“Well, then. How much fuel for the motors shall we load on? If we count on three, or say three and a half hours. …”
I see before me, over a draught, my hand with the counter and the logarithmic dial at the figure 15.
“Fifteen tons. But you’d better take … yes, better take a thousand.”
I said that because I know that tomorrow. … I noticed that my hands and the dial began to tremble.
“A thousand! What do you need such a lot for? That would last a week! No, more than a week!”
“Well, nobody knows. …”
I do know. …
The wind whistled, the air seemed to be stuffed to the limit with something invisible. I had difficulty in breathing, difficulty in walking, and with difficulty, slowly but without stopping for a second the hand of the Accumulating Tower was crawling, at the end of the avenue. The peak of the Tower reached into the very clouds;—dull, blue, groaning in a subdued way, sucking electricity from the clouds. The tubes of the Musical Tower resounded.
As always—four abreast. But the rows did not seem as firm as usual; they were swinging, bending more and more, perhaps because of the wind. There! They seemed to have stumbled upon something at the corner, and they drew back and stopped, congealed, a close mass, a clot, breathing rapidly; at once all had stretched their necks like geese.
“Look! No look, look—there, quick!”
“They? Are those they?”
“Ah, never! Never! I’d rather put my head straight into the Machine. …”
“Silence! Are you crazy?”
On the corner the doors of the auditorium were ajar, a heavy column of about fifty people—. The word “people” is not the right one. These were heavy-wheeled automatons bound in iron and moved by an invisible mechanism. Not people but a sort of human-like tractor. Over their heads, floating in the air—a white banner with a golden sun embroidered on it, and the rays of the sun: “We are the first! We have already been operated upon! Follow us, all of you!”
They slowly, unhesitatingly mowed through the crowd, and it was clear that if they had had in their way a wall, a tree, a house, they would have moved on with no more hesitation through wall, tree or house. In the middle of the avenue they fused and stretched out into a chain, arm in arm, their faces turned towards us. And we, a human clot, tense, the hair pricking our heads, we waited. Our necks were stretched out goose-fashion. Clouds. The wind whistled. Suddenly the wings of the chain from right and left bent quickly around us, and faster, faster, like a heavy engine descending a hill, they closed the ring and pulled us toward the yawning doors and inside. …
Somebody’s piercing cry: “They are driving us in! Run!”
All ran. Close to the wall there still was an open living gate of human beings. Everybody dashed through it, heads forward. Their heads became sharp wedges, so with their ribs, shoulders, hips. … Like a stream of water compressed in a firehose they spurted out in the form of a fan—and all around me stamping feet, raised arms, unifs. … The double-curved S- with his transparent wing-ears appeared for a moment close before my eyes; he disappeared as suddenly; I was alone among arms and legs appearing for a second and disappearing. I was running. …
I dashed to the entrance of a house to stop for a breath, my back close to the door—and immediately, like a splinter borne by the wind, a human being was thrown towards me.
“All the while I … I have been following you. I do not want … do you see? I do not want … I am ready to. …”
Small round hands on my sleeves, round dark blue eyes—it was O-90. She just slipped along my body like a unif which, its hanger broken, slips along the wall to fall upon the floor. Like a little bundle she crumpled below me on the cold doorstep, and I stood over her, stroking her head, her face—my hands were wet. I felt as if I were very big and she very small, a small part of myself. I felt something quite different from what I feel towards I-330. I think that the ancients must have had similar feelings towards their private children.
Below, passing through her hands with which she was covering her face, a voice came to me:
“Every night I … I cannot! If they cure me. … Every night I sit in the darkness alone and think of him, and of what he will look like when I. … If cured I should have nothing to live with—do you understand me? You must … you must. …”
An absurd feeling yet it was there; I really must! Absurd, because this “duty” of mine was nothing but another crime. Absurd, because white and black cannot be one, duty and crime cannot coincide. Or perhaps there is no black and white in life, but everything depends upon the first logical premise? If the premise is that I unlawfully gave her a child. …
“It is all right, but don’t, only don’t …” I said. “Of course I understand. … I must take you to I-330, as I once offered to, so that she. …”
“Yes.” (This in a low voice, without uncovering her face.)
I helped her rise. Silently we went along the darkening street, each busy with his own thoughts, or perhaps with the same thought. … We walked between silent leaden houses, through the tense, whipping branches of the wind. …
Through the whistling of the wind all at once I heard, as if splashing through ditches, the familiar footsteps coming from some unseen point. At the corner I turned around, and among the clouds, flying upside-down reflected in
