One of Joh Fredersen’s shoulders made a leisurely movement.
“Good evening,” said the young man, in a strangled tone.
He went.
“Why did you dismiss him, father?” the son asked.
“I have no use for him,” said Joh Fredersen, still not having looked at his son.
“Why not, father?”
“I have no use for people who start when one speaks to them,” said the Master over Metropolis.
“Perhaps he felt ill … perhaps he is worrying about somebody who is dear to him.”
“Possibly. Perhaps too, he was still under the effects of the too long night in Yoshiwara. Freder, avoid assuming people to be good, innocent and victimized just because they suffer. He who suffers has sinned, against himself and against others.”
“You do not suffer, father?”
“No.”
“You are quite free from sin?”
“The time of sin and suffering lies behind me, Freder.”
“And if this man, now … I have never seen such a thing … but I believe that men resolved to end their lives go out of a room as he did …”
“Perhaps.”
“And suppose you were to hear, tomorrow, that he were dead … that would leave you untouched … ?”
“Yes.”
Freder was silent.
His father’s hand slipped over a lever, and pressed it down. The white lamps in all the rooms surrounding the brainpan of the New Tower of Babel went out. The Master over Metropolis had informed the circular world around him that he did not wish to be disturbed without urgent cause.
“I cannot tolerate it,” he continued, “when a man, working upon Metropolis, at my right hand, in common with me, denies the only great advantage he possesses above the machine.”
“And what is that, father?”
“To take delight in work,” said the Master over Metropolis. Freder’s hand glided over his hair, then rested on its glorious fairness. He opened his lips, as though he wanted to say something; but he remained silent.
“Do you suppose,” Joh Fredersen went on, “that I need my secretaries’ pencils to check American stock-exchange reports? The index tables of Rotwang’s trans-ocean trumpets are a hundred times more reliable and swift than clerk’s brains and hands. But, by the accuracy of the machine I can measure the accuracy of the men, by the breath of the machine, the lungs of the men who compete with her.”
“And the man you just dismissed, and who is doomed (for to be dismissed by you, father, means going down! … Down! … Down! …) he lost his breath, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Because he was a man and not a machine …”
“Because he denied his humanity before the machine.”
Freder raised his head and his deeply troubled eyes.
“I cannot follow you now, father,” he said, as if in pain.
The expression of patience on Joh Fredersen’s face deepened.
“The man,” he said quietly, “was my first secretary! The salary he drew was eight times as large as that of the last. That was synonymous with the obligation to perform eight times as much. To me. Not to himself. Tomorrow the fifth secretary will be in his place. In a week he will have rendered four of the others superfluous. I have use for that man.”
“Because he saves four others.”
“No, Freder. Because he takes delight in the work of four others. Because he throws himself entirely into his work—throws himself as desiringly as if it were a woman.”
Freder was silent. Joh Fredersen looked at his son. He looked at him carefully.
“You have had some experience?” he asked.
The eyes of the boy, beautiful and sad, slipped past him, out into space. Wild, white light frothed against the windows, and, in going out, left the sky behind, as a black velvet cloth over Metropolis.
“I have had no experience,” said Freder, tentatively, “except that I believe for the first time in my life to have comprehended the being of a machine …”
“That should mean a great deal,” replied the Master over Metropolis. “But you are probably wrong, Freder. If you had really comprehended the being of a machine you would not be so perturbed.”
Slowly the son turned his eyes and the helplessness of his incomprehension to his father.
“How can one but be perturbed,” he said, “if one comes to you, as I did, through the machine-rooms. Through the glorious rooms of your glorious machines … and sees the creatures who are fettered to them by laws of eternal watchfulness … lidless eyes …”
He paused. His lips were dry as dust.
Joh Fredersen leant back. He had not taken his gaze from his son, and still held it fast.
“Why did you come to me through the machine-rooms,” he asked quietly. “It is neither the best, nor the most convenient way.”
“I wished,” said the son, picking his words carefully, “Just once to look the men in the face—whose little children are my brothers—my sisters …”
“H’m,” said the other with very tight lips. The pencil which he held between his fingers tapped gently, dryly, once, twice, upon the table’s edge. Joh Fredersen’s eyes wandered from his son to the twitching flash of the seconds on the clock, then sinking back again to him.
“And what did you find?” he asked.
Seconds, seconds, seconds of silence. Then it was as though the son, uprooting and tearing loose his whole ego, threw himself, with a gesture of utter self-exposure, upon his father, yet he stood still, head a little bent, speaking softly, as though every word were smothering between his lips.
“Father! Help the men who live at your machines!”
“I cannot help them,” said the brain of Metropolis. “Nobody can help them. They are where they must be. They are what they must be. They are not fitted for anything more or anything different.”
“I do not know for what they are fitted,” said Freder, expressionlessly: his head fell upon his breast as though almost severed from his neck. “I only know what I saw—and that it was dreadful to look upon … I went through the machine-rooms—they were like temples. All the great gods were living in white temples. I saw Baal and Moloch, Huitziopochtli and Durgha; some frightfully companionable, some terribly solitary. I saw Juggernaut’s divine car and the Towers
