Part 7

The body of the _Integral_ is almost ready; it is an exquisite, oblong ellipsoid, made of our glass, which is everlasting like gold and flexible like steel. I watched them within, fixing its transverse ribs and its longitudinal stringers; in the stern they were erecting the base of the gigantic motor. Every three seconds the powerful tail of the _Integral_ will eject flame and gasses into the universal space, and the _Integral_ will soar forward and higher,--like a flaming Tamerlane of happiness! I watched how the workers, true to the Taylor system, would bend down, then unbend and turn around swiftly and rhythmically like levers of an enormous engine. In their hands they held glittering glass pipes which emitted bluish streaks of flame; the glass walls were being cut into with flame; with flame there were being welded the angles, the ribs, the bars. I watched the monstrous glass cranes easily rolling over the glass rails; like the workers themselves they would obediently turn, bend down and bring their loads inward into the bowels of the _Integral_. All seemed one, humanized machine and mechanized humans. It was the most magnificent, the most stirring beauty, harmony, music!

Quick! Down! To them, and with them! And I descended and mingled with them, fused with their mass, caught in the rhythm of steel and glass. Their movements were measured, tense and round. Their cheeks were colored with health, their mirror-like foreheads not clouded by the insanity of thinking. I was floating upon a mirror-like sea. I was reposing.... Suddenly one of them turned toward me his care-free face.

"Well, better today?"

"What better?"

"You were not here yesterday. And we thought something serious...." His forehead was shining; a childish and innocent smile.

My blood rushed to my face. No, I could not lie, facing those eyes. I remained silent; I was drowning.... Above, the shiny round white porcelain face appeared in the hatchway.

"Eh! D-503! Come up here! Something is wrong with a frame and brackets here, and ..."

Not waiting until he had finished, I rushed to him, upstairs; I was shamefully saving myself by flight. I had not the power to raise my eyes. I was dazed by the sparkling glass steps under my feet, and with every step I made I felt more and more hopeless. I, a corrupted man, a criminal, was out of place here. No, I shall probably never again be able to fuse myself into this mechanical rhythm, nor to float over this mirror-like, untroubled sea. I am to burn eternally from now on, running from place to place, seeking a nook where I may hide my eyes, eternally, until I.... A spark cold as ice pierced me: "I myself, I matter little, but is it necessary that _she_ also...? I must see that she ..."

I crawled through the hatchway to the deck and stood there; where was I to go now? I did not know what I had come for! I looked aloft. The midday sun exhausted by its march, was fuming dimly. Below was the _Integral_, a gray mass of glass,--dead. The pink blood was drained out! It was clear to me that all this was my imagination and that everything remained as before, yet it was also clear to me that ...

"What is the matter with you, D-503? Are you deaf? I call you and call.... What is the matter with you?" It was the Second Builder yelling directly into my ear; he must have been yelling that way for quite a while.

What was the matter with me? I had lost my rudder, the motor was groaning as before, the aero was quivering and rushing on but it had no rudder. I did not even know where I was rushing, down to the earth or up to the sun, to its flame....

RECORD SIXTEEN

Yellow A Two-dimensional Shadow An Incurable Soul

I have not written for several days, for I don't know how many. All my days are alike. All are of one color,--yellow like dry, overheated sand. Not a patch of shade, not a drop of water, only an infinity of yellow sand. I cannot live without her, but she, since she disappeared that day so mysteriously in the Ancient House....

Since that time I have seen her only once, during the hour for the Walk, two, three, four days ago, I do not remember exactly. All my days are alike. She only passed swiftly by and for a second filled up the yellow, empty world. With her, arm in arm, reaching not higher than her shoulder, were the double-curved S- and the thin papery doctor, and a fourth person whose fingers only I remember well; they streamed out, those fingers, from the sleeve of the unif like a bundle of rays, uncommonly thin, white, long. I-330 raised her hand and waved to me, then she bent toward the one with the ray-like fingers, over the head of S-. I overheard the word _Integral_. All four turned around to look at me,--and then they disappeared in the bluish-gray sea and my road was once more dry and yellow.

That same evening she had a pink check on me. I stood before the switchboard and with hatred and tenderness I implored it to click and soon to show the number I-330. I would jump out into the hall at every sound of the elevator. The door of the latter would open heavily. Pale, tall, blonde and dark they would come out of the elevator, and here and there curtains were falling.... But she was not there. She did not come. And it is quite possible that now, at this minute, as I write these lines, at twenty-two o'clock exactly, with her eyes closed, she is pressing her shoulder against somebody else _in the same way_ and _in the same way_ she may be asking someone: "Do you love me?" Whom? Who is he? That one with ray-like fingers or that thick-lipped, sprinkling R-? Or S-? S-! Why is it that I have heard his steps splashing behind me as though in a ditch all these days? Why has he been following me all these days like a shadow? Ahead of me, to my side, behind me, a grayish-blue, two-dimensional shadow; people cross it, people step on it but it remains nearby, attached to me by unseen ties. Perhaps that tie is I-330. I do not know. Or perhaps they, the Guardians I mean, already know that I ...

If some one should tell you your shadow sees you, sees you all the time, would you understand? All at once peculiar sensations arise in you; your arms seem to belong to someone else, they are in the way. That is how I feel; very frequently now I notice how absurdly I wave my hands without any rhythm. I have an irresistible desire to glance behind me but I am unable to do so, my neck might as well be forged of iron. I flee, I run faster and faster, and even with my back I feel that shadow following me as fast as I can run, and there is no place to hide myself, no place!

At length I reach my room. Alone at last! But here I find another thing, the telephone. I pick up the receiver. "Yes, I-330 please." And again I hear a light noise through the receiver; some one's step in the hall there, passing the door of her room, and--silence.... I drop the receiver. I cannot, cannot bear it any longer, and I run to see her!

This happened yesterday. I ran there and for a whole hour from sixteen to seventeen I wandered near the house in which she lives. Numbers were passing by in rows. Thousands of feet were beating the time like a behemoth with a million legs passing by. I was alone, thrown out by a storm on an uninhabited island, and my eyes were seeking and seeking among the grayish-blue waves. "There soon," I thought, "will appear from somewhere the sharp mocking angles of the brows lifted to the temples, and the dark window-eyes, and there behind them a flaming fireplace and someone's shadow.... And I will rush straight in behind those windows and say to her, 'Thou' (yes, 'thou' without fail), 'Thou knowest I cannot live without thee any longer, then why-- ...?'" But silence reigned.

Suddenly I heard the silence; suddenly I heard the Musical Tower silenced, and I understood! It was after seventeen already; every one had already left. I was alone. It was too late to return home. Around me,--a desert made of glass and bathed with yellow sunshine. I saw, as if in water, the reflection of the walls in the glass smoothness of the street, sparkling walls, hanging upside down. Myself also upside down, hanging absurdly in the glass.

"I must go at once, this very second, to the Medical Bureau or else ... or perhaps _this_ would be best: to remain here, to wait quietly until they see me and come and take me into the Operation Department and put an end to everything at once, redeem everything...." A slight rustle! and the double-curved S- was before me. Without looking I felt his two gray steel-drill eyes bore quickly into me. I plucked up all my strength to show a smile and to say (I had to say something), "I, I must go to the Medical Bureau."

"Who is detaining you? What are you standing here for?"

I was silent, absurdly hanging upside down.

"Follow me," said S- austerely.

I followed obediently, waving my unnecessary, foreign arms. I could not raise my eyes. I walked through a strange world turned upside down, where people had their feet pasted to the ceilings, and where engines stood with their bases upward, and where, still lower, the sky merged in the heavy glass of the pavement. I remember what pained me most was the fact that looking at the world for the last time in my life, I should see it upside down rather than in its natural state; but I could not raise my eyes.

We stopped. Steps. One step ... and I should see the figures of the doctors in their white aprons and the enormous dumb Bell.

With force, with some sort of an inner screw, at length I succeeded in tearing my eyes away from the glass beneath my feet, and I noticed the golden letters, "Medical Bureau." Why did he bring me here rather than to the Operation Department? Why did he spare me?--about this I did not even think at that moment. I made one jump over all the steps, firmly closed the door behind me and took a very deep breath, as if I had not breathed since morning and as if my heart had not beaten for the same length of time, as if only now I started to breathe and only now there opened a sluice in my chest....

Inside there were two of them, one a short specimen with heavy legs, his eyes like the horns of a bull tossing the patients up, the other extremely thin with lips like sparkling scissors, a nose like a blade--it was the same man who ... I ran to him as to a dear friend, straight over close to the blade, and muttered something about insomnia, dreams, shadows, yellow sand. The scissors-lips sparkled and smiled.

"Yes, it _is_ too bad. Apparently a soul has formed in you."

A soul?--that strange ancient word that was forgotten long ago....

"Is it ... v-very dangerous?" I stuttered.

"Incurable," was the cut of the scissors.

"But more specifically, what is it? Somehow I cannot imagine--"

"You see ... how shall I put it? Are you a mathematician?"

"Yes."

"Then you see ... imagine a plane, let us say this mirror. You and I are on its surface. You see? there we are, squinting our eyes to protect ourselves from the sunlight, or here is the bluish electric spark in that tube, there the shadow of that aero that just passed. All this is on the surface, is momentary only. Now imagine this very same surface softened by a flame so that nothing can any longer glide over it, so everything instead will penetrate into that mirror world which excites such curiosity in children. I assure you, children are not so foolish as we think they are! The surface becomes a volume, a body, a world; and inside the mirror,--within you, there is the sunshine, and the whirlwind caused by the aero propeller, and your trembling lips and someone else's lips also. You see, the cold mirror reflects, throws out, while this one absorbs; it keeps forever a trace of everything that touches it. Once you saw an imperceptible wrinkle on some one's face, and this wrinkle is forever preserved within you; you may happen to hear in the silence a drop of water falling,--and you will hear it forever!"

"Yes, yes, that is it!" I grasped his hand. I could hear drops of water dripping in the silence from the faucet of a washstand and at once I knew it was forever.

"But tell me please, why suddenly ... suddenly a soul? There was none, yet suddenly.... Why is it that no one has it, yet I...." I pressed the thin hand; I was afraid to loosen the safety belt.

"Why? Well, why don't we grow feathers or wings, but only shoulder blades, bases for wings? We have aeros; wings would only be in the way. Wings are needed in order to fly, but we don't need to fly anywhere. We have arrived at the terminus. We have found what we wanted. Is that not so?"

I nodded vaguely. He glanced at me and laughed a scalpel-like metallic laugh. The other doctor overheard us and stamped out of his room on his heavy legs. He picked up the thin doctor with his horn-eyes, then picked me up.

"What is the matter, a soul? You say a soul? Oh, damn it! We may soon retrogress even to the cholera epidemics. I told you," he tossed the thin one on the horns, "I told you the only thing to do is to operate on them all, wholesale! simply extirpate the centre for fancy. Only surgery can help here, only surgery." He put on a pair of enormous X-ray spectacles and remained thus for a long while, looking into my skull, through the bones into my brain and making notes.

"Very, very curious! Listen." He looked firmly into my eyes. "Would you not consent to have me perform an extirpation on you? It would be invaluable to the United State; it might help us to prevent an epidemic. If you have no special reasons, of course...."

Some time ago I should probably have said without hesitation, "I am willing," but now,--I was silent. I caught the profile of the thin doctor; I implored him!

"You see," he said at last, "Number D-530 is building the _Integral_ and I am sure the operation would interfere...."

"Ah-h!" grumbled the other and stamped back into his room.

We remained alone. The paper-like hand was put lightly and caressingly upon mine, the profile-like face came nearer and he said in a very low voice: "I shall tell you a secret. You are not the only one. My colleague is right when he speaks of an epidemic. Try to remember, have you not noticed yourself, some one with something similar, very similar, identical?"

He looked at me closely. What was he alluding to? To whom?... Is it possible?...

"Listen," I jumped up from my seat. But he had already changed the subject. In a loud metallic tone:

"... As to the insomnia and for the dreams you complain of, I advise you to walk a great deal. Tomorrow morning you must begin taking long walks ... say as far as the Ancient House."

Again he pierced me with his eyes and he smiled thinly. It seemed to me that I saw enveloped in the tender tissue of that smile a word, a letter, a name, the only name.... Or was it only my imagination? I waited impatiently while he wrote a certificate of illness for today and tomorrow. Once more I gently and firmly pressed his hand, then I ran out.

My heart now feels light and swift like an aero; it carries me higher and higher.... I know joy will come tomorrow. What joy?...

RECORD SEVENTEEN

Through Glass I Died The Corridor

I am puzzled. Yesterday, at the very moment when I thought everything was untangled, and that all the X's were at last found, new unknowns appeared in my equation. The origin of the coordinates of the whole story is of course the Ancient Home. From this centre the axes of all the X's, Y's, and Z's radiate, and recently they have entered into the formation of my whole life.

I walked along the X-axis (Avenue 59) towards the centre. The whirlwind of yesterday still raged within me; houses and people upside down; my own hands torturingly foreign to me; glimmering scissors; the sharp sound of drops dripping from the faucet;--all this existed, all this _existed_ once! All these things were revolving wildly, tearing my flesh, rotating wildly beneath the molten surface, there where the "soul" is located.

In order to follow the instructions of the doctor I chose the road which followed not the hypotenuse but the two legs of a triangle. Soon I reached the road running along the Green Wall. From beyond the Wall, from the infinite ocean of green there rose toward me an immense wave of roots, branches, flowers, leaves. It rose higher and higher; it seemed as though it would splash over me and that from a man, from the finest and most precise mechanism which I am, I would be transformed into.... But fortunately there was the Green Wall between me and that wild green sea. Oh, how great and divinely limiting is the wisdom of walls and bars! This Green Wall is I think the greatest invention ever conceived. Man ceased to be a wild animal the day he built the first wall; man ceased to be a wild man only on the day when the Green Wall was completed, when by this wall we isolated our machine-like, perfect world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds and beasts....

The blunt snout of some unknown beast was to be seen dimly through the glass of the Wall; its yellow eyes kept repeating the same thought which remained incomprehensible to me. We looked into each other's eyes for a long while. Eyes are shafts which lead from the superficial world into a world which is beneath the surface. A thought awoke in me: "what if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there on that absurd dirty heap of leaves, is happier than I, in his life which cannot be calculated in figures!" I waved my hand. The yellow eyes twinkled, moved back and disappeared in the foliage. What a pitiful being! How absurd the idea that he might be happier! Happier than _I_ he may be, but I am an exception, am I not? I am sick.

I noticed that I was approaching the dark red walls of the Ancient House and I saw the grown-together lips of the old woman. I ran to her with all speed.

"Is she here?"

The grown-together lips opened slowly:

"Who is 'she'?"

"Who? I-330, of course. You remember we came together, she and I, in an aero the other day."

"Oh, yes, yes, yes,--yes."

Ray-wrinkles around the lips, artful rays radiating from the eyes. They were making their way deeper and deeper into me.

"Well, she is here, all right. Came in a while ago."

"Here!" I noticed at the feet of the old woman a bush of silver,--bitter wormwood. (The court of the Ancient House, being a part of the museum is carefully kept in its prehistoric state.) A branch of the bush touched the old woman, she caressed that branch; upon her knees lay stripes of sunshine. For a second I myself, the sun, the old woman, the wormwood, those yellow eyes, all seemed to be one; we were firmly united by common veins and one common blood, boisterous, magnificent blood, was running through those veins.

I am ashamed now to write down all this, but I promised to be frank to the end of these records: yes, I bent over and kissed that soft, grown-together mouth of the old woman. She wiped it with her hand and laughed.

Running, I passed through familiar, half-dark, echoing rooms, and for some reason I ran straight to the bedroom. When I had reached the door, a thought flashed: "And if she is there ... not alone?" I stopped and listened. But all I heard was the tick-tock of my heart, not within me, but somewhere near, outside me.

I entered. The large bed,--untouched. A mirror ... another mirror in the door of the cupboard, and in the keyhole an ancient key upon an ancient ring. No one was there. I called softly: "I-330, are you here?"--and then in a still lower voice with closed eyes, holding my breath,--in a voice as though I were kneeling before her, "I-, dear." Silence. Only the water was dripping fast into the white basin of the washstand. I cannot now explain why, but I disliked that sound. I turned the faucet hard and went out. She was not there, so much was clear. She must be in another "apartment."

I ran down a wide, sombre stairway, pulled one door, another, a third,--locked. Every room was locked save that of "our" apartment. And she was not there. I went back again to the same apartment without knowing why. I walked slowly, with difficulty; my shoe-soles suddenly became as heavy as cast-iron. I remember distinctly my thought, "It is a mistake that the force of gravity is a constant; consequently all my formulae...."

Suddenly--an explosion! A door slammed down below; some one stamped quickly over the flagstones. I again became lightfooted, extremely light! I dashed to the railing to bend over, and in one word, one exclamation, expressed everything: "You!"

I became cold. Below in the square shadow of the window-frame, flapping its pink wing-ears, the head of S- passed by!

Like lightning I saw only the naked conclusion. Without any premises (I don't recall any premises even now) the conclusion: he must not see me here! And on the tips of my toes, pressing myself against the wall, I sneaked upstairs into the unlocked apartment.

I stopped for a second at the door. He was stamping upward, here. If only the door.... I prayed to the door but it was a wooden one,--It squeaked, it squealed. Like a wind something red passed my eyes, something green, and the yellow Buddha. In front of the mirror-door of the cupboard, my pale face; my ears still following those steps, my lips.... Now _he_ was already passing the green and yellow, now he was passing Buddha, now at the doorsill of the bedroom....

I grasped the key of the cupboard; the ring oscillated. This oscillation reminded me of something. Again a conclusion, a naked conclusion without premises; a conclusion, or to be more exact, a fragment of one: "Now I-330 is...." I brusquely opened the cupboard and when inside in the darkness shut the door firmly. One step! The floor shook under my feet. Slowly and softly I floated somewhere downward; my eyes were dimmed,--I died!