|
The Machine
Stops
II
THE MENDING APPARATUS
By a vestibule, by a lift, by a tubular railway, by a platform,
by a sliding door - by reversing all the steps of her departure
did Vashti arrive at her son"s room, which exactly resembled
her own. She might well declare that the visit was superfluous.
The buttons, the knobs, the reading-desk with the Book, the
temperature, the atmosphere, the illumination - all were exactly
the same. And if Kuno himself, flesh of her flesh, stood close
beside her at last, what profit was there in that? She was
too well-bred to shake him by the hand.
Averting her eyes, she spoke as follows:
"Here I am. I have had the most terrible journey and
greatly retarded the development of my soul. It is not worth
it, Kuno, it is not worth it. My time is too precious. The
sunlight almost touched me, and I have met with the rudest
people. I can only stop a few minutes. Say what you want to
say, and then I must return."
"I have been threatened with Homelessness," said
Kuno.
She looked at him now.
"I have been threatened with Homelessness, and I could
not tell you such a thing through the Machine."
Homelessness means death. The victim is exposed to the air,
which kills him.
"I have been outside since I spoke to you last. The
tremendous thing has happened, and they have discovered me."
"But why shouldn"t you go outside?" she exclaimed,
"It is perfectly legal, perfectly mechanical, to visit
the surface of the earth. I have lately been to a lecture
on the sea; there is no objection to that; one simply summons
a respirator and gets an Egression-permit. It is not the kind
of thing that spiritually minded people do, and I begged you
not to do it, but there is no legal objection to it."
"I did not get an Egression-permit."
"Then how did you get out?"
"I found out a way of my own."
The phrase conveyed no meaning to her, and he had to repeat
it.
"A way of your own?" she whispered. "But that
would be wrong."
"Why?"
The question shocked her beyond measure.
"You are beginning to worship the Machine," he
said coldly.
"You think it irreligious of me to have found out a
way of my own. It was just what the Committee thought, when
they threatened me with Homelessness."
At this she grew angry. "I worship nothing!" she
cried. "I am most advanced. I don"t think you irreligious,
for there is no such thing as religion left. All the fear
and the superstition that existed once have been destroyed
by the Machine. I only meant that to find out a way of your
own was----Besides, there is no new way out."
"So it is always supposed."
"Except through the vomitories, for which one must have
an Egression-permit, it is impossible to get out. The Book
says so."
"Well, the Book"s wrong, for I have been out on
my feet."
For Kuno was possessed of a certain physical strength.
By these days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant
was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength
were destroyed. Humanitarians may protest, but it would have
been no true kindness to let an athlete live; he would never
have been happy in that state of life to which the Machine
had called him; he would have yearned for trees to climb,
rivers to bathe in, meadows and hills against which he might
measure his body. Man must be adapted to his surroundings,
must he not? In the dawn of the world our weakly must be exposed
on Mount Taygetus, in its twilight our strong will suffer
euthanasia, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine
may progress, that the Machine may progress eternally.
"You know that we have lost the sense of space. We say
“space is annihilated”, but we have annihilated not space,
but the sense thereof. We have lost a part of ourselves. I
determined to recover it, and I began by walking up and down
the platform of the railway outside my room. Up and down,
until I was tired, and so did recapture the meaning of “Near”
and “Far”. “Near” is a place to which I can get quickly on
my feet, not a place to which the train or the air-ship will
take me quickly. “Far” is a place to which I cannot get quickly
on my feet; the vomitory is “far”, though I could be there
in thirty-eight seconds by summoning the train. Man is the
measure. That was my first lesson. Man"s feet are the
measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership,
his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable
and strong. Then I went further: it was then that I called
to you for the first time, and you would not come.
"This city, as you know, is built deep beneath the surface
of the earth, with only the vomitories protruding. Having
paced the platform outside my own room, I took the lift to
the next platform and paced that also, and so with each in
turn, until I came to the topmost, above which begins the
earth. All the platforms were exactly alike, and all that
I gained by visiting them was to develop my sense of space
and my muscles. I think I should have been content with this
- it is not a little thing, - but as I walked and brooded,
it occurred to me that our cities had been built in the days
when men still breathed the outer air, and that there had
been ventilation shafts for the workmen. I could think of
nothing but these ventilation shafts. Had they been destroyed
by all the food-tubes and medicine-tubes and music- tubes
that the Machine has evolved lately? Or did traces of them
remain? One thing was certain. If I came upon them anywhere,
it would be in the railway-tunnels of the topmost storey.
Everywhere else, all space was accounted for.
"I am telling my story quickly, but don"t think
that I was not a coward or that your answers never depressed
me. It is not the proper thing, it is not mechanical, it is
not decent to walk along a railway-tunnel. I did not fear
that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I feared
something far more intangible-doing what was not contemplated
by the Machine. Then I said to myself, “Man is the measure”,
and I went, and after many visits I found an opening.
"The tunnels, of course, were lighted. Everything is
light, artificial light; darkness is the exception. So when
I saw a black gap in the tiles, I knew that it was an exception,
and rejoiced. I put in my arm - I could put in no more at
first - and waved it round and round in ecstasy. I loosened
another tile, and put in my head, and shouted into the darkness:
“I am coming, I shall do it yet,” and my voice reverberated
down endless passages. I seemed to hear the spirits of those
dead workmen who had returned each evening to the starlight
and to their wives, and all the generations who had lived
in the open air called back to me, “You will do it yet, you
are coming,”"
He paused, and, absurd as he was, his last words moved her.
For Kuno had lately asked to be a father, and his request
had been refused by the Committee. His was not a type that
the Machine desired to hand on.
"Then a train passed. It brushed by me, but I thrust
my head and arms into the hole. I had done enough for one
day, so I crawled back to the platform, went down in the lift,
and summoned my bed. Ah what dreams! And again I called you,
and again you refused."
She shook her head and said:
"Don"t. Don"t talk of these terrible things.
You make me miserable. You are throwing civilization away."
"But I had got back the sense of space and a man cannot
rest then. I determined to get in at the hole and climb the
shaft. And so I exercised my arms. Day after day I went through
ridiculous movements, until my flesh ached, and I could hang
by my hands and hold the pillow of my bed outstretched for
many minutes. Then I summoned a respirator, and started.
"It was easy at first. The mortar had somehow rotted,
and I soon pushed some more tiles in, and clambered after
them into the darkness, and the spirits of the dead comforted
me. I don"t know what I mean by that. I just say what
I felt. I felt, for the first time, that a protest had been
lodged against corruption, and that even as the dead were
comforting me, so I was comforting the unborn. I felt that
humanity existed, and that it existed without clothes. How
can I possibly explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed
naked, and all these tubes and buttons and machineries neither
came into the world with us, nor will they follow us out,
nor do they matter supremely while we are here. Had I been
strong, I would have torn off every garment I had, and gone
out into the outer air unswaddled. But this is not for me,
nor perhaps for my generation. I climbed with my respirator
and my hygienic clothes and my dietetic tabloids! Better thus
than not at all.
"There was a ladder, made of some primæval metal.
The light from the railway fell upon its lowest rungs, and
I saw that it led straight upwards out of the rubble at the
bottom of the shaft. Perhaps our ancestors ran up and down
it a dozen times daily, in their building. As I climbed, the
rough edges cut through my gloves so that my hands bled. The
light helped me for a little, and then came darkness and,
worse still, silence which pierced my ears like a sword. The
Machine hums! Did you know that? Its hum penetrates our blood,
and may even guide our thoughts. Who knows! I was getting
beyond its power. Then I thought: “This silence means that
I am doing wrong.” But I heard voices in the silence, and
again they strengthened me." He laughed. "I had
need of them. The next moment I cracked my head against something."
She sighed.
"I had reached one of those pneumatic stoppers that
defend us from the outer air. You may have noticed them no
the air- ship. Pitch dark, my feet on the rungs of an invisible
ladder, my hands cut; I cannot explain how I lived through
this part, but the voices till comforted me, and I felt for
fastenings. The stopper, I suppose, was about eight feet across.
I passed my hand over it as far as I could reach. It was perfectly
smooth. I felt it almost to the centre. Not quite to the centre,
for my arm was too short. Then the voice said: “Jump. It is
worth it. There may be a handle in the centre, and you may
catch hold of it and so come to us your own way. And if there
is no handle, so that you may fall and are dashed to pieces
- it is till worth it: you will still come to us your own
way.” So I jumped. There was a handle, and ----"
He paused. Tears gathered in his mother"s eyes. She
knew that he was fated. If he did not die today he would die
tomorrow. There was not room for such a person in the world.
And with her pity disgust mingled. She was ashamed at having
borne such a son, she who had always been so respectable and
so full of ideas. Was he really the little boy to whom she
had taught the use of his stops and buttons, and to whom she
had given his first lessons in the Book? The very hair that
disfigured his lip showed that he was reverting to some savage
type. On atavism the Machine can have no mercy.
"There was a handle, and I did catch it. I hung tranced
over the darkness and heard the hum of these workings as the
last whisper in a dying dream. All the things I had cared
about and all the people I had spoken to through tubes appeared
infinitely little. Meanwhile the handle revolved. My weight
had set something in motion and I span slowly, and then----
"I cannot describe it. I was lying with my face to the
sunshine. Blood poured from my nose and ears and I heard a
tremendous roaring. The stopper, with me clinging to it, had
simply been blown out of the earth, and the air that we make
down here was escaping through the vent into the air above.
It burst up like a fountain. I crawled back to it - for the
upper air hurts - and, as it were, I took great sips from
the edge. My respirator had flown goodness knows here, my
clothes were torn. I just lay with my lips close to the hole,
and I sipped until the bleeding stopped. You can imagine nothing
so curious. This hollow in the grass - I will speak of it
in a minute, - the sun shining into it, not brilliantly but
through marbled clouds, - the peace, the nonchalance, the
sense of space, and, brushing my cheek, the roaring fountain
of our artificial air! Soon I spied my respirator, bobbing
up and down in the current high above my head, and higher
still were many air-ships. But no one ever looks out of air-ships,
and in any case they could not have picked me up. There I
was, stranded. The sun shone a little way down the shaft,
and revealed the topmost rung of the ladder, but it was hopeless
trying to reach it. I should either have been tossed up again
by the escape, or else have fallen in, and died. I could only
lie on the grass, sipping and sipping, and from time to time
glancing around me.
"I knew that I was in Wessex, for I had taken care to
go to a lecture on the subject before starting. Wessex lies
above the room in which we are talking now. It was once an
important state. Its kings held all the southern coast form
the Andredswald to Cornwall, while the Wansdyke protected
them on the north, running over the high ground. The lecturer
was only concerned with the rise of Wessex, so I do not know
how long it remained an international power, nor would the
knowledge have assisted me. To tell the truth I could do nothing
but laugh, during this part. There was I, with a pneumatic
stopper by my side and a respirator bobbing over my head,
imprisoned, all three of us, in a grass-grown hollow that
was edged with fern."
Then he grew grave again.
"Lucky for me that it was a hollow. For the air began
to fall back into it and to fill it as water fills a bowl.
I could crawl about. Presently I stood. I breathed a mixture,
in which the air that hurts predominated whenever I tried
to climb the sides. This was not so bad. I had not lost my
tabloids and remained ridiculously cheerful, and as for the
Machine, I forgot about it altogether. My one aim now was
to get to the top, where the ferns were, and to view whatever
objects lay beyond.
"I rushed the slope. The new air was still too bitter
for me and I came rolling back, after a momentary vision of
something grey. The sun grew very feeble, and I remembered
that he was in Scorpio - I had been to a lecture on that too.
If the sun is in Scorpio, and you are in Wessex, it means
that you must be as quick as you can, or it will get too dark.
(This is the first bit of useful information I have ever got
from a lecture, and I expect it will be the last.) It made
me try frantically to breathe the new air, and to advance
as far as I dared out of my pond. The hollow filled so slowly.
At times I thought that the fountain played with less vigour.
My respirator seemed to dance nearer the earth; the roar was
decreasing."
He broke off.
"I don"t think this is interesting you. The rest
will interest you even less. There are no ideas in it, and
I wish that I had not troubled you to come. We are too different,
mother."
She told him to continue.
"It was evening before I climbed the bank. The sun had
very nearly slipped out of the sky by this time, and I could
not get a good view. You, who have just crossed the Roof of
the World, will not want to hear an account of the little
hills that I saw - low colourless hills. But to me they were
living and the turf that covered them was a skin, under which
their muscles rippled, and I felt that those hills had called
with incalculable force to men in the past, and that men had
loved them. Now they sleep - perhaps for ever. They commune
with humanity in dreams. Happy the man, happy the woman, who
awakes the hills of Wessex. For though they sleep, they will
never die."
His voice rose passionately.
"Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that
it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing
that really lives in the Machine? We created the Machine,
to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It
was robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch,
it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love
to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills,
and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops
- but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our
goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through
its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let
us die. Oh, I have no remedy - or, at least, only one - to
tell men again and again that I have seen the hills of Wessex
as Ælfrid saw them when he overthrew the Danes.
"So the sun set. I forgot to mention that a belt of
mist lay between my hill and other hills, and that it was
the colour of pearl."
He broke off for the second time.
"Go on," said his mother wearily.
He shook his head.
"Go on. Nothing that you say can distress me now. I
am hardened."
"I had meant to tell you the rest, but I cannot: I know
that I cannot: good-bye."
Vashti stood irresolute. All her nerves were tingling with
his blasphemies. But she was also inquisitive.
"This is unfair," she complained. "You have
called me across the world to hear your story, and hear it
I will. Tell me - as briefly as possible, for this is a disastrous
waste of time - tell me how you returned to civilization."
"Oh - that!" he said, starting. "You would
like to hear about civilization. Certainly. Had I got to where
my respirator fell down?"
"No - but I understand everything now. You put on your
respirator, and managed to walk along the surface of the earth
to a vomitory, and there your conduct was reported to the
Central Committee."
"By no means."
He passed his hand over his forehead, as if dispelling some
strong impression. Then, resuming his narrative, he warmed
to it again.
"My respirator fell about sunset. I had mentioned that
the fountain seemed feebler, had I not?"
"Yes."
"About sunset, it let the respirator fall. As I said,
I had entirely forgotten about the Machine, and I paid no
great attention at the time, being occupied with other things.
I had my pool of air, into which I could dip when the outer
keenness became intolerable, and which would possibly remain
for days, provided that no wind sprang up to disperse it.
Not until it was too late did I realize what the stoppage
of the escape implied. You see - the gap in the tunnel had
been mended; the Mending Apparatus; the Mending Apparatus,
was after me.
"One other warning I had, but I neglected it. The sky
at night was clearer than it had been in the day, and the
moon, which was about half the sky behind the sun, shone into
the dell at moments quite brightly. I was in my usual place
- on the boundary between the two atmospheres - when I thought
I saw something dark move across the bottom of the dell, and
vanish into the shaft. In my folly, I ran down. I bent over
and listened, and I thought I heard a faint scraping noise
in the depths.
"At this - but it was too late - I took alarm. I determined
to put on my respirator and to walk right out of the dell.
But my respirator had gone. I knew exactly where it had fallen
- between the stopper and the aperture - and I could even
feel the mark that it had made in the turf. It had gone, and
I realized that something evil was at work, and I had better
escape to the other air, and, if I must die, die running towards
the cloud that had been the colour of a pearl. I never started.
Out of the shaft - it is too horrible. A worm, a long white
worm, had crawled out of the shaft and gliding over the moonlit
grass.
"I screamed. I did everything that I should not have
done, I stamped upon the creature instead of flying from it,
and it at once curled round the ankle. Then we fought. The
worm let me run all over the dell, but edged up my leg as
I ran. “Help!” I cried. (That part is too awful. It belongs
to the part that you will never know.) “Help!” I cried. (Why
cannot we suffer in silence?) “Help!” I cried. When my feet
were wound together, I fell, I was dragged away from the dear
ferns and the living hills, and past the great metal stopper
(I can tell you this part), and I thought it might save me
again if I caught hold of the handle. It also was enwrapped,
it also. Oh, the whole dell was full of the things. They were
searching it in all directions, they were denuding it, and
the white snouts of others peeped out of the hole, ready if
needed. Everything that could be moved they brought - brushwood,
bundles of fern, everything, and down we all went intertwined
into hell. The last things that I saw, ere the stopper closed
after us, were certain stars, and I felt that a man of my
sort lived in the sky. For I did fight, I fought till the
very end, and it was only my head hitting against the ladder
that quieted me. I woke up in this room. The worms had vanished.
I was surrounded by artificial air, artificial light, artificial
peace, and my friends were calling to me down speaking-tubes
to know whether I had come across any new ideas lately."
Here his story ended. Discussion of it was impossible, and
Vashti turned to go.
"It will end in Homelessness," she said quietly.
"I wish it would," retorted Kuno.
"The Machine has been most merciful."
"I prefer the mercy of God."
"By that superstitious phrase, do you mean that you
could live in the outer air?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever seen, round the vomitories, the bones
of those who were extruded after the Great Rebellion?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever seen, round the vomitories, the bones
of those who were extruded after the Great Rebellion?"
"Yes."
"They were left where they perished for our edification.
A few crawled away, but they perished, too - who can doubt
it? And so with the Homeless of our own day. The surface of
the earth supports life no longer."
"Indeed."
"Ferns and a little grass may survive, but all higher
forms have perished. Has any air-ship detected them?"
"No."
"Has any lecturer dealt with them?"
"No."
"Then why this obstinacy?"
"Because I have seen them," he exploded.
"Seen what?"
"Because I have seen her in the twilight - because she
came to my help when I called - because she, too, was entangled
by the worms, and, luckier than I, was killed by one of them
piercing her throat."
He was mad. Vashti departed, nor, in the troubles that followed,
did she ever see his face again.
|
|