The Bell
The Mirror-Like Sea
I Am To Burn Eternally
I was walking upon the dock where the _Integral_ is being built,
when the Second Builder came to meet me. His face as usual was round
and white,--a porcelain plate. When he speaks it seems as though he
serves you a plate of something unbearably tasty.
"You chose to be ill, and without the Chief we had an accident, as
it were, yesterday."
"An accident?"
"Yes, sir. We finished the bell and started to let it down, and
imagine! the men caught a male without a number. How he got in, I
cannot make out. They took him to the Operation Department. Oh,
they'll draw the mystery out of the fellow there; 'why' and 'how,'
etc...." He smiled delightedly.
Our best and most experienced physicians work in the Operation
Department under the direct supervision of the Well-Doer himself.
They have all kinds of instruments, but the best of all is the
Gas Bell. The procedure is taken from an ancient experiment of
elementary physics: they used to put a rat under a gas bell and
gradually pump out the air; the air becomes more and more rarified,
and ... you know the rest.
But our Gas Bell is certainly a more perfect apparatus and it is
used in combination with different gasses. Furthermore, we don't
torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did; we use it for a
higher purpose: to guard the security of the United State, in other
words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries ago when the
work of the Operation Department was only beginning, there were
yet to be found some fools who compared our Operation Department
with the ancient Inquisition. But this is as absurd as to compare
a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cut-throat. Both
use a knife, perhaps the same kind of a knife, both do the same
thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man, yet one is a well-doer,
the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus....
All this becomes perfectly clear in one second, in one turn of our
logical wheel, the teeth of which engage that _minus_, turn it
upward and thus change its aspect. That other matter is somewhat
different; the ring in the door was still oscillating, apparently
the door had just closed, yet she, I-330, had disappeared; she was
not there! The logical wheel could not turn this fact. A dream? But
even now I feel still in my right shoulder that incomprehensible
sweet pain of I-330 near me in the fog, pressing herself against me.
"Thou lovest fog?" Yes, I love the fog too. I love everything and
everything appears to me wonderful, new, tense; everything is so
good!...
"So good," I said aloud.
"Good?" The porcelain eyes bulged out. "What good do you find in
that? If that man without a number contrived to sneak in, it means
that there are others around here, everywhere, all the time, here
around the _Integral_, they--"
"Whom do you mean by 'they'?"
"How do I know who? But I sense them, all the time."
"Have you heard about the new operation which has been invented? I
mean the surgical removal of fancy?" (There really were rumors of
late about something of the sort.)
"No, I haven't. What has that to do with it?"
"Merely this: if I were you, I should go and ask to have this
operation performed upon me."
The plate expressed distinctly something lemon-like, sour. Poor
fellow! He took offence if one even hinted that he might possess
imagination. Well, a week ago I too should have taken offence at
such a hint. Not so now, for I know that I have imagination, that is
what my illness consists in, and more than that: I know that it is a
wonderful illness,--one does not want to be cured, simply does not
want to!
We ascended the glass steps; the world spread itself below us like
the palm of a hand.
You, readers of these records, whoever you be, you have the sun
above you. And if you ever were ill, as I am now, then you know
what kind of a sun there is or may be in the morning; you know
that pinkish, lucid, warm gold; the air itself looks a little
pinkish; everything seems permeated by the tender blood of the sun;
everything is alive; the stones seem soft and living; iron living
and warm; people all full of life and smiles. It may be that in a
short while all this will disappear, that in an hour the pinkish
blood of the sun will be drained out, but in the meantime everything
is alive. And I see how something flows and pulsates in the sides of
the _Integral_; I see the _Integral_ _think_ of its great and lofty
future, of the heavy load of inevitable happiness which it is to
carry up there into the heights, to you, unseen ones, to you who
seek eternally and who never find. You shall find! You shall be
happy! You must be happy, and you have now not very long to wait!
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....