Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 4. Griffith George Chetwynd
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Bell! The day began. All I saw and felt neither died, nor disappeared, it merely became covered with daylight, as our visible world does not die or disappear at the end of the day but merely becomes covered with the darkness of night. My head was filled by a light, thin haze. Through that haze I perceived the long glass tables and the globe-like heads busy chewing, slowly, silently, in unison. At a distance, through the haze, the metronome was slowly beating its tick-tock, and to the accompaniment of this customary and caressing music I joined with the others in counting automatically to fifty: fifty is the number of chewing movements required by the law of the State for every piece of food. And automatically then, keeping time, I went downstairs and put my name down in the book for the outgoing Numbers,—as everyone did. But I felt I lived separately from everybody; I lived by myself separated by a soft wall which absorbs noises; beyond that wall there was my world.
Here a thought occurred to me. If that world is only my own, why should I tell about it in these records? Why should I recount all these absurd “dreams” about closets, endless corridors? With great sorrow I notice that instead of a correct and strictly mathematical poem in honor of the United State, I am writing a fantastic novel. Oh! if only it were a novel and not my actual life, full of X’s, square-roots of minus one and down-fallings! Yet all may be for the best. Probably you, my unknown readers, are children still as compared with us. We are brought up by the United State; consequently we have reached the highest summits attainable by man. And you, being children, may swallow without crying all the bitter things I am to give you only if they be coated with the syrup of adventures.
The Same Evening
Are you familiar with the following sensation? You are in an aero and you dash upward along a blue spiral line; the window is open and the wind rushes past your face, whistling. There is no earth. The earth is forgotten. The earth is as far from you as Venus, Saturn or Jupiter. That is how I live now. A hurricane wind beats into my face; I forget the earth, forget rosy, dear O-90. Yet the earth does exist and sooner or later I must plane down to that earth; only I close my eyes to avoid seeing the date at which there is the name O-90 written on my Tables.
This evening the distant earth reminded me of itself. In order to fulfill the recommendation of the doctor (I desire sincerely, most sincerely I desire to be cured), I wandered for two hours and eight minutes over the straight lines of the deserted avenues. Everybody was in the auditoriums, in accordance with the Table. Only I, cut off from the rest, I was alone. Strictly speaking, it was a very unnatural situation. Imagine a finger cut off from the whole, from the hand; a separate human finger, somewhat hunched, running over the glass sidewalk. I was such a finger. What seemed most strange and unnatural was that the finger had no desire to be with its hand, with its fellows. I want either to be alone or with her; to transfuse my whole being into hers through a contact with her shoulder or through our interwoven fingers.
I came home as the sun was setting. The pink dust of evening was covering the glass of the walls, the golden peak of the Accumulating Tower, the voices and smiles of the Numbers. Is it not strange: the passing rays of the evening sun fall to the earth at the same angle as the awakening rays of the morning, yet they make everything seem so different; the pink tinge is different. At sunset it is so quiet, somewhat melancholy; at sunrise it is resounding, boisterous.
In the hall downstairs when I entered, I saw U-, the controller. She took a letter from the heaps of envelopes covered with pink dust and handed it to me. I repeat: she is a very respectable woman and I am sure she has only the very best feelings towards me.... Yet, every time I see those cheeks hanging down, which look like the gills of a fish, I....
Holding out her dry hand with the letter, U- sighed. But that sigh only very slightly moved in me the curtains which separate me from the rest of the world. I was completely projected upon the envelope which trembled in my hand. I had no doubt but that it was a letter from I-330.
At that moment I heard another sigh, such a deliberate one, underscored with two lines, that I raised my eyes from the envelope and saw a tender, cloudy smile coming from between the gills, through the bashful jalousies of lowered eyes. And then:
“You poor, poor, dear!...” a sigh underscored with three lines, and a glance at the letter, an imperceptible glance. (What was in the letter she naturally knew, ex officio.)
“No, really?... Why?”
“No, no, dear, I know better than you. For a long time I have watched you and I see that you need some one with years of experience of life to accompany you.”
I felt all pasted around by her smile. It was like a plaster upon the wounds which were to be inflicted upon me by the letter I held in my hand. Finally, through the bashful jalousies of her eyes, she said in a very low voice: “I shall think about it, dear. I shall think it over. And be sure that if I feel myself strong enough ...”
“Great Well-Doer! Is it possible that my lot is?... Is it possible that she means to say, that she?...”
My eyes were dimmed and filled with thousands of sinusoids; the letter was trembling. I went near the light, to the wall. There the light of the sun was going out; from the sun was falling thicker and thicker the dark, sad, pink dust, covering the floor, my hands, the letter. I opened the envelope and found the signature as fast as I could,—the first wound! It was not I-330; it was O-90! And another wound: in the right-hand corner a slovenly splash,—a blot! I cannot bear blots. It matters little whether they are made by ink or by ... well, it matters not by what. Heretofore, such a blot would have had only a disagreeable effect, disagreeable to the eyes; but now—why did that small gray blot seem to be like a cloud and seem to spread about me a leaden, bluish darkness? Or was it again the “soul” at work? Here is a transcript of the letter:
“You know, or perhaps you don’t ... I cannot write well. Little it matters! Now you know that without you there is for me not a single day, a single morning, a single spring, for R- is only ... well, that is of no importance to you. At any rate, I am very grateful to him, for without him, alone all these days, I don’t know what would.... During these last few days and nights I have lived through ten years, or perhaps twenty years. My room seemed to me not square but round; I walk around without end, round after round, always the same thing, not a door to escape through. I cannot live without you because I love you; and I should not, I cannot be with you any more,—because I love you! Because I see and I understand that you need no one now, no one in the world save that other, and you must realize that it is precisely because I love you I must ...
“I need another two or three days in order to paste together the fragments of myself and thus restore at least something similar to the O-90 of old. Then I shall go myself, and myself I shall state that I take your name from my list, and this will be better for you; you must feel happy now. I shall never again....”
“Good-bye, O-.”
Never again. Yes, that is better. She is right. But, why then?... Why then?...
Record Ninteen
The Infinitesimal of the Third Order
From Under the Forehead
Over the Railing
There in the strange corridor lighted by the dotted line of dim little electric lamps ... or no, no, later, when we had already reached one of the nooks in the courtyard of the Ancient House, she said, “Day-after-tomorrow.” That “day-after-tomorrow” is today. And everything seems to have wings and to fly; the day flies; and our Integral too already has wings. We finished placing the motor and tried it out today, without switching it in. What magnificent, powerful salvos! Each of them sounded for me like a salute in honor of her, the only one,—in honor of today!
At the time of the first explosion about a dozen loafing Numbers from the docks stood near the main tube—and nothing was left of them save a few crumbs and a little soot. With pride I write down now that this occurrence did not disturb the rhythm of our work even for a second. Not a man shrank. We and our lathes continued our rectilinear or curved motions with the same sparkling and polished precision as before, as if nothing had happened.