Part 4

R-13 sprinkled his fountain. O- laughed rosily and roundly. I waved my hand: "Well, you may laugh, I don't care." I was busy with something else. I had to find a way of eating up, of crushing down, that square-root of minus one. "Suppose," I offered, "we go to my place and do some arithmetical problems." (The quiet hour of yesterday afternoon came to my memory; perhaps today also....)

O- glanced at R-, then serenely and roundly at me; the soft, endearing color of our pink checks came to her cheeks.

"But today I am.... I have a check to him today." (A glance at R-.) "And tonight he is busy, so that--"

The moist varnished lips whispered good-naturedly: "Half an hour is plenty for us, is it not, O-? I am not a great lover of your problems; let us simply go over to my place and chat."

I was afraid to remain alone with myself, or to be more correct, with that new strange self, who by some curious coincidence bore my number, D-503. So I went with R-. True, he is not precise, not rhythmic, his logic is jocular and turned inside out, yet we are.... Three years ago we both chose our dear, rosy O-. This tied our friendship more firmly together than our school-days did. In R-'s room everything seems like mine; the Tables, the glass of the chairs, the table, the closet, the bed. But as we entered, R- moved one chair out of place, then another,--the room became confused, everything lost the established order and seemed to violate every rule of Euclid's geometry. R- remained the same as before; in Taylor and in mathematics he always lagged at the tail of the class.

We recalled Plappa, how we boys used to paste the whole surface of his glass legs with paper notes expressing our thanks (we all loved Plappa). We recalled our priest (it goes without saying that we were taught not the "law" of ancient religion but the law of the United State). Our priest had a very powerful voice; a real hurricane would come out of the megaphone. And we children would yell the prescribed texts after him with all our lung-power. We recalled how our scapegrace, R-13, used to stuff the priest with chewed paper; every word was thus accompanied by a paper wad shot out. Naturally, R- was punished, for what he did was undoubtedly wrong, but now we laughed heartily;--by we I mean our triangle, R-, O-, and I, I must confess, I too.

"And what if he had been a living one? Like the ancient ones, heh?" We'd have b... b..., a fountain running from the fat bubbling lips. The sun was shining through the ceiling, the sun above, the sun from the sides, its reflection from below. O- on R-13's lap and minute drops of sunlight in O-'s blue eyes. Somehow my heart warmed up. The square-root of minus one became silent and motionless....

"Well, how is your _Integral_? Will you soon hop off to enlighten the inhabitants of the planets? You'd better hurry up, my boy, or we poets will have produced such a devilish lot that even your _Integral_ will be unable to lift the cargo. 'Every day from eight to eleven' ..." R- wagged his head and scratched the back of it. The back of his head is square; it looks like a little valise (I recalled for some reason an ancient painting "In the Cab"). I felt more lively.

"You too are writing for the _Integral_? Tell me about it. What are you writing about? What did you write today, for instance?"

"Today I did not write; today I was busy with something else." "B-b-busy" sprinkled straight into my face.

"What else?"

R- frowned. "What? What? Well, if you insist I'll tell you. I was busy with the Death Sentence. I was putting the Death Sentence into verse. An idiot--and to be frank, one of our poets.... For two years we all lived side by side with him and nothing seemed wrong. Suddenly he went crazy. 'I,' said he, 'am a genius! And I am above the law.' All that sort of nonsense.... But it is not a thing to talk about."

The fat lips hung down. The varnish disappeared from the eyes. He jumped up, turned around and stared through the wall. I looked at his tightly closed little "valise" and thought, "What is he handling in his little valise now?"

A moment of awkward asymmetric silence. I could not see clearly what was the matter but I was certain there was something....

"Fortunately the antediluvian time of those Shakespeares and Dostoyevskis (or what were their names?) is past," I said in a voice deliberately loud.

R- turned his face to me. Words sprinkled and bubbled out of him as before, but I thought I noticed there was no more joyful varnish to his eyes.

"Yes, dear mathematician, fortunately, fortunately. We are the happy arithmetical mean. As you would put it, the integration from zero to infinity, from imbeciles to Shakespeare. Do I put it right?"

I do not know why (it seemed to me absolutely uncalled for) I recalled suddenly the other one, _her_ tone. A thin invisible thread stretched between her and R- (what thread?). The square-root of minus one began to bother me again. I glanced at my badge; sixteen-twenty-five o'clock! They had only thirty-five minutes for the use of the pink check.

"Well, I must go." I kissed O-, shook hands with R- and went to the elevator.

As I crossed the avenue I turned around. Here and there in the huge mass of glass penetrated by sunshine there were grayish-blue squares, the opaque squares of lowered curtains,--the squares of rhythmic, Taylorized happiness. On the seventh floor I found R-13's square. The curtains were already lowered.

Dear O-.... Dear R-.... He also has (I do not know why I write this "also," but I write as it comes from my pen), he too has something which is not entirely clear in him. Yet I, he and O-, we are a triangle; I confess, not an isosceles triangle but a triangle nevertheless. We, to speak in the language of our ancestors (perhaps to you, my planetary readers, this is the more comprehensible language) we are a family. And one feels so good at times, when one is able for a short while, at least, to close oneself within a firm triangle, to close oneself away from anything that....

RECORD NINE

Liturgy Iambus The Cast-Iron Hand

A solemn bright day. On such days one forgets one's weaknesses, inexactitudes, illnesses, and everything is crystalline and imperturbable like our new glass....

The Plaza of the Cube. Sixty-six imposing concentric circles--stands. Sixty-six rows of quiet serene faces. Eyes reflecting the shining of the sky,--or perhaps it is the shining of the United State. Red like blood, are the flowers--the lips of the women. Like soft garlands the faces of the children in the first rows, nearest the place of action. Profound, austere, gothic silence.

To judge by the descriptions which reach us from the ancients, they felt somewhat like this during their "Church services," but they served their nonsensical unknown god; we serve our rational god, whom we most thoroughly know. Their god gave them nothing but eternal, torturing seeking; our god gives us absolute truth, that is, he has rid us of any kind of doubt. Their god did not invent anything cleverer than sacrificing oneself, nobody knows what for; we bring to our god, The United State, a quiet, rational, carefully thought-out sacrifice.

Yes, it was a solemn liturgy for the United State, a reminiscence of the great days, years, of the Two Hundred Years' War,--a magnificent celebration of the victory of _all_ over _one_, of the _sum_ over the individual!

That _one_ stood on the steps of the Cube which was filled with sunlight. A white, no not even white, but already colorless glass face, lips of glass. And only the eyes--thirsty, swallowing, black holes leading into that dreadful world from which he was only a few minutes away. The golden badge with the number already had been taken off. His hands were tied with a red ribbon. (A symbol of ancient custom. The explanation of it is that in the old times when this sort of thing was not done in the name of the United State, the convicted naturally considered that they had the right to resist, hence their hands were usually bound with chains.)

On the top of the Cube, next to the Machine, the motionless, metallic figure of him whom we call the Well-Doer. One could not see his face from below. All one could see was that it was bounded by austere, magnificent, square lines. And his hands.... Did you ever notice how sometimes in a photograph the hands, if they were too near the camera, come out enormous? They then compel your attention, overshadow everything else. Those hands of his, heavy hands, quiet for the time being, were stony hands,--it seemed the knees on which they rested must have had pains to bear their weight.

Suddenly one of those hands rose slowly. A slow cast-iron gesture; obeying the will of the lifted hand, a Number came out on the platform. It was one of the State poets, whose fortunate lot it was to crown our celebration with his verses.

Divine iambic brass verses thundered over the many stands. They dealt with the man, who, his reason lost and lips like glass, stood on the steps and waited for the logical consequences of his own insane deeds.

... A blaze.... Buildings were swaying in those iambic lines, and sprinkling upward their liquified golden substance, they broke and fell. The green trees were scorched, their sap slowly ran out and they remained standing like black crosses, like skeletons. Then appeared Prometheus (that meant _us_).

"... he harnessed fire With machines and steel And fettered chaos with Law...."

The world was renovated; it became like steel,--a sun of steel, trees of steel, men of steel. Suddenly an insane man, "Unchained the fire and set it free," and again the world had perished.... Unfortunately I have a bad memory for poetry, but one thing I am sure of: one could not choose more instructive or more beautiful parables.

Another slow, heavy gesture of the cast-iron hand and another poet appeared on the steps of the Cube. I stood up! Impossible! But ... thick negro lips,--it _was_ he. Why did he not tell me that he was to be invested with such high.... His lips trembled; they were gray. Oh, I certainly understood; to be face to face with the Well-Doer, 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 poison themselves.... And degeneration,' ... etc.... This is true to the point of indecency."

"Indecency?"

"Yes. To let out into the street such a group of bald-headed naked little truths. Only imagine please. Imagine, say, that persistent admirer of mine, S-, well, you know him. Then imagine: if he should discard the deception of clothes and appear in public in his true form ... oh!" She laughed. But I clearly saw her lower, sorrowful triangle; two deep grooves from the nose to the mouth. And for some reason these grooves made me think: that double-curved being, half-hunched, with wing-like ears,--he embraced her? her, such ... Oh!

Naturally, I try now merely to express my abnormal feelings of that moment. Now, as I write, I understand perfectly that all this is as it should be; that he, S-4711, like any other honest Number has a perfect right to the joys of life and that it would be unjust.... But I think the point is quite clear.

I-330 laughed a long, strange laugh. Then she cast a look at me, into me.

"The most curious thing is that I am not in the least afraid of you. You are such a dear, I am sure of it! You would never think of going to the Bureau and reporting that I drink liqueurs and smoke. You will be sick or busy, or I don't know what.... Furthermore, I am sure you will drink this charming poison with me."

What an impertinent, mocking tone! I felt definitely that in a moment I should hate her. (Why in a moment? In fact I hated her all the time.)

I-330 turned over the little glass of green poison straight into her mouth. Then she stood up, and all rosy through the translucent saffron-yellow tissue, she made a few steps and stopped behind my chair.... Suddenly her arms were about my neck ... her lips grew into mine, no, even somewhere much deeper, much more terribly.... I swear all this was very unexpected for me. That is why perhaps ... for I could not (at this moment I see clearly) I could not myself have the desire to....

Unbearably sweet lips. (I suppose it was the taste of the liqueur.) It was as though burning poison were being poured into me, and more and more....