The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (40 page)

"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 'Neaf and
Tar.' '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 exacdy 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 story. 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 civilisation 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 primaeval 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 on 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 still 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 still
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 where, 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 my 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 from 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 your lecturers see, that it
is we who are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the
Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our
will now. It has 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 lines. 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 Elfrid 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.