Part 15

"Just double the age, and as simple as at sixteen! Listen. Is it possible that it really never occurred to you that _they_ (we do not yet know their names but I am certain you will disclose them to us), that _they_ were interested in you only as the Builder of the _Integral?_ only in order to be able through the use of you--"

"Don't! Don't!" I cried. But it was like protecting yourself with your hands and crying to a bullet: you may still be hearing your own "don't" but the bullet meanwhile has burned you through, and writhing with pain, you are prostrated on the ground.

Yes, yes; the Builder of the _Integral_.... Yes, yes.... At once there came back to me the angry face of U- with twitching, brick-red gills, on that morning when both of them....

I remember now, clearly, how I raised my eyes and laughed. A Socrates-like, bald-headed man was sitting before me; and small drops of sweat dotted the bald surface of his cranium.

How simple, how magnificently trivial everything was! How simple! Almost to the point of being ridiculous. Laughter was choking me and bursting forth in puffs; I covered my mouth with my hand and rushed wildly out....

Steps. Wind. Damp, leaping fragments of lights and faces.... And while running: "No! Only to see her! To see her once more!"

Here again, an empty white page. All I remember is feet; not people, just feet; hundreds of feet, confusedly stamping feet, falling from somewhere on the pavement; a heavy rain of feet.... And some cheerful, daring voice, and a shout that was probably for me: "Hey, hey! Come here! Come along with us!"

Afterward--a deserted square heavily overloaded with tense wind. In the middle of the square a dim, heavy threatening mass--the Machine of the Well-Doer; and a seemingly unexpected image arose within me in response to the sight of the Machine: a snow-white pillow and on the pillow a head thrown back, and half-closed eyes and a sharp, sweet line of teeth.... All this seemed so absurdly, so terribly connected with the Machine. I know _how_ this connection has come about but I do not yet want to see it nor to say it aloud--I don't want to! I do not!

I closed my eyes, sat down on the steps which lead upwards to the Machine. I must have been running for my face was wet. From somewhere very far away cries were coming. But nobody heard them; nobody heard me crying: "Save me from it--save me!"

If only I had a mother as the ancients had,--my mother, _mine_, for whom I should be not the Builder of the _Integral_ and not D-530, not a molecule of the United State but merely a living human piece, a piece of herself, a trampled, smothered, a cast-off piece.... And though I were driving the nails into the cross or being nailed to it (perhaps it is the same), she would hear what no one else could hear; her old grown-together wrinkled lips....

RECORD THIRTY-SEVEN

Infusorian Doomsday Her Room

This morning while we were in the refectory, my neighbor to my left whispered to me in a frightened tone:

"But why don't you eat? Don't you see, they are looking at you!"

I had to pluck up all my strength to show a smile. I felt it--like a crack in my face; I smiled and the borders of the crack drew apart wider and wider; it was quite painful.

What followed was this: no sooner had I lifted the small cube of paste upon my fork, than my fork jerked from my hand and tinkled against the plate, and at once the tables, the walls, the plates, the air even, trembled and rang; and outside too, an enormous, iron, round roar reaching the sky--floating over heads and houses it died away in the distance in small, hardly perceptible circles like those upon water.

I saw faces instantaneously grow faded and bleached; I saw mouths filled with food suddenly motionless and forks hanging in air. Then everything became confused, jumped off the centuries-old tracks, everybody jumped up from his place (without singing the Hymn!) and confusedly, in disorder, hastily finishing chewing, choking, grasping one another.... They were asking: "What? What happened? What?..." And the disorderly fragments of the Machine which was once perfect and great, fell down in all directions,--down the elevators, down the stairs.... Stamping of feet.... Pieces of words like pieces of torn letters carried by the wind....

The same outpour from the neighboring houses. A minute later the avenue seemed like a drop of water under a microscope: the infusoria locked up in the transparent, glass-like drop of water were tossing around, to the sides, up and down.

"Ah!" Some one's triumphant voice. I saw the back of a neck and a finger pointing to the sky. I remember very distinctly a yellow-pinkish nail and under the nail a crescent crawling out as if from under the horizon. The finger was like a compass; all eyes were raised to the sky.

There, running away from an invisible pursuit, masses of cloud were rushing upon each other; and colored by the clouds the aeros of the Guardians, with their tubes like antennae, were floating. And farther to the west--something like.... At first nobody could understand what it was, even I, who knew (unfortunately) more than the others. It was like a great hive of black aeros swarming somewhere at an extraordinary height--they looked like hardly noticeable, swiftly moving points.... Nearer and nearer.... Hoarse, guttural sounds began to reach the earth and finally we saw _birds_ just over our heads! They filled the sky with their sharp, black, descending triangles. The stormy wind drove them down and they began to land on the cupolas, on the roofs, poles and balconies.

"Ah--ah!" and the triumphant back of the neck turned, and I saw that man with the protruding forehead but it seemed that the title, so to speak, was all that was left of him: he seemed to have crawled out from under his forehead and on his face, around the eyes and lips, bunches of rays were growing. Through the noise of the wind and wings and cawing, he cried to me:

"Do you realize? Do you realize! They have blown up the Wall! The Wall has been blown up! Do you _understand_?"

Somewhere in the background, figures with their heads drawn in were hastily rushing by, and into the houses. In the middle of the pavement a mass of those who had been already operated upon; they moved towards the west....

... Hairy bunches of rays around the lips and eyes.... I grasped his hands:

"Tell me. Where is she? Where is I-330? There? Beyond the Wall or...? I must.... Do you hear me? At once.... I cannot...."

"Here!" he shouted in a happy, drunken voice, showing strong yellow teeth, "here in town, and she is acting! Oh, we are doing great work!"

Who are those "we"? Who am I?

There were about fifty around him. Like him, they seemed to have crawled out from under their foreheads. They were loud, cheerful, strong-toothed, swallowing the stormy wind. With their simple, not at all terrible-looking electrocutors (where did they get them?) they started to the west, towards the operated ones, encircling them, keeping parallel to forty-eighth avenue....

Stumbling against the tightly-drawn ropes woven by the wind, I was running to her. What for? I did not know. I was stumbling.... Empty streets.... The city seemed foreign, wild, filled with the ceaseless, triumphant, hubbub of birds. It seemed like the end of the world, _Doomsday_.

Through the glass of the walls in quite a few houses (this cut into my mind) I saw male and female Numbers in shameless embraces--without curtains lowered, without pink checks, in the middle of the day!...

The house--her house; the door ajar. The lobby, the control desk, all was empty. The elevator had stopped in the middle of its shaft. I ran panting up the endless stairs. The corridor. Like the spokes of a wheel figures on the doors dashed past my eyes; 320, 326, 330,--I-330! Through the glass wall everything in her room was seen to be upside down, confused, creased. The table overturned, its legs in the air like a beast. The bed was absurdly placed away from the wall, obliquely. Strewn over the floor--fallen, trodden petals of the pink checks.

I bent over and picked up one, two, three of them; all bore the name D-503. I was on all of them, drops of myself, of my molten, poured-out self. And that was all--that was left....

Somehow I felt they should not lie there on the floor and be trodden upon. I gathered a handful of them, put them on the table and carefully smoothed them out, glanced at them and ... laughed aloud! I never knew it before but now I know, and you too, know, that laughter may be of different colors. It is but a distant echo of an explosion within us; it may be the echo of a holiday, red, blue and golden fireworks, or at times it may represent pieces of human flesh exploded into the air....

I noticed an unfamiliar name on some of the pink checks. I do not remember the figures but I do remember the letter--F. I brushed the stubs from the table to the floor, stepped on them, on myself, stamped on them with my heels,--and went out....

I sat in the corridor on the window-sill in front of her door and waited long and stupidly. An old man appeared. His face was like a pierced, empty bladder with folds; from beneath the puncture something transparent was still slowly dripping. Slowly, vaguely I realized--tears. And only when the old man was quite far off I came to and exclaimed:

"Please ... listen.... Do you know ... Number I-330?"

The old man turned around, waved his hand in despair and stumbled farther away....

I returned home at dusk. On the west side the sky was twitching every second in a pale blue electric convulsion:--a subdued, heavy roar was proceeding from that direction. The roofs were covered with black charred sticks,--birds.

I lay down; and instantly like a heavy beast sleep came and stifled me....

RECORD THIRTY-EIGHT

I Don't Know What Title--Perhaps the Whole Synopsis May Be Called a Cast-off Cigarette-butt.

I awoke. A bright glare painful to look at. I half closed my eyes. My head seemed filled with some caustic blue smoke. Everything was enveloped in fog and through the fog:

"But I did not turn on the light ... then how is it...."

I jumped up. At the table, leaning her chin on her hand and smiling, was I-330, looking at me.

She was at the very table at which I am now writing. Those ten or fifteen minutes are already behind me, cruelly twisted into a very firm spring. Yet it seems to me that the door closed after her only a second ago and that I could still overtake her and grasp her hand,--and that she might laugh out and say....

I-330 was at the table. I rushed towards her.

"You? You! I have been.... I saw your room.... I thought you...." But midway I hurt myself upon the sharp, motionless spears of her eyelashes and I stopped. I remembered: she looked at me in the same way before,--in the _Integral_. It was urgent to tell her everything in one second and in such a way that she should believe--or she would never....

"Listen, I-330, I must.... I must ... everything! No, no, one moment--let me have a glass of water first."

My mouth was as dry as though it were lined with blotting paper. I poured a glass of water but I could not.... I put the glass back upon the table, and with both hands firmly grasped the carafe.

Now I noticed that the blue smoke was from a cigarette. She brought the cigarette to her lips and with avidity she drew in and swallowed the smoke as I did water; then she said:

"Don't. Be silent. Don't you see it matters little? I came anyway. They are waiting for me below.... Do you want these minutes which are our last...?"

Abruptly she threw the cigarette on the floor and bent backwards over the side of the chair to reach the button in the wall (it was quite difficult to do so), and I remember how the chair swayed slightly, how two of its legs were lifted. Then the curtains fell.

She came close to me and embraced me. Her knees, through her dress, were like a slow, gentle, warm, enveloping and permeating poison....

Suddenly (it happens at times) you plunge into sweet, warm sleep--when all at once, as if something pricks you, you tremble and your eyes are again widely open. So it was now; there on the floor in her room were the pink checks stamped with traces of footsteps, one of them bore the letter F. and some figures.... Plus and minus fused within my mind into one lump.... I could not say even now what sort of a feeling it was but I crushed her so that she cried out with pain....

One more minute out of these ten or fifteen; her head thrown back, lying on the bright white pillow, her eyes half closed, a sharp, sweet line of teeth.... And all this reminded me in an irresistible, absurd, torturing way about something forbidden, something not permissible at that moment. More tenderly, more cruelly, I pressed her to myself, more bright grew the blue traces of my fingers....

She said, without opening her eyes (I noticed this), "They say you went to see the Well-Doer yesterday, is it true?"

"Yes."

Then her eyes opened widely and with delight I looked at her and saw that her face grew quickly paler and paler, that it effaced itself, disappearing,--only the eyes remained.

I told her everything. Only for some reason, what I don't know--(no, it is not true, I know the reason) I was silent about one thing: His assertion at the end that they needed me only in order....

Like the image on a photographic plate in a developing fluid, her face gradually reappeared; the cheeks, the white line of teeth, the lips. She stood up and went to the mirror-door of the closet. My mouth was dry again. I poured water but it was revolting to drink it; I put the glass back on the table and asked:

"Did you come to see me because you wanted to inquire...?"

A sharp, mocking triangle of brows drawn to the temples looked at me from the mirror. She turned around to say something but said nothing.

It was not necessary; I knew.

To bid her good-bye, I moved my foreign limbs, struck the chair with them. It fell upside down, dead, like the table in her room. Her lips were cold ... just as cold was once the floor, here, near my bed....

When she left I sat down on the floor, bent over the cigarette-butt....

I cannot write any more--I no longer want to!

RECORD THIRTY-NINE

The End

All this was like the last crystal of salt thrown into a saturated solution; quickly, needle-like crystals began to appear, to grow more substantial and solid. It was clear to me; the decision was made and tomorrow morning _I shall do it_! It amounts to suicide but perhaps then I shall be re-born. For only what is killed can be re-born.

Every second the sky twitched in convulsion there in the west. My head was burning and pulsating inside; I was up all night and I fell asleep only at about seven o'clock in the morning when the darkness of the night was already dispelled and becoming gray and when the roofs crowded with birds became visible....

I woke up; ten o'clock. Evidently the bell did not ring today. On the table--left from yesterday--there stood the glass of water. I gulped the water down with avidity and I ran; I had to do it quickly, as quickly as possible.

The sky was deserted, blue, all eaten up by the storm. Sharp corners of shadows.... Everything seemed to be cut out of blue autumnal air--thin, dangerous to touch; it seemed so brittle, ready to disperse into glass dust. Within me something similar; I ought not to think; it was dangerous to think, for....

And I did not think, perhaps I did not even see properly; I only registered impressions. There on the pavement, thrown from somewhere, branches were strewn; their leaves were green, amber and cherry-red. Above, crossing each other, birds and aeros were tossing about. Here below heads, open mouths, hands waving branches.... All this must have been shouting, buzzing, chirping....

Then--streets empty as if swept by a plague. I remember I stumbled over something disgustingly soft, yielding yet motionless. I bent down--a corpse. It was lying flat, the legs apart. The face.... I recognized the thick negro lips which even now seemed to sprinkle with laughter. His eyes, firmly screwed in, laughed into my face. One second.... I stepped over him and ran. I could no longer.... I had to have everything done as soon as possible, or else I felt I would break, I would break in two like an overloaded sail....

Luckily it was not more than twenty steps away; I already saw the sign with the golden letters: "The Bureau of Guardians." At the door I stopped for a moment to gulp down as much air as I could and stepped in.

Inside, in the corridor stood an endless chain of numbers, holding small sheets of paper and heavy note-books. They moved slowly, advancing a step or two and stopping again. I began to be tossed about along the chain, my head was breaking to pieces; I pulled them by the sleeves, I implored them as a sick man implores to be given something that would even at the price of sharpest pain end everything, forever.

A woman with a belt tightly clasped around her waist over the unif and with two distinctly protruding squatty hemispheres tossing about as if she had eyes on them, chuckled at me:

"He has a belly-ache! Show him to the room second door to the right!"

Everybody laughed, and because of that laughter something rose in my throat; I felt I should either scream or ... or....

Suddenly from behind some one touched my elbow. I turned around. Transparent wing-ears! But they were not pink as usual; they were purplish red; his Adam's apple was tossing about as though ready to tear the covering....

Quickly boring into me: "What are you here for?"

I seized him.

"Quickly! Please! Quickly! ... into your office.... I must tell everything ... right away.... I am glad that you.... It may be terrible that it should be you to whom.... But it is well, it is well...."

He too, knew _her_; this made it even more tormenting for me. But perhaps he too, would tremble when he should hear.... And we would both be killing.... And I would not be alone at that, my supreme second....

The door closed with a slam. I remember a piece of paper was caught beneath the door and it rustled on the floor when the door closed. And then a strange airless silence covered us as if a glass bell were put over us. If only he had uttered a single, most insignificant word, no matter what, I should have told him everything at once. But he was silent. So keyed up that I heard a noise in my ears, I said without looking at him:

"I think I always hated her from the very beginning.... I struggled.... Or, no, no, don't believe me; I could have but I did not want to save myself; I wanted to perish; this was dearer to me than anything else ... and even now, even this minute, when I know already everything.... Do you know that I was summoned to the Well-Doer?"

"Yes, I do."

"But what he told me! Please realize that it was equivalent to ... it was as if some one should remove the floor from under you this minute, and you and all here on the desk, the papers, the ink ... the ink would splash out and cover everything with blots...."

"What else? What further? Hurry up, others are waiting!"

Then stumbling, muttering, I told him everything that is recorded in these pages.... About my real self, and about my hairy self, and about my hands ... yes ... exactly that was the beginning. And how I would not do my duty then, and how I lied to myself, and how she obtained false certificates for me, and how I grew worse and worse, every day, and about the long corridors underground, and there beyond the Wall....

All this I threw out in formless pieces and lumps. I would stutter and fail to find words. The lips double-curved in a smile would prompt me with the word I needed and I would nod gratefully: "Yes, yes!".... Suddenly, what was it? He was talking for me and I only listened and nodded: "Yes, yes," and then, "Yes, exactly so, ... yes, yes...."

I felt cold around my mouth as though it were wet with ether, and I asked with difficulty:

"But how is it.... You could not learn anywhere...."

He smiled a smile growing more and more curved; then:

"But I see that you do want to conceal from me something. For example, you enumerated everything you saw beyond the Wall but you failed to mention one thing. You deny it? But don't you remember that once, just in passing, just for a second you saw me there? Yes, yes _me_!"

Silence.

Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, it became shamelessly clear to me: he--he too--. And all myself, my torment, all that I brought here, crushed by the burden, plucking up my last strength as if performing a great feat, all appeared to me only funny,--like the ancient anecdote about Abraham and Isaac; Abraham all in a cold sweat, with the knife already raised over his son, over himself--and suddenly a voice from above: "Never mind.... I was only joking."

Without taking my eyes from the smile which grew more and more curved, I put my hands on the edge of the desk and slowly, very slowly pushed myself with my chair away from him. Then instantly gathering myself into my own hands, I dashed madly out, past loud voices, past steps and mouths....

I do not remember how I got into one of the public rest-rooms at a station of the Underground Railway. Above, everything was perishing; the greatest civilization, the most rational in human history was crumbling,--but here, by some irony everything remained as before, beautiful. The walls shone; water murmured cosily and like the water,--the unseen, transparent music.... Only think of it! All this is doomed; all this will be covered with grass, some day; only myths will remain....

I moaned aloud. At the same instant I felt someone gently patting my knee. It was from the left; it was my neighbor who occupied a seat on my left,--an enormous forehead, a bald parabola, yellow unintelligible lines of wrinkles on his forehead, those lines about me.

"I understand you. I understand completely," he said. "Yet you must calm yourself. You must. It will return. It will inevitably return. It is only important that everybody should learn of my discovery. You are the first to whom I talk about it. I have calculated that there is no _infinity_! No!"

I looked at him wildly.

"Yes, yes, I tell you so. There is no infinity. If the universe is infinite, then the average density of matter must equal zero, but as it is not zero, we know, consequently the universe is finite; it is spherical in form and the square of its radius--R2--is equal to the average density multiplied by.... The only thing left is to calculate the numerical coefficient and then.... Do you realize what it means? It means that everything is final, everything is simple.... But you, my honored sir, you disturb me, you prevent my finishing my calculations by your yelling!"

I do not know which shattered me more, his discovery, or his positiveness at that apocalyptic hour. I only then noticed that he had a notebook in his hands and a logarithmic dial. I understood then that even if everything was perishing it was my duty (before you, my unknown and beloved) to leave these records in a finished form.

I asked him to give me some paper, and here in the rest-room to the accompaniment of the quiet music, transparent like water, I wrote down these last lines.

I was about to put down a period as the ancients would put a cross over the caves into which they used to throw their dead, when all of a sudden my pencil trembled and fell from between my fingers....

"Listen!" (I pulled my neighbor). "Yes, listen, I say. There where your finite universe ends, what is there? What?"

He had no time to answer. From above, down the steps, stamping....

RECORD FORTY

Facts The Bell I Am Certain

Daylight. It is clear. The barometer--760 mm. It is possible that I, D-503, really wrote these--pages? Is it possible that I ever felt, or imagined I felt all this?