I Have Forgiven Everything

A Train Collision

Saved! At the very last moment, when it seemed there was no longer anything to grasp at, when it seemed that everything was finished…

It is as though you have already ascended the stairs to the Benefactor’s dread Machine, and the glass Bell has come down over you with a heavy clank, and for the last time in your life—quick, quick—you drink the blue sky with your eyes…

And suddenly—it was only a “dream.” The sun is pink and gay, and the wall is there—what joy to stroke the cold wall with your hand; and the pillow—what an endless delight to watch and watch the hollow left by your head on the white pillow…

This was approximately what I felt when I read the One State Gazette this morning. It had been a terrible dream, and now it was over. And I, fainthearted nonbeliever, I had already thought of willful death. I am ashamed to read the last lines I had written yesterday. But it is all the same now: let them stay as a reminder of the incredible thing that might have happened—and now will not happen… no, it will not happen!

The front page of the One State Gazette glowed with a proclamation:

REJOICE!

For henceforth you shall be perfect! Until this day, your own creations—machines—were more perfect than you.

How?

Every spark of a dynamo is a spark of the purest reason; each movement of a piston is a flawless syllogism. But are you not possessors of the same unerring reason?

The philosophy of cranes, presses, and pumps, is as perfect and clear as a compass-drawn circle. Is your philosophy less compass-drawn?

The beauty of a mechanism is in its rhythm—as steady and precise as that of a pendulum. But you, nurtured from earliest infancy on the Taylor system-have you not become pendulum-precise?

Except for one thing:

Machines have no imagination.

Have you ever seen the face of a pump cylinder break into a distant, foolish, dreamy smile while it works?

Have you ever heard of cranes restlessly turning from side to side and sighing at night, during the hours designated for rest?

No!

And you? Blush with shame! The Guardians have noticed more and more such smiles and sighs of late. And—hide your eyes—historians of the One State ask for retirement so that they need not record disgraceful events.

But this is not your fault—you are sick. The name of this sickness is IMAGINATION.

It is a worm that gnaws out black lines on the forehead. It is a fever that drives you to escape ever farther, even if this “farther” begins where happiness ends. This is the last barricade on our way to happiness.

Rejoice, then: this barricade has already been blown up.

The road is open.

The latest discovery of State Science is the location of the center of imagination—a miserable little nodule in the brain in the area of the pans Varolii. Triple-X-ray cautery of this nodule—and you are cured of imagination—

FOREVER.

You are perfect. You are machinelike. The road to one hundred per cent happiness is free. Hurry, then, everyone—old and young—hurry to submit to the Great Operation. Hurry to the auditoriums, where the Great Operation is being performed. Long live the Great Operation! Long live the One State! Long live the Benefactor!

You… If you were reading all this not in my notes, resembling some fanciful ancient novel, if this newspaper, still smelling of printers’ ink, were trembling in your hands as it does in mine; if you knew, as I know, that this is the most actual reality, if not today’s, then tomorrow’s—would you not feel as I do? Wouldn’t your head reel, as mine does? Wouldn’t these eerie, sweet, icy needle pricks run down your back, your arms? Would it not seem to you that you’re a giant, Atlas—and if you straighten up, you will inevitably strike the glass ceiling with your head?

I seized the telephone receiver. “I-330… Yes, yes, 330.” And then I cried out breathlessly, “You’re home, yes? Have you read it? You’re reading it? But this is, this is… It’s remarkable!”

“Yes…” A long, dark silence. The receiver hummed faintly, pondered something… “I must see you today. Yes, at my place, after sixteen. Without fail.”

Dearest! Dear, such a dear! “Without fail…” I felt myself smiling and could not stop. And now I would carry this smile along the street—high, like a light.

Outside, the wind swept at me. It whirled, howled, whipped, but I felt all the more exultant: whistle, scream—it doesn’t matter now—you can no longer topple walls. And if cast-iron, flying clouds tumble overhead—let them tumble: they cannot blot out the sun. We have forever chained it to the zenith—we, Joshuas, sons of Nun.

At the corner a dense group of Joshuas stood with their foreheads glued to the glass wall. Inside, a man already lay stretched out on the dazzling white table. From under the white the bare soles of his feet formed a yellow angle; white doctors were bent over his head; a white hand stretched to another hand a hypodermic syringe filled with something.

“And you, why don’t you go in?” I asked, addressing no one, or, rather, everyone.

“And what about you?” A spherical head turned to me.

“I will, later. I must first…”

Somewhat embarrassed, I withdrew. I really had to see her, 330, first. But why “first”? This I could not answer.

The dock. Icy-blue, the Integral shimmered, sparkled. In the machine compartment the dynamo hummed gently, caressingly, repeating some word over and over again—and the word seemed familiar, one of my own. I bent over it and stroked the long, cold tube of the engine. Dear… so dear. Tomorrow you will come alive; tomorrow, for the first time in your life, you will be shaken by the fiery, flaming sparks within your womb…

How would I be looking at this mighty glass monster if everything had remained as yesterday? If I knew that tomorrow at twelve I would betray it… yes, betray…

Cautiously, someone touched my elbow from the back. I turned: the platelike flat face of the Second Builder.

“You know it already?” he said.

“What? The Operation? Yes? How strangely— everything, everything—at once…”

“No, not that: the trial flight has been postponed to the day after tomorrow. All because of this Operation… And we were rushing, doing our best—and all for nothing…”

“All because of this Operation…” What a ridiculous, stupid man. Sees nothing beyond his flat face. If he only knew that, were it not for the Operation, he would be locked up in a glass box tomorrow at twelve, rushing about, trying to climb the walls…

In my room, at half past fifteen. I entered and saw U. She sat at my table—bony, straight, rigid, her right cheek set firmly on her hand. She must have waited long, for, when she jumped up to meet me, five dents remained on her cheek from her fingers.

For a second I recalled that wretched morning, and herself there, raging by the table, next to I-330… But only for a second, and then the memory was washed away by today’s sun. It was like entering the room on a bright day and absently turning the switch: the bulb lights up, but is invisible—pallid, absurd, unneeded…

Without a thought, I held my hand out to her, I forgave her everything. She seized both of my hands and pressed them hard in her own bony ones. Her sagging cheeks quivering with excitement like some ancient ornaments, she said, “I have been waiting… Only for a moment… I only wanted to say how happy I am, how glad for you! You understand—tomorrow, or the day after, you will be well—completely well, newly born…

I saw some sheets of paper on the table—the last pages of my notes. They lay there as I left them in the evening. If she had seen what I had written there… However, it no longer mattered; now it was merely history, ridiculously distant, like something seen through the wrong end of binoculars…

“Yes,” I said. “And you know—just now I was walking down the street, and there was a man before me, and his shadow on the pavement. And imagine, the shadow glowed. And it seems to me—I am certain—that tomorrow there will be no shadows. No man, no object will cast a shadow… The sun will shine through everything…”

She spoke gently and sternly. “You are a dreamer! I would not permit the children at school to speak like that…”

And she went on about the children—how she had taken them all to the Operation, and how they had had to be tied up there… and that “love must be ruthless, yes, ruthless,” and that she thought she would at last decide…

She smoothed the gray blue cloth over her knees, quickly and silently plastered me over with her smile, and left.

Fortunately, the sun had not yet stopped today; it was still running, and now it was sixteen. I knocked at the door, my heart beating…

“Come in!”

And I was down on the floor near her chair, embracing her legs, head thrown back and looking into her eyes—one, then the other—and in each one seeing myself, in marvelous captivity…

And then, outside the wall, a storm. Clouds darkening—more and more like cast iron. Let them! My head could not contain the flow of riotous, wild words—spilling over the rim. I spoke aloud, and, together with the sun, we were flying somewhere… But now we knew where—and behind us, planets—planets spraying flame, inhabited by fiery, singing flowers—and mute, blue planets, where sentient, rational stones were organized into societies—planets which, like our earth, had reached the summit of absolute, and hundred per cent happiness…

Suddenly, from above, “But don’t you think that the society at the summit is precisely a society organized of stones?” The triangle of her eyebrows grew sharper, darker. “And happiness… Well, after all, desires torment us, don’t they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one… What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it’s been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign—the divine minus.”

I remember I muttered in confusion, “Absolute minus? Minus 273°…”

“Precisely—minus 273°. Somewhat chilly, but wouldn’t that in itself prove that we’re at the summit?”

As once, a long time ago, she somehow spoke for me, through me, unfolding my ideas to the very end. But there was something sharply frightening in it—I could not bear it, and with an effort I forced a “no” out of sayself.

“No,” I said. “You… you are mocking me…”

She laughed, loudly—too loudly. Quickly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled, fell… A silence.

She rose and placed her hands upon my shoulders, and looked at me slowly and long. Then pulled me to herself—and there was nothing, only her hot, sharp lips.

“Farewell!”

It came from far, from above, and took a long time to reach me—a minute, perhaps, or two.

“What do you mean, ‘Farewell’?”

“Well, you are sick, you have committed crimes because of me—has it not been a torment to you? And now, the Operation—and you will cure yourself of me. And that means—farewell.”

“No,” I cried out.

A pitilessly sharp, dark triangle on white: “What? You don’t want happiness?”

My head was splitting; two logical trains collided, climbing upon each other, crashing, splintering…

“Well, I am waiting. Make your choice: the Operation and one hundred per cent happiness— or…”

“I cannot… without you. I want nothing without you,” I said, or merely thought—I am not sure—but she heard.

“Yes, I know,” she answered. And, her hands still on my shoulders, her eyes still holding mine, “Until tomorrow, then. Tomorrow, at twelve. You remember?”

“No, it’s been postponed for a day… The day after tomorrow…”

“All the better for us. At twelve, the day after tomorrow…”

I walked alone through the twilit street. The wind was whirling, driving, carrying me like a slip of paper. Fragments of cast-iron sky flew and flew-they had another day, two days to hurtle through infinity… The unifs of passersby brushed against me, but I walked alone. I saw it clearly: everyone was saved, but there was no salvation for me. I did not want salvation…

Thirty-second Entry

TOPICS:

I Do Not Believe

Tractors

A Human Splinter

Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man: hence… No, this is not what I mean. I know you know this. I am asking: have you ever really believed it; believed it totally, not with your mind, but with your body; have you ever felt that one day the fingers holding this very page will be icy, yellow…

No, of course you don’t believe it—and this is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor down to the pavement; this is why you are still eating, turning the page, shaving, smiling, writing…

The same—yes, exactly the same—is true of me today. I know that this little black arrow on the dock will crawl down here, below, to midnight, will slowly rise again, will step across some final line—and the incredible tomorrow will be here. I know this, but somehow I also don’t believe it. Or, perhaps, it seems to me that twenty-four hours are twenty-four years. And this is why I can still do something, hurry somewhere, answer questions, climb the ladder to the Integral. I still feel it rocking on the water; I know I must grasp the handrail and feel the cold glass under my hand. I see the transparent, living cranes bend their long, birdlike necks, stretch their beaks, and tenderly, solicitously feed the Integral with the terrible explosive food for its motors. And below, on the river, I clearly see the blue, watery veins and nodes, swollen with the wind. But all of this is quite apart from me, extraneous, flat—like a scheme on a sheet of paper. And it is strange that the flat, paper face of the Second Builder is suddenly speaking.

“Well, then? How much fuel shall we take for the motors? If we think of three… or three and a half hours…”

Before me—projected on the blueprint—my hand with the calculator, the logarithmic dial at fifteen.

“Fifteen tons. No, better load… yes—load a hundred…”

Because, after all, I do know that tomorrow…

And I see, from somewhere at the side: my hand with the dial starts to tremble faintly.

“A hundred? Why so much? That would be for a week. A week? Much longer!”

“Anything might happen… Who knows…”

I know…

The wind howls; the air is tightly filled with something invisible, to the very top. I find it hard to breathe, hard to walk. And slowly, with an effort, without stopping for a second, the arrow crawls upon the face of the clock on the Accumulator Tower at the end of the avenue. The spire is in the clouds—dim, blue, howling in muted tones, sucking electricity. The trumpets of the Music Plant howl.

As ever, in rows, four abreast But the rows are somehow unsolid; perhaps it is the wind that makes them waver, bend—more and more. Now they have collided with something on the corner, they flow back, and there is a dense, congealed, immobile cluster, breathing rapidly. Suddenly everyone is craning his neck.

“Look! No, look—that way, quick!”

“It’s they! It’s they!”

“… I’ll never… Better put my head straight into the Machine…”

“Sh-sh! You’re mad…”

In the auditorium at the corner the door is gaping wide, and a slow, heavy column of some fifty people emerges. “People?” No, that does not describe them. These are not feet—they are stiff, heavy wheels, moved by some invisible transmission belt These are not people—they are humanoid tractors. Over their heads a white banner is flapping in the wind, a golden sun embroidered on it; between the sun’s rays, the words: “We are the first! We have already undergone the Operation! Everybody, follow us!”

Slowly, irresistibly, they plow through the crowd. And it is clear that if there were a wall, a tree, a house in their way, they would without halting plow through the wall, the tree, the house. Now they are in the middle of the avenue. Hands locked, they spread out into a chain, facing us. And we—a tense knot, necks stretched, heads bristling forward—wait. Clouds. Whistling wind.

Suddenly the flanks of the chain, on the right and the left, bend quickly and rush upon us, faster, faster, like a heavy machine speeding downhill. They lock us in the ring—and toward the gaping doors, into the doors, inside…

Someone’s piercing scream: “They’re driving us in! Run!”

And everybody rushes. Just near the wall there is still a narrow living gateway, and everyone streams there, head forward—heads instantly sharp as wedges, sharp elbows, shoulders, sides. Like a jet of water, compressed inside a fire hose, they spread fanlike, and all around—stamping feet, swinging arms, unifs. From somewhere for an instant—a glimpse of a double curved, S-like body, translucent wing-ears—and he is gone, as though swallowed by the earth, and I am alone, in the midst of flashing arms and feet—I run…

I dive into a doorway for a moment’s breath, my back pressed to the door—and instantly, a tiny human splinter—as if driven to me by the wind.

“I was… following you… all the time… I do not want to—you understand—I do not want to. I agree…”

Round, tiny hands upon my sleeve, round blue eyes: it is O. She seems to slide down along the wall and slump onto the ground. Shrunk into a little ball below, on the cold stair, and I bend over her, stroking her head, her face—my hands are wet. As though I were very big, and she—altogether tiny—a tiny part of my own self. This is very different from die feeling for I-330. It seems to me that something like it may have existed among the ancients toward their private children.

Below, through the hands covering the face, just audibly: “Every night I… I cannot… if they cure me… Every night—alone, in darkness—I think about him: what he will be like, how I will… There will be nothing for me to live by—you understand? And you must, you must…”

A preposterous feeling, but I know: yes, I must. Preposterous, because this duty of mine is yet another crime. Preposterous, because white cannot at the same time be black, duty and crime cannot coincide. Or is there no black or white in life, and the color depends only on the initial logical premise? And if the premise was that I unlawfully gave her a child…

“Very well-but don’t, don’t…” I say. “You understand, I must take you to I-330—as I offered that time—so that she…”

“Yes.” Quietly, without taking her hands from her face.

I helped her to get up. And silently, each with our own thoughts—who knows, perhaps about the same thing—along the darkening street, among mute, leaden houses, through the taut, swishing branches of wind…

At a certain transparent, tense point, I heard through the whistling of the wind familiar, slapping steps. At the corner, I glanced back, and in the midst of the rushing, upside-down clouds reflected in the dim glass of the pavement I saw S. Immediately, my hands were not my own, swinging out of time, and I was telling O loudly that tomorrow—yes, tomorrow—the Integral would go up for the first time, and it would be something utterly unprecedented, uncanny, miraculous.

O gave me an astonished, round, blue stare, looked at my loudly, senselessly swinging arms. But I did not let her say a word—I shouted on and on. And there, within me, separately—heard only by myself—the feverish, humming, hammering thought, No, I must not… I must somehow… I must not lead him to I-330…

Instead of turning left, I turned right. The bridge offered its obedient, slavishly bent back to the three of us—to me, O, and to S—behind us. The brightly lit buildings on the other side scattered lights into the water, the lights broke into thousands of feverishly leaping sparks, sprayed with frenzied white foam. The wind hummed like a thick bass string stretched somewhere low overhead. And through the bass, behind us all the time…

The house where I live. At the door O stopped, began to say something. “No! You promised…”

I did not let her finish. Hurriedly I pushed her into the entrance, and we were in the lobby, inside. Over the control desk, the familiar, excitedly quivering, sagging cheeks. A dense cluster of numbers in heated argument; heads looking over the banister from the second floor; people running singly down the stairs. But I would see about that later, later… Now I quickly drew O into the opposite corner, sat down, back against the wall (behind the wall I saw, gliding back and forth, a dark, large-headed shadow), and took out a note pad.

O slowly sagged into her chair—as though her body were melting, evaporating under her unif, and there were only an empty unif and empty eyes that sucked you into their blue emptiness.

Wearily, “Why did you bring me here? You lied to me!”

“No… Be quiet! Look that way—you see, behind the wall?”

“Yes, A shadow.”

“He follows me all the time… I cannot. You understand—I must not. I’ll write two words—you’ll take the note and go alone. I know he will remain here.”

The body stirred again under the unif, the belly rounded out a little; on the cheeks—a faint, rosy dawn.

I slipped the note into her cold fingers, firmly pressed her hand, dipped my eyes for the last time into her blue eyes.

“Good-by! Perhaps, some day we shall…” She took away her hand. Stooping, she walked off slowly… Two steps, and quickly she turned— and was again next to me. Her lips moved. With her eyes, her lips, all of herself—a single word, saying a single word to me—and what an unbearable smile, what pain…

And then, a bent tiny human splinter in the doorway, a tiny shadow behind the wall—without looking back, quickly, ever more quickly…

I went over to U’s desk. Excitedly, indignantly inflating her gills, she said to me, “You understand—they all seem to have lost their heads! He insists that he has seen some human creature near the Ancient House—naked and all covered with fur…”

From the dense cluster of heads, a voice: “Yes! I’ll say it again—I saw it, yes.”

“Well, what do you think of that? The man’s delirious!”

And this “delirious” of hers was so sure, so unbending that I asked myself: Perhaps all of it, all that’s been happening to me and around me lately is really nothing but delirium?

But then I glanced at my hairy hands, and I remembered: “There must be a drop of forest blood in you… Perhaps that’s why I…”

No—fortunately, it is not delirium. No— unfortunately, it is not delirium.

Thirty-third Entry

TOPICS:

No outline, hurriedly, the last—

The day has come.

Quick, the newspaper. Perhaps it… I read it with my eyes (precisely—my eyes are now like a pen, a calculator, which you hold in your hands and feel—it is apart from you, an instrument).

In bold type, across the front page:

The enemies of happiness are not sleeping. Hold on to your happiness with both hands! Tomorrow all work will halt—all numbers shall report for the Operation. Those who fail to do so will be subject to the Benefactor’s Machine.

Tomorrow! Can there be—will there be a tomorrow?

By daily habit, I stretch my hand (an instrument) to the bookshelf to add today’s Gazette to the others, in the binding stamped with the gold design. And on the way: What for? What does it matter? I shall never return to this room.

The newspaper drops to the floor. And I stand up and look around the room, the whole room; I hastily take with me, gather up into an invisible valise, all that I’m sorry to leave behind. The table. The books. The chair. I-330 sat in it that day, and I—below, on the floor… The bed…

Then, for a minute or two—absurdly waiting for some miracle. Perhaps the telephone will ring, perhaps she’ll say that…

No. There is no miracle.

I am leaving—into the unknown. These are my last lines. Good-by, beloved readers, with whom I’ve lived through so many pages, to whom, having contracted the soul sickness, I have exposed all of myself, to the last crushed little screw, the last broken spring…

I am leaving.

Thirty-fourth Entry

TOPICS:

The Excused Ones

Sunny Night

Radio Valkyrie

Oh, if I had really smashed myself and all the others to smithereens, if I had really found myself with her somewhere behind the Wall, among beasts baring their yellow fangs, if I had never returned here! It would have been a thousand, a million times easier. But now—what? To go and strangle that… But how would that help?

No, no, no! Take yourself in hand, D-503. Set yourself upon some firm logical axis—if only for a short time, bear down on the lever with all your strength, and, like an ancient slave, turn the millstones of syllogisms—until you write down, think over everything that happened…

When I boarded the Integral, everybody was already there, each at his post; all the cells in the gigantic glass beehive were full. Through the glass decks—tiny human ants below, near the telegraphs, dynamos, transformers, altimeters, valves, indicators, engines, pumps, tubes. In the lounge—a group of unknown men over schemes and instruments, probably assigned there by the Scientific Bureau. And with them, the Second Builder with two of his assistants.

All three with their heads drawn, turtlelike, into their shoulders, their faces—gray, autumnal, joyless.

“Well?” I asked.

“Oh… A bit nervous…” one of them said with a gray, lusterless smile. “Who knows where we may have to land? And generally, it’s uncertain…

It was unbearable to look at them—at those whom I would in an hour, with my own hands, eject from the comfortable figures of the Table of Hours, tearing them away from the maternal breast of the One State. They reminded me of the tragic figures of the “Three Excused Ones,” whose story is known to every schoolboy. It is a story of how three numbers were, by way of an experiment, excused from work for a month: do what you like, go where you wish.* The wretches loitered near their usual places of work, peering inside with hungry eyes; they stood in the street hour after hour, repeating the motions which had already become necessary to their organisms at the given times of day: they sawed and planed the air, swung invisible hammers, struck invisible blocks. And, finally, on the tenth day, unable to endure it any longer, they linked hands, walked into the water, and to the sounds of the March, went deeper and deeper, until the water put an end to their misery…

I repeat: it was painful for me to look at them; I hurried to leave them.

“I will check the machine compartment,” I said, “and then—we’re off.”

They asked me questions: what voltage was to be used for the starting blast, how much water ballast for the stern tank. There was a phonograph inside me: it answered all questions promptly and precisely, while I continued inwardly without interruption with my own thoughts.

This happened long ago, in the third century after the introduction of the Table.

Suddenly, in a narrow passageway, something reached me, within—and from that moment it all began.

In the narrow passageway gray unifs, gray faces flickered past me, and, for a second, one face: hair low on the forehead, deep-set eyes—that same man. I understood: they were here, and there was no escape from all this anywhere, and only minutes remained—a few dozen minutes… The tiniest molecular shivers ran through my body (they did not stop to the very end)—as though a huge motor had been set up within me, and the structure of my body was too slight for it, and so the walls, the partitions, the cables, the beams, the lights— everything trembled…

I did not know yet whether she was there. But there was no more time now—I was called upstairs, to the command cabin: it was time to go… Where?

Gray, lusterless faces. Tense blue veins below, in the water. Heavy, cast-iron layers of sky. And how hard to lift my cast-iron hand, to pick up the receiver of the command telephone.

“Up-45 degrees!”

A dull blast—a jolt—a frenzied white-green mountain of water aft—the deck slipping away from underfoot—soft, rubbery—and everything below, all of life, forever… For a second we were falling deeper and deeper into some funnel, and everything contracted: the icy-blue relief map of the city, the round bubbles of its cupolas, the solitary leaden finger of the Accumulator Tower. Then a momentary cottonwool curtain of clouds-we plunged through it-sun and blue sky. Seconds, minutes, miles—the blue was rapidly congealing, filling up with darkness, and stars emerged like drops of silvery, cold sweat…

And now—the uncanny, intolerably bright, black, starry, sunny night It was like suddenly becoming deaf: you still see the roaring trumpets, but you only see them: the trumpets are mute, all is silence. The sun was mute.

All this was natural, it was to be expected. We had left the earth’s atmosphere. But everything had happened so quickly, had taken everyone so unawares, that everyone around was cowed, silenced.

And to me—to me it all seemed easier somehow under this mute, fantastic sun: as though, crumpling up for the last time, I had already crossed the inescapable threshold—and my body was somewhere there, below, while I sped through a new world where everything must be so unfamiliar, so upside down…

“Hold the course!” I shouted into the receiver. Or, perhaps, it was not I, but the phonograph in me—and with a mechanical, hinged hand I thrust the command phone into the hands of the Second Builder. And I, shaken from head to foot by the finest molecular trembling, which I alone could feel, ran downstairs, to look for…

The door to the lounge—the one that in an hour would heavily click shut… By the door, someone I did not know—short, with a face like hundreds, thousands of others, a face that would be lost in a crowd. And only his hands were unusual—extraordinarily long, down to his knees, as though taken in a hurry, by mistake, from another human set.

A long arm stretched out, barred the way. “Where to?”

Clearly, he did not know that I knew everything.

Very well: perhaps this was as it should be. And looking down on him, deliberately curt, I said, “I am the Builder of the Integral. I supervise the tests. Understand?”

The arm was gone.

The lounge. Over the instruments and maps-gray, bristly heads, and yellow heads, bald, ripe. Quickly, I swept them with a glance, and back, along the corridor, down the hatch, to the engine room. Heat and din of pipes red-hot from the explosions, cranks gleaming in a desperate, drunken dance, the incessant, faintly visible quiver of arrows on the dials…

And finally, at the tachometer—he, with the low forehead bent over a notebook…

“Listen…” The din made it necessary to shout into his ear. “Is she here? Where is she?”

In the shadow under the forehead, a smile. “She? There, in the radio-telephone room…”

I rushed in. There were three of them, all in winged receiving helmets. She seemed a head taller than ever, winged, gleaming, flying—like the ancient Valkyries. And the huge blue sparks above, over the radio antenna, seemed to come from her, and the faint, lightning smell of ozone, also from her.

“Someone… no—you…” I said to her breathlessly (from running). “I must transmit a message down, to the earth, to the dock… Come, I’ll dictate it---”

Next to the apparatus room there was a tiny boxlike cabin. Side by side, at the table. I found her hand, pressed it hard. “Well? What next?”

“I don’t know. Do you realize how wonderful it is to fly, not knowing where—to fly—no matter where… And soon it will be twelve—and who knows what’s to come? And night… Where shall we be at night, you and I? Perhaps on grass, on dry leaves…”

She emanates blue sparks and smells of lightning, and my trembling grows more violent.

“Write down,” I say loudly, still out of breath (with running). “Time, eleven-thirty. Velocity: sixty-eight hundred…”

She, from under the winged helmet, without taking her eyes from the paper, quietly: “She came to me last night with your note… I know—I know everything, don’t speak. But the child is yours? And I sent her there—she is already safe, beyond the Wall. She’ll live…”

Back in the commander’s cabin. Again—the night, delirious, with a black starry sky and dazzling sun; the clock hand on the wall—limping slowly, from minute to minute; and everything as in a fog, shaken with the finest, scarcely perceptible (perceptible to me alone) trembling.

For some reason, it seemed to me: It would be better if all that was about to follow took place not here, but lower, nearer to the earth.

“Halt engines!” I cried into the receiver.

Still moving by inertia, but slower, slower. Now the Integral caught at some hair-thin second, hung for a moment motionless; then the hair broke, and the Integral plunged like a stone—down, faster, faster. And so, in silence, for minutes, dozens of minutes. I heard my own pulse. The clock hand before my eyes crawled nearer and nearer to twelve. And it was clear to me: I was the stone; I-330 was the earth, and I—a stone, thrown by someone’s, hand. And the stone was irresistibly compelled to fall, to crash against the earth, to smash itself to bits… And what if… Below, the hard blue smoke of clouds was already visible… What if…

But the phonograph inside me picked up the receiver with hingelike precision, gave the command: “Low speed.” The stone no longer fell. And now only the four lower auxiliaries—two fore, two aft—puffed wearily, merely to neutralize the Integral’s weight, and the Integral stopped in mid-air with a slight quiver, firmly anchored, about a kilometer from the earth.

Everyone rushed out on deck (it’s almost twelve-time for the lunch bell) and, bending over the glass railing, hurriedly gulped the unknown world below, beyond the Wall. Amber, green, blue: the autumn woods, meadows, a lake. At the edge of a tiny blue saucer, some yellow, bonelike ruins, a threatening, yellow, dry finger—probably the spire of an ancient church, miraculously preserved.

“Look, look! There, to the right!”

There—in a green wilderness—a rapid spot flew like a brown shadow. I had binoculars in my hand; mechanically I brought them to my eyes: chest-deep in the grass, with sweeping tails, a herd of brown horses galloped, and on their backs, those beings—bay, white, raven black…

Behind me: “And I tell you—I saw a face.”

“Go on! Tell it to someone else!”

“Here, here are the binoculars…”

But they were gone now. And endless green wilderness…

And in the wilderness—filling all of it, and all of me, and everyone—the piercing quaver of a bell: lunchtime, in another minute, at twelve.

The world—scattered in momentary, unconnected fragments. On the steps, somebody’s clanking golden badge—and I don’t care: it crunched under my heel. A voice: “And I say, there was a face!” A dark rectangle: the open door of the lounge. Clenched, white, sharply smiling teeth…

And at the moment when the clock began to strike, with agonizing slowness, without breathing from one stroke to the next, and the front ranks had already begun to move—the rectangle of the door was suddenly crossed over by two familiar, unnaturally long arms:

“Stop!”

Fingers dug into my palm—I-330, next to me.

“Who is he? Do you know him?”

“Isn’t he… Isn’t he one of…”

He stood on someone’s shoulders. Over a hundred faces—his face, like hundreds, thousands of others, yet unique.

“In the name of the Guardians… Those to whom I speak, they hear me, each of them hears me. I say to you—we know. We do not know your numbers as yet, but we know everything. The Integral shall not be yours! The test flight will be completed; and you—you will not dare to make a move now—you will do it, with your own hands. And afterward… But I have finished…”

Silence. The glass squares underfoot are soft as cotton; my feet are soft as cotton. She is beside me—utterly white smile, frenzied blue sparks. Through her teeth, into my ear, “Ah, so you did it? You ‘fulfilled your duty’? Oh, well…”

Her hand broke from my hand, the Valkyrie’s wrathful, winged helmet was now somewhere far ahead. Alone, silent, frozen, I walked like all the others into the lounge…

But no, it wasn’t I—not I! I spoke of it to no one, no one except those white, mute pages… Within me—inaudibly, desperately, loudly—I cried this to her. She sat across the table, opposite me, and she did not once allow her eyes to touch me. Next to her, someone’s ripe-yellow bald head.

I heard (it was I-330 speaking), “ ‘Nobility?’ No, my dearest Professor, even, a simple philological analysis of the word will show that it is nothing but a relic of ancient feudal forms. And we…”

I felt myself go pale—and now everyone would see it… But the phonograph within me performed the fifty prescribed masticating movements for every bite, I locked myself within me as in an ancient, untransparent house—I piled rocks before my door, I pulled down the shades…

Later—the commander’s receiver in my hands; and flight, in icy, final anguish—through clouds— into the icy, starry-sunny night. Minutes, hours. And evidently all this time, at feverish speed, the logical motor, unheard even by me, continued to work within me. For suddenly, at a certain point of blue space, I saw: my writing table, and over it U’s gill-like cheeks, and the forgotten pages of my notes. And it was clear to me: no one but she— everything was clear…

Ah, if I could only… I must, I must get to the radio room… The winged helmets, the smell of blue lightning… I remember—I was speaking to her loudly. And I remember—looking through me as though I were of glass—from far away, “I am busy. I am receiving messages from below. Dictate to her…”

In the tiny cabin, after a moment’s thought, I dictated firmly, “Time—fourteen-forty. Down! Stop engines. The end of everything.”

The command cabin. The Integral’s mechanical heart has been stopped, we are dropping, and my heart cannot keep up; it falls behind, it rises higher and higher into my throat. Clouds—then a distant green spot—ever greener, clearer—rushing madly at us—now—the end…

The white-porcelain twisted face of the Second Builder. It must be he who pushed me with all his strength. My head struck something, and falling, darkening, I heard as through a fog, “Aft engines-full speed!”

A sharp leap upward… I remember nothing else.

Thirty-fifth Entry

TOPICS:

In a Hoop

A Carrot

A Murder

I did not sleep all night. All night—a single thought…

Since yesterday, my head is tightly bandaged. But no: it’s not a bandage—it is a hoop; a merciless tight hoop of glass steel riveted to my head, and I am caught within this single, locked circle: I must kill U. Kill her, and then go to the other and say, “Now you believe?” The most disgusting thing of all is that killing is somehow messy, primitive. Crushing her skull with something—it gives me a strange sensation of something sickeningly sweet in the mouth, and I cannot swallow my saliva, I keep spitting it out into my handkerchief, and my mouth is dry.

In my closet there was a heavy piston rod which had snapped in the casting (I had to examine the structure of the breach under the microscope). I rolled up my notes into a tube (let her read all of me—to the last letter), slipped the rod into the tube, and went downstairs. The staircase was interminable, the stairs disgustingly slippery, liquid; I wiped my lips with my handkerchief all the time…

Below. My heart thumped. I stopped, pulled out the rod, and walked to the control table…

U was not there: an empty, icy board. I remembered—all work was stopped today; everyone was to report for the Operation. Of course, there was no reason for her to be here—no one to register.

In the street. Wind. A sky of flying cast-iron slabs. And—as at a certain moment yesterday—the world was split into sharp, separate, independent fragments, and each, as it hailed down, halted for a second, hung before me in the air—and vanished without a trace.

It was as though the precise, black letters on this page were suddenly to slide off, scatter in terror— here, there—and not a single word, nothing but a senseless jumble: fright-skip-jump… The crowd in the street was also like that-scattered, not in rows—moving forward, back, aslant, across.

And now no one. And for an instant, rushing headlong, everything stood still. There, on the second floor, in a glass cage suspended in the air, a man and a woman—kissing as they stood, her whole body brokenly bent backward. This— forever, for the last time…

At some corner, a stirring, spiky bush of heads. Over the heads—separately, in the air—a banner, words: “Down with the machines! Down with the Operation!” And apart (from me) —I, with a fleeting thought: Is everybody filled with pain that can be torn from within only together with his heart? Must everybody do something, before… And for a second there was nothing in the world except my brutish hand with its heavy, cast iron roll…

A small boy—all of him thrust forward, a shadow under his lower lip. The lower lip is turned out like the cuff of a rolled-up sleeve. His whole face is distorted, turned inside out—he is crying loudly, rushing from someone at full speed—and the stamping of feet behind him…

The boy reminded me: Yes, U must be at school today, I must hurry. I ran to the nearest stairs to the underground.

In the doorway, someone, rushing past: “Not running! Trains aren’t running today! There…”

I went down. Utter delirium. Glitter of faceted, crystal suns. Platform densely packed with heads. An empty, motionless train.

And in the silence—a voice. Hers. I could not see her, but I knew this firm, pliant voice like a striking whip—and somewhere, the sharp triangle of eyebrows raised to temples…

I shouted, “Let me! Let me through! I must…”

But someone’s fingers dug into my arms, my shoulders, like a vise, nailing me down. In the silence, the voice: “Run upstairs! They’ll cure you, they’ll stuff you full of rich, fat happiness, and, sated, you will doze off peacefully, snoring in perfect unison— don’t you hear that mighty symphony of snores? Ridiculous people! They want to free you of every squirming, torturing, nagging question mark. And you are standing here and listening to me. Hurry upstairs, to the Great Operation! What is it to you if I stay here—alone? What is it to you if I don’t want others to want for me, if I want to want myself—if I want the impossible…”

Another voice—slow, heavy: “Ah! The impossible? That means running after your stupid fantasies, which wag their tails before your nose? No, we’ll grab them by the tail, and crush them, and then…”

“And then gobble them up and snore—and there will have to be a new tail before your nose. They say the ancients had an animal they called an ass. To force it to go forward, ever forward, they would tie a carrot to the harness shaft before him, just where he could not reach it. And if he reached it and gobbled it down…”

Suddenly the vise released me. I rushed to the middle, where she was speaking. But at that moment everybody surged, crushed together—there was a shout behind: “They’re coming, they’re coming here!” The light flared, went out—someone had cut the wire. An avalanche of bodies, screams, groans, heads, fingers…

I don’t know how long we rolled so through the underground tube. At last, stairs, a dim light, growing lighter—and once more out in the street, fanlike, in all directions.

And now—alone. Wind, gray twilight—low, just overhead. On the wet glass of the pavement—deep, deep—the upside-down lights, walls, figures moving feet up. And the incredibly heavy roll in my hand-pulling me into the depths, to the very bottom.

Downstairs, at the table,—there was still no U, and her room was empty, dark.

I went up to my room, switched on the light. My temples throbbed in the tight circle of the hoop, I was still locked within the same circle: the table, on the table the white roll; bed, door, table, white roll… In the room on the left the shades were down. On the right, over a book—a knobby bald head, the forehead a huge yellow parabola. The wrinkles on the forehead—a row of yellow, illegible lines. Sometimes our eyes would meet, and then I felt: they were about me, those yellow lines.

It happened exactly at 21. U came to me herself. Only one thing remains clear in my memory: I breathed so loudly that I heard my own breathing, and tried and tried to lower it—and could not.

She sat down, smoothed her unif on her knees. The pink-brown gills fluttered.

“Ah, my dear—so it is true that you were hurt? As soon as I learned—I immediately…”

The rod was before me on the table. I sprang up, breathing still more loudly. She heard it, halted in mid-sentence, and also, for some reason, stood up. I saw already that place on her head… A sickening sweetness in my mouth… My handkerchief—but it wasn’t there; I spat on the floor.

The one behind the right wall—with yellow, intent wrinkles—about me. He must not see, it will be still more disgusting if he sees… I pressed the button—what difference if I had no right to, it was all the same now—the shades fell.

She evidently understood, dashed to the door. But I anticipated her—and, breathing loudly, my eyes fixed every moment on that spot on her head…

“You… you’ve gone mad! Don’t dare…” She backed away—sat down, or, rather, fell on the bed, thrust her folded hands between her knees, trembling. Tense as a spring, still holding her firmly with my eyes, I slowly stretched my hand to the table—only my hand moved—and seized the rod.

“I beg you! One day—only one day! Tomorrow-tomorrow I’ll go and do everything…”

What was she talking about? I swung at her…

And I consider that I killed her. Yes, you, my unknown readers, you have the right to call me a murderer. I know I would have brought the rod down on her head if suddenly she had not cried, “Please… for the sake… I agree—I… in a moment”

With shaking hands she pulled off her unif. The large, yellow, flabby body fell back on the bed… And only now I understood: she thought I had lowered the shades… that I wanted…

This was so unexpected, so absurd, that I burst out laughing. At once the tigthly wound spring within me cracked, my hand hung limp, the rod clanked on the floor. And I learned from my own experience that laughter was the most potent weapon: laughter can kill everything—even murder.

I sat at the table and laughed—a desperate, final laugh—and could see no way out of this preposterous situation. I don’t know how it all would have ended if it had proceeded in a normal way—but suddenly a new, external component was added: the telephone rang.

I rushed, grasped the receiver. Perhaps it was she? But an unfamiliar voice said, “Just a moment”

A tormenting, endless hum. From a distance, a heavy tread, coming nearer, more resonant, more leaden. Then “D-503? Uh-uh… This is the Benefactor speaking. Report to me at once!”

Clink—the receiver was down—clink.

U still lay on the bed, eyes closed, gills spread wide in a smile. I gathered up her dress from the floor, flung it at her, and, through my teeth, “Here! Quick, quick!”

She raised herself on her elbow, her breasts swished sideways, eyes round, all of her waxen.

“What?”

“Just that. Well, hurry—get dressed!”

All doubled up into a knot, clutching her dress, her voice strangled. “Turn away…”

I turned, leaned my forehead against the glass. Lights, figures, sparks trembled in the black wet mirror. No, it is I, the trembling is within me… Why did He call me? Does He already know everything about her, about me, about everything?

U, dressed, was at the door. Two steps to her, and I squeezed her hands as though expecting to squeeze out everything I needed from those hands.

“Listen… Her name-you know whom I mean-did you name her? No? But only the truth—I must know… I don’t care—only the truth…”

“No.”

“No? But why—since you had gone there and reported…”

Her lower lip was suddenly turned out, like that boy’s—and from the cheeks, down the cheeks-drops…

“Because I… I was afraid that… if I named her… you might… you would stop lov-… Oh, I can’t—I couldn’t have…”

I knew it was the truth. An absurd, ridiculous, human truth! I opened the door.

Thirty-sixth Entry

TOPICS:

Blank Pages

The Christian God

About My Mother

It’s strange—there seems to be a blank white page inside my head. I don’t remember how I walked there, how I waited (I know I waited)—nothing, not a single sound, or face, or gesture. As if all the lines connecting me with the world were cut.

I recalled myself only when I stood before Him, and was terrified to raise my eyes: I saw only His huge, cast-iron hands upon His knees. These hands seemed to weigh down even Him, bending His knees. Slowly He moved His fingers. The face was somewhere high up, in a haze, and it seemed that His voice did not thunder, did not deafen me, was like an ordinary human voice only because it came to me from such a height.

“And so—you too? You, the Builder of the Integral? You, who were to have become the greatest of conquistadors? You, whose name was to initiate a new, magnificent chapter in the history of the One State___You?”

The blood rushed to my head, my cheeks. Again a blank page—nothing but the pulse in my temples, and the resonant voice above, but not a single word. It was only when He ceased to speak that I recovered. I saw: the hand moved with the weight of a hundred tons—crept slowly—and a finger pointed at me.

“Well? Why are you silent? Is this so, or is it not? An executioner?”

“It is so,” I answered obediently. And then I clearly heard every word He spoke: “Oh, well! You think I am afraid of this word? Have you ever tried to pull off its shell and see what is inside? I will show you.

Remember: a blue hill, a cross, a crowd. Some—above, splashed with blood, are nailing a body to a cross; others—below, splashed with tears—are looking on. Does it not seem to you that the role of those above is the most difficult, the most important? If not for them, would this entire majestic tragedy have taken place? They were reviled by the ignorant crowd: but for that the author of the tragedy—God—should have rewarded them all the more generously. And what about the most merciful Christian God, slowly roasting in the fires of hell all who would not submit? Was He not an executioner? And was the number of those burned by the Christians on bonfires less than the number of burned Christians? Yet—you understand—this God was glorified for ages as the God of love. Absurd? No, on the contrary: it is testimony to the ineradicable wisdom of man, inscribed in blood. Even at that time-wild, shaggy—he understood: true, algebraic love of humanity is inevitably inhuman; and the inevitable mark of truth is—its cruelty. Just as the inevitable mark of fire is that it burns. Show me fire that does not burn.

Well—argue with me, prove the contrary!”

How could I argue? How could I argue, when these were (formerly) my own ideas—except that I had never been able to clothe them in such brilliant, impenetrable armor? I was silent…

“If this means that you agree with me, then let us talk like adults, after the children have gone to bed: let us say it all, to the very end. I ask you: what did people—from their very infancy—pray for, dream about, long for? They longed for some one to tell them, once and for all, the meaning of happiness, and then to bind them to it with a chain. What are we doing now, if not this very thing? The ancient dream of paradise… Remember: those in paradise no longer know desires, no longer know pity or love. There are only the blessed, with their imaginations excised (this is the only reason why they are blessed)—angels, obedient slaves of God… And now, at the very moment when we have already caught up with the dream, when we have seized it so (He clenched His hand: if it had held a stone, it would have squeezed juice out of it), when all that needed to be done was to skin the quarry and divide it into shares—at this very moment you—you…”

The cast-iron echoing voice suddenly broke off. I was red as a bar of iron on the anvil under the striking hammer. The hammer hung silently, and waiting for it was even more terrify…

Then, suddenly: “How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“And your naivete is of someone half that age—someone of sixteen! Has it really never entered your head that they—we still don’t know their names, but I am certain we shall learn them from you—that they needed you only as the Builder of the Integral? Only in order to use you as…”

“Don’t! Don’t!” I cried.

It was like holding up your hands and shouting it to a bullet: you still hear your ridiculous.

“Don’t,” and the bullet has already gone through you, you are already writhing on the floor.

Yes, yes—the Builder of the Integral… Yes, yes… and all at once—the memory of U’s raging face with quivering brick-red gills—that morning, when they both were in my room…

I clearly remember: I laughed, and raised my eyes. Before me sat a bald, Socratically bald, man, with tiny drops of sweat on his bald head.

How simple everything was. How majestically banal and ridiculously simple.

Laughter choked me, broke out in puffs. I covered my mouth with my hand and rushed out.

Stairs, wind, wet, jumping fragments of lights, faces—and, as I ran: No! To see her! Only once more—to see her!

And here again there is a blank white page. I can remember one thing only—feet. Not people-feet.

Hundreds of feet falling from somewhere down on the pavement, stamping without rhythm, a heavy rain of feet. And a gay, mischievous song, and a shout—probably to me—“Hey, Hey! Come here, to us!”

Then—a deserted square, filled to the brim with dense wind. In the middle, a dim, heavy, dreadful mass—the Benefactor’s Machine. And—such a strange, seemingly incongruous echo within me: a dazzling white pillow; on the pillow, a head, thrown back, with eyes half-closed; the sharp, sweet line of teeth… And all of this absurdly, terrifyingly connected with the Machine—I know how, but I still refuse to see, to name it aloud—I do not want to—no.

I shut my eyes and sat down on the stairs leading up to the Machine. It must have been raining. My face was wet. Somewhere in the distance, muffled cries. But no one hears me, no one hears me cry: Save me from this—save me!

If I had a mother, like the ancients: mine—yes, precisely—my mother. To whom I would be—not the Builder of the Integral, and not number D-503, and not a molecule of the One State, but a simple human being—a piece of herself, trampled, crushed, discarded… And let me nail, or let me be nailed—perhaps it’s all the same—but so that she would hear what no one else heard, so that her old woman’s mouth, drawn together, wrinkled…