THE MENDING APPARATUS

By a vestibule, by a lift, by a tubular railway, by a platform, by a

sliding door--by reversing all the steps of her departure did Vashti

arrive at her son's room, which exactly resembled her own. She might

well declare that the visit was superfluous. The buttons, the knobs,

the reading-desk with the Book, the temperature, the atmosphere, the

illumination--all were exactly the same. And if Kuno himself, flesh of

her flesh, stood close beside her at last, what profit was there in

that? She was too well-bred to shake him by the hand.

Averting her eyes, she spoke as follows:

"Here I am. I have had the most terrible journey and greatly retarded

the development of my soul. It is not worth it, Kuno, it is not worth

it. My time is too precious. The sunlight almost touched me, and I have

met with the rudest people. I can only stop a few minutes. Say what

you want to say, and then I must return."

"I have been threatened with Homelessness," said Kuno.

She looked at him now.

"I have been threatened with Homelessness, and I could not tell you

such a thing through the Machine."

Homelessness means death. The victim is exposed to the air, which kills

him.

"I have been outside since I spoke to you last. The tremendous thing

has happened, and they have discovered me."

"But why shouldn't you go outside!" she exclaimed. "It is perfectly

legal, perfectly mechanical, to visit the surface of the earth. I have

lately been to a lecture on the sea; there is no objection to that; one

simply summons a respirator and gets an Egression-permit. It is not the

kind of thing that spiritually-minded people do, and I begged you not

to do it, but there is no legal objection to it."

"I did not get an Egression-permit."

"Then how did you get out?"

"I found out a way of my own."

The phrase conveyed no meaning to her, and he had to repeat it.

"A way of your own?" she whispered. "But that would be wrong."

"Why?"

The question shocked her beyond measure.

"You are beginning to worship the Machine," he said coldly. "You think

it irreligious of me to have found out a way of my own. It was just

what the Committee thought, when they threatened me with Homelessness."

At this she grew angry. "I worship nothing!" she cried. "I am most

advanced. I don't think you irreligious, for there is no such thing as

religion left. All the fear and the superstition that existed once have

been destroyed by the Machine. I only meant that to find out a way of

your own was----Besides, there is no new way out."

"So it is always supposed."

"Except through the vomitories, for which one must have an

Egression-permit, it is impossible to get out. The Book says so."

"Well, the Book's wrong, for I have been out on my feet."

For Kuno was possessed of a certain physical strength.

By these days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant was

examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed.

Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true kindness to

let an athlete live; he would never have been happy in that state of

life to which the Machine had called him; he would have yearned for

trees to climb, rivers to bathe in, meadows and hills against which he

might measure his body. Man must be adapted to his surroundings, must

he not? In the dawn of the world our weakly must be exposed on Mount

Taygetus, in its twilight our strong will suffer euthanasia, that the

Machine may progress, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine

may progress eternally.

"You know that we have lost the sense of space. We say 'space is

annihilated,' but we have annihilated not space, but the sense thereof.

We have lost a part of ourselves. I determined to recover it, and I

began by walking up and down the platform of the railway outside my

room. Up and down, until I was tired, and so did recapture the meaning

of 'Near' and 'Far.' 'Near' is a place to which I can get quickly _on

my feet_, not a place to which the train or the air-ship will take me

quickly. 'Far' is a place to which I cannot get quickly on my feet;

the vomitory is 'far,' though I could be there in thirty-eight seconds

by summoning the train. Man is the measure. That was my first lesson.

Man's feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure

for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and

desirable and strong. Then I went further: it was then that I called to

you for the first time, and you would not come.

"This city, as you know, is built deep beneath the surface of the

earth, with only the vomitories protruding. Having paced the platform

outside my own room, I took the lift to the next platform and paced

that also, and so with each in turn, until I came to the topmost, above

which begins the earth. All the platforms were exactly alike, and all

that I gained by visiting them was to develop my sense of space and

my muscles. I think I should have been content with this--it is not a

little thing--but as I walked and brooded, it occurred to me that our

cities had been built in the days when men still breathed the outer

air, and that there had been ventilation shafts for the workmen. I

could think of nothing but these ventilation shafts. Had they been

destroyed by all the food-tubes and medicine-tubes and music-tubes

that the Machine has evolved lately? Or did traces of them remain? One

thing was certain. If I came upon them anywhere, it would be in the

railway-tunnels of the topmost story. Everywhere else, all space was

accounted for.

"I am telling my story quickly, but don't think that I was not a coward

or that your answers never depressed me. It is not the proper thing, it

is not mechanical, it is not decent to walk along a railway-tunnel.

I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I

feared something far more intangible--doing what was not contemplated

by the Machine. Then I said to myself, 'Man is the measure,' and I

went, and after many visits I found an opening.

"The tunnels, of course, were lighted. Everything is light, artificial

light; darkness is the exception. So when I saw a black gap in the

tiles, I knew that it was an exception, and rejoiced. I put in my

arm--I could put in no more at first--and waved it round and round

in ecstasy. I loosened another tile, and put in my head, and shouted

into the darkness: 'I am coming, I shall do it yet,' and my voice

reverberated down endless passages. I seemed to hear the spirits of

those dead workmen who had returned each evening to the starlight and

to their wives, and all the generations who had lived in the open air

called back to me, 'You will do it yet, you are coming.'"

He paused, and, absurd as he was, his last words moved her. For Kuno

had lately asked to be a father, and his request had been refused by

the Committee. His was not a type that the Machine desired to hand on.

"Then a train passed. It brushed by me, but I thrust my head and arms

into the hole. I had done enough for one day, so I crawled back to the

platform, went down in the lift, and summoned my bed. Ah, what dreams!

And again I called you, and again you refused."

She shook her head and said:

"Don't. Don't talk of these terrible things. You make me miserable. You

are throwing civilisation away."

"But I had got back the sense of space and a man cannot rest then.

I determined to get in at the hole and climb the shaft. And so I

exercised my arms. Day after day I went through ridiculous movements,

until my flesh ached, and I could hang by my hands and hold the pillow

of my bed outstretched for many minutes. Then I summoned a respirator,

and started.

"It was easy at first. The mortar had somehow rotted, and I soon pushed

some more tiles in, and clambered after them into the darkness, and the

spirits of the dead comforted me. I don't know what I mean by that.

I just say what I felt. I felt, for the first time, that a protest

had been lodged against corruption, and that even as the dead were

comforting me, so I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity

existed, and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly

explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed naked, and all these tubes

and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor

will they follow us out, nor do they matter supremely while we are

here. Had I been strong, I would have torn off every garment I had, and

gone out into the outer air unswaddled. But this is not for me, nor

perhaps for my generation. I climbed with my respirator and my hygienic

clothes and my dietetic tabloids! Better thus than not at all.

"There was a ladder, made of some primæval metal. The light from the

railway fell upon its lowest rungs, and I saw that it led straight

upwards out of the rubble at the bottom of the shaft. Perhaps our

ancestors ran up and down it a dozen times daily, in their building. As

I climbed, the rough edges cut through my gloves so that my hands bled.

The light helped me for a little, and then came darkness and, worse

still, silence which pierced my ears like a sword. The Machine hums!

Did you know that? Its hum penetrates our blood, and may even guide our

thoughts. Who knows! I was getting beyond its power. Then I thought:

'This silence means that I am doing wrong.' But I heard voices in the

silence, and again they strengthened me." He laughed. "I had need of

them. The next moment I cracked my head against something."

She sighed.

"I had reached one of those pneumatic stoppers that defend us from

the outer air. You may have noticed them on the air-ship. Pitch dark,

my feet on the rungs of an invisible ladder, my hands cut; I cannot

explain how I lived through this part, but the voices still comforted

me, and I felt for fastenings. The stopper, I suppose, was about eight

feet across. I passed my hand over it as far as I could reach. It was

perfectly smooth. I felt it almost to the centre. Not quite to the

centre, for my arm was too short. Then the voice said: 'Jump. It is

worth it. There may be a handle in the centre, and you may catch hold

of it and so come to us your own way. And if there is no handle, so

that you may fall and are dashed to pieces--it is still worth it: you

will still come to us your own way.' So I jumped. There was a handle,

and----"

He paused. Tears gathered in his mother's eyes. She knew that he was

fated. If he did not die today he would die tomorrow. There was not

room for such a person in the world. And with her pity disgust mingled.

She was ashamed at having borne such a son, she who had always been so

respectable and so full of ideas. Was he really the little boy to whom

she had taught the use of his stops and buttons, and to whom she had

given his first lessons in the Book? The very hair that disfigured his

lip showed that he was reverting to some savage type. On atavism the

Machine can have no mercy.

"There was a handle, and I did catch it. I hung tranced over the

darkness and heard the hum of these workings as the last whisper in

a dying dream. All the things I had cared about and all the people

I had spoken to through tubes appeared infinitely little. Meanwhile

the handle revolved. My weight had set something in motion and I span

slowly, and then----

"I cannot describe it. I was lying with my face to the sunshine. Blood

poured from my nose and ears and I heard a tremendous roaring. The

stopper, with me clinging to it, had simply been blown out of the

earth, and the air that we make down here was escaping through the vent

into the air above. It burst up like a fountain. I crawled back to

it--for the upper air hurts--and, as it were, I took great sips from

the edge. My respirator had flown goodness knows where, my clothes

were torn. I just lay with my lips close to the hole, and I sipped

until the bleeding stopped. You can imagine nothing so curious. This

hollow in the grass--I will speak of it in a minute,--the sun shining

into it, not brilliantly but through marbled clouds,--the peace, the

nonchalance, the sense of space, and, brushing my cheek, the roaring

fountain of our artificial air! Soon I spied my respirator, bobbing

up and down in the current high above my head, and higher still were

many air-ships. But no one ever looks out of air-ships, and in my case

they could not have picked me up. There I was, stranded. The sun shone

a little way down the shaft, and revealed the topmost rung of the

ladder, but it was hopeless trying to reach it. I should either have

been tossed up again by the escape, or else have fallen in, and died. I

could only lie on the grass, sipping and sipping, and from time to time

glancing around me.

"I knew that I was in Wessex, for I had taken care to go to a lecture

on the subject before starting. Wessex lies above the room in which

we are talking now. It was once an important state. Its kings held

all the southern coast from the Andredswald to Cornwall, while the

Wansdyke protected them on the north, running over the high ground. The

lecturer was only concerned with the rise of Wessex, so I do not know

how long it remained an international power, nor would the knowledge

have assisted me. To tell the truth I could do nothing but laugh,

during this part. There was I, with a pneumatic stopper by my side and

a respirator bobbing over my head, imprisoned, all three of us, in a

grass-grown hollow that was edged with fern."

Then he grew grave again.

"Lucky for me that it was a hollow. For the air began to fall back into

it and to fill it as water fills a bowl. I could crawl about. Presently

I stood. I breathed a mixture, in which the air that hurts predominated

whenever I tried to climb the sides. This was not so bad. I had not

lost my tabloids and remained ridiculously cheerful, and as for the

Machine, I forgot about it altogether. My one aim now was to get to

the top, where the ferns were, and to view whatever objects lay beyond.

"I rushed the slope. The new air was still too bitter for me and I came

rolling back, after a momentary vision of something grey. The sun grew

very feeble, and I remembered that he was in Scorpio--I had been to a

lecture on that too. If the sun is in Scorpio and you are in Wessex, it

means that you must be as quick as you can, or it will get too dark.

(This is the first bit of useful information I have ever got from a

lecture, and I expect it will be the last.) It made me try frantically

to breathe the new air, and to advance as far as I dared out of my

pond. The hollow filled so slowly. At times I thought that the fountain

played with less vigour. My respirator seemed to dance nearer the

earth; the roar was decreasing."

He broke off.

"I don't think this is interesting you. The rest will interest you even

less. There are no ideas in it, and I wish that I had not troubled you

to come. We are too different, mother."

She told him to continue.

"It was evening before I climbed the bank. The sun had very nearly

slipped out of the sky by this time, and I could not get a good view.

You, who have just crossed the Roof of the World, will not want to hear

an account of the little hills that I saw--low colourless hills. But to

me they were living and the turf that covered them was a skin, under

which their muscles rippled, and I felt that those hills had called

with incalculable force to men in the past, and that men had loved

them. Now they sleep--perhaps for ever. They commune with humanity in

dreams. Happy the man, happy the woman, who awakes the hills of Wessex.

For though they sleep, they will never die."

His voice rose passionately.

"Cannot you see, cannot all your lecturers see, that it is we who are

dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the

Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it

do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the

sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down

love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and

now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops--but not on our

lines. The Machine proceeds--but not to our goal. We only exist as the

blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work

without us, it would let us die. Oh, I have no remedy--or, at least,

only one--to tell men again and again that I have seen the hills of

Wessex as Ælfrid saw them when he overthrew the Danes.

"So the sun set. I forgot to mention that a belt of mist lay between my

hill and other hills, and that it was the colour of pearl."

He broke off for the second time.

"Go on," said his mother wearily.

He shook his head.

"Go on. Nothing that you say can distress me now. I am hardened."

"I had meant to tell you the rest, but I cannot: I know that I cannot:

good-bye."

Vashti stood irresolute. All her nerves were tingling with his

blasphemies. But she was also inquisitive.

"This is unfair," she complained. "You have called me across the

world to hear your story, and hear it I will. Tell me--as briefly as

possible, for this is a disastrous waste of time--tell me how you

returned to civilisation."

"Oh--that!" he said, starting. "You would like to hear about

civilisation. Certainly. Had I got to where my respirator fell down?"

"No--but I understand everything now. You put on your respirator, and

managed to walk along the surface of the earth to a vomitory, and there

your conduct was reported to the Central Committee."

"By no means."

He passed his hand over his forehead, as if dispelling some strong

impression. Then, resuming his narrative, he warmed to it again.

"My respirator fell about sunset. I had mentioned that the fountain

seemed feebler, had I not."

"Yes."

"About sunset, it let the respirator fall. As I said, I had entirely

forgotten about the Machine, and I paid no great attention at the time,

being occupied with other things. I had my pool of air, into which I

could dip when the outer keenness became intolerable, and which would

possibly remain for days, provided that no wind sprang up to disperse

it. Not until it was too late, did I realize what the stoppage of the

escape implied. You see--the gap in the tunnel had been mended; the

Mending Apparatus; the Mending Apparatus, was after me.

"One other warning I had, but I neglected it. The sky at night was

clearer than it had been in the day, and the moon, which was about

half the sky behind the sun, shone into the dell at moments quite

brightly. I was in my usual place--on the boundary between the two

atmospheres--when I thought I saw something dark move across the

bottom of the dell, and vanish into the shaft. In my folly, I ran down.

I bent over and listened, and I thought I heard a faint scraping noise

in the depths.

"At this--but it was too late--I took alarm. I determined to put on my

respirator and to walk right out of the dell. But my respirator had

gone. I knew exactly where it had fallen--between the stopper and the

aperture--and I could even feel the mark that it had made in the turf.

It had gone, and I realized that something evil was at work, and I had

better escape to the other air, and, if I must die, die running towards

the cloud that had been the colour of a pearl. I never started. Out of

the shaft--it is too horrible. A worm, a long white worm, had crawled

out of the shaft and was gliding over the moonlit grass.

"I screamed. I did everything that I should not have done, I stamped

upon the creature instead of flying from it, and it at once curled

round the ankle. Then we fought. The worm let me run all over the

dell, but edged up my leg as I ran. 'Help!' I cried. (That part is

too awful. It belongs to the part that you will never know.) 'Help!'

I cried. (Why cannot we suffer in silence?) 'Help!' I cried. Then my

feet were wound together, I fell, I was dragged away from the dear

ferns and the living hills, and past the great metal stopper (I can

tell you this part), and I thought it might save me again if I caught

hold of the handle. It also was enwrapped, it also. Oh, the whole dell

was full of the things. They were searching it in all directions,

they were denuding it, and the white snouts of others peeped out

of the hole, ready if needed. Everything that could be moved they

brought--brushwood, bundles of fern, everything, and down we all went

intertwined into hell. The last things that I saw, ere the stopper

closed after us, were certain stars, and I felt that a man of my sort

lived in the sky. For I did fight, I fought till the very end, and it

was only my head hitting against the ladder that quieted me. I woke up

in this room. The worms had vanished. I was surrounded by artificial

air, artificial light, artificial peace, and my friends were calling to

me down speaking-tubes to know whether I had come across any new ideas

lately."

Here his story ended. Discussion of it was impossible, and Vashti

turned to go.

"It will end in Homelessness," she said quietly.

"I wish it would," retorted Kuno.

"The Machine has been most merciful."

"I prefer the mercy of God."

"By that superstitious phrase, do you mean that you could live in the

outer air?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever seen, round the vomitories, the bones of those who were

extruded after the Great Rebellion?"

"Yes."

"They were left where they perished for our edification. A few crawled

away, but they perished, too--who can doubt it? And so with the

Homeless of our own day. The surface of the earth supports life no

longer."

"Indeed."

"Ferns and a little grass may survive, but all higher forms have

perished. Has any air-ship detected them?"

"No."

"Has any lecturer dealt with them?"

"No."

"Then why this obstinacy?"

"Because I have seen them," he exploded.

"Seen _what_?"

"Because I have seen her in the twilight--because she came to my help

when I called--because she, too, was entangled by the worms, and,

luckier than I, was killed by one of them piercing her throat."

He was mad. Vashti departed, nor, in the troubles that followed, did

she ever see his face again.

_Part III_