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
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:
