Would It Not Be Better?

Here is my conversation with I-330 yesterday, at the Ancient House, in the midst of motley, noisy colors—reds, greens, bronze-yellows, whites, oranges—stunning the mind, breaking up the logical flow of thought… And all the time, under the frozen, marble smile of the pug-nosed ancient poet.

I reproduce this conversation to the letter—for it seems to me that it will be of vast, decisive importance to the destiny of the One State —nay, of the entire universe. Besides, perhaps, my unknown readers, you will find in it a certain vindication of me…

I-330 flung everything at me immediately, without preliminaries. “I know: the Integral is to make its first, trial flight the day after tomorrow. On that day we shall seize it”

“What? The day after tomorrow?”

“Yes. Sit down, calm yourself. We cannot lose a minute. Among the hundreds rounded up at random by the Guardians last night there were twelve Mephi. If we delay a day or two, they’ll perish.”

I was silent.

“To observe the test, they have to send you electricians, mechanics, doctors, meteorologists. Exactly at twelve—remember this—when the lunch bell will ring and everyone will go to the dining room, we shall remain in the corridor, lock them in, and the Integral is ours… Do you understand— it must be done, at any cost. The Integral in our hands will be the weapon that will help us finish everything quickly, painlessly, at once. Their aeros —ha! Insignificant gnats against a falcon. And then— if it becomes essential—we can simply direct the motor exhausts downward, and by their work alone…”

I jumped up. “It’s unthinkable! Absurd! Don’t your realize that what you’re planning is revolution?”

“Yes, revolution! Why is this absurd?”

“It is absurd because there can be no revolution. Because our—I am saying this, not you—our revolution was the final one. And there can be no others. Everyone knows this…”

The mocking, sharp triangle of eyebrows. “My dear—you are a mathematician. More—you are a philosopher, a mathematical philosopher. Well, then: name me the final number.”

“What do you mean? I… I don’t understand: what final number?”

“Well, the final, the ultimate, the largest”

“But that’s preposterous! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number?”

“Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite. The final one is for children: children are frightened by infinity, and it’s important that children sleep peacefully at night…”

“But what sense, what sense is there in all of this—for the Benefactor’s sake! What sense, if everybody is already happy?”

“Let us suppose… Very well, suppose it’s so. And what next?”

“Ridiculous! An utterly childish question. Tell children a story—to the very end, and they will still be sure to ask, ‘And what next? And why?’ ”

“Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers are invariably children. Exactly, just like children, we must always ask, ‘And what next?’ ”

“There’s nothing next! Period. Throughout the universe—spread uniformly—everywhere…”

“Ah: uniformly, everywhere! That’s exactly where it is—entropy, psychological entropy. Is it not clear to you, a mathematician, that only differences, differences in temperatures—thermal contrasts —make for life? And if everywhere, throughout the universe, there are equally warm, or equally cool bodies… they must be brought into collision—to get fire, explosion, Gehenna. And we will bring them into collision.”

“But I-330, you must understand—this was exactly what our forebears did during the Two Hundred Years’ War…”

“Oh, and they were right—a thousand times right But they made one mistake. They later came to believe that they had the final number—which does not, does not exist in nature. Their mistake was the mistake of Galileo: he was right that the earth revolves around the sun, but he did not know that the whole solar system also revolves— around some other center; he did not know that the real, not the relative, orbit of the earth is not some naive circle…”

“And you?”

“We? We know for the time being that there is no final number. We may forget it. No, we are even sure to forget it when we get old—as everything inevitably gets old. And then we, too, shall drop—like leaves in autumn from the tree—like you, the day after tomorrow… No, no, my dear, not you. For you are with us, you are with us!”

Fiery, stormy, flashing—I have never yet seen her like that—she embraced me with all of herself. I disappeared…

At the last, looking firmly, steadily into my eyes, “Remember, then: at twelve.”

And I said, “Yes, I remember.”

She left. I was alone—among the riotous, many-voiced tumult of blue, red, green, bronze-yellow, orange colors…

Yes, at twelve… And suddenly an absurd sensation of something alien settled on my face—impossible to brush off. Suddenly—yesterday morning, U—and what she had shouted into I-330’s face… Why? What nonsense.

I hurried outside—and home, home…

Somewhere behind me I heard the piercing cries of birds over the Wall. And before me, in the setting sun—the spheres of cupolas, the huge, flaming cubes of houses, the spire of the Accumulator Tower like lightning frozen in the sky. And all this, all this perfect, geometric beauty will have to be… by me, by my own hands… Is there no way out, no other road?

Past one of the auditoriums (I forget the number). Inside it, benches piled up in a heap; in the middle, tables covered with sheets of pure white glass cloth; on the white, a stain of the sun’s pink blood. And concealed in all of this—some unknown, and therefore frightening tomorrow. It is unnatural for a thinking, seeing being to live amidst irregulars, unknowns, X’s… As if you were blindfolded and forced to walk, feeling your way, stumbling, and knowing that somewhere—just nearby—is the edge; a single step, and all that will remain of you will be a flattened, mangled piece of flesh. Am I not like this now?

And what if—without waiting—I plunge myself, head down? Would it not be the only, the correct way—disentangling everything at once?

Thirty-first Entry

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The Great Operation