Part 11

Probably every one of the passers-by had the same thought: "If I go to help him, I, only one of the many, will he not think that I am guilty of something and that I am therefore anxious to...."

I must confess, I had that thought. But remembering how many times he had proved my real Guardian-angel and how often he had saved me, I stepped towards him and with courage and warm assurance I stretched out my hand and tore off the sheet. S- turned around. The little drills sank quickly into me to the bottom and found something there. Then he lifted his left brow, winked toward the wall where "Mephi" had been hanging a minute ago. The tail of his little smile twinkled even with a certain pleasure which greatly surprised me. But why should I be surprised? A doctor always prefers a temperature of 40°C. and a rash to the slow, languid rise of the temperature during the period of incubation of a disease; it enables him to determine the character of the disease. _Mephi_ broke out today on the walls like a rash. I understood his smile.

In the passage to the underground railway, under our feet on the clean glass of the steps again a white sheet: _Mephi_. And also on the walls of the tunnel and on the benches and on the mirror of the car. (Apparently pasted on in haste as some were hanging on a slant.) Everywhere the same white gruesome rash.

I must confess that the exact meaning of that smile became clear to me only after many days which were overfilled with the strangest and most unexpected events.

The roaring of the wheels, distinct in the general silence, seemed to be the noise of infected streams of blood. Some Number was inadvertently touched on the shoulder and he started so that a package of papers fell out of his hands. To my left another Number was reading a paper, his eyes fixed always on the same line; the paper perceptibly trembled in his hands. I felt that everywhere, in the wheels, in the hands, in the newspapers, even in the eyelashes, the pulse was becoming more and more rapid and I thought it probable that today when I-330 and I should find ourselves _there_, the temperature would rise to 39°, 40°, perhaps 41° and....

At the docks--the same silence filled with the buzzing of an invisible propeller. The lathes were silent as if brooding. Only the cranes were moving almost inaudibly as if on tip-toe, gliding, bending over, picking up with their tentacles the lumps of frozen air and loading the tanks of the _Integral_. We are already preparing the _Integral_ for a trial flight.

"Well, shall we have her up in a week?" This was my question addressed to the Second Builder. His face is like porcelain, painted with sweet blue and tender pink little flowers (eyes and lips), but today those little flowers looked faded and washed-out. We were counting aloud when suddenly I broke off in the midst of a word and stopped, my mouth wide open; above the cupola, above the blue lump lifted by the crane, there was a scarcely noticeable small white square. I felt my whole body trembling--perhaps with laughter. Yes! _I myself heard_ my own laughter. (Did you ever hear your own laughter?)

"No, listen," I said. "Imagine you are in an ancient aeroplane. The altimeter shows 5000 meters. A wing breaks; you are dashing down like.... And on the way you calculate: 'Tomorrow from twelve to two ... from two to six ... and dinner at five!' Would it not be absurd?"

The little blue flowers began to move and bulge out. What if I were made of glass and he could have seen what was going on within me at that moment? If he knew that some three or four hours later....

RECORD TWENTY-SEVEN

No Headings. It Is Impossible!

I was alone in the endless corridors. In those same corridors.... A mute, concrete sky. Water was dripping somewhere upon a stone. The familiar heavy opaque door,--and the subdued noise from behind it.

She said she would come out at sixteen sharp. It was already five minutes, then ten, then fifteen past sixteen. No one appeared. For a second I was my former self, horrified at the thought that the door might open.

"Five minutes more, and if she does not come out...."

Water was dripping somewhere upon a stone. No one about. With melancholy pleasure I felt: "saved," and slowly I turned and walked back along the corridor. The trembling dots of the small lamps on the ceiling became dimmer and dimmer. Suddenly a quick rattle of a door behind me. Quick steps, softly echoing from the ceiling and the walls. It was she, light as a bird, panting somewhat from running.

"I knew you would be here, you would come! I knew you,--you...."

The spears of her eyelashes moved apart to let me in and ... how can I describe what effect that ancient, absurd and wonderful rite has upon me when her lips touch mine? Can I find a formula to express that whirlwind which sweeps out of my soul everything, everything save her? Yes, yes from my _soul_. You may laugh at me if you will.

She made an effort to raise her eyelids and her slow words too came with an effort:

"No. Now we must go."

The door opened. Old, worn steps. An unbearably multicolored noise, whistling and light....

* * * * *

Twenty-four hours have passed since then and everything seems to have settled in me, yet it is most difficult for me to find words for even an approximate description.... It is as though a bomb had exploded in my head.... Open mouths, wings, shouts, leaves, words, stones, all these one after another in a heap....

I remember my first thought was: "Fast--back!" For it was clear to me that while I was waiting there in the corridors, _they_ somehow had blasted and destroyed the Green Wall, and from behind it everything rushed in and splashed over our city which until then had been kept clean of that lower world. I must have said something of this sort to I-330. She laughed.

"No, we have simply come out _beyond the Green Wall_."

Then I opened my eyes, and close to me, actually, I saw those very things which until then not a single living Number had ever seen otherwise than depreciated a thousand times, dimmed and hazy through the cloudy glass of the Wall.

The Sun,--it was no longer our light, evenly diffused over the mirror surface of the pavements; it seemed an accumulation of living fragments, of incessantly oscillating, dizzy spots which blinded the eyes. And the trees! Like candles rising into the very sky, or like spiders which squatted upon the earth, supported by their clumsy paws, or like mute green fountains. And all this was moving, jumping, rustling. Under my feet some strange little ball was crawling.... I stood as though rooted to the ground. I was unable to take a step because under my foot there was not an even plane, but (imagine!), something disgustingly soft, yielding, living, springy, green!...

I was dazed; I was strangled,--yes, strangled; it is the best word to express my state. I stood holding fast with both hands to a swinging branch.

"It is nothing. It is all right. It is natural,--for the first time. It will pass. Courage!"

At I-330's side bouncing dizzily on a green net,--someone's thinnest profile, cut out of paper. No, not "someone's." I recognized him. I remembered. It was the doctor. I understood everything very clearly. I realized that they both caught me beneath the arms and laughingly dragged me forward. My legs twisted and glided.... Terrible noise, cawing, stumps, yelling, branches, tree-trunks, wings, leaves, whistling....

The trees ran apart. A bright clearing. In the clearing, people, or perhaps to be more exact, _beings_. Now comes the most difficult part to describe for _this_ was beyond any bounds of probability. It is clear to me now why I-330 was stubbornly silent about it before; I should not have believed it, should not have believed even her. It is even possible that tomorrow I shall not believe myself, shall not believe my own description in these pages.

In the clearing, around a naked, skull-like rock,--a noisy crowd of three or four hundred ... people. Well, let's call them people. I find it difficult to coin new words. Just as on the stands you recognize in the general accumulation of faces only those which are familiar to you, so at first I recognized only our grayish-blue unifs. But one second later and I saw distinctly and clearly among the unifs dark, red, golden, black, brown and white humans--apparently they were humans. None of them had any clothes on, and their bodies were covered with short, glistening hair, like that which may be seen on the stuffed horse in the Prehistoric Museum. But their females had faces exactly, yes exactly, like the faces of our women: tender, rosy and not overgrown with hair. Also their breasts were free of hair, firm breasts of wonderful geometrical form. As to the males, only a part of their faces were free from hair, like our ancestors', and the organs of reproduction, similar to ours.

All this was so unbelievable, so unexpected, that I stood there quietly (I assert positively that I stood quietly), and looked around. Like a scale: overload one side sufficiently and then you may gently put on the other as much as you will; the arrow will not move.

Suddenly I felt alone. I-330 was no longer with me. I don't know how nor where she disappeared. Around me were only _those_, with their hair glistening like silk in the sunlight. I caught someone's warm, strong, dark shoulder.

"Listen, please, in the name of the Well-Doer, could you tell me where she went? A while, a minute ago she...."

Long-haired, austere eyebrows turned to me.

"Sh ... sh ... silence!" He made a sign with his head towards the centre where there stood the yellow, skull-like stone.

There above the heads of all I saw her. The sun beat straight into my eyes, and because of that she seemed coal-black, standing out on the blue cloth of the sky,--a coal-black silhouette on a blue background. A little higher the clouds were floating. And it seemed that not the clouds but the rock itself, and she herself upon that rock, and the crowd and the clearing,--all were silently floating like a ship, and the earth was light and glided away from under the feet....

"Brothers!" (It was she.) "Brothers, you all know that there inside the Wall, in the City, they are building the _Integral_. And you know also that the day has come for us to destroy that Wall and all other walls, so that the green wind may blow all over the earth, from end to end. But the _Integral_ is going to take these walls up into the heights to the thousands of other worlds which every evening whisper to us with their lights through the black leaves of night...."

Waves and foam and wind were beating the rock:

"Down with the _Integral!_ Down!"

"No, brothers, not 'down'. The _Integral_ must be ours. And it _shall_ be ours. On the day when it first sets sail into the sky, _we_ shall be on board. For the Builder of the _Integral_ is with us. He left the walls, he came with me here in order to be with us. Long live the Builder!"

A second--and I was somewhere above everything. Under me: heads, heads, heads, wide open yelling mouths, arms rising and falling.... There was something strange and intoxicating in it all. I felt myself _above everybody_; I was,--I,--a separate world; I ceased to be the usual item; I became unity....

Again I was below, near the rock, my body happy, shaken and rumpled, as after an embrace of love. Sunlight, voices, and from above--the smile of I-330. A golden-haired woman, her whole body silky-golden and diffusing an odor of different herbs, was near by. She held a cup, apparently made of wood. She drank a little from it with her red lips and then offered the cup to me. I closed my eyes and with avidity I drank the sweet cold prickly sparks, pouring them down on the fire which burned within me.

Soon afterward my blood and the whole world began to circulate a thousand times faster; the earth seemed to be flying, light as down. And within me everything was simple, light and clear. Only then I noticed on the rock the familiar, enormous letters: M E P H I, and for some reason the inscription seemed to me _necessary_. It seemed to be a simple thread binding everything together. A rather rough picture hewn in the rock; this too, seemed comprehensible; it represented a youth with wings and with a transparent body, and in the place ordinarily occupied by the heart,--a blinding, red, blazing coal. Again, I understood that coal, or no, I _felt_ it as I felt without hearing every word of I-330 (she continued to speak from above, from the rock), and I felt that all of them breathed one breath and that they were all ready to fly somewhere like the birds over the Wall.

From behind, from the confusion of breathing bodies,--a loud voice:

"But this is folly!"

It seems to me it was I, yes, I am certain it was I, who then jumped on the rock; from there I saw the sun, heads, a green sea on a blue background, and I cried:

"Yes, yes, precisely. All must become insane; we must become insane as soon as possible! We must; I know it."

I-330 was at my side. Her smile--two dark lines from the angles of her mouth directed upward.... And within me a blazing coal. It was momentary, light, a little painful, beautiful.... And later,--only stray fragments that remained sticking in me....

... Very low and slowly a bird was moving. I saw it was living, like me. It was turning its head now to the right and then to the left like a human being, and its round black eyes screwed themselves into me....

... Then: a human back glistening with fur the color of ancient ivory;--a mosquito crawling on that back, a mosquito with tiny transparent wings. The back twitched to chase the mosquito away; it twitched again....

... And yet another thing: a shadow from the leaves, a woven, net-like shadow. Some lay in that shadow, chewing something, something similar to the legendary food of the ancients, a long yellow fruit and a piece of something dark. They put some of it in my hand, and it seemed droll to me for I did not know whether I might eat it or not....

... And again: a crowd, heads, legs, arms, mouths, faces appearing for a second and disappearing like bursting bubbles. For a second appeared (or perhaps it was only an hallucination?) the transparent, flying wing-ears....

With all my might I pressed the hand of I-330. She turned to me.

"What is the matter?"

"He is here! I thought, I--"

"Who?"

"S-, a second ago, in the crowd."

The ends of the thin coal-black, brows moved to the temples--a smile like a sharp triangle. I could not see clearly why she smiled. How could she smile?

"But you understand, I-330, don't you, you understand what it means if he, or one of them is here?"

"You are funny! How could it ever enter the heads of those within the Wall that we are here? Remember; take yourself. Did you ever think it was possible? They are busy hunting us _there_,--let them! You are delirious!"

Her smile was light and cheerful and I too, was smiling; the earth was drunken, cheerful, light, floating....

RECORD TWENTY-EIGHT

Both of Them Entropy and Energy The Opaque Part of the Body

If your world is similar to the world of the ancients, then you may easily imagine that one day you suddenly come upon a sixth or a seventh continent, upon some Atlantis, and you find there unheard of cities, labyrinths, people flying through the air without the aid of wings or aeros, stones lifted into the air by the power of a gaze,--in brief, imagine that you see things that cannot come to your mind even if you suffer from dream-sickness. That is how I feel now. For you must understand that no one has ever gone beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years' War, as I already have told you.

I know that it is my duty to you, my unknown friends, to give more details about that unsuspected strange world which opened to me yesterday. But for the time being I am unable to return to that subject. Everything is so novel, so novel it is like a rainstorm, and I am not big enough to collect it all. I spread out the folds of my unif, my palms,--and yet pailfuls splash past me and only drops can reach these pages....

At first I heard behind me, behind the door, a loud voice. I recognized her voice, the voice of I-330, tense, metallic--and another one, almost inflexible, like a wooden ruler, the voice of U-. Then the door came open with a crack and both of them shot into the room. _Shot_ is the right word.

I-330 put her hand on the back of my armchair and smiled over her shoulder but only with her teeth, at U-. I should not care to stand before such a smile.

"Listen," she said to me, "this woman seems to have made it her business to guard you from me like a little child. Is it with your permission?"

"But he _is_ a child. Yes! That is why he does not notice that you ... that it is only in order.... That all this is only a foul game! Yes! And it is my duty...."

For a second (in the mirror) the broken, trembling line of brows. I leaped, controlling with difficulty the other self within me, the one with the hairy fists; with difficulty, pushing every word through my teeth, I cried straight into her face, into her very gills:

"Get out of here at once! Out! At once!"

The gills swelled at first into brick-red lumps, then fell and became gray. She opened her mouth to say something but without a word she slammed it shut and went out.

I threw myself towards I-330.

"Never, never will I forgive myself! She dared! You ... but you don't think, do you, that you, that she.... This is all because she wants to register on me but I...."

"Fortunately she will not have time for that now. Besides, even a thousand like her.... I don't care.... I know you will not believe that thousand but only me. For after all that happened yesterday, I am all yours, all, to the very end, as you wanted it. I am in your hands; you can now at any moment...."

"What, 'at any moment?'" (But at once I understood what. My blood rushed to my ears and cheeks.) "Don't speak about that, you must never speak about that! The _other_ I, my former self ... but now...."

"How do I know? Man is like a novel: up to the last page one does not know what the end will be. It would not be worth reading otherwise."

She was stroking my head. I could not see her face but I could tell by her voice that she was looking somewhere very far into the distance; she hooked herself to that cloud which was floating silently, slowly, no one knows where to.

Suddenly she pushed me away with her hand, firmly but tenderly.

"Listen. I came to tell you that perhaps we are now ... our last days.... You know, don't you, that all Auditoriums are to be closed after tonight?"

"Closed?"

"Yes. I passed by and saw that in all Auditoriums preparations are going on: tables; medics all in white...."

"But what does it all mean?"

"I don't know. Nobody knows as yet. That is the worst of it. I only feel the current is on, the spark is jumping, and if not today, then tomorrow.... Yet perhaps they will not have time...."

For a long while I have ceased to understand who are _they_ and who _we_. I do not understand what I want; do I want them to have or not to have enough time? One thing is clear to me: I-330 is now on the very edge, on the very edge, and in one second more....

"But it is folly," I said. "You, versus the United State! It is the same as if you should cover the muzzle of a gun with your hands and expect that way to prevent the shot.... It is absolute folly!"

A smile.

"'We must all go insane,--as soon as possible go insane.' It was yesterday, do you remember?"

Yes, she was right; I had even written it down. Consequently it really took place. In silence I looked into her face. At that moment the dark cross was especially distinct.

"I-, dear, before it is too late.... If you want ... I'll leave everything, I'll forget everything, and we'll go there beyond the Wall, to _them_.... I do not even know who they are...."

She shook her head. Through the dark windows of her eyes I saw within her a flaming oven, sparks, tongues of flame and above them a heap of dry, tarry wood. It was clear to me that it was too late, my words could be of no avail.

She stood up. She would soon leave. Perhaps these were the last days, or the last minutes.... I grasped her hand.

"No, stay a little while longer ... for the sake ... for the sake...."

She slowly lifted my hand towards the light, my hairy paw which I detest. I wanted to withdraw it but she held it tightly.

"Your hand.... You undoubtedly don't know and very few do know, that women from here occasionally used to fall in love with _them_. Probably there are in you a few drops of that blood of the sun and the woods. Perhaps that is why I...."

Silence. It was so strange that because of that silence, because of an emptiness, of nothing, my heart should beat so wildly. I cried.

"Ah, you shall not go yet! You shall not go until you tell me about _them_ ... for you love ... them, and I do not know even who they are, nor where they come from."

"Who are they? The half we have lost. H2 and O, two halves; but in order to get water, H2O, creeks, seas, waterfalls, storms, it is necessary that those two halves be united."

I distinctly remember every movement of hers. I remember she picked up a glass triangle from my table and while talking she pressed its sharp edge against her cheek; a white scar would appear; then it would fill again and become pink and disappear. And it is strange that I cannot remember her words, especially the beginning of the story. I remember only different images and colors. At first, I remember, she told me about the Two Hundred Years' War. Red color.... On the green of the grass, on the dark clay, on the pale blue of the snow,--everywhere red ditches that would not become dry. Then yellow; yellow grass burned by the sun, yellow naked wild-men and wild dogs side by side near swollen cadavers of dogs or perhaps of men. All this, certainly beyond the Walls, for the City was already the victor and it possessed already our present-day petroleum food. And at night ... down from the sky ... heavy black folds. The folds would swing over the woods, the villages,--blackish-red slow columns of smoke. A dull moaning; endless strings of people driven into the City to be saved by force and to be whipped into happiness.

"... You knew almost all this."

"Yes, almost."

"But you did not know and only a few did, that a small part of them remained together and stayed to live beyond the Wall. Being naked, they went into the woods. They learned there from the trees, beasts, birds, flowers and sun. Hair soon grew over their bodies, but under that hair they preserved their warm red blood. With you it was worse; numbers covered your bodies; numbers crawled over you like lice. One ought to strip you of everything, and naked you ought to be driven into the woods. You ought to learn how to tremble with fear, with joy, with wild anger, with cold; you should pray to fire! And we Mephi, we want...."

"Oh, wait a minute! 'Mephi,' what does it mean!"

"Mephi? It is from Mephisto. You remember, there on the rock, the figure of the youth? Or, no. I shall explain it to you in your own language and you will understand better: there are two forces in the world, entropy and energy. One leads into blessed quietude, to happy equilibrium, the other to the destruction of equilibrium, to torturingly perpetual motion. Our, or rather your ancestors, the Christians, worshipped entropy like a God. But we are not Christians, we...."

At that moment a slight whisper was suddenly heard, a knock at the door, and in rushed that flattened man with the forehead low over his eyes, who several times had brought me notes from I-330. He ran straight to us, stopped, panting like an air-pump, and could say not a word, as he must have been running at top speed.

"But tell me! What has happened?" I-330 grasped him by the hand.