We: New Edition Read online

  Throwing on my yuny, I bent over 1-330 and, for the last time, took her in with my eyes.

  “I knew that ... I knew you,” said she, very softly. She got up quickly, put on her yuny, and her smile-bite.

  “Well, fallen angel. Now you’re ruined,” she said, reverting to the formal you. “No, aren’t you afraid? Well, goodbye ! You’ll get back on your own, right?”

  She opened the mirrored door that was in one wall of the wardrobe. Over her shoulder she looked at me and waited. I left obediently. But I’d no more than stepped over the threshold when suddenly I had to feel her pressed against me with her shoulder, only for a second, with her shoulder, that’s all.

  I rushed back into the room where she (I thought) was still buttoning up her yuny in front of the mirror. I ran in—and stopped. I can see it now: The old ring on the key of the wardrobe door was still swinging, but 1-330 was gone. There was nowhere she could have gone, there was only one exit from the room, but still she was gone. I rummaged through everything, I even opened the door of the wardrobe and ran my hands through the ancient motley dresses. No one.

  I feel a little awkward, my planetary readers, when I tell you about this totally improbable thing that happened. But what can you do if that really is the way it happened? The whole day from the earliest morning—wasn’t it full of the most improbable things, wasn’t it just like that ancient sickness called dreaming? And so what difference does it make, one absurdity more or less? Besides, I am certain that sooner or later I’m going to be able to fit any absurdity into a syllogism. I find that comforting, and I hope it comforts you.

  How full I am! If only you knew how full I am!

  RECORD 14

  “Mine” Forbidden Cold Floor

  Still about what happened yesterday. During the Personal Hour before bedtime yesterday I was busy and couldn’t make a note here. But all that seems carved into me—and especially (this is probably carved in forever) that unbearably cold floor....

  0 was supposed to come to me in the evening—it was her day. I went downstairs to the duty desk to get my pass for lowering the blinds.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the duty officer asked. “You look sort of, I don’t know, today ... ”

  “I ... I’m sick....”

  As a matter of fact, that was the truth. Of course I’m sick. The whole thing is sickness. And just then it hit me: I had the certificate. I felt in my pocket. There it was, it rustled. Which meant ... it all ... really happened.

  I handed the slip of paper to the duty officer. I could feel my cheeks start to burn. I didn’t have to look at the duty officer to see that he was looking at me with surprise.

  And it was already 21:30. In the room to my left the blinds were down. In the room to the right I see my neighbor. He’s bent over a book, his bumpy, hillocky bald spot and forehead making a huge yellow parabola. And I keep pacing and pacing. I’m in torment. How can I, after all that ... with her, with O? And from the right I definitely feel eyes on me, I can clearly make out wrinkles on that forehead—a string of yellow lines. And it somehow seems that those lines are about me.

  At 22:45 in my room: a rosy whirlwind of joy. A strong ring of rosy arms around my neck. And then I feel how the ring is weakening, weakening ... it breaks ... the arms drop...

  “You aren’t the same, not how you were before. You aren’t mine!”

  What savage terminology—“mine.” I was never ... But I suddenly caught myself: It occurred to me that I wasn’t before, true, but now ... Because now I wasn’t living in our rational world. I was in the ancient delirious world, the world where minus one has roots.

  The blinds fall. There, behind the wall to the right, my neighbor knocks his book off the table onto the floor, and in the last little momentary crack between the blinds and the floor I see his yellow hand grab the book. And everything in me longs to reach out and grasp that hand....

  “I thought ... I wanted to meet you today during the walk. There was a lot I had ... I needed to tell you so much....”

  Poor, dear O! Her rosy mouth ... the rosy crescent with its horns turned downward. But I can’t tell her everything that happened, if only because that would make her an accomplice of my crimes. Because I know she doesn’t have the strength to go to the Bureau of Guardians, and, consequently ...

  O was lying on the bed. I was kissing her slowly. I kissed that naive little puffy crease on her wrist. Her blue eyes were closed. The rosy crescent was slowly opening up like a flower ... and I kissed her all over.

  Suddenly I had an intense feeling of the emptiness of everything, how it had all been abandoned. I couldn’t, it was impossible. I needed to, but I couldn’t. My lips turned cold at once.

  The rosy crescent began to tremble, faded, became contorted. 0 pulled the cover over her, wrapped herself in it, and turned her face into the pillow....

  I sat on the floor next to the bed, a desperately cold floor, and said nothing. The punishing cold from beneath me rose higher and higher. There is probably the same mute cold up there, in the silent blue interplanetary spaces.

  “Please understand me ... I didn’t mean ...” I mumbled. “I tried with all my might ... ”

  It was true. I, the real me, did not want ... But still, what words could I use to tell her? How explain to her that the piece of iron did not want ... but the law was implacable, precise ...

  Lifting her head out of the pillow, 0 said, her eyes still shut, “Go away.” But as she was crying this came out: “O-way. And this stupid detail also etched itself into me.

  Cold through and through, turning numb, I went out into the hall. There beyond the wall was a barely visible wisp of fog. But by night it would probably come down again and cover everything. What would that night bring?

  O slipped past me without a word and went to the elevator. The door banged shut.

  “Wait a minute!” I yelled. I was terrified.

  But the elevator was already humming down, down, down ...

  She had taken R from me.

  She had taken O from me.

  And yet ... and yet ...

  RECORD 15

  Bell Mirror-Like Sea My Fate to Burn Forever

  As soon as I enter the hangar where the INTEGRAL is being built, the Second Builder comes toward me. His face is the same as always: round, white, a porcelain plate. And—serving something irresistibly tasty on this plate—he says:

  “Yesterday, while you were so good as to be sick, while the boss was away, so to speak, we had here what you might call an event.”

  “An event?”

  “Yes! The bell rang, they knocked off work, everybody started to leave the hangar, and—wait for it—the man on the door caught a fellow with no number. How he got in I’ll never understand. They took him to Operations. Poor baby, they’ll pull it out of him there, how and why he ...” (a delicious smile).

  Our best and most experienced physicians work in Operations, under the direct supervision of the Benefactor himself. They have all sorts of apparatus, the main instrument being the famous Gas Bell. This is essentially the old school experiment: A mouse is placed under a glass dome, a pump gradually rarefies the air in the dome ... and so on. But the Gas Bell is of course a much improved piece of equipment, it uses various gasses; and then, too, this is not making fun of some poor little helpless animal, this has a high purpose, the security of OneState—in other words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries back, when the work in Operations was only just getting under way, there were certain idiots who compared Operations with the ancient Inquisition. But that’s just as stupid as equating a surgeon doing a tracheotomy with a highway robber. They might both be holding the same knife in their hand and doing the same thing-cutting a living human being’s throat open—but one of them is a benefactor and the other’s a criminal, one has a + sign and the other a—sign.

  All this is too obvious, all this you can see in one second, one spin of the logical machine. And then all of a sudden the gear teeth snag on th
at minus sign—and something totally different swims up to the surface: that key ring still swinging on the wardrobe door. The door had obviously just slammed, but she, I-330, was not there. She’d vanished. There was no way the machine could handle that. A dream? But I can still feel it, that incomprehensibly sweet pain in my right shoulder, I-330 pressing against my right shoulder, beside me in the fog. “You love the fog?” Yes, the fog, too. I love everything. And everything is supple, new, surprising, everything is ... okay.

  “Everything’s okay,” I said aloud.

  “Okay?” The round porcelain eyes popped. “I mean, what’s okay about this? If that guy with no number managed ... then they must be ... everywhere, all around, all the time, they’re here, they’re around the INTEGRAL, they ...”

  “Who is they?”

  “How should I know who? But I feel them—you know? All the time.”

  “Have you heard about this new operation they’re supposed to have developed—the one where they cut out the imagination?” (I had in fact recently heard something like this.)

  “Yes, I know. Why do you bring that up?”

  “Because, if I were you, I’d go see about having that done.”

  Something sour as a lemon materialized on the plate. Dear little man. The remotest hint that he might have an imagination was quite insulting to him. But what am I saying? A week back, and I’d probably have been insulted, too. But not now. Because now I know that I have one, that I’m sick. And I also know I don’t feel like getting well. I just don’t feel like it, that’s all. We mounted the glass steps of the stairway. You could see everything below like the palm of your hand.

  Those of you reading these notes, wherever you are, you’ve got the sun above you. And if you were ever as sick as I am now, you know what the sun is like in the morning, or how it might be, you know that rosy, transparent, warm gold. And even the air is a little pink, and everything’s saturated with the tender blood of the sun, everything’s alive; soft and alive—the stones; warm and alive—the iron; the people alive and every one of them smiling. It might be that an hour later everything will vanish, in one hour the last drop of rosy blood will be gone, but for the time being everything’s alive. And I see something pulsing and surging in the glass juices of the INTEGRAL. I see the INTEGRAL thinking about its great and terrifying future, about the heavy burden of inescapable happiness that it will carry there, upward, to you, the unknown ones, to you who seek eternally and never find. You will find, you will be happy. It is your duty to be happy. And you don’t have long to wait.

  The hull of the INTEGRAL is almost ready: an elegant, elongated ellipsoid made of our glass—as everlasting as gold, as resilient as steel. I saw them inside fastening the transverse ribs, or framers, and the lengthwise stringers to the glass body; aft, they were putting in the base for the giant rocket engine. One blast every three seconds. Every three seconds the mighty tail of the INTEGRAL will spew out flame and gasses into cosmic space, and then off it will fly, the fiery Tamerlane of happiness....

  I watched the men below, how they would bend over, straighten up, turn around, all in accordance with Taylor, smoothly and quickly, keeping in time, like the levers of a single immense machine. Pipes glistened in their hands: With fire they were cutting, with fire they were soldering the glass partitions, angle bars, ribs, gussets. I watched the gigantic cranes, made of clear glass, slowly rolling along glass rails and, just like the men, obediently turn, bend, and insert their cargo into the innards of the INTEGRAL. They were the same, all one: humanized, perfected men. It was the sublimest, the most moving beauty, harmony, music.... I wanted to go down there at once, to them, to be with them!

  And there I’d be: shoulder to shoulder with them, welded to them, caught up in the steel rhythm, the measured movements, the firm round ruddy cheeks, the mirror-smooth brows, unclouded by the insanity of thought. I was sailing on a mirror-like sea. I was at rest.

  Suddenly one of them turned to me serenely and said: “Well, how’s it going today? Feeling better?”

  “Better? What ... ?”

  “I mean, you weren’t at work yesterday. We thought you might be down with something serious....” Clear brow, innocent, childlike smile.

  The blood rushed to my face. I could not lie to those eyes, I could not. I said nothing. I was sinking.

  From above—gleaming, round, and white—the porcelain face appeared from a hatch: “Hey! D-503! Mind coming here for a minute? We’ve got a tight frame here with the consoles, and the junction nodes are showing pressure up to ...”

  Not waiting for him to finish, I rushed off in his direction—I was running away in disgrace, to escape. I didn’t have the strength to raise my eyes. I was dazzled by the flashing glass steps beneath my feet, and each step made me feel more hopeless: I had no business being here, a criminal, a poisoned man. Never again was I to blend into the precise mechanical rhythm, never to sail on the serene and mirror-like sea. My fate was to burn forever, to rush hither and yon, searching for some corner to hide my eyes—forever, until I found the strength at last to go through ...

  And then a frozen spark shot through: So much for me, I no longer mattered, but it would have to be about her, too, and she ...

  I crawled out of the hatch onto the deck and stopped: I didn’t know where to go now, I didn’t know why I’d come here. I looked up. There the sun, exhausted by noon, was dimly rising. Down below was the INTEGRAL, gray-glassed and dead. The rosy blood had run out—I knew I was imagining all this, that everything was the way it was before, but still, it was clear....

  “What’s the matter with you, 503? Are you deaf? I’ve been calling and calling.... What’s the matter?” It was the Second Builder, who must have been shouting right in my ear for a long time.

  What is the matter with me? I’ve lost the rudder. The motor is roaring for all it’s worth, the aero is trembling and racing along, but there’s no rudder—and I don’t know where it’s headed: downward to crash into the earth any second, or upward .... to the sun, to fire ...

  RECORD 16

  Yellow Two-Dimensional Shadow Incurable Soul

  Haven’t written here in several days. I don’t know how many: All the days seem like one. All the days have one color, yellow, like dessicated, hyper-heated sand, and there isn’t a shred of shade, nor a drop of water, and no end of the yellow sand. I can’t manage without her—but she, ever since she mysteriously vanished from the Ancient House ...

  Since then I’ve seen her only once on the walk. Two, three, four days ago ... I don’t know. All the days are the same. She appeared once, momentarily, and filled the empty yellow world for a second. Hand in hand with her was the double-bent S, who came only to her shoulder, and the paper-thin doctor, and a fourth Number—only his fingers stuck in my memory: They stuck out of the sleeves of his yuny like bundles of rays ... extremely thin, white, and long. 1-330 raised her hand and waved to me, then she bent across S’s head and said something to ray-fingers. I could hear the word “INTEGRAL,” and then all four looked back at me, and then they were lost in the gray-blue sky and I was left with the yellow, dried path.

  She had a pink ticket to come to my place that evening. I stood in front of the intercom screen and with mixed tenderness and hatred implored it to click so that the white slot would hurry and light up with “1-330.” The elevator doors clanged and every sort came out—pale, tall, pink, dark—but not her. She didn’t come.

  And it may be that right now, at 22:00, at the very minute when I’m writing this, she’s got her eyes closed and is pressing her shoulders against someone and saying, “You like it?” Who? Who is he? That one with the ray-fingers? Or the thick-lipped sprinkler, R? Or S?

  S ... How come not a day passes that I don’t hear his flat feet behind me, squelching along as though walking through puddles? Why is he behind me every day, like a shadow? In front, to the side, behind, this gray-blue, two-dimensional shadow. People walk through it, step on it, but it’s always right there all the same, next
to me, attached by an invisible umbilical cord. Maybe she’s the umbilical—I-330? I don’t know. Or maybe they, the Guardians, already know that I ...

  Let’s say they told you that your shadow could see you, see you all the time. You understand. And suddenly you have this strange feeling that your arms are somebody else’s, they’re in your way, and I catch myself swinging my arms like an idiot, out of step with my own feet. And suddenly you’ve absolutely got to look behind you, but you can’t look behind you, it’s impossible, your neck’s in a vise. So I run, I run faster and faster, and my very back senses my shadow running after me, faster and faster, and there’s nowhere, nowhere, I can hide from it....

  I’m in my room, I’m finally alone. But now there’s something else: the phone. I pick up the receiver again: “Yes, may I speak to 1-330, please.” There’s more of the slight noise in the receiver, someone’s footsteps, in the hallway, past the doors of her room, and silence.... I throw the receiver down ... and that’s it, I can’t go on. I’ve got to go there, to her.

  That was yesterday. I ran over there, and for a whole hour, from 16:00 to 17:00, I wandered around the building where she lives. Numbers were passing in rows. Thousands of feet raining down in time, a million-footed leviathan, heaving, was floating past. But I am alone—cast up by the storm on an uninhabited island, and I search and search with my eyes through the gray-blue waves.

  Any minute now, from somewhere—the sharp sardonic angle of eyebrows raised toward temples, and the dark windows of the eyes and there, inside, a burning hearth and someone’s shadows moving. And I’m headed straight there, inside, and I call her (by the intimate “you”): “But surely you know—I can’t do without you. So why this ... ?”