Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 4. Griffith George Chetwynd
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where there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. What an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that formerly we would mark happiness with the sign ‘plus’! No, absolute happiness must be marked ‘minus,’—divine minus!”
I remember I stammered unintelligibly:
“Absolute zero!—minus 273° C.”
“Minus 273°—exactly! A somewhat cool temperature. But does it not prove that we are at the summit?”
As before she seemed somehow to speak for me and through me, developing to the end my own thoughts. But there was something so morbid in her tone that I could not refrain ... with an effort I drew out a “No.”
“No,” I said, “You, you are mocking....”
She burst out laughing loudly, too loudly. Swiftly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled and fell over.... Silence.
She stood up, put her hands upon my shoulders and looked into me for a long while. Then she pulled me toward her and everything seemed to have disappeared save her sharp, hot lips....
“Good-bye.”
The words came from afar, from above, and reached me not at once, only after a minute, perhaps two minutes later.
“Why ... why ‘good-bye’?”
“You have been ill, have you not? Because of me you have committed crimes. Has not all this tormented you? And now you have the Operation to look forward to. You will be cured of me. And that means—good-bye.”
“No!” I cried.
A pitilessly sharp black triangle on a white background.
“What? Do you mean that you don’t want happiness?”
My head was breaking into pieces; two logical trains collided and crawled upon each other, rattling and smothering....
“Well, I am waiting. You must choose; the Operation and hundred per-cent happiness, or....”
“I cannot ... without you.... I must not ... without you....” I said, or perhaps I only thought, I am not sure which, but I-330 heard.
“Yes, I know,” she said. Then, her hands still on my shoulders and her eyes not letting my eyes go, “Then ... until tomorrow. Tomorrow at twelve. You remember?”
“No, it was postponed for a day. Day-after-tomorrow!”
“So much the better for us. At twelve, day-after-tomorrow!”
I walked alone in the dusky street. The wind was whirling, carrying, driving me like a piece of paper; fragments of the leaden sky were soaring, soaring—they had to soar through the infinite for another day or two....
Unifs of Numbers were brushing my sides,—yet I was walking alone. It was clear to me that all were saved but that there was no salvation for me. For I do not want salvation....
Record Thirty Two
I Do Not Believe
Tractors
A Little Human Splinter
Do you believe that you will die? Oh, yes, “Man is mortal. I am a man, consequently....” No, not that; I know that; you know it. But I ask: has it ever happened that you actually believed it? Believed definitely, believed not with your reason but with your body, that you actually felt that some day those fingers which now hold this page, will become yellow, icy?...
No, of course you cannot believe this. That is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement before now, that is why you eat, turn over these pages, shave, smile, write.
This very thing, yes, exactly this is alive in me today. I know that that small black hand on the clock will slide down here towards midnight, then again it will start to ascend, and it will cross some last border and the improbable tomorrow will have arrived. I know it, but somehow I do not believe it, or perhaps I think that twenty-four hours are twenty-four years. Therefore I am still able to act, to hurry, to answer questions, to climb the rope-ladder to the Integral. I am still able to feel how the latter is shaking the surface of the water, and I still understand that I must grasp the railing, and I am still able to feel the cold glass in my hand. I see the transparent, living cranes, bending their long necks, carefully feeding the Integral with the terrible explosive food which the motors need. I still see below on the river the blue veins and knots of water swollen by the wind.... Yet all this seems very distant from me, foreign, flat,—like a draught on a sheet of paper. And it seems to me strange, when the flat, draught-like face of the Second Builder, suddenly asks:
“Well, then. How much fuel for the motors shall we load on? If we count on three, or say three and a half hours....”
I see before me, over a draught, my hand with the counter and the logarithmic dial at the figure 15.
“Fifteen tons. But you’d better take ... yes, better take a thousand.”
I said that because I know that tomorrow.... I noticed that my hands and the dial began to tremble.
“A thousand! What do you need such a lot for? That would last a week! No, more than a week!”
“Well, nobody knows....”
I do know....
The wind whistled, the air seemed to be stuffed to the limit with something invisible. I had difficulty in breathing, difficulty in walking, and with difficulty, slowly but without stopping for a second the hand of the Accumulating Tower was crawling, at the end of the avenue. The peak of the Tower reached into the very clouds;—dull, blue, groaning in a subdued way, sucking electricity from the clouds. The tubes of the Musical Tower resounded.
As always—four abreast. But the rows did not seem as firm as usual; they were swinging, bending more and more, perhaps because of the wind. There! They seemed to have stumbled upon something at the corner, and they drew back and stopped, congealed, a close mass, a clot, breathing rapidly; at once all had stretched their necks like geese.
“Look! No look, look—there, quick!”
“They? Are those they?”
“Ah, never! Never! I’d rather put my head straight into the Machine....”
“Silence! Are you crazy?”
On the corner the doors of the auditorium were ajar, a heavy column of about fifty people—. The word “people” is not the right one. These were heavy-wheeled automatons bound in iron and moved by an invisible mechanism. Not people but a sort of human-like tractor. Over their heads, floating in the air—a white banner with a golden sun embroidered on it, and the rays of the sun: “We are the first! We have already been operated upon! Follow us, all of you!”
They slowly, unhesitatingly mowed through the crowd, and it was clear that if they had had in their way a wall, a tree, a house, they would have moved on with no more hesitation through wall, tree or house. In the middle of the avenue they fused and stretched out into a chain, arm in arm, their faces turned towards us. And we, a human clot, tense, the hair pricking our heads, we waited. Our necks were stretched out goose-fashion. Clouds. The wind whistled. Suddenly the wings of the chain from right and left bent quickly around us, and faster, faster, like a heavy engine descending a hill, they closed the ring and pulled us toward the yawning doors and inside....
Somebody’s piercing cry: “They are driving us in! Run!”
All ran. Close to the wall there still was an open living gate of human beings. Everybody dashed through it, heads forward. Their heads became sharp wedges, so with their ribs, shoulders, hips.... Like a stream of water compressed in a firehose they spurted out in the form of a fan,—and all around me stamping feet, raised arms, unifs.... The double-curved S- with his transparent wing-ears appeared for a moment close before my eyes; he disappeared