Suddenly I clearly realized how empty I was, how I had given away. … No, I could not—impossible! I knew I must … but no—impossible! I ought … but no—impossible! My lips cooled at once. The rosy crescent trembled, darkened, drew together. O-90 covered herself with the bedspread, her face hidden in the pillow.
I was sitting near the bed, on the floor. What a desperately cold floor! I sat there in silence. The terrible cold from the floor rose higher and higher. There in the blue, silent space among the planets, there probably it is as cold.
“Please understand, dear; I did not mean …” I muttered, “With all my heart, I …”
It was the truth. I, my real self did not mean.— … Yet how could I express it in words? How could I explain to her that the piece of iron did not want to. … But that the law is precise, inevitable!
O-90 lifted her face from the pillow and without opening her eyes she said, “Go away.” But because she was crying she pronounced it “Oo aaa-ay.” For some reason this absurd detail will not leave my memory.
Penetrated by the cold and torpid, I went out into the hall. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass. Outside a thin, almost imperceptible film of haze was spread. “Towards night,” I thought, “it will descend again and drown the world. How sad a night it will be!”
O-90 passed swiftly by, going toward the elevator. The door slammed.
“Wait a minute!” I screamed. I was frightened.
But the elevator was already groaning, going down—down—down. …
“She robbed me of R-, she robbed me of O-90, yet, yet … nevertheless. …”
Record Fifteen
The bell—The mirror-like sea—I am to burn eternally.
I was walking upon the dock where the Integral is being built, when the Second Builder came to meet me. His face as usual was round and white—a porcelain plate. When he speaks it seems as though he serves you a plate of something unbearably tasty.
“You chose to be ill, and without the Chief we had an accident, as it were, yesterday.”
“An accident?”
“Yes, sir. We finished the bell and started to let it down, and imagine! the men caught a male without a number. How he got in, I cannot make out. They took him to the Operation Department. Oh, they’ll draw the mystery out of the fellow there; ‘why’ and ‘how,’ etc. …” He smiled delightedly.
Our best and most experienced physicians work in the Operation Department under the direct supervision of the Well-Doer himself. They have all kinds of instruments, but the best of all is the Gas Bell. The procedure is taken from an ancient experiment of elementary physics: they used to put a rat under a gas bell and gradually pump out the air; the air becomes more and more rarified, and … you know the rest.
But our Gas Bell is certainly a more perfect apparatus and it is used in combination with different gasses. Furthermore, we don’t torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did; we use it for a higher purpose: to guard the security of the United State, in other words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries ago when the work of the Operation Department was only beginning, there were yet to be found some fools who compared our Operation Department with the ancient Inquisition. But this is as absurd as to compare a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cutthroat. Both use a knife, perhaps the same kind of a knife, both do the same thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man, yet one is a well-doer, the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus. … All this becomes perfectly clear in one second, in one turn of our logical wheel, the teeth of which engage that minus, turn it upward and thus change its aspect. That other matter is somewhat different; the ring in the door was still oscillating, apparently the door had just closed, yet she, I-330, had disappeared; she was not there! The logical wheel could not turn this fact. A dream? But even now I feel still in my right shoulder that incomprehensible sweet pain of I-330 near me in the fog, pressing herself against me. “Thou lovest fog?” Yes, I love the fog too. I love everything and everything appears to me wonderful, new, tense; everything is so good! …
“So good,” I said aloud.
“Good?” The porcelain eyes bulged out. “What good do you find in that? If that man without a number contrived to sneak in, it means that there are others around here, everywhere, all the time, here around the Integral, they—”
“Whom do you mean by ‘they’?”
“How do I know who? But I sense them, all the time.”
“Have you heard about the new operation which has been invented? I mean the surgical removal of fancy?” (There really were rumors of late about something of the sort.)
“No, I haven’t. What has that to do with it?”
“Merely this: if I were you, I should go and ask to have this operation performed upon me.”
The plate expressed distinctly something lemon-like, sour. Poor fellow! He took offence if one even hinted that he might possess imagination. Well, a week ago I too should have taken offence at such a hint. Not so now, for I know that I have imagination, that is what my illness consists in, and more than that: I know that it is a wonderful illness—one does not want to be cured, simply does not want to!
We ascended the glass steps; the world spread itself below us like the palm of a hand.
You, readers of these records, whoever you be, you have the sun above you. And if you ever were ill, as I am now, then you know what kind of a sun there is or may be in the morning; you know that pinkish, lucid, warm gold; the air itself looks a little pinkish; everything seems permeated by the tender blood of the
