"I don't want to go," I cried, "I want to stay here!"
"Why?" she asked me, averting her face.
"Don't you know?" I said swiftly. "Haven't you understood long ago that
I love you?" She shook her head.
"Love is something that we don't know here--not until we have been
married and lived with our men. Sometimes not then." But she looked at
me, and I thought there were tears in her eyes. Suddenly the impulse I
had been resisting ever since the morning on the mountain became
insupportable, and I caught her in my arms almost roughly. Her face was
close to mine, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her, forgetting
everything but the knowledge that I had stumbled upon the sort of love
that doesn't pass away, no matter how long a man lives.
After a while, though, she drew away as if she resisted not my desire,
but her own.
"No--" she said in a low voice, "no...."
"But Selda!" I stammered, "I love you--I want to marry you." She shook
her head.
"No," she said again, "didn't you understand? I am scheduled to marry
Edvar."
At first I didn't know what she meant.
"Scheduled?" I repeated dully. "I don't understand."
"It has been arranged for years. Don't you remember what Edvar told you
about our marriages here, the very first day you came? I was destined to
marry Edvar long before any of us were born, before our parents, even,
were born. It's the way they order our lives."
"But I love you," I cried in amazement. "And you love me, too. I know
you love me."
"That means nothing here," she said. "It happens sometimes. One has to
accept it. Nothing can be done. We live according to the machinery of
the world. Everything is known and predetermined."
* * * * *
Suddenly, in the midst of what she was saying, close behind me there
sounded even above the roaring of the waterfall a raucous noise like the
hooting of a taxi horn. It was followed by a shrieking of brakes, and a
hoarse voice near by shouted something angry and profane. A rush of air
swept by me, and I heard faintly the sound of a motor moving away, with
a grinding of gears. I looked at Selda.
"Did you hear that?"
She nodded, with wide, frightened eyes. "Yes. It's not the first time."
Suddenly she rose, frowning, as if with pain. "Come," she added, "now we
must go back."
There was nothing else to do. We went back silently to the airship, and
turned its nose toward the city.
But when I left her at her apartment, promising to see her later, I had
one last hope in my mind. I went to the Bureau.
The Bureau was a vast system of halls and offices, occupying two floors
of the great building. I was sent from one automatic device to
another--there were no human clerks--in search of the representative who
had spoken to me before. Finally I found him in his apartment, down the
corridor only a hundred feet or so from my own. He was pouring over a
metal sheet on his table, where innumerable shifting figures were thrown
by some hidden machine, and he was calculating with a set of hundreds of
buttons along its edges. He spoke to me without pausing or looking up,
and throughout my interview he continued with his figuring as if it had
been entirely automatic--as perhaps it was.
"What is it, Baret?" he said I felt like a small child before the
principal of the school.
"I have come to ask you whether it is necessary for me to go," I
answered. He nodded slightly, never looking up.
"It is necessary," he said. "Your visit was pre-arranged and definite."
I made a gesture of remonstrance.
"But I don't want to go," I insisted. "I like this place, and I am
willing to fall into its life if I can remain under any conditions."
"It is impossible," he objected angrily.
"I have never been told why or how I came here. You said you would tell
me that."
"I have never been told myself. It is a matter known to the men who
handled it."
"If I went to them, surely they could find some way to let me stay?"
"No," he said coldly, "the thing was as definite as every event that
takes place here. We do not let things happen haphazardly. We do not
alter what has been arranged. And even if it were possible to let you
stay--which I am inclined to doubt--they would not permit it."
* * * * *
"Why not?" I asked dully.
"Because there is no place for you. Our social system has been planned
for hundreds of years ahead. Every individual of today and every
individual of the next six generations has his definite place, his
program, his work to do. There is no place for you. It is impossible to
fit you in, for you have no work, no training, no need that you can
fill. You have no woman, and there are no women for your children or
your children's children. You are unnecessary. To fit you in, one would
have to disrupt the whole system for generations ahead. It is
impossible."