Part 10

"I can't bear it," I said, "You are here, near me, yet you seem to be behind an opaque ancient wall; through that wall I hear a rustle and voices; I cannot make out the words, I don't know what is there. I cannot bear it. You seem always to withhold something from me; you have never told me what kind of a place it was where I found myself that day beneath the Ancient House. Where did those corridors lead? Why was the doctor there,--or perhaps all that never happened?"

I-330 put her hands on my shoulders and slowly entered deeply into my eyes.

"You want to know all?"

"Yes, I do."

"And you would not be afraid to follow me anywhere? Wherever I should lead you?"

"Anywhere!"

"All right then. I promise you, after the holiday, if only.... Oh yes, there is your _Integral_. I always forget to ask; will it soon be completed?"

"No. 'If only' what? Again! 'If only' what?"

She, already at the door: "You shall see."

I was again alone. All that she left behind her was a barely perceptible scent, similar to that of a sweet, dry, yellow dust of flowers from behind the Green Wall; also, sunk deeply within me, question marks like small hooks similar to those the ancients used for fishing (_vide_ the Prehistoric Museum).

... Why did she suddenly ask about the _Integral_?

RECORD TWENTY-FOUR

The Limit of the Function Easter To Cross Out Everything

I am like a motor set in motion at a speed of too many revolutions per second, the bearings have become too hot and in one more minute the molten metal will begin to drip and everything will go to the devil. Cold water! Quick! Some logic! I pour pailfuls of it, but my logic merely sizzles on the hot metal and disappears in the air in the form of vapor.

Of course it is clear that in order to establish the true meaning of a function, one must establish its limit. It is also clear that yesterday's "dissolution in the universe" taken to its limit is death. For death is exactly the most complete dissolution of the self in the universe. Hence: L=f(D), love is the function of death.

Yes, exactly, exactly! That is why I am afraid of I-330; I struggle against her, I don't want.... But why is it that within me "I don't want to" and "I want to" stand side by side? That is the chief horror of the matter; I continue to long for that happy death of yesterday. The horror of it is that even now, when I have integrated the logical function, when it becomes evident that the latter contains death hidden in it, nevertheless I long for it with my lips, arms, breast, with every millimeter....

Tomorrow is the Day of Unanimity. She will certainly be there and I shall see her, though from a distance. That distance will be painful to me, for I must be, I am inevitably drawn, close to her, so that her hands, her shoulder, her hair.... I long for even that pain.... Let it come.... Great Well-Doer! How absurd to desire pain! Who is ignorant of the simple fact that pains are negative items which reduce that sum total we call happiness? Consequently ... Well, no "consequently" ... Emptiness.... Nakedness!

_The Same Evening._

Through the glass wall of the house I see a disquieting, windy, feverishly pink, sunset. I move my armchair to avoid that pinkness and turn over these pages, and I find I am forgetting that I write this not for myself but for you unknown people whom I love and pity, for you who still lag centuries behind, below. Let me tell you about the Day of Unanimity, about that Great Day. I think that day for us is what Easter was for the ancients. I remember I used to prepare an hour-calendar the eve of that day; solemnly I would cross out every time the figure of the hour elapsed; nearer by one hour! one hour less to wait!... If I were certain that nobody would discover it, I assure you I should now too, make out such a calendar and carry it with me, and I should watch how many hours remain until tomorrow, when I shall see, at least from a distance....

(I was interrupted. They brought me a new unif from the shop. As is customary, new unifs are given to us for tomorrow's celebration. Steps in the hall, exclamations of joy, noises.)

I shall continue; tomorrow I shall see the same spectacle which we see year after year and which always awakes in us fresh emotions, as though we saw it for the first time: an impressive throng of piously lifted arms. Tomorrow is the day of the yearly election of the Well-Doer. Tomorrow we shall again hand over to our Well-Doer the keys to the impregnable fortress of our happiness. Certainly this in no way resembles the disorderly, unorganized election-days of the ancients, on which (it seems so funny!) they did not even know in advance the result of the election. To build a state on some non-discountable contingencies, to build blindly,--what could be more nonsensical? Yet centuries were required to pass before this was understood!

Needless to say, we in this respect as in all others have no place for contingencies; nothing unexpected can happen. The elections themselves have rather a symbolic meaning. They remind us that we are a united, powerful organism of millions of cells, that--, to use the language of the "gospel" of the ancients, we are a united church. The history of the United State knows not a single case in which upon this solemn day even a solitary voice has dared to violate the magnificent unison.

They say that the ancients used to conduct their elections secretly, stealthily like thieves. Some of our historians assert even that they would come to the electoral celebrations completely masked. Imagine the weird, fantastic spectacle! Night. A plaza. Along the walls the stealthily creeping figures covered with mantles. The red flame of torches dancing in the wind.... Why was such secrecy necessary? It has never been satisfactorily explained. Probably it resulted from the fact that elections were associated with some mystic and superstitious, perhaps even criminal ceremonies. We have nothing to conceal or to be ashamed of; we celebrate our election openly, honestly, in daylight. I see them all vote for the Well-Doer and everybody sees me vote for the Well-Doer. How could it be otherwise, since "all" and "I" are one "we"? How ennobling, sincere, lofty, is this compared with the cowardly, thievish "secrecy" of the ancients! Moreover, how much more expedient! For even admitting for a moment the impossible, that is the outbreak of some dissonance in our customary unity, in that case our unseen Guardians are always right there among us, are they not, to register the Numbers who would fall into error and save them from any further false steps? The United State is theirs, the Numbers'! And besides....

Through the wall to my left a she-number before the mirror-door of the closet; she is hastily unbuttoning her unif. For a second, swiftly--eyes, lips, two sharp, pink ... the curtains fell. Within me instantly awoke all that happened yesterday and now I no longer know what I meant to say by "besides...." I no longer wish to;--I cannot. I want one thing. I want I-330. I want her every minute, every second, to be with me, with no one else. All that I wrote about Unanimity is of no value; it is not what I want; I have a desire to cross it out, to tear it to pieces and throw it away. For I know (be it a sacrilege, yet it is the truth), that a glorious Day is possible only with her and only then when we are side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Without her the Sun of tomorrow will appear to me only as a little circle cut out of a tin sheet, and the sky a sheet of tin painted blue, and I myself ... I snatched the telephone receiver.

"I-330, are you there?"

"Yes, it is I. Why so late?"

"Perhaps not too late yet. I want to ask you ... I want you to be with me tomorrow--dear!"

"Dear" I said in a very low voice. And for some reason a thing I saw this morning at the docks flashed through my mind: just for fun someone put a watch under the hundred-ton sledge-hammer.... A swing, a breath of wind in the face and the silent hundred-ton, knife-like weight on the breakable watch....

A silence. I thought I heard someone's whisper in I-330's room. Then her voice:

"No, I cannot. Of course you understand that I myself.... No, I cannot. 'Why?' You shall see tomorrow."

Night.

RECORD TWENTY-FIVE

The Descent from Heaven The Greatest Catastrophe in History The Known--Is Ended

At the beginning all arose, and the hymn, like a solemn mantle, slowly waved above our heads. Hundreds of tubes of the Musical Tower and millions of human voices. For a second I forgot everything; I forgot that alarming something at which I-330 hinted in connection with today's celebration; I think I even forgot about her. At that moment I was the very same little boy who once wept because of a tiny ink-stain on his unif, which no one else could see. Even if it be so, if nobody sees that I am covered with black, ineffaceable stains, I know it, do I not? I know that there should be no place for a criminal like me among these frank open faces. What if I should rush forward and shout out all at once everything about myself! The end might follow. Let it! At least for a second I would feel myself clear and clean and senseless like that innocent blue sky....

All eyes were directed upward; in the pure morning blue, still moist with the tears of night, a small dark spot appeared. Now it was dark, now bathed in the rays of the sun. It was He, descending to us from the sky, He--the new Jehovah--in an aero, He, as wise and as lovingly cruel as the Jehovah of the ancients. Nearer and nearer, and higher toward him were drawn millions of hearts. Already he saw us. And in my mind with Him I looked over everything from the heights: concentric circles of stands marked with dotted blue lines of unifs,--like circles of a spider-web strewn with microscopic suns (the shining of the badges). And in the centre there soon the wise white spider would occupy his place--the Well-Doer clad in white, the Well-Doer who wisely tangled our hands and feet in the salutary net of happiness.

His magnificent descent from the sky was accomplished. The brassy Hymn came to silence; all sat down. At once I perceived that everything was really a very thin spider-web, the threads of which were stretched tense and trembling, and it seemed that in a moment those threads might break and something improbable....

I half rose and looked around, and I met many lovingly-worried eyes which passed from one face to another. I saw someone lifting his hand and almost imperceptibly waving his fingers--he was making signs to another. The latter replied with a similar finger-sign. And a third.... I understood; they were the Guardians. I understood; they were alarmed by something--the spider-web was stretched and trembling. And within me as if tuned to the same wave-length of a radio, within me there was a corresponding quiver.

On the platform a poet was reciting his pre-electoral ode. I could not hear a single word; I only felt the rhythmic swing of the hexametric pendulum, and with its every motion I felt how nearer and nearer there was approaching some hour set for.... I continued to turn over face after face like pages but I could not find the one, the only one, I was seeking, the one I needed to find at once, as soon as possible, for one more swing of the pendulum and....

It was he, certainly it was he! Below, past the main platform, gliding over the sparkling glass, the ear-wings flapped by, the running body gave a reflection of a double-curved S-, like a noose which was rolling toward some of the intricate passages among the stands. S-, I-330,--there is some thread between them. I have always felt some thread between them. I don't know yet what that thread is but some day I shall untangle it. I planted my gaze on him; he was rushing farther away, behind him that invisible thread.... There he stopped ... there.... I was pierced, twisted together into a knot as if by a lightning-like, many-volted electric discharge; in my row, not more than 40° from me, S- stopped and bowed. I saw I-330 and beside her the smiling, repellent, negro-lipped R-13.

My first thought was to rush to her and cry, "Why with him? Why did you not want...?" But the salutary invisible spider-web bound fast my hands and feet; so, gritting my teeth together I sat stiff as iron, my gaze fixed upon them. A sharp _physical_ pain at my heart. I remember my thought: "if non-physical causes effect physical pain, then it is clear that...."

I regret that I did not come to any conclusion. I remember only that something about "soul" flashed through my mind, a purely nonsensical ancient expression, "His soul fell into his boots" passed through my head. My heart sank. The hexameter came to an end. It was about to start. What "It"?

The five minute pre-election recess established by custom. The custom-established pre-electional silence. But now it was not that pious, really prayer-like silence that it usually was. Now it was as in the ancient days when there were no Accumulating Towers, when the sky, still untamed in those days, would roar from time to time with its "storms." It was like the "lull before the storm" of the ancient days. The air seemed to be made of transparent, vaporized cast-iron. One wanted to breathe with one's mouth wide open. My hearing, intense to painfulness, registered from behind a mouse-like, gnawing, worried whisper. Without lifting my eyes I saw those two, I-330 and R-13, side by side, shoulder to shoulder,--and on my knees my trembling, foreign, hateful, hairy hands....

Everybody was holding a badge with a clock in his hands. One.... Two.... Three.... Five minutes. From the main platform a cast-iron, slow voice:

"Those in favor shall lift their hands."

If only I dared to look straight into his eyes as formerly! Straight and devotedly, and think: "Here I am, my whole self! Take me!" But now I did not dare. I had to make an effort to raise my hand, as if my joints were rusty.

A whisper of millions of hands. Someone's subdued "Ah!" and I felt something was coming, falling heavily, but I could not understand what it was, and I did not have the strength or courage to take a look....

"Those opposed?"...

This was always the most magnificent moment of our celebration: all would remain sitting motionless, joyfully bowing their heads under the salutary yoke of that Number of Numbers. But now, to my horror again I heard a rustle; light as a sigh, yet it was more distinct even than the brass tube of the Hymn. Thus the last sigh in a man's life, around him people with their faces pale and with drops of cold sweat upon their foreheads.... I lifted my eyes and....

It took one hundredth of a second only; I saw thousands of hands arise "opposed" and fall back. I saw the pale cross-marked face of I-330 and her lifted hand. Darkness came upon my eyes.

Another hundredth of a second, silence. Quiet. The pulse. Then, as if at the sign of some mad conductor, from all the stands rattling, shouting, a whirlwind of unifs lifted by the rush, the perplexed figures of the Guardians running to and fro. Someone's heels in the air near my eyes and close to those heels someone's wide-open mouth tearing itself by an inaudible scream. For some reason this picture remains particularly distinct in my memory: thousands of mouths noiselessly yelling as if on the screen of a monstrous cinema. Also as if on a screen, somewhere below at a distance, for a second--O-90, pressed against the wall in a passage, her lips white, defending her abdomen with her crossed arms. She disappeared as if washed away by a wave, or else I simply forgot her because....

This not on the screen any more but within me, within my compressed heart, within the rapidly pulsating temples; over my head, somewhat to the left, R-13 suddenly jumped upon a bench, all sprinkling, red, rabid. In his arms was I-330, pale, her unif torn from shoulder to breast, red blood on white. She firmly held him round the neck, and he with huge leaps from bench to bench, repellent and agile, like a gorilla, was carrying her away upward.

As if it were in a fire of ancient days, everything became red around me. Only one thing in my head: to jump after them, to catch them. At this moment I cannot explain to myself the source of that strength within me, but like a battering-ram I broke through the crowd, over somebody's shoulders, over a bench and I was there in a moment and caught R-13 by the collar:

"Don't you dare! Don't you dare, I say! Immediately--"

Fortunately no one could hear my voice, as everyone was shouting and running.

"Who is it? What is the matter? What--" R-13 turned around; his sprinkling lips were trembling. He apparently thought it was one of the Guardians.

"What? I do not want--I won't allow--Put her down at once!"

But he only sprinkled angrily with his lips, shook his head and ran on. Then I ... I am terribly ashamed to write all this down but I believe I must, so that you, my unknown readers, may make a complete study of my disease.... Then I hit him over the head with all my might. You understand? I hit him. This I remember distinctly. I remember also a feeling of liberation that followed my action, a feeling of lightness in my whole body.

I-330 slid quickly out of his arms.

"Go away!" she shouted to R-, "Don't you see that he--? Go!"

R-13 showed his white negro teeth, sprinkled into my face some word, dived down and disappeared. And I picked up I-330, pressed her firmly to myself and carried her away.

My heart was beating forcibly. It seemed enormous. And with every beat it would splash out such a thundering, such a hot, such a joyful wave! A flash: "Let them, below there, let them toss and rush and yell and fall; what matter if something has fallen, if something has been shattered to dust?-- Little matter! Only to remain this way and carry her, carry and carry...."

_The Same Evening, Twenty-two o'Clock._

I hold my pen with great difficulty. Such an extraordinary fatigue after all the dizzying events of this morning. Is it possible that the strong, salutary, centuries-old walls of the United State have fallen? Is it possible that we are again without a roof over our heads, back in the wild state of freedom like our remote ancestors? Is it possible that we have lost our Well-Doer? "Opposed!" On the Day of Unanimity--opposed! I am ashamed of _them_, painfully, fearfully ashamed.... But who are "they"? And who am I? "They," "We"...? Do I know?

I shall continue.

She was sitting where I had brought her on the uppermost glass bench which was hot from the sun. Her right shoulder and the beginning of the wonderful and incalculable curve were uncovered,--an exceedingly thin serpent of blood. She seemed not to be aware of the blood, or that her breast was uncovered. No, I will say rather: she seemed to see all that and seemed to feel that it was essential to her, that if her unif were buttoned she would have torn it, she would have....

"And tomorrow!" She breathed the words through sparkling white clenched teeth, "Tomorrow, nobody knows what ... do you understand? Neither I nor anyone else knows; it is unknown! Do you realize what a joy it is? Do you realize that all that was certain has come to an end? Now ... things will be new, improbable, unforeseen!"

Below the human waves were still foaming, tossing, roaring, but they seemed to be very far away, and to be growing more and more distant. For she was looking at me. She slowly drew me into herself through the narrow, golden windows of her pupils. We thus remained silent for a long while. And for some reason I recalled how once I watched some queer yellow pupils through the Green Wall, while above the Wall birds were soaring (or was this another time?).

"Listen, if nothing particular happens tomorrow, I shall take you there; do you understand?"

No, I did not understand but I nodded in silence. I was dissolved, I became infinitesimal, a geometrical point....

After all, there is some logic,--a peculiar logic of today, in this state of being a point. A point has more unknowns than any other entity. If a point should start to move, it might become thousands of curves, or hundreds of solids.

I was afraid to budge. What might I have become if I had moved? It seemed to me that everybody like myself was afraid now of even the most minute of motions.

At this moment, for instance, as I sit and write, everyone is sitting hidden in his glass cell, expecting something. I do not hear the buzzing of the elevators, usual at this hour, or laughter or steps, from time to time Numbers pass in couples through the hall, whispering, on tip-toe....

What will happen tomorrow? What will become of me tomorrow?

RECORD TWENTY-SIX

The World Does Exist Rash Forty-one Degrees Centigrade

Morning. Through the ceiling the sky is as usual firm, round, red-cheeked. I think I should have been less surprised had I found above some extraordinary quadrangular sun, or people clad in many-colored dresses made of the skins of animals, or opaque walls of stone. Then the world, _our world_, does still exist? Or is it only inertia? Is the generator already switched out, while the armature is still roaring and revolving;--two more revolutions, or three, and at the fourth will it die away?

Are you familiar with that strange state in which you wake up in the middle of the night, open your eyes into the darkness and then suddenly feel you are lost in the dark; you quickly, quickly begin to feel around, to seek something familiar and solid, a wall, a lamp, a chair? In exactly the same way I felt around, seeking in the Journal of the United State; quickly, quickly--I found this:

"The celebration of the Day of Unanimity, long awaited by all, took place yesterday. The same Well-Doer who so often proved his unshakeable wisdom, was unanimously re-elected for the forty-eighth time. The celebration was clouded by a little confusion, created by the enemies of happiness, who by their action naturally lost the right to be the bricks for the foundation of the renovated United State. It is clear to everybody that to take into consideration their votes would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent, heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in a concert hall."

Oh, great Sage! Is it really true that despite everything we are saved? What objection indeed can one find to this most crystalline syllogism? And further on a few more lines:

"Today at twelve o'clock a joint meeting of the Administrative Bureau, Medical Bureau, and Bureau of Guardians will take place. An important State decree is to be expected shortly."

No, the Walls still stand erect. Here they are! I can feel them. And that strange feeling of being lost somewhere, of not knowing where I am--that feeling is gone. I am not surprised any longer to see the sky blue and the sun round and all the Numbers going to work as usual....

I walked along the avenue with a particularly firm resounding step. It seemed to me that everyone else walked exactly like me. But at the crossing, on turning the corner, I noticed people strangely shying away, going around the corner of a building sidewise, as if a pipe had burst in the wall, as if cold water were spurting like a fountain on the sidewalk and it was impossible to cross it.

Another five or ten steps and I too felt a spurt of cold water that struck me and threw me from the sidewalk; at a height of approximately two meters a quadrangular piece of paper was pasted to the wall and on that sheet of paper,--unintelligible, poisonously green letters:

_MEPHI_

And under the paper,--an S-like curved back and wing-ears shaking with anger or emotion. His right arm lifted as high as possible, his left arm hopelessly stretched out backward like a hurt wing, he was trying to jump high enough to reach the paper and tear it off but he was unable to do so. He was a fraction of an inch too short.