We: New Edition Read online

  I repeat, it was painful for me to look at them. I was in a hurry to get away.

  “I’ll just check in the machine room,” I said, “and then—we’re on the way.”

  They were asking me about this and that—what voltage to set for the blast-off, how much water ballast was needed for the aft tank. There was a sort of phonograph in me that answered all questions quickly and precisely, while, on the inside, I never ceased to concentrate on my own business.

  And suddenly, in a narrow little gangway, one thing got to me there, inside, and that was in fact the moment from which it all started.

  Gray yunies, gray faces, were passing by in that narrow little gangway when, for one second, one stood out—tousled hair low on a forehead above deep-set eyes: him. I understood: They were here.

  And there was nowhere I could go to escape from all that. And there were only minutes left, a handful of minutes. ... There began an infinitesimal, molecular trembling throughout my body (from that point to the very end it never left me)—as though a huge motor had been turned on and the structure of my body was too light to bear it and all the walls, partitions, cables, girders, lights—everything was trembling....

  I still don’t know whether she’s here. But there’s no time now—they’ve sent for me to come up to the bridge at once: It’s time for take-off.... Take-off to where?

  Gray, dim faces. Down below, on the water, tense blue veins. Ponderous, cast-iron layers of sky. And my hand seems made of cast iron when I lift the command phone.

  “Lift-on—45°!”

  Dull explosion—jolt—aft, a green-and-white mountain of water goes berserk—deck, soft and spongy, vanishes beneath the feet—and everything below, all of life, forever ... In one second everything around shrank as we fell into a sort of funnel: the icy blue convex cityscape, the round bubbles of the cupolas, the lonely leaden finger of the Accumulator Tower. Then—a momentary curtain of cotton-wadding clouds—through it—and the sun was shining in a blue sky. Seconds, minutes, miles—and the blue was quickly becoming firm and suffused with darkness, the stars were emerging like drops of cold silver sweat.

  And here it was—the anxious, unbearably bright, black, starry, sunny night. It was how it might be if you suddenly went deaf: You can still see the trumpets blaring, but you only see them; the trumpets are mute. There’s only silence. That’s how the sun was—mute.

  This was natural, this was to be expected. We’d left the earth’s atmosphere. But it somehow happened so quickly, so abruptly, that everyone suddenly turned shy and got quiet. But as for me—I somehow felt even easier under this fantastic mute sun: as though I had done with cringing, I had crossed some unavoidable threshold, leaving my body down there somewhere while I was speeding in a new world where you expected everything to be unprecedented, upside down....

  “Hold this heading!” I shouted into the intercom, or rather, this shout came from the phonograph in me—and the same phonograph, with a mechanical, hinged movement, handed the intercom phone to the Second Builder. And I, my whole body covered with this thin molecular trembling that only I knew about, headed below, looking for ...

  The door to the wardroom—the very one: In an hour from now it would slam shut and lock tight. Next to the door was someone I didn’t know—shortish, with a face you’d never pick out of a big crowd, with one unusual feature: His arms were uncommonly long and reached to his knees—looked as though they’d been taken by mistake from a different set of human parts.

  One of these long arms reached out and barred the door: “Where are you going?”

  I could see he didn’t know that I knew everything. But so what—maybe it’s better that way. I drew myself up to my full height and said, with deliberate bluntness: “I am the builder of the INTEGRAL. I am in charge of the tests. You understand?”

  The arm vanished.

  The wardroom. Heads bent over the instruments and maps, some of them sprouting a gray bristle, others yellow, bald, ripe. I gather them all into a bunch with one quick glance and head back along the gangway, down the companionway, to the engine room. There, pipes that were glowing from the explosions gave off heat and racket, glistening levers were going through a desperate drunken dance, and the dial pointers never for a moment ceased their barely perceptible trembling....

  Finally, at the tachometer, him—the one with the overhanging brow—bent over a notebook....

  “Listen ... !” I had to shout over the racket right into his ear. “She here? Where is she?”

  There was a smile in the shadow under his brow: “Her? Over there. In the radio telephone room.”

  I go there. I find three of them. All of them in winged headphone helmets. She looked a head taller than usual, winged, gleaming, flying—like one of the ancient Valkyries—and there seemed to be huge blue sparks overhead, on the radio antenna: This came from her, and so did the faint whiff of ozone, lightning.

  “Could someone ... or you,” I said, speaking to her and panting (from running), “could you take a transmission back to earth, to the hangar? Come with me, I’ll dictate it.”

  Next to the equipment room was a small cabin the size of a drawer. We sat at the desk, next to each other. I found her hand and pressed it.

  “Well? What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have any idea how marvelous this is—just to fly, not knowing, no matter where.... And soon it’ll be 12:00 and no one knows what? And tonight ... where’ll we be tonight, you and I? On the grass, maybe, on dry leaves....”

  Blue sparks from her, and the scent of lightning, and my trembling gets faster and faster.

  “Take this down,” I say to her in a loud voice, still panting (from running). “Time 11:30. Speed 6800 ...”

  From beneath her winged helmet, keeping her eyes on the paper, she says quietly: “She came to me last night with your note.... I know, I know everything, be quiet. But her baby ... it’s yours, right? So I sent her ... she’s there already, on the other side of the Wall. She’s going to live....”

  I’m back on the bridge. Back with the insane night of black star-studded sky and blinding sun. Back with the crippled hand of the clock on the wall slowly going from minute to minute and everything clothed in a fog of infinitely fine, all but imperceptible trembling, known to me alone.

  Why, I don’t know, but it struck me that it would be better for all this to take place not here, but somewhere down there, closer to the earth.

  “Stop engines!” I shouted into the intercom.

  Still moving forward, by inertia, but slower, slower. Then the INTEGRAL snagged on some hairbreadth second of time, hung for an instant motionless, till the hair snapped, and the INTEGRAL dropped downward, faster and faster, like a stone. Thus silently for minutes, for dozens of minutes, my pulse audible, the minute hand before my eyes nearer and nearer to 12. And I saw that I was the stone, that I-330 was the earth, that I was a stone thrown by someone, and that the stone had an intolerable need to fall, to smash into the earth, into a thousand fragments.... But what if ... below you could already see the firm blue smoke of clouds ... But what if ...

  But the phonograph inside me, with the smooth precision of a hinge, grabbed the phone and gave the order: “Ahead slow!” The stone stopped falling. Now only the four lower engines, two aft and two forward, were wearily panting just enough to counter the INTEGRAL’s weight, and the INTEGRAL, barely trembling, as though riding at anchor, stood still in the air, some bare kilometer from the earth.

  Everyone spilled out onto the deck (the 12 o’clock mealtime bell was due), and, leaning over the glass railing, drank in, in great hurried gulps, the unknown world down there, beyond the Wall. Amber, green, blue; the woods in autumn, meadows, a lake. At the edge of the blue saucer were some yellow ruins, like bones, from which a dried yellow finger rose menacingly—the steeple of an ancient church, probably, that had survived by a miracle.

  “Look! Look! Over there, to the right!”

  There across the green desert a quickly movin
g spot flew like a brown shadow. Mechanically I moved the binoculars in my hands to my eyes: Chest-high in the grass a herd of brown horses galloped, their tails flying, and on their backs were those creatures, dark bay, white, black....

  A voice behind me: “But I tell you I saw it—a face.”

  “Go on ... tell that to someone else.”

  “Well here ... you take the binoculars.”

  But they’d already vanished. Endless green desert ...

  And in the desert, filling all of it and me and everyone, the piercing vibration of the bell: mealtime in one minute, at 12.

  Instantly the world scattered in disconnected bits. Someone’s resonant golden badge lay on the steps, and it meant nothing to me; it crunched beneath my heel. A voice: “But I tell you, it was a face!” A dark rectangle: open door to the wardroom. White teeth clenched in a sharp smile ...

  And at that moment, when the clock began to strike with infinite slowness, not breathing between one stroke and another, and the lines in front had already begun to move, the rectangle of the door was suddenly barred by two familiar, unnaturally long arms:

  “Halt!”

  Fingers dug into my palm—this was 1-330, who was next to me.

  “Who’s this? Do you know him?”

  “Isn’t ... but isn’t he ... ?”

  Now he was on someone’s shoulders. Above the hundreds of faces his face, the face of hundreds and thousands but uniquely his.

  “In the name of the Guardians ... Those to whom I’m speaking are listening, each one of them is listening. And what I’m telling you is this: We know. We don’t know your numbers yet, but we know everything. The INTEGRAL will not be yours. The test flight will be carried out to the end, and as for you—you dare not make a move—you will carry it out with your own hands. And then ... but I’ve finished....”

  Silence. The glass paving beneath my feet was soft, quilted, and my feet were soft and quilted. Next to me an absolutely white smile, frantic blue sparks. Into my ear, through her teeth:

  “So it was you? You ‘did your duty’? Well ... so be it....”

  Her hand tore out of mine and the Valkyrie helmet with its angry wings was already far ahead of me. Frozen, silent, like all the others, I walk alone into the wardroom....

  But it wasn’t me—it wasn’t! I told no one about this—no one except these mute white pages....

  Inside myself I was screaming this at her—this desperate, loud, inaudible scream. She was sitting opposite me across the table and not once did her eyes brush me. Seated beside her was someone’s ripe yellow bald spot. I could hear 1-330 talking:

  “ ‘Nobility’? But my dear professor, a simple philological analysis of this word shows that it is a prejudice, a survival from ancient feudal epochs. But we ...”

  I felt myself turning pale, and in a moment everyone would see this.... But the internal phonograph counted off the fifty statutory chews for each morsel, I locked myself inside myself as in an ancient opaque house, I blocked my door with rocks, I closed the drapes....

  Then the command phone was in my hands and ... flight, in frozen, final misery—through dark clouds—into the night of sun and stars. Minutes, hours. And evidently inside me all this time, feverishly, at full speed, unheard even by me, the logical motor had been running. Because all of a sudden at some point in blue space I saw my desk and above it the gill-like cheeks of U, on it a forgotten sheet of my records. And I saw it all clearly: nobody but her ... I saw it all....

  Oh if only ... if only I could make it to the radio.... Winged helmets, the smell of blue lightning.... I remember—I was talking to her in a loud voice about something, and I remember how she looked straight through me as if I were glass and said absently:

  “I’m busy. I’m getting a transmission from below. You can dictate yours to her over there....”

  In the tiny box of the cabin I thought for a second and dictated in a firm voice:

  “Time: 14:40. Prepare for landing! Stop all engines. It’s all over.”

  Bridge. The mechanical heart of the INTEGRAL has stopped, we’re falling, but my own heart can’t fall fast enough, keeps lagging, rises higher in my throat. Clouds—and then in the distance a green spot, greener, more and more clear, rushes whirling at us—this is the end....

  The porcelain-white, distorted face of the Second Builder. It was probably him who shoved me with all his might. I hit my head against something and just as I was falling, going dark, I vaguely heard:

  “Aft engines! Ahead full!”

  There was a sharp leap upward.... That’s all I remember.

  RECORD 35

  In a Hoop Carrot Murder

  I didn’t sleep all night. All night long I thought about one thing....

  After what happened yesterday, my head’s been in tight bandages. Or rather, no—it isn’t a bandage, but more like a hoop, a merciless hoop made of glass steel and riveted to my head. And I myself am in just such a forged hoop: Kill U. To kill U, and then go to her, to I-330, and say, “Now do you believe me?” But the most revolting thing is that killing is somehow dirty and archaic; to take something and smash someone’s skull in—this gives me a sensation of something disgustingly sweet in my mouth and I can’t swallow my own spit, I’m forever spitting in my handkerchief, my mouth’s dry.

  In my locker lay a heavy piston rod that had broken after casting (I needed to examine the structure of the fracture under a microscope). I rolled my notes up into a cylinder (let her read all of me, right down to the last letter), shoved the broken end of the piston rod inside, and headed below. The stairway seemed endless, the steps disgustingly slippery somehow, and watery, and I had to keep wiping the sweat away with a handkerchief....

  Below. Heart pounding. I stopped, took out the rod, went to the control desk....

  But U wasn’t there. The board was vacant, frozen. I remembered that all work had been canceled for today; everybody had to go for the Operation. So it made sense: She had no reason to be here, there wouldn’t be anybody to register....

  On the street. Wind. Sky made of racing cast-iron plates. And, just as it happened yesterday at a certain moment: The whole world was divided up into separate, distinct, independent pieces, and each of them, falling headlong, would stop for a second and hang in the air in front of me—then evaporate without a trace.

  Just as if the precise black letters on this page were to shift suddenly, were to be startled into flying off every which way, and not a single word remained, only nonsense: artl-ngoffichwa—. That’s just the sort of scattered crowd that was on the street—no rows, but forward, back, across, cater-cornered.

  Then there was no one. And for one second everything froze in headlong motion: Up there on the second floor, in that glass cage hanging out in the air, is a man and a woman, kissing, standing up, her whole body leaning bent over backward. That’s forever, for the last time.

  At a certain corner I come on a prickly shrub of heads waving about. Up in the air above this, all by itself, is a banner with the words: “Down with the Machines!” “Down with the Operation!” And something in me (not me) has a momentary thought: “Can it be that everyone harbors the kind of pain that can be extracted only along with the heart, and that everyone has to do something before ... ?” And for one second the world contains nothing except (my) animal hand with its cast-iron weight in a roll of paper....

  Now a boy turns up, all of him straining forward, a shadow beneath his lower lip. His lower lip is inside out, like the cuff of a rolled-up sleeve—his whole face is inside out—he’s yelling—running from someone as fast as he can—footsteps behind him....

  From the boy my mind jumps to the conclusion: “That’s right, U must be at the school now. Better get there quick.” I ran to the nearest subway entrance.

  At the entrance someone running past yelled: “They aren’t running! The trains aren’t running today! There ... ”

  I went down. Absolute delirium below. The glitter of faceted crystal suns. Platform rammed full
of heads. An empty, stationary train.

  And in this silence, a voice: hers. I can’t see her, but I know it, I know this resilient, pliant voice, like a slashing whip. There, somewhere, is the sharp triangle of brows drawn back to the temples....

  I shouted: “Let me through! Let me through! I’ve got to...”

  But my arms and shoulders were clamped in someone’s grip, and in the silence I heard a voice: “No, run upstairs! You’ll be cured there—they’ll stuff you tight with good rich happiness and when you’re full, you’ll dream peaceful organized dreams, snoring in time with everyone—can’t you hear that great symphony of snores? You silly people—they want to rid you of these question marks that squirm like worms and gnaw at you like worms. And here you stand and listen to me. Get upstairs quick to the Great Operation! What difference is it to you if I stay on here alone? What difference is it to you if I don’t want others to do the wanting for me? If I want to want for myself? If I want the impossible?”

  Another voice, slow and heavy: “Aha! The impossible? That means running after your imbecilic fantasies so they can wag their tails in front of your nose? No—we’re going to grab that tail and stamp on it, and then...”

  “And then—stuff it in your face and snore away—and there’ll have to be a new tail to put in front of your nose. They say the ancients had an animal called the donkey. In order to make him keep on going forward, they tied a carrot to the shaft in front of his face so that it was just out of his reach. But if he did reach it, he ate it....”