"Is there any hope, Kuno?"
"None for us."
"Where are you?"
She crawled towards him over the bodies of the dead. His blood spurted
over her hands.
"Quicker," he gasped, "I am dying--but we touch, we talk, not through
the Machine."
He kissed her.
"We have come back to our own. We die, but we have recaptured life,
as it was in Wessex, when Ælfrid overthrew the Danes. We know what
they know outside, they who dwelt in the cloud that is the colour of a
pearl."
"But, Kuno, is it true? Are there still men on the surface of the
earth? Is this--this tunnel, this poisoned darkness--really not the
end?"
He replied:
"I have seen them, spoken to them, loved them. They are hiding in the
mist and the ferns until our civilisation stops. Today they are the
Homeless--tomorrow----"
"Oh, tomorrow--some fool will start the Machine again, tomorrow."
"Never," said Kuno, "never. Humanity has learnt its lesson."
As he spoke, the whole city was broken like a honeycomb. An air-ship
had sailed in through the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It crashed
downwards, exploding as it went, rending gallery after gallery with its
wings of steel. For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and,
before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky.