Читать книгу Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 4 - August Nemo, John Dos Passos, Griffith George Chetwynd - Страница 32

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.

“They are coming here,—” panted the air-pump, “with guards.... And with them that what’s-his-name, the hunchback....”

“S-?”

“Yes. They are in the house by this time. They’ll soon be here. Quick, quick!”

“Nonsense, we have time!” I-330 was laughing, cheerful sparks in her eyes. It was either absurd, senseless courage, or else there was something I did not yet understand.

“I-, dear, for the sake of the Well-Doer! You must understand that this....”

“For the sake of the Well-Doer!” The sharp, triangle-smile.

“Well ... well, for my sake, I implore you!”

“Oh, yes, I wanted to talk to you about some other matters.... Well, never mind.... We’ll talk about them tomorrow.”

And cheerfully (yes cheerfully) she nodded to me; the other came out for a second from under his forehead’s awning and nodded also. I was alone.

Quick! To my desk! I opened this manuscript, took the pen so that they should find me at this work which is for the benefit of the United State. Suddenly I felt every hair on my head living, separated, moving: “What if they should read, even one page of these most recently written?”

Motionless I sat at the table but everything around me seemed to be moving, as if the less than microscopic movements of the atoms suddenly were magnified millions of times, and I saw the walls trembling, my pen trembling and the letters swinging and fusing together. “To hide them! But where?” Glass all around. “To burn them?” But they would notice the fire through the corridor and in the neighboring room. Besides I felt unable, I felt too weak, to destroy this torturing and perhaps dearest piece of my own self....

Voices from a distance (from the corridor) and steps. I had only time to snatch a handful of pages and put them under me, and then as if soldered to the armchair, every atom of which was quivering, I remained sitting, while the floor under my feet rolled like the deck of a ship, up and down....

All shrunk together and hidden under the awning of my own forehead like that messenger, I watched them stealthily; they were going from room to room, beginning at the right end of the corridor. Nearer ... nearer.... I saw that some sat in their rooms, torpid like me; others would jump up and open their doors wide,—lucky ones! If only I too, could....

“The Well-Doer is the most perfect fumigation humanity needs, consequently no peristalsis in the organism of the United State could....” I was writing this nonsense, pressing my trembling pen hard, and lower and lower my head bent over the table, and within me some sort of crazy forge.... With my back I was listening ... and I heard the click of the door-knob.... A current of fresh air.... My armchair was dancing a mad dance.... Only then, and even then with difficulty, I tore myself away from the page, turned my head in the direction of the newcomers (how difficult it is to play a foul game!). In front of all was S-, morose, silent, swiftly drilling with his eyes deep shafts within me, within my armchair and within the pages which were twitching in my hands. Then for a second—familiar, everyday faces at the door; one of them separated itself from the rest with its bulging, pinkish-brown gills....

At once I recalled everything that happened in the same room half an hour ago and it was clear to me that they would presently....

All my being was shriveling and pulsating in that fortunately opaque part of my body with which I was covering the manuscript. U- came up to S-, gently plucked his sleeve and said in a low voice:

“This is D-503, the builder of the Integral. You have probably heard of him. He is always like that, at his desk; does not spare himself at all!”

... And I thought!... What a dear, wonderful woman!...

S- slid up to me, bent over my shoulder toward the table. I covered the lines I had written with my elbow but he shouted severely:

“Show us at once what you have there, please!”

Dying with shame, I held out the sheet of paper. He read it over, and I noticed a tiny smile jump out of his eyes, jump down his face and slightly wagging its tail, perch upon the right angle of his mouth....

“Somewhat ambiguous, yet.... Well, you may continue; we shall not disturb you any more.”

He went splashing towards the door as if in a ditch of water. And with every step of his I felt coming back to me my legs, my arms, my fingers,—my soul again distributed itself evenly over my whole body; I breathed....

The last thing: U- lingered in my room to come back to me and say in my very ear in a whisper: “It is lucky for you that I....”

I did not understand. What did she mean by that? The same evening I learned that they led away three Numbers, although nobody speaks out loud about that, or about anything that happened. This ostensible silence is due to the educational influence of the Guardians who are ever present among us. Conversations deal chiefly with the quick fall of the barometer and the forthcoming change in the weather.