Читать книгу Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 4 - August Nemo, John Dos Passos, Griffith George Chetwynd - Страница 35

The Great Operation

I Forgave Everything

The Collision of Trains

Saved! At the very last moment, when it seemed that there was nothing to hold to, that it was the end!...

It was as if you already ascended the steps towards the threatening machine of the Well-Doer, or as if the great glass Bell with a heavy thud already covered you, and for the last time in life you looked at the blue sky to swallow it with your eyes ... when suddenly, it was only a dream! The sun is pink and cheerful and the wall ... what happiness to be able to touch the cold wall! And the pillow! To delight endlessly in the little cavity formed by your own head in the white pillow!... This is approximately what I felt, when I read the State Journal this morning. It has been all a terrible dream and this dream is over. And I was so feeble, so unfaithful, that I thought of selfish, voluntary death! I am ashamed now to reread the last lines of yesterday. But let them remain as a memory of that incredible might-have-happened, which will not happen! On the front page of the State Journal the following gleamed:

“REJOICE!

“For from now on we are perfect!

“Before today your own creation, engines, were more perfect than you.

“WHY?

“For every spark from a dynamo—is a spark of pure reason; each motion of a piston—a pure syllogism. Is it not true that the same faultless reason is within you?

“The philosophy of the cranes, presses, and pumps is finished and clear like a circle. But is your philosophy less circular? The beauty of a mechanism lies in its immutable, precise rhythm, like that of a pendulum. But have you not become as precise as a pendulum, you who are brought up on the system of Taylor?

“Yes, but there is one difference:

“MECHANISMS HAVE NO FANCY

“Did you ever notice a pump cylinder during its work show upon its face a wide, distant, sensuously-dreaming smile? Did you ever hear cranes restlessly toss about and sigh at night, during the hours designed for rest?

“NO!

“Yet on your faces (you may well blush with shame!), the Guardians have seen more and more frequently those smiles and they have heard your sighs. And (you should hide your eyes for shame!) the historians of the United State all tendered their resignations so as to be relieved from having to record such shameful occurrences.

“It is not your fault; you are ill. And the name of your illness is

“FANCY

“It is a worm that gnaws black wrinkles on one’s forehead. It is a fever that drives one to run farther and farther, albeit ‘farther’ may begin where happiness ends. It is the last barricade on our road to happiness.

“Rejoice! This Barricade Has Been Blasted at Last! The Road is Open!

“The latest discovery of our State science is that there is a centre for fancy,—a miserable little nervous knot in the lower region of the frontal lobe of the brain. A triple treatment of this knot with X-rays will cure you of fancy—

“Forever!

“You are perfect; you are mechanized; the road to hundred per-cent happiness is open! Hasten then all of you, young and old, hasten to undergo the great Operation! Hasten to the auditoriums where the great Operation is being performed! Long live the Great Operation! Long live the United State! Long live the Well-Doer.”

You, had you read all this not in my records which look like an ancient strange novel, had you like me held in your trembling hands the newspaper, smelling of typographic ink ... if you knew as I do, that all this is most certain reality, if not the reality of today, then that of tomorrow,—would you not feel the very things I feel? Would not your head whirl as mine does? Would there not run over your back and arms those strange, sweet, icy needles? Would you not feel that you were a giant, an Atlas?—that if only you stood up and straightened out you would reach the ceiling with your head?

I snatched the telephone receiver.

“I-330. Yes.... Yes. Yes ... 330!” And then, swallowing my own words I shouted, “Are you at home? Yes? Have you read? You are reading now? Is it not, is it not stupendous?”

“Yes....” A long, dark silence. The wires buzzed almost imperceptibly. She was thinking.

“I must see you today without fail. Yes, in my room, after sixteen, without fail!”

Dear ... she is such a dear!... “Without fail!” I was smiling and I could not stop, I felt I should carry that smile with me into the street like a light above my head.

Outside the wind ran over me, whirling, whistling, whipping, but I felt even more cheerful. “All right, go on, go on moaning and groaning! The Walls cannot be torn down.” Flying leaden clouds broke over my head ... well let them! They could not eclipse the sun! We chained it to the zenith like so many Joshuas, sons of Nuns!

At the corner a group of Joshuas, sons of Nuns, were standing with their foreheads pasted to the glass of the wall. Inside, on a dazzling white table already a Number lay. One could see two naked soles diverging from under the sheet in a yellow angle.... White medics bent over his head,—a white hand, a stretched-out hand holding a syringe filled with something....

“And you, what are you waiting for?” I asked nobody in particular, or rather all of them.

“And you?” Someone’s round head turned to me.

“I? Oh, afterward! I must first....” Somewhat confused, I left the place. I really had to see I-330 first. But why first? I could not explain to myself....

The docks. The Integral, bluish like ice, was glistening and sparkling. The engine was caressingly grumbling, repeating some one word, as if it were my word, a familiar one. I bent down and stroked the long, cold tube of the motor. “Dear! What a dear tube! Tomorrow it will come to life, tomorrow for the first time it will tremble with burning, flaming streams in its bowels.”

With what eyes would I have looked at the glass monster had everything remained as it was yesterday? If I knew that tomorrow at twelve I should betray it, yes, betray.... Someone behind cautiously touched my elbow. I turned around. The plate-like, flat face of the Second Builder.

“Do you know already?” he asked.

“What? About the Operation? Yes. How everything, everything ... suddenly....”

“No, not that. The trial flight is put off until day-after-tomorrow,—on account of that Operation. They rushed us for nothing; we hurried....”

“On account of that Operation!” Funny, limited man. He could see no farther than his own platter! If only he knew that but for the Operation tomorrow at twelve he would be locked-up in a glass cage, would be tossing about, trying to climb the walls!

At twelve-thirty when I came into my room I saw U-. She was sitting at my table, firm, straight, bone-like, resting her right cheek on her hand. She must have waited for a long while because when she brusquely rose to meet me there remained on her cheek five white imprints of her fingers.

For a second that terrible morning came back to me; she beside I-330, indignant. But for a second only. All was at once washed off by the sun of today, as it happens sometimes when you enter your room on a bright day and absent-mindedly turn on the light, the bulb shines but it is out of place, droll, unnecessary.

Without hesitation I held out my hand to her; I forgave her everything. She firmly grasped both my hands and pressed them till they hurt. Her cheeks quivering and hanging down like ancient precious ornaments, she said with emotion:

“I was waiting.... I want only one moment.... I only wanted to say ... how happy, how joyous I am for you! You realize of course, that tomorrow or day-after-tomorrow you will be healthy again, as if born anew.”

I noticed my papers on the table; the last two pages of my record of yesterday; they were in the place where I left them the night before. If only she knew what I wrote there! Although I did not care after all. Now it was only history; it was the ridiculously far off distance like an image through a reversed opera-glass.

“Yes,” I said, “a while ago, while passing through the avenue, I saw a man walking ahead of me. His shadow stretched along the pavement and think of it! his shadow was luminous! I think, more than that, I am absolutely certain that tomorrow all shadows will disappear. Not a shadow from any person or any thing! The sun will be shining through everything.”

She, gently and earnestly:

“You are a dreamer! I should not allow my children in school to talk that way.”

She told me something about the children; that they were all led in one herd to the Operation; that it was necessary to bind them afterward with ropes; and that one must love pitilessly, “yes, pitilessly,” and that she thought she might finally decide to....

She smoothed out the grayish-blue fold of the unif that fell between her knees, swiftly pasted her smiles all over me and went out.

Fortunately the sun did not stop today. The sun was running. It was already sixteen o’clock.... I was knocking at the door, my heart was knocking....

“Come in!”

I threw myself upon the floor near her chair, to embrace her limbs, to lift my head upward and look into her eyes, first into one then into the other, and in each of them to see the reflection of myself in wonderful captivity....

There beyond the wall it looked stormy, there the clouds were leaden,—let them be! My head was overcrowded with impetuous words, and I was speaking aloud, and flying with the sun I knew not where.... No, now we know where we are flying; planets were following me, planets sparkling with flame and populated with fiery, singing flowers and mute planets, blue ones where rational stones were unified into one organized society, and planets which like our own earth had reached already the apex of one hundred per-cent happiness.

Suddenly from above:

“And don’t you think that at the apex are, precisely, stones unified into an organized society?” The triangle grew sharper and sharper, darker and darker.

“Happiness ... well?... Desires are tortures, are they not? It is clear therefore, that happiness is where there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. What an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that formerly we would mark happiness with the sign ‘plus’! No, absolute happiness must be marked ‘minus,’—divine minus!”

I remember I stammered unintelligibly:

“Absolute zero!—minus 273° C.”

“Minus 273°—exactly! A somewhat cool temperature. But does it not prove that we are at the summit?”

As before she seemed somehow to speak for me and through me, developing to the end my own thoughts. But there was something so morbid in her tone that I could not refrain ... with an effort I drew out a “No.”

“No,” I said, “You, you are mocking....”

She burst out laughing loudly, too loudly. Swiftly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled and fell over.... Silence.

She stood up, put her hands upon my shoulders and looked into me for a long while. Then she pulled me toward her and everything seemed to have disappeared save her sharp, hot lips....

“Good-bye.”

The words came from afar, from above, and reached me not at once, only after a minute, perhaps two minutes later.

“Why ... why ‘good-bye’?”

“You have been ill, have you not? Because of me you have committed crimes. Has not all this tormented you? And now you have the Operation to look forward to. You will be cured of me. And that means—good-bye.”

“No!” I cried.

A pitilessly sharp black triangle on a white background.

“What? Do you mean that you don’t want happiness?”

My head was breaking into pieces; two logical trains collided and crawled upon each other, rattling and smothering....

“Well, I am waiting. You must choose; the Operation and hundred per-cent happiness, or....”

“I cannot ... without you.... I must not ... without you....” I said, or perhaps I only thought, I am not sure which, but I-330 heard.

“Yes, I know,” she said. Then, her hands still on my shoulders and her eyes not letting my eyes go, “Then ... until tomorrow. Tomorrow at twelve. You remember?”

“No, it was postponed for a day. Day-after-tomorrow!”

“So much the better for us. At twelve, day-after-tomorrow!”

I walked alone in the dusky street. The wind was whirling, carrying, driving me like a piece of paper; fragments of the leaden sky were soaring, soaring—they had to soar through the infinite for another day or two....

Unifs of Numbers were brushing my sides,—yet I was walking alone. It was clear to me that all were saved but that there was no salvation for me. For I do not want salvation....