She spoke gently and sternly. “You are a dreamer! I would not permit the children at school to speak like that…”
And she went on about the children—how she had taken them all to the Operation, and how they had had to be tied up there… and that “love must be ruthless, yes, ruthless,” and that she thought she would at last decide…
She smoothed the gray blue cloth over her knees, quickly and silently plastered me over with her smile, and left.
Fortunately, the sun had not yet stopped today; it was still running, and now it was sixteen. I knocked at the door, my heart beating…
“Come in!”
And I was down on the floor near her chair, embracing her legs, head thrown back and looking into her eyes—one, then the other—and in each one seeing myself, in marvelous captivity…
And then, outside the wall, a storm. Clouds darkening—more and more like cast iron. Let them! My head could not contain the flow of riotous, wild words—spilling over the rim. I spoke aloud, and, together with the sun, we were flying somewhere… But now we knew where—and behind us, planets—planets spraying flame, inhabited by fiery, singing flowers—and mute, blue planets, where sentient, rational stones were organized into societies—planets which, like our earth, had reached the summit of absolute, and hundred per cent happiness…
Suddenly, from above, “But don’t you think that the society at the summit is precisely a society organized of stones?” The triangle of her eyebrows grew sharper, darker. “And happiness… Well, after all, desires torment us, don’t they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one… What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it’s been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign—the divine minus.”
I remember I muttered in confusion, “Absolute minus? Minus 273°…”
“Precisely—minus 273°. Somewhat chilly, but wouldn’t that in itself prove that we’re at the summit?”
As once, a long time ago, she somehow spoke for me, through me, unfolding my ideas to the very end. But there was something sharply frightening in it—I could not bear it, and with an effort I forced a “no” out of sayself.
“No,” I said. “You… you are mocking me…”
She laughed, loudly—too loudly. Quickly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled, fell… A silence.
She rose and placed her hands upon my shoulders, and looked at me slowly and long. Then pulled me to herself—and there was nothing, only her hot, sharp lips.
“Farewell!”
It came from far, from above, and took a long time to reach me—a minute, perhaps, or two.
“What do you mean, ‘Farewell’?”
“Well, you are sick, you have committed crimes because of me—has it not been a torment to you? And now, the Operation—and you will cure yourself of me. And that means—farewell.”
“No,” I cried out.
A pitilessly sharp, dark triangle on white: “What? You don’t want happiness?”
My head was splitting; two logical trains collided, climbing upon each other, crashing, splintering…
“Well, I am waiting. Make your choice: the Operation and one hundred per cent happiness— or…”
“I cannot… without you. I want nothing without you,” I said, or merely thought—I am not sure—but she heard.
“Yes, I know,” she answered. And, her hands still on my shoulders, her eyes still holding mine, “Until tomorrow, then. Tomorrow, at twelve. You remember?”
“No, it’s been postponed for a day… The day after tomorrow…”
“All the better for us. At twelve, the day after tomorrow…”
I walked alone through the twilit street. The wind was whirling, driving, carrying me like a slip of paper. Fragments of cast-iron sky flew and flew-they had another day, two days to hurtle through infinity… The unifs of passersby brushed against me, but I walked alone. I saw it clearly: everyone was saved, but there was no salvation for me. I did not want salvation…
Thirty-second Entry
Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man: hence… No, this is not what I mean. I know you know this. I am asking: have you ever really believed it; believed it totally, not with your mind, but with your body; have you ever felt that one day the fingers holding this very page will be icy, yellow…
No, of course you don’t believe it—and this is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor down to the pavement; this is why you are still eating, turning the page, shaving, smiling, writing…
The same—yes, exactly the same—is true of me today. I know that this little black arrow on the dock will crawl down here, below, to midnight, will slowly rise again, will step across some final line—and the incredible tomorrow will be here. I know this, but somehow I also don’t believe it. Or, perhaps, it seems to me that twenty-four hours are twenty-four years. And this is why I can still do something, hurry somewhere, answer questions, climb the ladder to the Integral. I still feel it rocking on the water; I know I must grasp the handrail and feel the cold glass under my hand. I see the transparent, living cranes bend their long, birdlike necks, stretch their beaks, and tenderly, solicitously feed the Integral with the terrible explosive food for its motors. And below, on the river, I clearly see the blue, watery veins and nodes, swollen with the wind. But all of this is quite apart from me, extraneous, flat—like a scheme on a sheet of paper. And it is strange that the flat, paper face of the Second Builder is suddenly speaking.
“Well, then? How much fuel shall we take for the motors? If we think of three… or three and a half hours…”
Before me—projected on the blueprint—my hand with the calculator, the logarithmic dial at fifteen.
“Fifteen tons. No, better load… yes—load a hundred…”
Because, after all, I do know that tomorrow…
And I see, from somewhere at the side: my hand with the dial starts to tremble faintly.
“A hundred? Why so much? That would be for a week. A week? Much longer!”
“Anything might happen… Who knows…”
I know…
The wind howls; the air is tightly filled with something invisible, to the very top. I find it hard to breathe, hard to walk. And slowly, with an effort, without stopping for a second, the arrow crawls upon the face of the clock on the Accumulator Tower at the end of the avenue. The spire is in the clouds—dim, blue, howling in muted tones, sucking electricity. The trumpets of the Music Plant howl.
As ever, in rows, four abreast But the rows are somehow unsolid; perhaps it is the wind that makes them waver, bend—more and more. Now they have collided with something on the corner, they flow back, and there is a dense, congealed, immobile cluster, breathing rapidly. Suddenly everyone is craning his neck.
“Look! No, look—that way, quick!”
“It’s they! It’s they!”
“… I’ll never… Better put my head straight into the Machine…”
“Sh-sh! You’re mad…”
In the auditorium at the corner the door is gaping wide, and a slow, heavy column of some fifty people emerges. “People?” No, that does not describe them. These are not feet—they are stiff, heavy wheels, moved by some invisible transmission belt These are not people—they are humanoid tractors. Over their heads a white banner is flapping in the wind, a golden sun embroidered on it; between the sun’s rays, the words: “We are the first! We have already undergone the Operation! Everybody, follow us!”