“Someone… no—you…” I said to her breathlessly (from running). “I must transmit a message down, to the earth, to the dock… Come, I’ll dictate it---”
Next to the apparatus room there was a tiny boxlike cabin. Side by side, at the table. I found her hand, pressed it hard. “Well? What next?”
“I don’t know. Do you realize how wonderful it is to fly, not knowing where—to fly—no matter where… And soon it will be twelve—and who knows what’s to come? And night… Where shall we be at night, you and I? Perhaps on grass, on dry leaves…”
She emanates blue sparks and smells of lightning, and my trembling grows more violent.
“Write down,” I say loudly, still out of breath (with running). “Time, eleven-thirty. Velocity: sixty-eight hundred…”
She, from under the winged helmet, without taking her eyes from the paper, quietly: “She came to me last night with your note… I know—I know everything, don’t speak. But the child is yours? And I sent her there—she is already safe, beyond the Wall. She’ll live…”
Back in the commander’s cabin. Again—the night, delirious, with a black starry sky and dazzling sun; the clock hand on the wall—limping slowly, from minute to minute; and everything as in a fog, shaken with the finest, scarcely perceptible (perceptible to me alone) trembling.
For some reason, it seemed to me: It would be better if all that was about to follow took place not here, but lower, nearer to the earth.
“Halt engines!” I cried into the receiver.
Still moving by inertia, but slower, slower. Now the Integral caught at some hair-thin second, hung for a moment motionless; then the hair broke, and the Integral plunged like a stone—down, faster, faster. And so, in silence, for minutes, dozens of minutes. I heard my own pulse. The clock hand before my eyes crawled nearer and nearer to twelve. And it was clear to me: I was the stone; I-330 was the earth, and I—a stone, thrown by someone’s, hand. And the stone was irresistibly compelled to fall, to crash against the earth, to smash itself to bits… And what if… Below, the hard blue smoke of clouds was already visible… What if…
But the phonograph inside me picked up the receiver with hingelike precision, gave the command: “Low speed.” The stone no longer fell. And now only the four lower auxiliaries—two fore, two aft—puffed wearily, merely to neutralize the Integral’s weight, and the Integral stopped in mid-air with a slight quiver, firmly anchored, about a kilometer from the earth.
Everyone rushed out on deck (it’s almost twelve-time for the lunch bell) and, bending over the glass railing, hurriedly gulped the unknown world below, beyond the Wall. Amber, green, blue: the autumn woods, meadows, a lake. At the edge of a tiny blue saucer, some yellow, bonelike ruins, a threatening, yellow, dry finger—probably the spire of an ancient church, miraculously preserved.
“Look, look! There, to the right!”
There—in a green wilderness—a rapid spot flew like a brown shadow. I had binoculars in my hand; mechanically I brought them to my eyes: chest-deep in the grass, with sweeping tails, a herd of brown horses galloped, and on their backs, those beings—bay, white, raven black…
Behind me: “And I tell you—I saw a face.”
“Go on! Tell it to someone else!”
“Here, here are the binoculars…”
But they were gone now. And endless green wilderness…
And in the wilderness—filling all of it, and all of me, and everyone—the piercing quaver of a belclass="underline" lunchtime, in another minute, at twelve.
The world—scattered in momentary, unconnected fragments. On the steps, somebody’s clanking golden badge—and I don’t care: it crunched under my heel. A voice: “And I say, there was a face!” A dark rectangle: the open door of the lounge. Clenched, white, sharply smiling teeth…
And at the moment when the clock began to strike, with agonizing slowness, without breathing from one stroke to the next, and the front ranks had already begun to move—the rectangle of the door was suddenly crossed over by two familiar, unnaturally long arms:
“Stop!”
Fingers dug into my palm—I-330, next to me.
“Who is he? Do you know him?”
“Isn’t he… Isn’t he one of…”
He stood on someone’s shoulders. Over a hundred faces—his face, like hundreds, thousands of others, yet unique.
“In the name of the Guardians… Those to whom I speak, they hear me, each of them hears me. I say to you—we know. We do not know your numbers as yet, but we know everything. The Integral shall not be yours! The test flight will be completed; and you—you will not dare to make a move now—you will do it, with your own hands. And afterward… But I have finished…”
Silence. The glass squares underfoot are soft as cotton; my feet are soft as cotton. She is beside me—utterly white smile, frenzied blue sparks. Through her teeth, into my ear, “Ah, so you did it? You ‘fulfilled your duty’? Oh, well…”
Her hand broke from my hand, the Valkyrie’s wrathful, winged helmet was now somewhere far ahead. Alone, silent, frozen, I walked like all the others into the lounge…
But no, it wasn’t I—not I! I spoke of it to no one, no one except those white, mute pages… Within me—inaudibly, desperately, loudly—I cried this to her. She sat across the table, opposite me, and she did not once allow her eyes to touch me. Next to her, someone’s ripe-yellow bald head.
I heard (it was I-330 speaking), “ ‘Nobility?’ No, my dearest Professor, even, a simple philological analysis of the word will show that it is nothing but a relic of ancient feudal forms. And we…”
I felt myself go pale—and now everyone would see it… But the phonograph within me performed the fifty prescribed masticating movements for every bite, I locked myself within me as in an ancient, untransparent house—I piled rocks before my door, I pulled down the shades…
Later—the commander’s receiver in my hands; and flight, in icy, final anguish—through clouds— into the icy, starry-sunny night. Minutes, hours. And evidently all this time, at feverish speed, the logical motor, unheard even by me, continued to work within me. For suddenly, at a certain point of blue space, I saw: my writing table, and over it U’s gill-like cheeks, and the forgotten pages of my notes. And it was clear to me: no one but she— everything was clear…
Ah, if I could only… I must, I must get to the radio room… The winged helmets, the smell of blue lightning… I remember—I was speaking to her loudly. And I remember—looking through me as though I were of glass—from far away, “I am busy. I am receiving messages from below. Dictate to her…”
In the tiny cabin, after a moment’s thought, I dictated firmly, “Time—fourteen-forty. Down! Stop engines. The end of everything.”
The command cabin. The Integral’s mechanical heart has been stopped, we are dropping, and my heart cannot keep up; it falls behind, it rises higher and higher into my throat. Clouds—then a distant green spot—ever greener, clearer—rushing madly at us—now—the end…
The white-porcelain twisted face of the Second Builder. It must be he who pushed me with all his strength. My head struck something, and falling, darkening, I heard as through a fog, “Aft engines-full speed!”
A sharp leap upward… I remember nothing else.
Thirty-fifth Entry
I did not sleep all night. All night—a single thought…
Since yesterday, my head is tightly bandaged. But no: it’s not a bandage—it is a hoop; a merciless tight hoop of glass steel riveted to my head, and I am caught within this single, locked circle: I must kill U. Kill her, and then go to the other and say, “Now you believe?” The most disgusting thing of all is that killing is somehow messy, primitive. Crushing her skull with something—it gives me a strange sensation of something sickeningly sweet in the mouth, and I cannot swallow my saliva, I keep spitting it out into my handkerchief, and my mouth is dry.