Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 4. Griffith George Chetwynd
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I dashed to the entrance of a house to stop for a breath, my back close to the door,—and immediately, like a splinter borne by the wind, a human being was thrown towards me.
“All the while I ... I have been following you. I do not want ... do you see? I do not want ... I am ready to....”
Small round hands on my sleeves, round dark blue eyes—it was O-90. She just slipped along my body like a unif which, its hanger broken, slips along the wall to fall upon the floor. Like a little bundle she crumpled below me on the cold door-step, and I stood over her, stroking her head, her face,—my hands were wet. I felt as if I were very big and she very small, a small part of myself. I felt something quite different from what I feel towards I-330. I think that the ancients must have had similar feelings towards their private children.
Below, passing through her hands with which she was covering her face, a voice came to me:
“Every night I ... I cannot! If they cure me.... Every night I sit in the darkness alone and think of him, and of what he will look like when I.... If cured I should have nothing to live with—do you understand me? You must ... you must....”
An absurd feeling yet it was there; I really must! Absurd, because this “duty” of mine was nothing but another crime. Absurd, because white and black cannot be one, duty and crime cannot coincide. Or perhaps there is no black and white in life, but everything depends upon the first logical premise? If the premise is that I unlawfully gave her a child....
“It is all right, but don’t, only don’t ...” I said. “Of course I understand.... I must take you to I-330, as I once offered to, so that she....”
“Yes.” (This in a low voice, without uncovering her face.)
I helped her rise. Silently we went along the darkening street, each busy with his own thoughts, or perhaps with the same thought.... We walked between silent leaden houses, through the tense, whipping branches of the wind....
Through the whistling of the wind all at once I heard, as if splashing through ditches, the familiar footsteps coming from some unseen point. At the corner I turned around, and among the clouds, flying upside-down reflected in the dim glass of the pavement I saw S-. Instantly my arms became foreign, swinging out of time, and I began to tell O-90 in a low voice that tomorrow, yes tomorrow, was the day of the first flight of the Integral, and that it was to be something that never happened before in all history, great, miraculous.
“Think of it! For the first time in life to find myself outside the limits of our city and see—who knows what is beyond the Green Wall?”
O-90 looked at me extremely surprised, her blue eyes trying to penetrate mine; she looked at my senselessly swinging arms. But I did not let her say a word,—I kept talking, talking.... And within me, apart from what I was saying and audible only to myself a thought was feverishly buzzing and knocking. “Impossible! You must somehow ... you must not lead him to I-330!”
Instead of turning to the right I turned to the left. The bridge submissively bent its back in a slavish way to all three of us, to me, to O-, to him behind. Lights were falling from the houses across the water, falling and breaking into thousands of sparks which danced feverishly, sprayed with the mad white foam of the water. The wind was moaning like a tensely stretched string of a double-basso somewhere not far away. Through this basso, behind, all the while....
The house where I live. At the entrance O- stopped and began:
“No! You promised, did you not, that....”
I did not let her finish. Hastily I pushed her through the entrance and we found ourselves in the lobby. At the controller’s desk—the familiar, hanging, excitedly quivering cheeks, a group of Numbers around. They were quarreling about something, heads bending over the banisters on the second floor; they were running downstairs one by one. But about that later. I at once drew O-90 into the opposite, unoccupied corner and sat down with my back to the wall. I saw a dark large-headed shadow gliding back and forth over the sidewalk. I took out my notebook. O-90 in her chair was slowly sinking as if she were evaporating from under her unif, as if her body were thawing, as if only her empty unif were left, and empty eyes taking one into the blue emptiness. In a tired voice:
“Why did you bring me here? You lied to me?”
“No, not so loud! Look here! Do you see? Through the wall?”
“Yes, I see a shadow.”
“He is always following me.... I cannot.... Do you understand? I cannot therefore ... I am going to write a few words to I-330. You take the note and go alone. I know he will remain here.”
Her body began again to take form and to move beneath the unif; on her face a faint sunrise, dawn. I put the note between her cold fingers, pressed her hand firmly and for the last time looked into her blue eyes.
“Good-bye. Perhaps some day....” She freed her hand. Slightly bending over she slowly moved away, made two steps, turned around quickly and again we were side by side. Her lips were moving; with her lips and with her eyes she repeated some inaudible word. What an unbearable smile! What suffering!
Then the bent-over human splinter went to the door; a bent-over little shadow beyond the wall; without turning around she went on faster, still faster....
I went to U-’s desk. With emotion filling up her indignant gills she said to me:
“They have all gone crazy! He, for instance, is trying to assure me that he himself saw a naked man covered with hair near the Ancient House....”
A voice from the group of empty raised heads;
“Yes. I repeat it, yes.”
“Well, what do you think of that? Oh, what a delirium!” The word “delirium” came out of her mouth so full of conviction, so unbending, that I asked myself: “Perhaps it really was nothing but delirium, all that has been going on around me of late?” I glanced at my hairy hand and I remembered: “There are, undoubtedly, some drops of that blood of the sun and woods in you. That is why perhaps you....” No, fortunately it was not delirium; or no, unfortunately it was not delirium.
Record Thirty Three
This without a Synopsis, Hastily, the Last
The day.
Quick, to the newspaper! perhaps there.... I read the paper with my eyes (exactly; my eyes now are like a pen, or like a counting machine which you hold and feel in your hands like a tool, something foreign, an instrument). In the newspaper on the first page, in large print:
“THE ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS ARE AWAKE! HOLD TO YOUR HAPPINESS WITH BOTH HANDS. TOMORROW ALL WORK WILL STOP AND ALL THE NUMBERS ARE TO COME TO BE OPERATED UPON. THOSE WHO FAIL TO COME WILL BE SUBMITTED TO THE MACHINE OF THE WELL-DOER.”
Tomorrow! How can there be, how can there be any tomorrow?
Following my daily habit, I stretched out my arm (instrument!) to the bookshelf to put today’s paper with the rest in a cover ornamented with gold. While doing this: “What for? What does it matter? Never again shall I.... In this cover, never....” And out of my hands, down to the floor it fell.
I stood looking all around, over all my room; hastily I was taking away, feverishly putting into some unseen valise everything I regretted leaving here: my desk, my books, my chair. Upon that chair sat I-330 that day; I was below on the floor.... My bed.... Then for a minute or two I stood and waited for some miracle to happen; perhaps the telephone would ring, perhaps she would say that.... But no, no miracle....
I am leaving, going into the unknown. These are my last lines. Farewell you, my unknown beloved ones, with whom I have lived through so many pages, before whom I have bared my diseased soul, my whole self to the last broken little screw, to the last cracked spring.... I am going....
Record Thirty Four
The