The eternal moment, and other stories
a little out of the common. She had often to address passengers
with direct speech, and this had given her a certain roughness and
originality of manner. When Vashti swerved away from the sunbeams with
a cry, she behaved barbarically--she put out her hand to steady her.
"How dare you!" exclaimed the passenger. "You forget yourself!"
The woman was confused, and apologised for not having let her fall.
People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing
to the Machine.
"Where are we now?" asked Vashti haughtily.
"We are over Asia," said the attendant, anxious to be polite.
"Asia?"
"You must excuse my common way of speaking. I have got into the habit
of calling places over which I pass by their unmechanical names."
"Oh, I remember Asia. The Mongols came from it."
"Beneath us, in the open air, stood a city that was once called Simla."
"Have you ever heard of the Mongols and of the Brisbane school?"
"No."
"Brisbane also stood in the open air."
"Those mountains to the right--let me show you them." She pushed back
a metal blind. The main chain of the Himalayas was revealed. "They were
once called the Roof of the World, those mountains."
"What a foolish name!"
"You must remember that, before the dawn of civilisation, they seemed
to be an impenetrable wall that touched the stars. It was supposed
that no one but the gods could exist above their summits. How we have
advanced, thanks to the Machine!"
"How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!" said Vashti.
"How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!" echoed the passenger
who had dropped his Book the night before, and who was standing in the
passage.
"And that white stuff in the cracks?--what is it?"
"I have forgotten its name."
"Cover the window, please. These mountains give me no ideas."
The northern aspect of the Himalayas was in deep shadow: on the Indian
slope the sun had just prevailed. The forests had been destroyed
during the literature epoch for the purpose of making newspaper-pulp,
but the snows were awakening to their morning glory, and clouds still
hung on the breasts of Kinchinjunga. In the plain were seen the ruins
of cities, with diminished rivers creeping by their walls, and by the
sides of these were sometimes the signs of vomitories, marking the
cities of today. Over the whole prospect air-ships rushed, crossing and
intercrossing with incredible _aplomb_, and rising nonchalantly when
they desired to escape the perturbations of the lower atmosphere and to
traverse the Roof of the World.
"We have indeed advanced, thanks to the Machine," repeated the
attendant, and hid the Himalayas behind a metal blind.
The day dragged wearily forward. The passengers sat each in his cabin,
avoiding one another with an almost physical repulsion and longing to
be once more under the surface of the earth. There were eight or ten of
them, mostly young males, sent out from the public nurseries to inhabit
the rooms of those who had died in various parts of the earth. The man
who had dropped his Book was on the homeward journey. He had been sent
to Sumatra for the purpose of propagating the race. Vashti alone was
travelling by her private will.
At midday she took a second glance at the earth. The air-ship was
crossing another range of mountains, but she could see little, owing to
clouds. Masses of black rock hovered below her, and merged indistinctly
into grey. Their shapes were fantastic; one of them resembled a
prostrate man.
"No ideas here," murmured Vashti, and hid the Caucasus behind a metal
blind.
In the evening she looked again. They were crossing a golden sea, in
which lay many small islands and one peninsula.
She repeated, "No ideas here," and hid Greece behind a metal blind.
_Part II_
THE MENDING APPARATUS
By a vestibule, by a lift, by a tubular railway, by a platform, by a
sliding door--by reversing all the steps of her departure did Vashti
arrive at her son's room, which exactly resembled her own. She might
well declare that the visit was superfluous. The buttons, the knobs,
the reading-desk with the Book, the temperature, the atmosphere, the
illumination--all were exactly the same. And if Kuno himself, flesh of
her flesh, stood close beside her at last, what profit was there in
that? She was too well-bred to shake him by the hand.
Averting her eyes, she spoke as follows:
"Here I am. I have had the most terrible journey and greatly retarded
the development of my soul. It is not worth it, Kuno, it is not worth
it. My time is too precious. The sunlight almost touched me, and I have
met with the rudest people. I can only stop a few minutes. Say what
you want to say, and then I must return."
"I have been threatened with Homelessness," said Kuno.
She looked at him now.
"I have been threatened with Homelessness, and I could not tell you
such a thing through the Machine."
Homelessness means death. The victim is exposed to the air, which kills
him.
"I have been outside since I spoke to you last. The tremendous thing
has happened, and they have discovered me."
"But why shouldn't you go outside!" she exclaimed. "It is perfectly
legal, perfectly mechanical, to visit the surface of the earth. I have
lately been to a lecture on the sea; there is no objection to that; one
simply summons a respirator and gets an Egression-permit. It is not the
kind of thing that spiritually-minded people do, and I begged you not
to do it, but there is no legal objection to it."
"I did not get an Egression-permit."
"Then how did you get out?"
"I found out a way of my own."
The phrase conveyed no meaning to her, and he had to repeat it.
"A way of your own?" she whispered. "But that would be wrong."
"Why?"
The question shocked her beyond measure.
"You are beginning to worship the Machine," he said coldly. "You think
it irreligious of me to have found out a way of my own. It was just
what the Committee thought, when they threatened me with Homelessness."
At this she grew angry. "I worship nothing!" she cried. "I am most
advanced. I don't think you irreligious, for there is no such thing as
religion left. All the fear and the superstition that existed once have
been destroyed by the Machine. I only meant that to find out a way of
your own was----Besides, there is no new way out."
"So it is always supposed."
"Except through the vomitories, for which one must have an
Egression-permit, it is impossible to get out. The Book says so."
"Well, the Book's wrong, for I have been out on my feet."
For Kuno was possessed of a certain physical strength.
By these days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant was
examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed.
Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true kindness to
let an athlete live; he would never have been happy in that state of
life to which the Machine had called him; he would have yearned for
trees to climb, rivers to bathe in, meadows and hills against which he
might measure his body. Man must be adapted to his surroundings, must
he not? In the dawn of the world our weakly must be exposed on Mount
Taygetus, in its twilight our strong will suffer euthanasia, that the
Machine may progress, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine
may progress eternally.
"You know that we have lost the sense of space. We say 'space is
annihilated,' but we have annihilated not space, but the sense thereof.
We have lost a part of ourselves. I determined to recover it, and I
began by walking up and down the platform of the railway outside my
room. Up and down, until I was tired, and so did recapture the meaning
of 'Near' and 'Far.' 'Near' is a place to which I can get quickly _on
my feet_, not a place to which the train or the air-ship will take me
quickly. 'Far' is a place to which I cannot get quickly on my feet;
the vomitory is 'far,' though I could be there in thirty-eight seconds
by summoning the train. Man is the measure. That was my first lesson.
Man's feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure
for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and
desirable and strong. Then I went further: it was then that I called to
you for the first time, and you would not come.
"This city, as you know, is built deep beneath the surface of the
earth, with only the vomitories protruding. Having paced the platform
outside my own room, I took the lift to the next platform and paced
that also, and so with each in turn, until I came to the topmost, above
which begins the earth. All the platforms were exactly alike, and all
that I gained by visiting them was to develop my sense of space and
my muscles. I think I should have been content with this--it is not a
little thing--but as I walked and brooded, it occurred to me that our
cities had been built in the days when men still breathed the outer
air, and that there had been ventilation shafts for the workmen. I
could think of nothing but these ventilation shafts. Had they been
destroyed by all the food-tubes and medicine-tubes and music-tubes
that the Machine has evolved lately? Or did traces of them remain? One
thing was certain. If I came upon them anywhere, it would be in the
railway-tunnels of the topmost story. Everywhere else, all space was
accounted for.
"I am telling my story quickly, but don't think that I was not a coward
or that your answers never depressed me. It is not the proper thing, it
is not mechanical, it is not decent to walk along a railway-tunnel.
I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I
feared something far more intangible--doing what was not contemplated
by the Machine. Then I said to myself, 'Man is the measure,' and I
went, and after many visits I found an opening.
"The tunnels, of course, were lighted. Everything is light, artificial
light; darkness is the exception. So when I saw a black gap in the
tiles, I knew that it was an exception, and rejoiced. I put in my
arm--I could put in no more at first--and waved it round and round
in ecstasy. I loosened another tile, and put in my head, and shouted
into the darkness: 'I am coming, I shall do it yet,' and my voice
reverberated down endless passages. I seemed to hear the spirits of
those dead workmen who had returned each evening to the starlight and
to their wives, and all the generations who had lived in the open air
called back to me, 'You will do it yet, you are coming.'"
He paused, and, absurd as he was, his last words moved her. For Kuno
had lately asked to be a father, and his request had been refused by
the Committee. His was not a type that the Machine desired to hand on.
"Then a train passed. It brushed by me, but I thrust my head and arms
into the hole. I had done enough for one day, so I crawled back to the
platform, went down in the lift, and summoned my bed. Ah, what dreams!
And again I called you, and again you refused."
She shook her head and said:
"Don't. Don't talk of these terrible things. You make me miserable. You
are throwing civilisation away."
"But I had got back the sense of space and a man cannot rest then.
I determined to get in at the hole and climb the shaft. And so I
exercised my arms. Day after day I went through ridiculous movements,
until my flesh ached, and I could hang by my hands and hold the pillow
of my bed outstretched for many minutes. Then I summoned a respirator,
and started.
"It was easy at first. The mortar had somehow rotted, and I soon pushed
some more tiles in, and clambered after them into the darkness, and the
spirits of the dead comforted me. I don't know what I mean by that.
I just say what I felt. I felt, for the first time, that a protest