The eternal moment, and other stories
had been lodged against corruption, and that even as the dead were
comforting me, so I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity
existed, and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly
explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed naked, and all these tubes
and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor
will they follow us out, nor do they matter supremely while we are
here. Had I been strong, I would have torn off every garment I had, and
gone out into the outer air unswaddled. But this is not for me, nor
perhaps for my generation. I climbed with my respirator and my hygienic
clothes and my dietetic tabloids! Better thus than not at all.
"There was a ladder, made of some primæval metal. The light from the
railway fell upon its lowest rungs, and I saw that it led straight
upwards out of the rubble at the bottom of the shaft. Perhaps our
ancestors ran up and down it a dozen times daily, in their building. As
I climbed, the rough edges cut through my gloves so that my hands bled.
The light helped me for a little, and then came darkness and, worse
still, silence which pierced my ears like a sword. The Machine hums!
Did you know that? Its hum penetrates our blood, and may even guide our
thoughts. Who knows! I was getting beyond its power. Then I thought:
'This silence means that I am doing wrong.' But I heard voices in the
silence, and again they strengthened me." He laughed. "I had need of
them. The next moment I cracked my head against something."
She sighed.
"I had reached one of those pneumatic stoppers that defend us from
the outer air. You may have noticed them on the air-ship. Pitch dark,
my feet on the rungs of an invisible ladder, my hands cut; I cannot
explain how I lived through this part, but the voices still comforted
me, and I felt for fastenings. The stopper, I suppose, was about eight
feet across. I passed my hand over it as far as I could reach. It was
perfectly smooth. I felt it almost to the centre. Not quite to the
centre, for my arm was too short. Then the voice said: 'Jump. It is
worth it. There may be a handle in the centre, and you may catch hold
of it and so come to us your own way. And if there is no handle, so
that you may fall and are dashed to pieces--it is still worth it: you
will still come to us your own way.' So I jumped. There was a handle,
and----"
He paused. Tears gathered in his mother's eyes. She knew that he was
fated. If he did not die today he would die tomorrow. There was not
room for such a person in the world. And with her pity disgust mingled.
She was ashamed at having borne such a son, she who had always been so
respectable and so full of ideas. Was he really the little boy to whom
she had taught the use of his stops and buttons, and to whom she had
given his first lessons in the Book? The very hair that disfigured his
lip showed that he was reverting to some savage type. On atavism the
Machine can have no mercy.
"There was a handle, and I did catch it. I hung tranced over the
darkness and heard the hum of these workings as the last whisper in
a dying dream. All the things I had cared about and all the people
I had spoken to through tubes appeared infinitely little. Meanwhile
the handle revolved. My weight had set something in motion and I span
slowly, and then----
"I cannot describe it. I was lying with my face to the sunshine. Blood
poured from my nose and ears and I heard a tremendous roaring. The
stopper, with me clinging to it, had simply been blown out of the
earth, and the air that we make down here was escaping through the vent
into the air above. It burst up like a fountain. I crawled back to
it--for the upper air hurts--and, as it were, I took great sips from
the edge. My respirator had flown goodness knows where, my clothes
were torn. I just lay with my lips close to the hole, and I sipped
until the bleeding stopped. You can imagine nothing so curious. This
hollow in the grass--I will speak of it in a minute,--the sun shining
into it, not brilliantly but through marbled clouds,--the peace, the
nonchalance, the sense of space, and, brushing my cheek, the roaring
fountain of our artificial air! Soon I spied my respirator, bobbing
up and down in the current high above my head, and higher still were
many air-ships. But no one ever looks out of air-ships, and in my case
they could not have picked me up. There I was, stranded. The sun shone
a little way down the shaft, and revealed the topmost rung of the
ladder, but it was hopeless trying to reach it. I should either have
been tossed up again by the escape, or else have fallen in, and died. I
could only lie on the grass, sipping and sipping, and from time to time
glancing around me.
"I knew that I was in Wessex, for I had taken care to go to a lecture
on the subject before starting. Wessex lies above the room in which
we are talking now. It was once an important state. Its kings held
all the southern coast from the Andredswald to Cornwall, while the
Wansdyke protected them on the north, running over the high ground. The
lecturer was only concerned with the rise of Wessex, so I do not know
how long it remained an international power, nor would the knowledge
have assisted me. To tell the truth I could do nothing but laugh,
during this part. There was I, with a pneumatic stopper by my side and
a respirator bobbing over my head, imprisoned, all three of us, in a
grass-grown hollow that was edged with fern."
Then he grew grave again.
"Lucky for me that it was a hollow. For the air began to fall back into
it and to fill it as water fills a bowl. I could crawl about. Presently
I stood. I breathed a mixture, in which the air that hurts predominated
whenever I tried to climb the sides. This was not so bad. I had not
lost my tabloids and remained ridiculously cheerful, and as for the
Machine, I forgot about it altogether. My one aim now was to get to
the top, where the ferns were, and to view whatever objects lay beyond.
"I rushed the slope. The new air was still too bitter for me and I came
rolling back, after a momentary vision of something grey. The sun grew
very feeble, and I remembered that he was in Scorpio--I had been to a
lecture on that too. If the sun is in Scorpio and you are in Wessex, it
means that you must be as quick as you can, or it will get too dark.
(This is the first bit of useful information I have ever got from a
lecture, and I expect it will be the last.) It made me try frantically
to breathe the new air, and to advance as far as I dared out of my
pond. The hollow filled so slowly. At times I thought that the fountain
played with less vigour. My respirator seemed to dance nearer the
earth; the roar was decreasing."
He broke off.
"I don't think this is interesting you. The rest will interest you even
less. There are no ideas in it, and I wish that I had not troubled you
to come. We are too different, mother."
She told him to continue.
"It was evening before I climbed the bank. The sun had very nearly
slipped out of the sky by this time, and I could not get a good view.
You, who have just crossed the Roof of the World, will not want to hear
an account of the little hills that I saw--low colourless hills. But to
me they were living and the turf that covered them was a skin, under
which their muscles rippled, and I felt that those hills had called
with incalculable force to men in the past, and that men had loved
them. Now they sleep--perhaps for ever. They commune with humanity in
dreams. Happy the man, happy the woman, who awakes the hills of Wessex.
For though they sleep, they will never die."
His voice rose passionately.
"Cannot you see, cannot all your lecturers see, that it is we who are
dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the
Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it
do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the
sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down
love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and
now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops--but not on our
lines. The Machine proceeds--but not to our goal. We only exist as the
blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work
without us, it would let us die. Oh, I have no remedy--or, at least,
only one--to tell men again and again that I have seen the hills of
Wessex as Ælfrid saw them when he overthrew the Danes.
"So the sun set. I forgot to mention that a belt of mist lay between my
hill and other hills, and that it was the colour of pearl."
He broke off for the second time.
"Go on," said his mother wearily.
He shook his head.
"Go on. Nothing that you say can distress me now. I am hardened."
"I had meant to tell you the rest, but I cannot: I know that I cannot:
good-bye."
Vashti stood irresolute. All her nerves were tingling with his
blasphemies. But she was also inquisitive.
"This is unfair," she complained. "You have called me across the
world to hear your story, and hear it I will. Tell me--as briefly as
possible, for this is a disastrous waste of time--tell me how you
returned to civilisation."
"Oh--that!" he said, starting. "You would like to hear about
civilisation. Certainly. Had I got to where my respirator fell down?"
"No--but I understand everything now. You put on your respirator, and
managed to walk along the surface of the earth to a vomitory, and there
your conduct was reported to the Central Committee."
"By no means."
He passed his hand over his forehead, as if dispelling some strong
impression. Then, resuming his narrative, he warmed to it again.
"My respirator fell about sunset. I had mentioned that the fountain
seemed feebler, had I not."
"Yes."
"About sunset, it let the respirator fall. As I said, I had entirely
forgotten about the Machine, and I paid no great attention at the time,
being occupied with other things. I had my pool of air, into which I
could dip when the outer keenness became intolerable, and which would
possibly remain for days, provided that no wind sprang up to disperse
it. Not until it was too late, did I realize what the stoppage of the
escape implied. You see--the gap in the tunnel had been mended; the
Mending Apparatus; the Mending Apparatus, was after me.
"One other warning I had, but I neglected it. The sky at night was
clearer than it had been in the day, and the moon, which was about
half the sky behind the sun, shone into the dell at moments quite
brightly. I was in my usual place--on the boundary between the two
atmospheres--when I thought I saw something dark move across the
bottom of the dell, and vanish into the shaft. In my folly, I ran down.
I bent over and listened, and I thought I heard a faint scraping noise
in the depths.
"At this--but it was too late--I took alarm. I determined to put on my
respirator and to walk right out of the dell. But my respirator had
gone. I knew exactly where it had fallen--between the stopper and the
aperture--and I could even feel the mark that it had made in the turf.
It had gone, and I realized that something evil was at work, and I had
better escape to the other air, and, if I must die, die running towards
the cloud that had been the colour of a pearl. I never started. Out of
the shaft--it is too horrible. A worm, a long white worm, had crawled
out of the shaft and was gliding over the moonlit grass.
"I screamed. I did everything that I should not have done, I stamped
upon the creature instead of flying from it, and it at once curled
round the ankle. Then we fought. The worm let me run all over the
dell, but edged up my leg as I ran. 'Help!' I cried. (That part is
too awful. It belongs to the part that you will never know.) 'Help!'