Читать книгу Wyndham Smith - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 8

CHAPTER SIX

Vinetta knew that what she did next must be at some risk to herself, but it was the path to the sole hope that she had. Nor may the risk at this stage have been very great. She had the advantage of being under no suspicion at all. Her lawless birth (which was no more than a doubt against which the odds were forty-four to one) had long ceased to be questioned, in view of the discretions of recent years. And her own vote had been given in the popular, expected direction. Nor did suspicion readily stir among those who, however intellectually eminent they might be in comparison with their contemporaries, had long ceased to be alert to the possibilities of rebellion in a world where lawless impulses had become as rare as noxious weeds in their glasshouses of husbandry.

Her dread was less that she might be observed to seek conference with Colpeck-4XP than that she might fail to persuade him to what she would.

She knew that the operation which would restore the twentieth-century ego to its barbarous body would be timed for eight a.m., and would involve preparations by which its subjects would be isolated for a previous hour. It was shortly after nine when she returned to her own apartment, after visiting the body of Wyndham Smith. She had chosen a time at which she had known that the routines of her own companions, which were of an absolute regularity, would secure her from observation.

Now she would wait until ten, at which hour the ninety-nine other members of her hundred (and therefore the co-occupants of a single residence) would be engaged at their solitary meals. She was of a disposition to outrage convention, and test the quality of this alien ego, by visiting Colpeck-4XP at a time which would certainly be unobserved, but which would be considered fundamentally indecent by any human being now living, except perhaps herself—she was less than sure of that—and, even more doubtfully, him.

But she would try. And if he should refuse to talk under such conditions, or to be observed during the taking of food, he might, at least, understand that there must be urgent cause for such an intrusion and consent to meet her at a later hour, for which there would still be time. And that decision gave her a clear period of leisure in which to arrange her own thoughts; to face boldly her lawless desires, and the criminalities by which she contemplated their realization; and to order the arguments by which she must endeavour to win this alluringly barbarous stranger who had come into possession of Colpeck body and Colpeck brain to co-operate with her.

And as she thought during the next hour, her mind busy with many arguments and doubts, many speculations and fears, she would have said that she was oppressed by the greatest trouble her life had known, which would be hard to deny, she being faced by the twilight of all her race, and with no more than precarious hope of avoiding the common death. Yet the fact was that she had been waked to a more vivid mood than she had known in the years behind. Life roused itself at the nearness of death, as, in those who deserve its boon, it will ever do. If she had more fear than her life had known till that hour, she had also more active hope. Fear and hope fed from the same dish, on which they equally thrived. She had more fear than when she had voted for her own end, for resignation was gone.

There came a time when her evening meal slid on to the table, as it would ever do at the same hour, by which she knew that the time for which she waited had come.

She must not stay to eat, though the routines of life had become so absolute that she had a puzzled wonder as to what the consequences of such abstention might prove to be. She rose at once from the pneumatic couch on which she had reclined in the relaxation of thought, and made a way to the apartment of Colpeck-4XP which no bolts obstructed, and which was independent of opening doors.

The solidity of matter, which had been an accepted faith of the nineteenth century, had become, in the twentieth, more or less theoretically denied or experimentally refuted, without being recognized for the utter delusion which it was subsequently demonstrated to be.

It was recognized as a mathematical possibility that, as an atom consists of molecules as far apart from one another, and relatively as small, as the planets of the solar system, if each of these molecules should be themselves of no greater density, nor composed of more solid particles, then, if the universe were compressed to an absolute solidity, it might—even on the assumption that the material has objective reality—be compressed into less space than is now occupied by a pin’s head: but this knowledge was incomplete and unapplied.

Vinetta (avoiding the sliding rails by which the food-machines and other services did their silent, punctual work) walked through walls that were opaque to sight, and contained sound, but were no hindrance to her, or to the purple garment she wore. The privacies of the world which Vinetta knew were not secured by bolt or lock, but by an iron rule of routine, which had become stronger than any law.

Now she made a circuitous way through rooms which would be vacant at such an hour, and walked at last, with a quiet face, but a fast-beating heart, into the one she sought.

“Do you mind,” she asked, “if I talk to you now? It is important—to me,” Colpeck-4XP had been sucking mixed fruit-juices through a tube, in small quantities, at the regulation intervals. A plate of some pink substance which, apart from its colour, had the appearance of grated cheese, stood before him to be eaten later. He looked up astonished, perhaps repelled, by this invasion, unprecedented not merely in his individual experiences but in the records of eccentricity or crime during several previous centuries.

“I shouldn’t have come without cause,” she said uncertainly, controlling with difficulty the desire to withdraw from the sight of another human being absorbing drink.

“No,” he agreed dubiously. “I suppose not.” He had ceased to drink. He laid down the glass tubes. Her sense of having outraged both his modesty and her own diminished somewhat with this cessation, though, as his eyes met hers, she could not control a blush such as may not have been observed for three hundred years on a woman’s face.

“I haven’t come to Colpeck-4XP,” she went on, bravely ignoring her burning cheeks, “but to Wyndham Smith.”

That was what she had resolved to and it seemed to have some effect.

“Yes,” he said, though still in that dubious puzzled voice. “There is that. But why have you come?”

“I went to see Colpeck-4XP,” she answered, “an hour ago.”

“You—yes, I see. But why?”

“He will be willing to remain in his present body, if you concur.”

The information was of a nature to cause Wyndham Smith, now that the first shock of traditional unseemliness was over, to forget the circumstances in which they met.

He had been thinking rather sombrely, during the last hour, of the alternatives that lay before him—either to return to a barbarous, bloody world of which he had no recollection now, and of which he could only form a vaguely terrible picture, or to face the utter loneliness of a deserted earth, with no better prospect than solitary death at last, which would end his species with himself—one of these—or else to join the general euthanasia which was the deliberately selected doom of his fellow men.

But the actual choice he had supposed to be even less than that. The accepted rule was that a transferred identity must be adjusted within two days unless both the egos concerned should prefer to continue in their exchanged tenements, and such an occurrence had never been. Was it likely now?

The information she brought gave him a choice which he might not have had, and which might not be easy to make. It was welcome news. But it explained nothing. Before he discussed, he must understand. “Why,” he asked, “did you get him to tell you that?”

“Because it was essential for me to know whether, if I should agree on something with you tonight, I should have to deal with someone else tomorrow.”

Yes. He saw that. That was sense. But what bargain could she wish to make? “To what,” he asked, “do you want me to agree?”

“Before I say that, will you tell me whether you mean to go back to the other life?”

“It sounds the most natural thing to do.”

“History tells us that it was very horrible. Pain. Heat. Cold. Quarrels. Bad food. Diseases. All sorts of muddle and dirt. Even insects under your clothes.”

“We haven’t decided that this life is any good.”

“But that must have been worse in ever so many ways.”

“And yet people wished to live.”

“But you are going to live. You’ve arranged that.”

“Not in a very attractive manner.”

“Then it is just to oblige Colpeck-4XP to come back to that, if he thinks even the twentieth century wouldn’t be so bad? It’s you who’ve done that for him, and then you won’t face it yourself.”

“That’s foolish. He can end his life here, if he will. He’ll be no worse off than he was before. In fact, better. I’ve given him a chance that he wouldn’t have had the initiative to get for himself.”

This was a disconcerting reply. She had hoped something from this argument of justice, knowing that the brain which Wyndham Smith now controlled was of a particular scrupulosity on points for honour. But his reply was difficult to rebut. She had a better hope when he added, “But I haven’t said yet that I won’t let him have his way.”

She said, “There won’t be much pleasure in being the only creature alive, even though the machines go on working, as I suppose they will, more or less”

“I doubt that. No. I don’t see that there will.”

Their eyes met. Prompted by the insurgent ego of twentieth-century barbarism which now controlled it, the brain of Colpeck-4XP became alive to the implication of this amazing interview.

“Suppose,” she said, refusing to withdraw the gaze which he met so disconcertingly, “that you were not quite alone?”

He did not affect to misunderstand. He answered directly, “You could not do that, even if I would agree—if you would dare. You have voted for your own death.”

“But I was the rebel child.”

It was an audacious assertion, even though it might be a true guess. Yet what penalty could it now bear, even though it were believed, even though it should be broadcast to the 4,999,998, who would be shocked by its shameless boast? There can be little for fear or hope, for resentment or retribution, among those who have united to end their race.

After this, there were some minutes of silence. The ego of Wyndham Smith warred with the brain, the acquired character, the traditions of Colpeck-4XP, and the conflict was confused beyond speedy determination or assurance of victory for either side.

Vinetta understood something of this. She judged correctly that to ask too much at this moment might be to get nothing at all, which she must not risk.

But these new sharp emotions of hope and doubt had a fighting quality which would not be still. She asked, “You will not go back?”

He considered this. “No,” he said, with deliberation. “I will stay here. I will see it out. That is, if he agrees.”

“He will agree,” she said confidently. Her voice had a note of victory, of exaltation, such as had not been heard for centuries from a human throat.

With cautious boldness, she pushed forward her lines of attack, asking more, though much less than all. “You will not expose me that I have come here?”

No,” he answered, with the same reluctant-seeming deliberation as before, as though being forced along a path that he feared to tread, “I will not do that.”

“I wish,” she said, “you would eat. Why should you stay for me? It is I, not you, who transgress. The time is short now. You will miss your meal.”

“So,” he answered, “will you.” He added, “I cannot eat while you are here. It is not done.”

She saw, as he said this, that he waged a fight which she must help him to win. She must not forget that he was handicapped with a Colpeck brain, or rather with one that had been trained to value the Colpeck traditions, cautions, and inhibitions.

She said, “There was a time when men ate in each other’s presence.”

“There was a time,” he replied, “as you have reminded me, when insects might crawl upon human flesh.” His hand made a spasmodic shrinking movement as he said this. It was a vile thought for one before whose birth most insects had left the world.

“There was a later time when it became a marriage custom to eat together, though all other men, except young children, would feed apart.”

“But,” he replied, “that custom is long since dead in more decent times. It is left behind.”

She asked, “Where will our customs be in a week’s time? We do well to boast! But there will be one custom that is ended now.”

She reached over. She took his spoon. She ate a mouthful of food. After that, she went with averted eyes. Neither did he look at her. They were both ashamed at what she had done. But she had raised a chaos within his heart that he could not still.