
Poor, dear, O-90. Her rosy mouth was a crescent with its horns downward. But I could not tell her everything, could I, if for no other reason than that it would make her an accomplice of my crimes? I knew that she would not have the courage to report me to the Bureau of Guardians, consequently....
“My dear O-, I am sick, I am exhausted. I went again today to the Medical Bureau; but it is nothing, it will pass. But let us not talk about it;—let us forget it.”
O-90 was lying down. I kissed her gently. I kissed that childish, fluffy fold at her wrist. Her blue eyes were closed. The pink crescent of her lips was slowly blooming, more and more like a flower. I kissed her....
Suddenly I clearly realized how empty I was, how I had given away.... No, I could not—impossible! I knew I must ... but no—impossible! I ought ... but no—impossible! My lips cooled at once. The rosy crescent trembled, darkened, drew together. O-90 covered herself with the bedspread, her face hidden in the pillow.
I was sitting near the bed, on the floor. What a desperately cold floor! I sat there in silence. The terrible cold from the floor rose higher and higher. There in the blue, silent space among the planets, there probably it is as cold.
“Please understand, dear; I did not mean...” I muttered, “With all my heart, I ...”
It was the truth. I, my real self did not mean.— ... Yet how could I express it in words? How could I explain to her that the piece of iron did not want to.... But that the law is precise, inevitable!
O-90 lifted her face from the pillow and without opening her eyes she said, “Go away.” But because she was crying she pronounced it “Oo aaa-ay.” For some reason this absurd detail will not leave my memory.
Penetrated by the cold and torpid, I went out into the hall. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass. Outside a thin, almost imperceptible film of haze was spread. “Towards night,” I thought, “it will descend again and drown the world. How sad a night it will be!”
O-90 passed swiftly by, going toward the elevator. The door slammed.
“Wait a minute!” I screamed. I was frightened.
But the elevator was already groaning, going down—down—down....
“She robbed me of R-, she robbed me of O-90, yet, yet ... nevertheless....”
Record Fifteen
The Bell
The Mirror-Like Sea
I Am To Burn Eternally
I was walking upon the dock where the Integral is being built, when the Second Builder came to meet me. His face as usual was round and white,—a porcelain plate. When he speaks it seems as though he serves you a plate of something unbearably tasty.
“You chose to be ill, and without the Chief we had an accident, as it were, yesterday.”
“An accident?”
“Yes, sir. We finished the bell and started to let it down, and imagine! the men caught a male without a number. How he got in, I cannot make out. They took him to the Operation Department. Oh, they’ll draw the mystery out of the fellow there; ‘why’ and ‘how,’ etc....” He smiled delightedly.
Our best and most experienced physicians work in the Operation Department under the direct supervision of the Well-Doer himself. They have all kinds of instruments, but the best of all is the Gas Bell. The procedure is taken from an ancient experiment of elementary physics: they used to put a rat under a gas bell and gradually pump out the air; the air becomes more and more rarified, and ... you know the rest.
But our Gas Bell is certainly a more perfect apparatus and it is used in combination with different gasses. Furthermore, we don’t torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did; we use it for a higher purpose: to guard the security of the United State, in other words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries ago when the work of the Operation Department was only beginning, there were yet to be found some fools who compared our Operation Department with the ancient Inquisition. But this is as absurd as to compare a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cut-throat. Both use a knife, perhaps the same kind of a knife, both do the same thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man, yet one is a well-doer, the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus.... All this becomes perfectly clear in one second,