can light our tunnel, and the City, and all the Cities of the
world with nothing save metal and wires. We can give our brothers
a new light, cleaner and brighter than any they have ever known.
The power of the sky can be made to do men’s bidding. There are
no limits to its secrets and its might, and it can be made to
grant us anything if we but choose to ask.
Then we knew what we must do. Our discovery is too great for us
to waste our time in sweeping the streets. We must not keep our
secret to ourselves, nor buried under the ground. We must bring
it into the sight of all men. We need all our time, we need the
work rooms of the Home of the Scholars, we want the help of our
brother Scholars and their wisdom joined to ours. There is so
much work ahead for all of us, for all the Scholars of the world.
In a month, the World Council of Scholars is to meet in our City.
It is a great Council, to which the wisest of all lands are
elected, and it meets once a year in the different Cities of the
earth. We shall go to this Council and we shall lay before them,
as our gift, this glass box with the power of the sky. We shall
confess everything to them. They will see, understand and
forgive. For our gift is greater than our transgression. They
will explain it to the Council of Vocations, and we shall be
assigned to the Home of the Scholars. This has never been done
before, but neither has a gift such as ours ever been offered to
men.
We must wait. We must guard our tunnel as we had never guarded it
before. For should any men save the Scholars learn of our secret,
they would not understand it, nor would they believe us. They
would see nothing, save our crime of working alone, and they
would destroy us and our light. We care not about our body, but
our light is...
Yes, we do care. For the first time do we care about our body.
For this wire is as a part of our body, as a vein torn from us,
glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or
of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these
two?
We stretch out our arms. For the first time do we know how strong
our arms are. And a strange thought comes to us: we wonder, for
the first time in our life, what we look like. Men never see
their own faces and never ask their brothers about it, for it is
evil to have concern for their own faces or bodies. But tonight,
for a reason we cannot fathom, we wish it were possible to us to
know the likeness of our own person.
PART SIX
We have not written for thirty days. For thirty days we have not
been here, in our tunnel. We had been caught. It happened on that
night when we wrote last. We forgot, that night, to watch the
sand in the glass which tells us when three hours have passed and
it is time to return to the City Theatre. When we remembered it,
the sand had run out.
We hastened to the Theatre. But the big tent stood grey and
silent against the sky. The streets of the City lay before us,
dark and empty. If we went back to hide in our tunnel, we would
be found and our light found with us. So we walked to the Home of
the Street Sweepers.
When the Council of the Home questioned us, we looked upon the
faces of the Council, but there was no curiosity in those faces,
and no anger, and no mercy. So when the oldest of them asked us:
“Where have you been?” we thought of our glass box and of our
light, and we forgot all else. And we answered:
“We will not tell you.”
The oldest did not question us further. They turned to the two
youngest, and said, and their voice was bored:
“Take our brother Equality 7-2521 to the Palace of Corrective
Detention. Lash them until they tell.”
So we were taken to the Stone Room under the Palace of Corrective
Detention. This room has no windows and it is empty save for an
iron post. Two men stood by the post, naked but for leather
aprons and leather hoods over their faces. Those who had brought
us departed, leaving us to the two Judges who stood in a corner
of the room. The Judges were small, thin men, grey and bent. They
gave the signal to the two strong hooded ones.
They tore the clothes from our body, they threw us down upon our
knees and they tied our hands to the iron post. The first blow of
the lash felt as if our spine had been cut in two. The second
blow stopped the first, and for a second we felt nothing, then
the pain struck us in our throat and fire ran in our lungs
without air. But we did not cry out.
The lash whistled like a singing wind. We tried to count the
blows, but we lost count. We knew that the blows were falling
upon our back. Only we felt nothing upon our back any longer. A
flaming grill kept dancing before our eyes, and we thought of
nothing save that grill, a grill, a grill of red squares, and
then we knew that we were looking at the squares of the iron
grill in the door, and there were also the squares of stone on
the walls, and the squares which the lash was cutting upon our
back, crossing and re-crossing itself in our flesh.
Then we saw a fist before us. It knocked our chin up, and we saw
the red froth of our mouth on the withered fingers, and the Judge
asked:
“Where have you been?”
But we jerked our head away, hid our face upon our tied hands,
and bit our lips.
The lash whistled again. We wondered who was sprinkling burning
coal dust upon the floor, for we saw drops of red twinkling on
the stones around us.
Then we knew nothing, save two voices snarling steadily, one
after the other, even though we knew they were speaking many
minutes apart:
“Where have you been where have you been where have you been
where have you been?...”
And our lips moved, but the sound trickled back into our throat,
and the sound was only:
“The light... The light... The light....”
Then we knew nothing.
We opened our eyes, lying on our stomach on the brick floor of a
cell. We looked upon two hands lying far before us on the bricks,
and we moved them, and we knew that they were our hands. But we
could not move our body. Then we smiled, for we thought of the
light and that we had not betrayed it.
We lay in our cell for many days. The door opened twice each day,
once for the men who brought us bread and water, and once for the
Judges. Many Judges came to our cell, first the humblest and then
the most honored Judges of the City. They stood before us in
their white togas, and they asked:
“Are you ready to speak?”
But we shook our head, lying before them on the floor. And they
departed.
We counted each day and each night as it passed. Then, tonight,
we knew that we must escape. For tomorrow the World Council of
Scholars is to meet in our City.
It was easy to escape from the Palace of Corrective Detention.
The locks are old on the doors and there are no guards about.
There is no reason to have guards, for men have never defied the
Councils so far as to escape from whatever place they were
ordered to be. Our body is healthy and strength returns to it
speedily. We lunged against the door and it gave way. We stole
through the dark passages, and through the dark streets, and down
into our tunnel.
We lit the candle and we saw that our place had not been found
and nothing had been touched. And our glass box stood before us
on the cold oven, as we had left it. What matter they now, the
scars upon our back!
Tomorrow, in the full light of day, we shall take our box, and
leave our tunnel open, and walk through the streets to the Home
of the Scholars. We shall put before them the greatest gift ever
offered to men. We shall tell them the truth. We shall hand to
them, as our confession, these pages we have written. We shall
join our hands to theirs, and we shall work together, with the
power of the sky, for the glory of mankind. Our blessing upon
you, our brothers! Tomorrow, you will take us back into your fold
and we shall be an outcast no longer. Tomorrow we shall be one of
you again. Tomorrow...
PART SEVEN
It is dark here in the forest. The leaves rustle over our head,
black against the last gold of the sky. The moss is soft and
warm. We shall sleep on this moss for many nights, till the
beasts of the forest come to tear our body. We have no bed now,
save the moss, and no future, save the beasts.
We are old now, yet we were young this morning, when we carried
our glass box through the streets of the City to the Home of the
Scholars. No men stopped us, for there were none about from the
Palace of Corrective Detention, and the others knew nothing. No
men stopped us at the gate. We walked through empty passages and
into the great hall where the World Council of Scholars sat in
solemn meeting.
We saw nothing as we entered, save the sky in the great windows,
blue and glowing. Then we saw the Scholars who sat around a long
table; they were as shapeless clouds huddled at the rise of the
great sky. There were men whose famous names we knew, and others
from distant lands whose names we had not heard. We saw a great
painting on the wall over their heads, of the twenty illustrious
men who had invented the candle.
All the heads of the Council turned to us as we entered. These
great and wise of the earth did not know what to think of us, and
they looked upon us with wonder and curiosity, as if we were a
miracle. It is true that our tunic was torn and stained with
brown stains which had been blood. We raised our right arm and we
said:
“Our greeting to you, our honored brothers of the World Council
of Scholars!”
Then Collective 0-0009, the oldest and wisest of the Council,
spoke and asked:
“Who are you, our brother? For you do not look like a Scholar.”
“Our name is Equality 7-2521,” we answered, “and we are a Street
Sweeper of this City.”
Then it was as if a great wind had stricken the hall, for all the
Scholars spoke at once, and they were angry and frightened.
“A Street Sweeper! A Street Sweeper walking in upon the World
Council of Scholars! It is not to be believed! It is against all
the rules and all the laws!”
But we knew how to stop them.
“Our brothers!” we said. “We matter not, nor our transgression.
It is only our brother men who matter. Give no thought to us, for
we are nothing, but listen to our words, for we bring you a gift
such as had never been brought to men. Listen to us, for we hold
the future of mankind in our hands.”
Then they listened.
We placed our glass box upon the table before them. We spoke of
it, and of our long quest, and of our tunnel, and of our escape
from the Palace of Corrective Detention. Not a hand moved in that
hall, as we spoke, nor an eye. Then we put the wires to the box,
and they all bent forward and sat still, watching. And we stood
still, our eyes upon the wire. And slowly, slowly as a flush of
blood, a red flame trembled in the wire. Then the wire glowed.
But terror struck the men of the Council. They leapt to their
feet, they ran from the table, and they stood pressed against the
wall, huddled together, seeking the warmth of one another’s
bodies to give them courage.
We looked upon them and we laughed and said:
“Fear nothing, our brothers. There is a great power in these
wires, but this power is tamed. It is yours. We give it to you.”
Still they would not move.
“We give you the power of the sky!” we cried. “We give you the
key to the earth! Take it, and let us be one of you, the humblest
among you. Let us all work together, and harness this power, and
make it ease the toil of men. Let us throw away our candles and
our torches. Let us flood our cities with light. Let us bring a
new light to men!”
But they looked upon us, and suddenly we were afraid. For their
eyes were still, and small, and evil.
“Our brothers!” we cried. “Have you nothing to say to us?”
Then Collective 0-0009 moved forward. They moved to the table and
the others followed.
“Yes,” spoke Collective 0-0009, “we have much to say to you.”
The sound of their voices brought silence to the hall and to beat
of our heart.
“Yes,” said Collective 0-0009, “we have much to say to a wretch
who have broken all the laws and who boast of their infamy!
“How dared you think that your mind held greater wisdom than the
minds of your brothers? And if the Councils had decreed that you
should be a Street Sweeper, how dared you think that you could be
of greater use to men than in sweeping the streets?”
“How dared you, gutter cleaner,” spoke Fraternity 9-3452, “to
hold yourself as one alone and with the thoughts of the one and
not of the many?”
“You shall be burned at the stake,” said Democracy 4-6998.
“No, they shall be lashed,” said Unanimity 7-3304, “till there is
nothing left under the lashes.”
“No,” said Collective 0-0009, “we cannot decide upon this, our
brothers. No such crime has ever been committed, and it is not
for us to judge. Nor for any small Council. We shall deliver this
creature to the World Council itself and let their will be done.”
We looked upon them and we pleaded:
“Our brothers! You are right. Let the will of the Council be done
upon our body. We do not care. But the light? What will you do
with the light?”
Collective 0-0009 looked upon us, and they smiled.
“So you think that you have found a new power,” said Collective
0-0009. “Do all your brothers think that?”
“No,” we answered.
“What is not thought by all men cannot be true,” said Collective
0-0009.
“You have worked on this alone?” asked International 1-5537.
“Many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas
in the past,” said Solidarity 8-1164, “but when the majority of
their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their
ideas, as all men must.”
“This box is useless,” said Alliance 6-7349.
“Should it be what they claim of it,” said Harmony 9-2642, “then
it would bring ruin to the Department of Candles. The Candle is a
great boon to mankind, as approved by all men. Therefore it
cannot be destroyed by the whim of one.”
“This would wreck the Plans of the World Council,” said Unanimity
2-9913, “and without the Plans of the World Council the sun
cannot rise. It took fifty years to secure the approval of all
the Councils for the Candle, and to decide upon the number
needed, and to re-fit the Plans so as to make candles instead of
torches. This touched upon thousands and thousands of men working
in scores of States. We cannot alter the Plans again so soon.”
“And if this should lighten the toil of men,” said Similarity
5-0306, “then it is a great evil, for men have no cause to exist
save in toiling for other men.”
Then Collective 0-0009 rose and pointed at our box.
“This thing,” they said, “must be destroyed.”
And all the others cried as one:
“It must be destroyed!”
Then we leapt to the table.
We seized our box, we shoved them aside, and we ran to the
window. We turned and we looked at them for the last time, and a
rage, such as it is not fit for humans to know, choked our voice
in our throat.
“You fools!” we cried. “You fools! You thrice-damned fools!”
We swung our fist through the windowpane, and we leapt out in a
ringing rain of glass.
We fell, but we never let the box fall from our hands. Then we
ran. We ran blindly, and men and houses streaked past us in a
torrent without shape. And the road seemed not to be flat before
us, but as if it were leaping up to meet us, and we waited for
the earth to rise and strike us in the face. But we ran. We knew
not where we were going. We knew only that we must run, run to
the end of the world, to the end of our days.
Then we knew suddenly that we were lying on a soft earth and that
we had stopped. Trees taller than we had ever seen before stood
over us in great silence. Then we knew. We were in the Uncharted
Forest. We had not thought of coming here, but our legs had
carried our wisdom, and our legs had brought us to the Uncharted
Forest against our will.
Our glass box lay beside us. We crawled to it, we fell upon it,
our face in our arms, and we lay still.
We lay thus for a long time. Then we rose, we took our box and
walked on into the forest.
It mattered not where we went. We knew that men would not follow
us, for they never enter the Uncharted Forest. We had nothing to
fear from them. The forest disposes of its own victims. This gave
us no fear either. Only we wished to be away, away from the City
and from the air that touches upon the air of the City. So we
walked on, our box in our arms, our heart empty.
We are doomed. Whatever days are left to us, we shall spend them
alone. And we have heard of the corruption to be found in
solitude. We have torn ourselves from the truth which is our
brother men, and there is no road back for us, and no redemption.
We know these things, but we do not care. We care for nothing on
earth. We are tired.
Only the glass box in our arms is like a living heart that gives
us strength. We have lied to ourselves. We have not built this
box for the good of our brothers. We built it for its own sake.
It is above all our brothers to us, and its truth above their
truth. Why wonder about this? We have not many days to live. We
are walking to the fangs awaiting us somewhere among the great,
silent trees. There is not a thing behind us to regret.
Then a blow of pain struck us, our first and our only. We thought
of the Golden One. We thought of the Golden One whom we shall
never see again. Then the pain passed. It is best. We are one of
the Damned. It is best if the Golden One forget our name and the
body which bore that name.
PART EIGHT
It has been a day of wonder, this, our first day in the forest.
We awoke when a ray of sunlight fell across our face. We wanted
to leap to our feet, as we have had to leap every morning of our
life, but we remembered suddenly that no bell had rung and that
there was no bell to ring anywhere. We lay on our back, we threw
our arms out, and we looked up at the sky. The leaves had edges
of silver that trembled and rippled like a river of green and
fire flowing high above us.
We did not wish to move. We thought suddenly that we could lie
thus as long as we wished, and we laughed aloud at the thought.
We could also rise, or run, or leap, or fall down again. We were
thinking that these were thoughts without sense, but before we
knew it our body had risen in one leap. Our arms stretched out of
their own will, and our body whirled and whirled, till it raised
a wind to rustle through the leaves of the bushes. Then our hands
seized a branch and swung us high into a tree, with no aim save
the wonder of learning the strength of our body. The branch
snapped under us and we fell upon the moss that was soft as a
cushion. Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over on
the moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair, in our face. And
we heard suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing
as if there were no power left in us save laughter.
Then we took our glass box, and we went on into the forest. We
went on, cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were
swimming through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising
and falling and rising around us, and flinging their green sprays
high to the treetops. The trees parted before us, calling us
forward. The forest seemed to welcome us. We went on, without
thought, without care, with nothing to feel save the song of our
body.
We stopped when we felt hunger. We saw birds in the tree
branches, and flying from under our footsteps. We picked a stone
and we sent it as an arrow at a bird. It fell before us. We made
a fire, we cooked the bird, and we ate it, and no meal had ever
tasted better to us. And we thought suddenly that there was a
great satisfaction to be found in the food which we need and
obtain by our own hand. And we wished to be hungry again and
soon, that we might know again this strange new pride in eating.
Then we walked on. And we came to a stream which lay as a streak
of glass among the trees. It lay so still that we saw no water
but only a cut in the earth, in which the trees grew down,
upturned, and the sky lay at the bottom. We knelt by the stream
and we bent down to drink. And then we stopped. For, upon the
blue of the sky below us, we saw our own face for the first time.
We sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body
were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers,
for we felt not pity when looking upon it. Our body was not like
the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin
and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this
being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing
to fear with this being.
We walked on till the sun had set. When the shadows gathered
among the trees, we stopped in a hollow between the roots, where
we shall sleep tonight. And suddenly, for the first time this
day, we remembered that we are the Damned. We remembered it, and
we laughed.
We are writing this on the paper we had hidden in our tunic
together with the written pages we had brought for the World
Council of Scholars, but never given to them. We have much to
speak of to ourselves, and we hope we shall find the words for it
in the days to come. Now, we cannot speak, for we cannot
understand.
PART NINE
We have not written for many days. We did not wish to speak. For
we needed no words to remember that which has happened to us.
It was on our second day in the forest that we heard steps behind
us. We hid in the bushes, and we waited. The steps came closer.
And then we saw the fold of a white tunic among the trees, and a
gleam of gold.
We leapt forward, we ran to them, and we stood looking upon the
Golden One.
They saw us, and their hands closed into fists, and the fists
pulled their arms down, as if they wished their arms to hold
them, while their body swayed. And they could not speak.
We dared not come too close to them. We asked, and our voice
trembled:
“How did you come to be here, Golden One?”
But they whispered only:
“We have found you....”
“How did you come to be in the forest?” we asked.
They raised their head, and there was a great pride in their
voice; they answered:
“We have followed you.”
Then we could not speak, and they said:
“We heard that you had gone to the Uncharted Forest, for the
whole City is speaking of it. So on the night of the day when we
heard it, we ran away from the Home of the Peasants. We found the
marks of your feet across the plain where no men walk. So we
followed them, and we went into the forest, and we followed the
path where the branches were broken by your body.”
Their white tunic was torn, and the branches had cut the skin of
their arms, but they spoke as if they had never taken notice of
it, nor of weariness, nor of fear.
“We have followed you,” they said, “and we shall follow you
wherever you go. If danger threatens you, we shall face it also.
If it be death, we shall die with you. You are damned, and we
wish to share your damnation.”
They looked upon us, and their voice was low, but there was
bitterness and triumph in their voice.
“Your eyes are as a flame, but our brothers have neither hope nor
fire. Your mouth is cut of granite, but our brothers are soft and
humble. Your head is high, but our brothers cringe. You walk, but
our brothers crawl. We wish to be damned with you, rather than
blessed with all our brothers. Do as you please with us, but do
not send us away from you.”
Then they knelt, and bowed their golden head before us.
We had never thought of that which we did. We bent to raise the
Golden One to their feet, but when we touched them, it was as if
madness had stricken us. We seized their body and we pressed our
lips to theirs. The Golden One breathed once, and their breath
was a moan, and then their arms closed around us.
We stood together for a long time. And we were frightened that we
had lived for twenty-one years and had never known what joy is
possible to men.
Then we said:
“Our dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger
in solitude. We have no need of our brothers. Let us forget their
good and our evil, let us forget all things save that we are
together and that there is joy as a bond between us. Give us your
hand. Look ahead. It is our own world, Golden One, a strange,
unknown world, but our own.”
Then we walked on into the forest, their hand in ours.
And that night we knew that to hold the body of women in our arms
is neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the
race of men.
We have walked for many days. The forest has no end, and we seek
no end. But each day added to the chain of days between us and
the City is like an added blessing.
We have made a bow and many arrows. We can kill more birds than
we need for our food; we find water and fruit in the forest. At
night, we choose a clearing, and we build a ring of fires around
it. We sleep in the midst of that ring, and the beasts dare not
attack us. We can see their eyes, green and yellow as coals,
watching us from the tree branches beyond. The fires smoulder as
a crown of jewels around us, and smoke stands still in the air,
in columns made blue by the moonlight. We sleep together in the
midst of the ring, the arms of the Golden One around us, their
head upon our breast.