Freder held him fast. He looked around. Nobody was paying any attention, either to him or to the other man. Clouds of steam and fumes surrounded them like a fog. There was a door near by. Freder carried the man to the door and pushed it open. It led to the tool-house. A packing case offered a hard resting place. Freder let the man slip down into it.
Dull eyes looked up at him. The face to which they belonged was little more than that of a boy.
“What is your name?” said Freder.
“11811 …”
“I want to know what your mother called you …”
“Georgi.”
“Georgi, do you know me?”
Consciousness returned to the dull eyes together with recognition.
“Yes, I know you … You are the son of Joh Fredersen … of Joh Fredersen, who is the father of us all …”
“Yes. Therefore I am your brother, Georgi, do you see? I heard your Paternoster …”
The body flung itself up with a heave.
“The machine—” He sprang to his feet. “My machine—”
“Leave it alone, Georgi, and listen to me …”
“Somebody must be at the machine!”
“Somebody will be at the machine; but not you …”
“Who will, then?”
“I.”
Staring eyes were the answer.
“I,” repeated Freder. “Are you fit to listen to me, and will you be able to take good note of what I say? It is very important, Georgi!”
“Yes,” said Georgi, paralysed.
“We shall now exchange lives, Georgi. You take mine, I yours. I shall take your place at the machine. You go quietly out in my clothes. Nobody noticed me when I came here. Nobody will notice you when you go. You must only not lose your nerve and keep calm. Keep under cover of where the air is brewing like a mist. When you reach the street take a car. You will find more than enough money in my pockets. Three streets further on change the car. And again after another three streets. Then drive to the Ninetieth Block. At the corner pay off the taxi and wait until the driver is out of sight. Then find your way to the seventh floor of the seventh house. A man called Josaphat lives there. You are to go to him. Tell him I sent you. Wait for me or for a message from me. Do you understand, Georgi?”
“Yes.”
But the “Yes” was empty and seemed to reply to something other than Freder’s question.
A little while later the son of Joh Fredersen, the Master of the great Metropolis, was standing before the machine which was like Ganesha, the god with the elephant’s head.
He wore the uniform of all the workmen of Metropolis: from throat to ankle the dark blue linen, bare feet in the hard shoes, hair firmly pressed down by the black cap.
He held his hand on the lever and his gaze was set on the clock, the hands of which vibrated like magnetic needles.
The hunted stream of air washed around him making the folds of the canvas flutter.
Then he felt how, slowly, chokingly, from the incessant trembling of the floor, from the walls in which the furnaces whistled, from the ceiling which seemed eternally to be in the act of falling down, from the pushing of the short arms of the machine, from the steady resistance of the gleaming body, terror welled up in him—terror, even to the certainty of Death.
He felt—and saw, too—how, from out the swathes of vapour, the long soft elephant’s trunk of the god Ganesha loosened itself from the head, sunken on the chest, and gently, with unerring finger, felt for his, Freder’s forehead. He felt the touch of this sucker, almost cool, not in the least painful, but horrible. Just in the centre, over the bridge of the nose, the ghostly trunk sucked itself fast; it was hardly a pain, yet it bored a fine, dead-sure gimlet, towards the centre of the brain. As though fastened to the clock of an infernal machine the heart began to thump. Paternoster … Paternoster … Paternoster …
“I will not,” said Freder, throwing back his head to break the cursed contact: “I will not … I will … I will not …”
He groped for he felt the sweat dropping from his temples like drops of blood in all pockets of the strange uniform which he wore. He felt a rag in one of them and drew it out. He mopped his forehead and, in doing so, felt the sharp edge of a stiff piece of paper, of which he had taken hold together with the cloth.
He pocketed the cloth and examined the paper.
It was no larger than a man’s hand, bearing neither print nor script, being covered over and over with the tracing of a strange symbol and an apparently half-destroyed plan.
Freder tried hard to make something of it but he did not succeed. Of all the signs marked on the plan he did not know one. Ways seemed to be indicated, seeming to be false ways, but they all led to one destination; to a place which was filled with crosses.
A symbol of life? Sense in nonsense?
As Joh Fredersen’s son, Freder was accustomed swiftly and correctly to grasp anything called a plan. He pocketed the plan though it remained before his eyes.
The sucker of the elephant’s trunk of the god Ganesha glided down to the occupied unsubdued brain which reflected, analysed and sought. The head, not tamed, sank back into the chest. Obediently, eagerly, worked the little machine which drove the Paternoster of the New Tower of Babel.
A little glimmering light played upon the more delicate joints almost on the top of the machine, like a small malicious eye.
The machine had plenty of time. Many hours would pass before the Master of Metropolis, before Joh Fredersen would tear the food which his machines were chewing up from the teeth of his mighty machines.
Quite softly, almost smilingly, the gleaming eye, the malicious eye, of the
