The eternal moment, and other stories
They replied, as before, that the defect would be set right shortly.
"Shortly! At once!" she retorted. "Why should I be worried by imperfect
music? Things are always put right at once. If you do not mend it at
once, I shall complain to the Central Committee."
"No personal complaints are received by the Central Committee," the
Committee of the Mending Apparatus replied.
"Through whom am I to make my complaint, then?"
"Through us."
"I complain then."
"Your complaint shall be forwarded in its turn."
"Have others complained?"
This question was unmechanical, and the Committee of the Mending
Apparatus refused to answer it.
"It is too bad!" she exclaimed to another of her friends. "There never
was such an unfortunate woman as myself. I can never be sure of my
music now. It gets worse and worse each time I summon it."
"I too have my troubles," the friend replied. "Sometimes my ideas are
interrupted by a slight jarring noise."
"What is it?"
"I do not know whether it is inside my head, or inside the wall."
"Complain, in either case."
"I have complained, and my complaint will be forwarded in its turn to
the Central Committee."
Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer. The defects
had not been remedied, but the human tissues in that latter day had
become so subservient, that they readily adapted themselves to every
caprice of the Machine. The sigh at the crisis of the Brisbane symphony
no longer irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody.
The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall, was no longer
resented by her friend. And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so
with the bath water that began to stink, so with the defective rhymes
that the poetry machine had taken to emit. All were bitterly complained
of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten. Things went from
bad to worse unchallenged.
It was otherwise with the failure of the sleeping apparatus. That
was a more serious stoppage. There came a day when over the whole
world--in Sumatra, in Wessex, in the innumerable cities of Courland
and Brazil--the beds, when summoned by their tired owners, failed
to appear. It may seem a ludicrous matter, but from it we may date
the collapse of humanity. The Committee responsible for the failure
was assailed by complainants, whom it referred, as usual, to the
Committee of the Mending Apparatus, who in its turn assured them that
their complaints would be forwarded to the Central Committee. But the
discontent grew, for mankind was not yet sufficiently adaptable to do
without sleeping.
"Some one is meddling with the Machine----" they began.
"Some one is trying to make himself king, to reintroduce the personal
element."
"Punish that man with Homelessness."
"To the rescue! Avenge the Machine! Avenge the Machine!"
"War! Kill the man!"
But the Committee of the Mending Apparatus now came forward, and
allayed the panic with well-chosen words. It confessed that the Mending
Apparatus was itself in need of repair.
The effect of this frank confession was admirable.
"Of course," said a famous lecturer--he of the French Revolution, who
gilded each new decay with splendour--"of course we shall not press our
complaints now. The Mending Apparatus has treated us so well in the
past that we all sympathize with it, and will wait patiently for its
recovery. In its own good time it will resume its duties. Meanwhile let
us do without our beds, our tabloids, our other little wants. Such, I
feel sure, would be the wish of the Machine."
Thousands of miles away his audience applauded. The Machine still
linked them. Under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains, ran
the wires through which they saw and heard, the enormous eyes and ears
that were their heritage, and the hum of many workings clothed their
thoughts in one garment of subserviency. Only the old and the sick
remained ungrateful, for it was rumoured that Euthanasia, too, was out
of order, and that pain had reappeared among men.
It became difficult to read. A blight entered the atmosphere and dulled
its luminosity. At times Vashti could scarcely see across her room. The
air, too, was foul. Loud were the complaints, impotent the remedies,
heroic the tone of the lecturer as he cried: "Courage, courage! What
matter so long as the Machine goes on? To it the darkness and the
light are one." And though things improved again after a time, the old
brilliancy was never recaptured, and humanity never recovered from its
entrance into twilight. There was an hysterical talk of "measures,"
of "provisional dictatorship," and the inhabitants of Sumatra were
asked to familiarize themselves with the workings of the central
power station, the said power station being situated in France. But
for the most part panic reigned, and men spent their strength praying
to their Books, tangible proofs of the Machine's omnipotence. There
were gradations of terror--at times came rumours of hope--the Mending
Apparatus was almost mended--the enemies of the Machine had been got
under--new "nerve-centres" were evolving which would do the work even
more magnificently than before. But there came a day when, without the
slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire
communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as
they understood it, ended.
Vashti was lecturing at the time and her earlier remarks had been
punctuated with applause. As she proceeded the audience became silent,
and at the conclusion there was no sound. Somewhat displeased, she
called to a friend who was a specialist in sympathy. No sound:
doubtless the friend was sleeping. And so with the next friend whom
she tried to summon, and so with the next, until she remembered Kuno's
cryptic remark, "The Machine stops."
The phrase still conveyed nothing. If Eternity was stopping it would of
course be set going shortly.
For example, there was still a little light and air--the atmosphere had
improved a few hours previously. There was still the Book, and while
there was the Book there was security.
Then she broke down, for with the cessation of activity came an
unexpected terror--silence.
She had never known silence, and the coming of it nearly killed
her--it did kill many thousands of people outright. Ever since her
birth she had been surrounded by the steady hum. It was to the ear
what artificial air was to the lungs, and agonizing pains shot across
her head. And scarcely knowing what she did, she stumbled forward and
pressed the unfamiliar button, the one that opened the door of her cell.
Now the door of the cell worked on a simple hinge of its own. It was
not connected with the central power station, dying far away in France.
It opened, rousing immoderate hopes in Vashti, for she thought that the
Machine had been mended. It opened, and she saw the dim tunnel that
curved far away towards freedom. One look, and then she shrank back.
For the tunnel was full of people--she was almost the last in that city
to have taken alarm.
People at any time repelled her, and these were nightmares from her
worst dreams. People were crawling about, people were screaming,
whimpering, gasping for breath, touching each other, vanishing in the
dark, and ever and anon being pushed off the platform on to the live
rail. Some were fighting round the electric bells, trying to summon
trains which could not be summoned. Others were yelling for Euthanasia
or for respirators, or blaspheming the Machine. Others stood at the
doors of their cells fearing, like herself, either to stop in them or
to leave them. And behind all the uproar was silence--the silence which
is the voice of the earth and of the generations who have gone.
No--it was worse than solitude. She closed the door again and sat
down to wait for the end. The disintegration went on, accompanied by
horrible cracks and rumbling. The valves that restrained the Medical
Apparatus must have been weakened, for it ruptured and hung hideously
from the ceiling. The floor heaved and fell and flung her from her
chair. A tube oozed towards her serpent fashion. And at last the final
horror approached--light began to ebb, and she knew that civilisation's
long day was closing.
She whirled round, praying to be saved from this, at any rate, kissing
the Book, pressing button after button. The uproar outside was
increasing, and even penetrated the wall. Slowly the brilliancy of her
cell was dimmed, the reflections faded from her metal switches. Now
she could not see the reading-stand, now not the Book, though she held
it in her hand. Light followed the flight of sound, air was following
light, and the original void returned to the cavern from which it had
been so long excluded. Vashti continued to whirl, like the devotees of
an earlier religion, screaming, praying, striking at the buttons with
bleeding hands.
It was thus that she opened her prison and escaped--escaped in the
spirit: at least so it seems to me, ere my meditation closes. That she
escapes in the body--I cannot perceive that. She struck, by chance, the
switch that released the door, and the rush of foul air on her skin,
the loud throbbing whispers in her ears, told her that she was facing
the tunnel again, and that tremendous platform on which she had seen
men fighting. They were not fighting now. Only the whispers remained,
and the little whimpering groans. They were dying by hundreds out in
the dark.
She burst into tears.
Tears answered her.
They wept for humanity, those two, not for themselves. They could not
bear that this should be the end. Ere silence was completed their
hearts were opened, and they knew what had been important on the earth.
Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible,
man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength
on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the
garments that he had woven. Century after century had he toiled, and
here was his reward. Truly the garment had seemed heavenly at first,
shot with the colours of culture, sewn with the threads of self-denial.
And heavenly it had been so long as it was a garment and no more, so
long as man could shed it at will and live by the essence that is
his soul, and the essence, equally divine, that is his body. The sin
against the body--it was for that they wept in chief; the centuries of
wrong against the muscles and the nerves, and those five portals by
which we can alone apprehend--glozing it over with talk of evolution,
until the body was white pap, the home of ideas as colourless, last
sloshy stirrings of a spirit that had grasped the stars.
"Where are you?" she sobbed.
His voice in the darkness said, "Here."
"Is there any hope, Kuno?"
"None for us."
"Where are you?"
She crawled towards him over the bodies of the dead. His blood spurted
over her hands.
"Quicker," he gasped, "I am dying--but we touch, we talk, not through
the Machine."
He kissed her.
"We have come back to our own. We die, but we have recaptured life,
as it was in Wessex, when Ælfrid overthrew the Danes. We know what
they know outside, they who dwelt in the cloud that is the colour of a
pearl."
"But, Kuno, is it true? Are there still men on the surface of the
earth? Is this--this tunnel, this poisoned darkness--really not the
end?"
He replied:
"I have seen them, spoken to them, loved them. They are hiding in the
mist and the ferns until our civilisation stops. Today they are the
Homeless--tomorrow----"
"Oh, tomorrow--some fool will start the Machine again, tomorrow."
"Never," said Kuno, "never. Humanity has learnt its lesson."
As he spoke, the whole city was broken like a honeycomb. An air-ship
had sailed in through the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It crashed