His magnificent descent from the sky was accomplished. The brassy Hymn came to silence; all sat down. At once I perceived that everything was really a very thin spiderweb, the threads of which were stretched tense and trembling, and it seemed that in a moment those threads might break and something improbable. …
I half rose and looked around, and I met many lovingly-worried eyes which passed from one face to another. I saw someone lifting his hand and almost imperceptibly waving his fingers—he was making signs to another. The latter replied with a similar finger-sign. And a third. … I understood; they were the Guardians. I understood; they were alarmed by something—the spiderweb was stretched and trembling. And within me as if tuned to the same wavelength of a radio, within me there was a corresponding quiver.
On the platform a poet was reciting his pre-electoral ode. I could not hear a single word; I only felt the rhythmic swing of the hexametric pendulum, and with its every motion I felt how nearer and nearer there was approaching some hour set for. … I continued to turn over face after face like pages but I could not find the one, the only one, I was seeking, the one I needed to find at once, as soon as possible, for one more swing of the pendulum and. …
It was he, certainly it was he! Below, past the main platform, gliding over the sparkling glass, the ear-wings flapped by, the running body gave a reflection of a double-curved S-, like a noose which was rolling toward some of the intricate passages among the stands. S-, I-330—there is some thread between them. I have always felt some thread between them. I don’t know yet what that thread is but some day I shall untangle it. I planted my gaze on him; he was rushing farther away, behind him that invisible thread. … There he stopped … there. … I was pierced, twisted together into a knot as if by a lightning-like, many-volted electric discharge; in my row, not more than 40° from me, S- stopped and bowed. I saw I-330 and beside her the smiling, repellent, negro-lipped R-13.
My first thought was to rush to her and cry, “Why with him? Why did you not want … ?” But the salutary invisible spiderweb bound fast my hands and feet; so, gritting my teeth together I sat stiff as iron, my gaze fixed upon them. A sharp physical pain at my heart. I remember my thought: “if nonphysical causes effect physical pain, then it is clear that. …”
I regret that I did not come to any conclusion. I remember only that something about “soul” flashed through my mind, a purely nonsensical ancient expression, “His soul fell into his boots” passed through my head. My heart sank. The hexameter came to an end. It was about to start. What “It”?
The five minute pre-election recess established by custom. The custom-established pre-electional silence. But now it was not that pious, really prayer-like silence that it usually was. Now it was as in the ancient days when there were no Accumulating Towers, when the sky, still untamed in those days, would roar from time to time with its “storms.” It was like the “lull before the storm” of the ancient days. The air seemed to be made of transparent, vaporized cast-iron. One wanted to breathe with one’s mouth wide open. My hearing, intense to painfulness, registered from behind a mouse-like, gnawing, worried whisper. Without lifting my eyes I saw those two, I-330 and R-13, side by side, shoulder to shoulder—and on my knees my trembling, foreign, hateful, hairy hands. …
Everybody was holding a badge with a clock in his hands. One. … Two. … Three. … Five minutes. From the main platform a cast-iron, slow voice:
“Those in favor shall lift their hands.”
If only I dared to look straight into his eyes as formerly! Straight and devotedly, and think: “Here I am, my whole self! Take me!” But now I did not dare. I had to make an effort to raise my hand, as if my joints were rusty.
A whisper of millions of hands. Someone’s subdued “Ah!” and I felt something was coming, falling heavily, but I could not understand what it was, and I did not have the strength or courage to take a look. …
“Those opposed?” …
This was always the most magnificent moment of our celebration: all would remain sitting motionless, joyfully bowing their heads under the salutary yoke of that Number of Numbers. But now, to my horror again I heard a rustle; light as a sigh, yet it was more distinct even than the brass tube of the Hymn. Thus the last sigh in a man’s life, around him people with their faces pale and with drops of cold sweat upon their foreheads. … I lifted my eyes and. …
It took one hundredth of a second only; I saw thousands of hands arise “opposed” and fall back. I saw the pale cross-marked face of I-330 and her lifted hand. Darkness came upon my eyes.
Another hundredth of a second, silence. Quiet. The pulse. Then, as if at the sign of some mad conductor, from all the stands rattling, shouting, a whirlwind of unifs lifted by the rush, the perplexed figures of the Guardians running to and fro. Someone’s heels in the air near my eyes and close to those heels someone’s wide-open mouth tearing itself by an inaudible scream. For some reason this picture remains particularly distinct in my memory: thousands of mouths noiselessly yelling as if on the screen of a monstrous cinema. Also as if on a screen, somewhere below at a distance, for a second—O-90, pressed against the wall in a passage, her lips white, defending her abdomen
