Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 4. Griffith George Chetwynd

      “This is D-503, the builder of the Integral. You have probably heard of him. He is always like that, at his desk; does not spare himself at all!”

      ... And I thought!... What a dear, wonderful woman!...

      S- slid up to me, bent over my shoulder toward the table. I covered the lines I had written with my elbow but he shouted severely:

      “Show us at once what you have there, please!”

      Dying with shame, I held out the sheet of paper. He read it over, and I noticed a tiny smile jump out of his eyes, jump down his face and slightly wagging its tail, perch upon the right angle of his mouth....

      “Somewhat ambiguous, yet.... Well, you may continue; we shall not disturb you any more.”

      He went splashing towards the door as if in a ditch of water. And with every step of his I felt coming back to me my legs, my arms, my fingers,—my soul again distributed itself evenly over my whole body; I breathed....

      The last thing: U- lingered in my room to come back to me and say in my very ear in a whisper: “It is lucky for you that I....”

      I did not understand. What did she mean by that? The same evening I learned that they led away three Numbers, although nobody speaks out loud about that, or about anything that happened. This ostensible silence is due to the educational influence of the Guardians who are ever present among us. Conversations deal chiefly with the quick fall of the barometer and the forthcoming change in the weather.

      Record Twenty Nine

      Threads on the Face

      Sprouts

      An Unnatural Compression

      It is strange: the barometer continues to fall yet there is no wind. There is quiet. Above, the storm which we do not yet hear has begun. The clouds are rushing with a terrific speed. There are few of them as yet; separate fragments; it is as if there above us an unknown city were being destroyed and pieces of walls and towers were rushing down, coming nearer and nearer with terrific speed, but it will take some days of rushing through the blue infinite before they reach the bottom, that is us, below. And below there is silence.

      There are thin, incomprehensible, almost invisible threads in the air; every autumn they are brought here from beyond the Wall. They float slowly, and suddenly you feel something foreign and invisible on your face; you want to brush it off, but no, you cannot rid yourself of it. You feel it especially near the Green Wall, where I was this morning. I-330 made an appointment with me to meet her in the Ancient House in that “Apartment” of ours.

      I was not far from the rust-red, opaque mass of the Ancient House, when I heard behind me short hasty steps and rapid breathing. I turned around and saw O-90 trying to catch up to me. She seemed strangely and perfectly rounded. Her arms and breast, her whole body, so familiar to me, was rounded out, stretching her unif. It seemed as though it would soon tear the thin cloth and come out into the sun, into the light. I think that there in the green debris, in springtime, the unseen sprouts try thus to tear their way through the ground in order to emit their branches and leaves and to bloom.

      For a few seconds she shone into my face with her blue eyes in silence.

      “I saw you on the Day of Unanimity.”

      “I saw you, too.” I at once remembered; below, in a narrow passage she had stood, pressing herself to the wall, protecting her abdomen with her arms, and automatically I glanced now at her abdomen which rounded the unif. She must have noticed, for she became pink, and with a rosy smile:

      “I am so happy ... so happy! I am so full of ... you understand, I am ... I walk and I hear nothing around me.... And all the while I listen within, within me....”

      I was silent. Something foreign was shadowing my face and I was unable to rid myself of it. Suddenly, all shining, light blue, she caught my hand; I felt her lips upon it.... It was for the first time in my life.... It was some ancient caress as yet unknown to me.... And I was so ashamed and it pained me so much that I swiftly, I think even roughly, pulled my hand away.

      “Listen, you are crazy, it seems.... And anyway you ... what are you happy about? Is it possible that you forget what is ahead of you? If not now, then within a month or two....”

      Her light went out, her roundness sagged and shrank. And in my heart an unpleasant, even a painful compression, mixed with pity. Our heart is nothing else than an ideal pump: a compression, i.e., a shrinking at the moment of pumping, is a technical absurdity. Hence it is clear how essentially absurd, unnatural and pathological are all these “loves” and “pities,” etc., etc., which create that compression....

      Silence. To the left the cloudy green glass of the Wall. And just ahead the dark red mass. Those two colors combined, gave me as a resultant what I thought was a splendid idea.

      “Wait! I know how to save you! I shall save you from.... To see one’s own child for a few moments only and then be sent to death! No! You shall be able to bring it up! You shall watch it and see it grow in your arms, and ripen like a fruit....”

      Her body quivered and she seemed to have chained herself to me.

      “Do you remember that woman, I-330? That ... of ... of long ago?... Who during that walk?... Well, she is now right here, in the Ancient House. Let us go to her and I assure you that I shall arrange matters at once.”

      I already pictured us, I-330 and I, leading O-90 through the corridors ... then how she would be brought amidst flowers, grass, and leaves.... But O-90 stepped back, the little horns of her rosy crescent trembling and bending downward.

      “Is she that same one?” she asked.

      “That is....” I was confused for some reason. “Yes, of course ... that very same....”

      “And you want me to go to her, to ask her ... to.... Don’t you ever dare to say another word about it!”

      Leaning over, she walked away.... Then as if she remembered something, she turned around and cried:

      “I shall die; be it so! And it is none of your business ... what do you care?”

      Silence. From above pieces of blue towers and walls were falling downward with terrific speed ... they will have perhaps hours or days to fly through the infinite.... Unseen threads were slowly floating through the air, planting themselves upon my face, and it was impossible to brush them off, impossible to rid myself of them.

      I walked slowly toward the Ancient House and in my heart I felt that absurd, tormenting compression....

      Record Thirty

      The Last Number

      Galileo’s Mistake

      Would It Not Be Better?

      Here is my conversation with I-330, which took place in the Ancient House yesterday in the midst of loud noise, among colors which stifled the logical course of my thoughts, red, green, bronze, saffron-yellow, orange colors.... And all the while under the motionless marble smile of that snub-nosed ancient poet.

      I shall reproduce the conversation word by word, for it seems to me that it may have an enormous and decisive importance for the fate of the United State,—more than that, for the fate of the universe. Besides, reading it, you my unknown readers, may find some justification for me. I-330, without preliminaries, at once threw everything upon my head:

      “I know that the day after tomorrow the first trial trip of the Integral is to take place. On that day we shall take possession of it.”

      “What! Day after tomorrow?”

      “Yes. Sit down and don’t be upset. We cannot afford to lose a minute. Among the hundreds who were arrested yesterday there are twenty Mephis. To let pass two or three days means that they will perish.”

      I