We

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!”

Slowly, irresistibly, they plow through the crowd. And it is clear that if there were a wall, a tree, a house in their way, they would without halting plow through the wall, the tree, the house. Now they are in the middle of the avenue. Hands locked, they spread out into a chain, facing us. And we—a tense knot, necks stretched, heads bristling forward—wait. Clouds. Whistling wind.

Suddenly the flanks of the chain, on the right and the left, bend quickly and rush upon us, faster, faster, like a heavy machine speeding downhill. They lock us in the ring—and toward the gaping doors, into the doors, inside…

Someone’s piercing scream: “They’re driving us in! Run!”

And everybody rushes. Just near the wall there is still a narrow living gateway, and everyone streams there, head forward—heads instantly sharp as wedges, sharp elbows, shoulders, sides. Like a jet of water, compressed inside a fire hose, they spread fanlike, and all around—stamping feet, swinging arms, unifs. From somewhere for an instant—a glimpse of a double curved, S-like body, translucent wing-ears—and he is gone, as though swallowed by the earth, and I am alone, in the midst of flashing arms and feet—I run…

I dive into a doorway for a moment’s breath, my back pressed to the door—and instantly, a tiny human splinter—as if driven to me by the wind.

“I was… following you… all the time… I do not want to—you understand—I do not want to. I agree…”

Round, tiny hands upon my sleeve, round blue eyes: it is O. She seems to slide down along the wall and slump onto the ground. Shrunk into a little ball below, on the cold stair, and I bend over her, stroking her head, her face—my hands are wet. As though I were very big, and she—altogether tiny—a tiny part of my own self. This is very different from die feeling for I-330. It seems to me that something like it may have existed among the ancients toward their private children.

Below, through the hands covering the face, just audibly: “Every night I… I cannot… if they cure me… Every night—alone, in darkness—I think about him: what he will be like, how I will… There will be nothing for me to live by—you understand? And you must, you must…”

A preposterous feeling, but I know: yes, I must. Preposterous, because this duty of mine is yet another crime. Preposterous, because white cannot at the same time be black, duty and crime cannot coincide. Or is there no black or white in life, and the color depends only on the initial logical premise? And if the premise was that I unlawfully gave her a child…

“Very well-but don’t, don’t…” I say. “You understand, I must take you to I-330—as I offered that time—so that she…”

“Yes.” Quietly, without taking her hands from her face.

I helped her to get up. And silently, each with our own thoughts—who knows, perhaps about the same thing—along the darkening street, among mute, leaden houses, through the taut, swishing branches of wind…

At a certain transparent, tense point, I heard through the whistling of the wind familiar, slapping steps. At the corner, I glanced back, and in the midst of the rushing, upside-down clouds reflected in the dim glass of the pavement I saw S. Immediately, my hands were not my own, swinging out of time, and I was telling O loudly that tomorrow—yes, tomorrow—the Integral would go up for the first time, and it would be something utterly unprecedented, uncanny, miraculous.

O gave me an astonished, round, blue stare, looked at my loudly, senselessly swinging arms. But I did not let her say a word—I shouted on and on. And there, within me, separately—heard only by myself—the feverish, humming, hammering thought, No, I must not… I must somehow… I must not lead him to I-330…

Instead of turning left, I turned right. The bridge offered its obedient, slavishly bent back to the three of us—to me, O, and to S—behind us. The brightly lit buildings on the other side scattered lights into the water, the lights broke into thousands of feverishly leaping sparks, sprayed with frenzied white foam. The wind hummed like a thick bass string stretched somewhere low overhead. And through the bass, behind us all the time…

The house where I live. At the door O stopped, began to say something. “No! You promised…”

I did not let her finish. Hurriedly I pushed her into the entrance, and we were in the lobby, inside. Over the control desk, the familiar, excitedly quivering, sagging cheeks. A dense cluster of numbers in heated argument; heads looking over the banister from the second floor; people running singly down the stairs. But I would see about that later, later… Now I quickly drew O into the opposite corner, sat down, back against the wall (behind the wall I saw, gliding back and forth, a dark, large-headed shadow), and took out a note pad.

O slowly sagged into her chair—as though her body were melting, evaporating under her unif, and there were only an empty unif and empty eyes that sucked you into their blue emptiness.

Wearily, “Why did you bring me here? You lied to me!”

“No… Be quiet! Look that way—you see, behind the wall?”

“Yes, A shadow.”

“He follows me all the time… I cannot. You understand—I must not. I’ll write two words—you’ll take the note and go alone. I know he will remain here.”

The body stirred again under the unif, the belly rounded out a little; on the cheeks—a faint, rosy dawn.

I slipped the note into her cold fingers, firmly pressed her hand, dipped my eyes for the last time into her blue eyes.

“Good-by! Perhaps, some day we shall…” She took away her hand. Stooping, she walked off slowly… Two steps, and quickly she turned— and was again next to me. Her lips moved. With her eyes, her lips, all of herself—a single word, saying a single word to me—and what an unbearable smile, what pain…

And then, a bent tiny human splinter in the doorway, a tiny shadow behind the wall—without looking back, quickly, ever more quickly…

I went over to U’s desk. Excitedly, indignantly inflating her gills, she said to me, “You understand—they all seem to have lost their heads! He insists that he has seen some human creature near the Ancient House—naked and all covered with fur…”

From the dense cluster of heads, a voice: “Yes! I’ll say it again—I saw it, yes.”

“Well, what do you think of that? The man’s delirious!”

And this “delirious” of hers was so sure, so unbending that I asked myself: Perhaps all of it, all that’s been happening to me and around me lately is really nothing but delirium?

But then I glanced at my hairy hands, and I remembered: “There must be a drop of forest blood in you… Perhaps that’s why I…”

No—fortunately, it is not delirium. No— unfortunately, it is not delirium.