We
face to face with the hosts of Guardians! Yet one should not allow
oneself to be so upset.
Swift sharp verses like an axe.... They told about an unheard-of
crime, about sacrilegious poems in which the Well-Doer was
called.... But no, I do not dare to repeat....
R-13 was pale when he finished, and looking at no one (I did not
expect such bashfulness of him) he descended and sat down. For
an infinitesimal fraction of a second I saw right beside him
somebody's face--a sharp, black triangle--and instantly I lost it;
my eyes, thousands of eyes, were directed upward toward the Machine.
Then--again the superhuman, cast-iron, gesture of the hand.
Swayed by an unknown wind the criminal moved; one step ... one more,
... then the last step in his life. His face was turned to the sky,
his head thrown backward--he was on his last.-- ... Heavy, stony
like fate, the Well-Doer went around the machine, put his enormous
hand on the lever.... Not a whisper, not a breath around; all eyes
were upon that hand.... What crushing, scorching power one must feel
to be the tool, to be the resultant of hundreds of thousands of
wills! How great his lot!
Another second. The hand moved down, switching in the current. The
lightning-sharp blade of the electric ray.... A faint crack like
a shiver, in the tubes of the Machine.... The prone body, covered
with a light phosphorescent smoke; then suddenly, under the eyes of
all, it began to melt,--to melt, to dissolve with terrible speed.
And then nothing; just a pool of chemically pure water which only a
moment ago was so red and pulsated in his heart....
All this was simple; all of us were familiar with the phenomenon,
dissociation of matter,--yes, the splitting of the atoms of the
human body! Yet every time we witnessed it, it seemed a miracle; it
was a symbol of the superhuman power of the Well-Doer.
Above, in front of Him, the burning faces of the female numbers,
mouths half open from emotion, flowers swaying in the wind.[2]
According to custom, ten women were covering with flowers the
unif of the Well-Doer, which was still wet with spray. With the
magnificent step of a supreme priest He slowly descended, slowly
passed between the rows of stands; and like tender white branches
there rose toward Him the arms of the women; and, millions like
one, our tempestuous cheers! Then cheers in honor of the Guardians,
who all unseen, were present among us.... Who knows, perhaps the
fancy of the ancient man foresaw them centuries ahead, when he
created the gentle and formidable "guardian-angels" assigned to each
one from the day of his birth?
[2] These flowers naturally were brought from the Botanical Museum.
I, personally, am unable to see anything beautiful in flowers, or
in anything else that belongs to the lower kingdom which now exists
only beyond the Green Wall. Only rational and useful things are
beautiful: machines, boots, formulae, food, etc.
Yes, there was in our celebration something of the ancient
religions, something purifying like a storm.... You whose lot it may
be to read this, are you familiar with such emotions? I am sorry for
you if you are not.
RECORD TEN
A Letter
A Manhunt
Hairy I
Yesterday was for me a kind of filter-paper which chemists use for
filtering their solutions (all suspended and superfluous particles
remain on the paper). This morning I went downstairs all purified
and distilled, transparent.
Downstairs in the hall the controller sat at a small table,
constantly looking at her watch and recording the Numbers who were
leaving. Her name is U- ... well, I prefer not to give her Number,
for I fear I may not write kindly about her. Although, as a matter
of fact, she is a very respectable, mature woman. The only thing I
do not like in her is that her cheeks fold down a little like gills
of a fish (although I do not see anything wrong in this appearance).
She scratched with her pen and I saw on the page "D-503"--and
suddenly, splash! an ink-blot. No sooner did I open my mouth to call
her attention to that, than she raised her head and blotted me with
an inky smile. "There is a letter for you. You will receive it,
dear. Yes, yes, you will."
I knew a letter, after she had read it, must go through the Bureau
of the Guardians (I think it is unnecessary to explain in detail
this natural order of things); I would receive it not later than
twelve o'clock. But that tiny smile confused me; the drop of ink
clouded the transparency of the distilled solution. At the dock of
the _Integral_ I could not concentrate; I even made a mistake in my
calculations,--that never happened to me before.
At twelve o'clock, again the rosy-brown fish-gills' smile, and at
last the letter was in my hands. I cannot say why I did not read
it right there, but I put it in my pocket and ran into my room.
I opened it and glanced it over and ... and sat down. It was the
official notification advising me that Number I-330 had had me
assigned to her and that today at twenty-one o'clock, I was to go to
her. Her address was given.
"No! After all that happened! After I showed her frankly my attitude
toward her! Besides, how could she know that I did not go to the
Bureau of the Guardians? She had no way of knowing that I was ill
and could not.... And despite all this...."
A dynamo was whirling and buzzing in my head. Buddha ... yellow
... lilies-of-the-valley ... rosy crescent.... Besides,--besides,
O- wanted to come to see me today! I am sure she would not believe
(how could one believe), that I had absolutely nothing to do with
the matter, that ... I am sure also that we (O- and I) will have
a difficult, foolish and absolutely illogical conversation. No,
anything but that! Let the situation solve itself mechanically; I
shall send her a copy of this official communication.
While I was hastily putting the paper in my pocket, I noticed my
terrible ape-like hand. I remembered how that day during our walk,
she took my hand and looked at it. Is it possible that she really
... that she....
A quarter to twenty-one. A white northern night. Everything was
glass,--greenish. But it was a different kind of glass, not like
ours, not genuine but very breakable,--a thin glass shell and within
that shell things were flying, whirling, buzzing. I should not have
been surprised if suddenly the cupola of the auditorium had risen in
slow, rolling clouds of smoke; or if the ripe moon had sent an inky
smile,--like that one at the little table this morning; or if in all
the houses suddenly all the curtains had been lowered and behind the
curtains....
I felt something peculiar; my ribs were like iron bars that
interfered, decidedly interfered, with my heart, giving it too
little space. I stood at a glass door on which were the golden
letters _I-330_; I-330 sat at the table with her back to me; she was
writing something. I stepped in.
"Here...." I held out the pink check, "... I received the
notification this noon and here I am!"
"How punctual you are! Just a minute please, may I? Sit down. I
shall finish in a minute."
She lowered her eyes to the letter. What had she there, behind her
lowered curtains? What would she say? What would she do in a second?
How to learn it? How to calculate it, since she comes from beyond,
from the wild ancient land of dreams? I looked at her in silence.
My ribs were iron bars. The space for the heart was too small....
When she speaks her face is like a swiftly revolving, glittering
wheel; you cannot see the separate bars. But at that moment the
wheel was motionless. I saw a strange combination: dark eyebrows
running right to the temples--a sharp, mocking triangle; and still
another dark triangle with its apex upward--two deep wrinkles from
the nose to the angles of the mouth. And these two triangles somehow
contradicted each other. They gave the whole face that disagreeable,
irritating X, or cross; a face obliquely marked by a cross.
The wheel started to turn; its bars blurred.
"So you did not go to the Bureau of Guardians after all?"
"I did ... I did not feel well ... I could not."
"Yes? I thought so; something _must_ have prevented you, matters
little what (sharp teeth--a smile). But now you are in my hands. You
remember: 'Any Number who within forty-eight hours fails to report
to the Bureau is considered....'"
My heart banged so forcibly that the iron bars bent. If I were
not sitting ... like a little boy, how stupid! I was caught like
a little boy and stupidly I kept silent. I felt I was in a net;
neither my legs nor my arms....
She stood up and stretched herself lazily. She pressed the button
and the curtains on all four walls fell with a slight rustle. I was
cut off from the rest of the world, alone with her.
She was somewhere behind me, near the closet door. The unif
was rustling, falling. I was listening, _all_ listening. I
remembered,--no, it glistened in my mind for one hundredth of a
second,--I once had to calculate the curve of a street membrane
of a new type. (These membranes are handsomely decorated and are
placed on all the avenues, registering all street conversations for
the Bureau of Guardians.) I remembered a rosy concave, trembling
membrane,--a strange being consisting of one organ only, an ear. I
was at that moment such a membrane.
Now the "click" of the snap-button at her collar, at her breast, and
... lower. The glassy silk rustled over her shoulders and knees,
over the floor. I heard--and this was clearer than actual seeing--I
heard how one foot stepped out of the grayish-blue heap of silk,
then the other.... Soon I'd hear the creak of the bed and ...
The tensely stretched membrane trembled and registered the
silence,--no, the sharp hammer-like blows of the heart against the
iron bars and endless pauses between beats. And I heard, saw, how
she, behind me hesitated for a second, thinking. The door of the
closet.... It slammed; again silk ... silk....
"Well, all right."
I turned around. She was dressed in a saffron-yellow dress of an
ancient style. This was a thousand times worse than if she had not
been dressed at all. Two sharp points, through the thin tissue
glowing with rosiness, two burning embers piercing through ashes;
two tender, round knees....
She was sitting in a low armchair. In front of her on a small square
table, I noticed a bottle filled with something poisonously green
and two small glasses on thin legs. In the corner of her mouth she
had a very thin paper tube; she was ejecting smoke formed by the
burning of that ancient smoking substance whose name I do not now
remember.
The membrane was still vibrating. Within the sledge-hammer was
pounding the red-hot iron bars of my chest. I heard distinctly every
blow of the hammer, and ... what if she too heard it?
But she continued to produce smoke very calmly; calmly she looked at
me; and nonchalantly she flicked ashes on the pink check!
With as much self-control as possible I asked, "If you still feel
that way, why did you have me assigned to you? And why did you make
me come here?"
As if she had not heard at all, she poured some of the green liquid
from the bottle into a small glass and sipped it.
"Wonderful liqueur! Want some?"
Then I understood; alcohol! Like lightning there came to memory what
I saw yesterday: the stony hand of the Well-Doer, the unbearable
blade of the electric ray; there on the Cube, the head thrown
backward, the stretched-out body! I shivered.
"Please listen," I said, "You know, do you not, that any one who
poisons himself with nicotine, more particularly with alcohol, is
severely treated by the United State?"
Dark brows raised high to the temples, the sharp mocking triangle.
"'It is more reasonable to annihilate a few than to allow many to