Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 4. Griffith George Chetwynd
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remains nearby, attached to me by unseen ties. Perhaps that tie is I-330. I do not know. Or perhaps they, the Guardians I mean, already know that I ...
If some one should tell you your shadow sees you, sees you all the time, would you understand? All at once peculiar sensations arise in you; your arms seem to belong to someone else, they are in the way. That is how I feel; very frequently now I notice how absurdly I wave my hands without any rhythm. I have an irresistible desire to glance behind me but I am unable to do so, my neck might as well be forged of iron. I flee, I run faster and faster, and even with my back I feel that shadow following me as fast as I can run, and there is no place to hide myself, no place!
At length I reach my room. Alone at last! But here I find another thing, the telephone. I pick up the receiver. “Yes, I-330 please.” And again I hear a light noise through the receiver; some one’s step in the hall there, passing the door of her room, and—silence.... I drop the receiver. I cannot, cannot bear it any longer, and I run to see her!
This happened yesterday. I ran there and for a whole hour from sixteen to seventeen I wandered near the house in which she lives. Numbers were passing by in rows. Thousands of feet were beating the time like a behemoth with a million legs passing by. I was alone, thrown out by a storm on an uninhabited island, and my eyes were seeking and seeking among the grayish-blue waves. “There soon,” I thought, “will appear from somewhere the sharp mocking angles of the brows lifted to the temples, and the dark window-eyes, and there behind them a flaming fireplace and someone’s shadow.... And I will rush straight in behind those windows and say to her, ‘Thou’ (yes, ‘thou’ without fail), ‘Thou knowest I cannot live without thee any longer, then why— ...?’” But silence reigned.
Suddenly I heard the silence; suddenly I heard the Musical Tower silenced, and I understood! It was after seventeen already; every one had already left. I was alone. It was too late to return home. Around me,—a desert made of glass and bathed with yellow sunshine. I saw, as if in water, the reflection of the walls in the glass smoothness of the street, sparkling walls, hanging upside down. Myself also upside down, hanging absurdly in the glass.
“I must go at once, this very second, to the Medical Bureau or else ... or perhaps this would be best: to remain here, to wait quietly until they see me and come and take me into the Operation Department and put an end to everything at once, redeem everything....” A slight rustle! and the double-curved S- was before me. Without looking I felt his two gray steel-drill eyes bore quickly into me. I plucked up all my strength to show a smile and to say (I had to say something), “I, I must go to the Medical Bureau.”
“Who is detaining you? What are you standing here for?”
I was silent, absurdly hanging upside down.
“Follow me,” said S- austerely.
I followed obediently, waving my unnecessary, foreign arms. I could not raise my eyes. I walked through a strange world turned upside down, where people had their feet pasted to the ceilings, and where engines stood with their bases upward, and where, still lower, the sky merged in the heavy glass of the pavement. I remember what pained me most was the fact that looking at the world for the last time in my life, I should see it upside down rather than in its natural state; but I could not raise my eyes.
We stopped. Steps. One step ... and I should see the figures of the doctors in their white aprons and the enormous dumb Bell.
With force, with some sort of an inner screw, at length I succeeded in tearing my eyes away from the glass beneath my feet, and I noticed the golden letters, “Medical Bureau.” Why did he bring me here rather than to the Operation Department? Why did he spare me?—about this I did not even think at that moment. I made one jump over all the steps, firmly closed the door behind me and took a very deep breath, as if I had not breathed since morning and as if my heart had not beaten for the same length of time, as if only now I started to breathe and only now there opened a sluice in my chest....
Inside there were two of them, one a short specimen with heavy legs, his eyes like the horns of a bull tossing the patients up, the other extremely thin with lips like sparkling scissors, a nose like a blade—it was the same man who ... I ran to him as to a dear friend, straight over close to the blade, and muttered something about insomnia, dreams, shadows, yellow sand. The scissors-lips sparkled and smiled.
“Yes, it is too bad. Apparently a soul has formed in you.”
A soul?—that strange ancient word that was forgotten long ago....
“Is it ... v-very dangerous?” I stuttered.
“Incurable,” was the cut of the scissors.
“But more specifically, what is it? Somehow I cannot imagine—”
“You see ... how shall I put it? Are you a mathematician?”
“Yes.”
“Then you see ... imagine a plane, let us say this mirror. You and I are on its surface. You see? there we are, squinting our eyes to protect ourselves from the sunlight, or here is the bluish electric spark in that tube, there the shadow of that aero that just passed. All this is on the surface, is momentary only. Now imagine this very same surface softened by a flame so that nothing can any longer glide over it, so everything instead will penetrate into that mirror world which excites such curiosity in children. I assure you, children are not so foolish as we think they are! The surface becomes a volume, a body, a world; and inside the mirror,—within you, there is the sunshine, and the whirlwind caused by the aero propeller, and your trembling lips and someone else’s lips also. You see, the cold mirror reflects, throws out, while this one absorbs; it keeps forever a trace of everything that touches it. Once you saw an imperceptible wrinkle on some one’s face, and this wrinkle is forever preserved within you; you may happen to hear in the silence a drop of water falling,—and you will hear it forever!”
“Yes, yes, that is it!” I grasped his hand. I could hear drops of water dripping in the silence from the faucet of a washstand and at once I knew it was forever.
“But tell me please, why suddenly ... suddenly a soul? There was none, yet suddenly.... Why is it that no one has it, yet I....” I pressed the thin hand; I was afraid to loosen the safety belt.
“Why? Well, why don’t we grow feathers or wings, but only shoulder blades, bases for wings? We have aeros; wings would only be in the way. Wings are needed in order to fly, but we don’t need to fly anywhere. We have arrived at the terminus. We have found what we wanted. Is that not so?”
I nodded vaguely. He glanced at me and laughed a scalpel-like metallic laugh. The other doctor overheard us and stamped out of his room on his heavy legs. He picked up the thin doctor with his horn-eyes, then picked me up.
“What is the matter, a soul? You say a soul? Oh, damn it! We may soon retrogress even to the cholera epidemics. I told you,” he tossed the thin one on the horns, “I told you the only thing to do is to operate on them all, wholesale! simply extirpate the centre for fancy. Only surgery can help here, only surgery.” He put on a pair of enormous X-ray spectacles and remained thus for a long while, looking into my skull, through the bones into my brain and making notes.
“Very, very curious! Listen.” He looked firmly into my eyes. “Would you not consent to have me perform an extirpation on you? It would be invaluable to the United State; it might help us to prevent an epidemic. If you have no special reasons, of course....”
Some time ago I should probably have said without hesitation, “I am willing,” but now,—I was silent. I caught the profile of the thin doctor; I implored him!
“You see,” he said at last, “Number D-530 is building the Integral and I am sure the operation would interfere....”
“Ah-h!” grumbled the other and stamped back into his room.
We remained alone. The paper-like hand was put lightly and caressingly upon mine, the profile-like face came nearer and he said in a very low voice: “I shall tell you a secret. You are not the only one. My colleague is right