I turned the cold brass knob.
’You will permit me to take the aero?”
“Yes, certainly! Of course…”
Outside, in the sunshine, at the entrance, the old woman was dozing like a vegetable. Again it was astonishing that her closegrown mouth opened and she spoke.
“And your… did she remain there by herself?”
“By herself.”
The old woman’s mouth grew together again. She shook her head. Evidently, even her failing brain understood the full absurdity and danger of the woman’s conduct.
Exactly at seventeen I was at the lecture. And it was only here that I suddenly realized I had said an untruth to the old woman: I-330 was not there by herself now. Perhaps it was this – that I had unwittingly lied to the old woman – that tormented me and interfered with my listening. Yes, she was not by herself: that was the trouble.
After half past twenty-one I had a free hour. I could go to the Office of the Guardians right there and then and turn in my report. But I felt extremely tired after that stupid incident And then – the legal time limit for reporting was two days. I would do it tomorrow; I still had twenty-four hours.
Seventh Entry
Topics: An Eyelash. Taylor. Henbane and Lilies of the Valley
Night. Green, orange, blue. Red royal instrument. Orange-yellow dress. The bronze Buddha. Suddenly he raises his heavy bronze eyelids, and sap begins to flow from them, from Buddha. And sap from the yellow dress, and drops of sap trickling down the mirror, and from the large bed, and the children’s beds, and now I myself, flowing with sap – and some strange, sweet, mortal terror…
I woke: soft, bluish light, glimmer of glass walls, glass chairs and table. This calmed me; my heart stopped hammering. Sap, Buddha… what nonsense! Clearly I must be ill. I have never dreamed before. They say that with the ancients dreaming was a perfectly ordinary, normal occurrence. But of course, their whole life was a dreadful whirling carousel – green, orange, Buddhas, sap. We, however, know that dreams are a serious psychic disease. And I know that until this moment my brain has been a chronometrically exact gleaming mechanism without a single speck of dust. But now… Yes, precisely: I feel some alien body in my brain, like the finest eyelash in the eye. You do not feel your body, but that eye with the lash in it – you can’t forget it for a second…
The brisk crystal bell over my head: seven o’clock, time to get up. On the right and the left, through the glass walls, I see myself, my room, my clothes, my movements – repeated a thousand times over. This is bracing: you feel yourself a part of a great, powerful, single entity. And the precise beauty of it – not a single superfluous gesture, curve, or turn.
Yes, this Taylor was unquestionably the greatest genius of the ancients. True, his thought did not reach far enough to extend his method to all of life, to every step, to the twenty-four hours of every day. He was unable to integrate his system from one hour to twenty-four. Still, how could they write whole libraries of books about some Kant, yet scarcely notice Taylor, that prophet who was able to see ten centuries ahead?
Breakfast is over. The Hymn of the One State is sung in unison. In perfect rhythm, by fours, we walk to the elevators. The faint hum of motors, and quickly – down, down, down, with a slight sinking of the heart…
Then suddenly again that stupid dream – or some implicit function of the dream. Oh, yes, the other day – the descent in the aero. However, all that is over. Period. And it is good that I was so decisive and sharp with her.
In the car of the underground I sped to the place where the graceful body of the Integral, still motionless, not yet animated by fire, gleamed in the sun. Shutting my eyes, I dreamed in formulas. Once more I calculated in my mind the initial velocity needed to tear the Integral away from the earth. Each fraction of a second the mass of the Integral would change (expenditure of the explosive fuel). The equation was very complex, with transcendental values.
As through a dream – in that firm world of numbers – someone sat down, next to me, jostled me slightly, said, “Sorry.”
I opened my eyes a little. At first glance (association with the Integral), something rushing into space: a head – rushing because at either side of it stood out pink wing-ears. Then the curve at the heavy back of the head, the stooped shoulders – double-curved – the letter S…And through the glass walls of my algebraic world, again that eyelash – something unpleasant that I must do today.
“Oh, no, it’s nothing. Certainly.” I smiled at my neighbor, bowing to him. The number S-4711 glinted from his badge. So this was why I had associated him from the very first with the letter S: a visual impression, unrecorded by the conscious mind. His eyes glinted – two sharp little drills, revolving rapidly, boring deeper and deeper – in a moment they would reach the very bottom and see what I would not… even to myself…
That troubling eyelash suddenly became entirely clear to me. He was one of them, one of the Guardians, and it was simplest to tell him everything at once, without delay.
“You know, I was at the Ancient House yesterday…” My voice was strange, somehow flattened out I tried to clear my throat.
“Why, that’s excellent. It gives material for very instructive conclusions.”
“But, you see, I was not alone, I accompanied number I-330, and…”
’I-330? I am delighted for you. A very interesting, talented woman. She has many admirers.”
But then, perhaps, he too? That time during the walk… And he might even be registered for her?
No, it was impossible, unthinkable to talk to him about it; that was clear.
“Oh, yes, yes! Of course, of course! Very.” I smiled more and more broadly and foolishly, and I felt: This smile makes me look naked, stupid.
The little gimlets had reached the very bottom, then, whirling rapidly, slipped back into his eyes. With a double-edged smile, S nodded to me and slid away toward the exit.
I hid behind my newspaper – it seemed to me that everyone was staring at me – and instantly forgot about the eyelash, the gimlets, everything. The news I read was so upsetting that it drove all else out of my mind. There was but one short line:
“According to reliable sources, new traces have been discovered of the elusive organization which aims at liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State.”
“Liberation?” Amazing, the extent to which criminal instincts persist in human nature. I use the word “criminal” deliberately. Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibly as… well, as the motion of the aero and its speed: when its speed equals zero, it does not move; when man’s freedom equals zero, he commits no crimes. That is clear. The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom. And now, just as we have gotten rid of it (on the cosmic scale, centuries are, of course, no more than “just”), some wretched halfwits…
No, I cannot understand why I did not go to the Office of the Guardians yesterday, immediately. Today, after sixteen o’clock, I shall go without fail.
At sixteen-ten I came out, and immediately saw O on the corner – all pink with pleasure at the meeting. “She, now, has a simple, round brain.
How fortunate: she will understand and support me… But no, I needed no support, I had made a firm decision…
The March rang out harmoniously from the trumpets of the Music Plant – the same daily March. What ineffable delight in this daily repetition, its constancy, its mirror clarity!
She seized my hand. “Let’s walk.” The round blue eyes wide open to me – blue windows – and I could step inside without stumbling against anything; nothing there – that is, nothing extraneous, unnecessary.
“No,