suddenly she laughed. I saw the laughter in her eyes. I saw the resounding sharp curve of that laughter, flexible, tense like a whip. I remember my whole body shivered. I thought of grasping her . . . and I don’t know what. ... I had to do something, it mattered little what; automatically I looked at my golden badge, glanced at my watch—ten minutes to seventeen!
“Don’t you think it is time to go?” I said in as polite a tone as possible.
“And if I should ask you to stay here with me?”
“What? Do you realize what you are saying? In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium.”
“And all the Numbers must take the prescribed courses in art and science,’ ” said I-330 with my voice.
Then she lifted the curtain, opened her eyes—through the dark windows the fire was blazing.
“I have a physician in the Medical Bureau; he is registered to me; if I ask him, he will give you a certificate declaring that you are ill. All right?”
Understood! At last I understood where this game was leading.
“Ah, so! But you know that every honest Number as a matter of course must immediately go to the office of the Guardians and—”
“And as a matter not of course?” (Sharp smile-bite.) “I am very curious to know: will you or will you not go to the Guardians?”
“Are you going to remain here?”
I grasped the knob of the door. It was a brass knob, a cold, brass knob, and I heard, cold like brass, her voice: “Just a minute, may I?”
She went to the telephone, called a Number (I was so upset it escaped me), and spoke loudly: “I shall be waiting for you in the Ancient House. Yes, yes, alone.”
I turned the cold brass knob.
“May I take the aero?”
“Oh, yes, certainly, please!”
In the sunshine at the gate the old woman was dozing like a plant. Again I was surprised to see her grown-to-gether mouth open, and to hear her say:
“And your lady, did she remain alone?”
“Alone.”
The mouth of the old woman grew together again; she shook her head; apparently even her weakening brain understood the stupidity and the danger of that woman’s behavior.
At seventeen o’clock exactly I was at the lecture. There I suddenly realized that I did not tell the whole truth to the old woman. I-330 was not there alone now. Possibly this fact, that I involuntarily told the old woman a lie, was torturing me now and distracting my attention. Yes, not alone—that was the point.
After twenty-one-thirty o’clock I had a free hour; I could therefore have gone to the office of the Guardians to make my report. But after that stupid adventure I was so tired; besides, the law provides two days. I shall have time tomorrow; I have another twenty-four hours.
Record Seven
An Eyelash
Taylor
Henbane and Lily of the Valley
Night. Green, orange, blue. The red royal instrument. The yellow dress. Then a brass Buddha. Suddenly it lifted the brass eyelids and sap began to flow from it, from Buddha. Sap also from the yellow dress. Even in the mirror, drops of sap, and from the large bed and from the children’s bed and soon from myself. . . . It is horror, mortally sweet horror! ...
I woke up. Soft blue light, the glass of the walls, of the chairs, of the table was glimmering. This calmed me. My heart stopped palpitating. Sap! Buddha! How absurd! I am sick, it is clear; I never saw dreams before. They say that to see dreams was a common normal thing with the ancients. Yes, after all, their life was a whirling carousel: green, orange, Buddha, sap. But we, people of today, we know all too well that dreaming is a serious mental disease.
I... Is it possible that my brain, this precise, clean, glittering mechanism, like a chronometer without a speck of dust on it, is ... ? Yes, it is, now. I really feel there in the brain some foreign body like an eyelash in the eye. One does not feel one’s whole body, but this eye with a hair in it; one cannot forget it for a second. ...
The cheerful, crystalline sound of the bell at my head. Seven o’clock. Time to get up. To tha right and to the left as in mirrors, to the right and to the left through the glass walls I see others like myself, other rooms like my own, other clothes like my own, movements like mine, duplicated thousands of times. This invigorates me; I see myself as a part of an enormous, vigorous, united body; and what precise beauty! Not a single superfluous gesture, or bow, or turn. Yes, this Taylor was undoubtedly the greatest genius of the ancients. True, he did not come to the idea of applying his method to the whole life, to every step throughout the twenty-four hours of the day; he was unable to integrate his system from one o’clock to twenty-four. I cannot understand the ancients. How could they write whole libraries about some Kant and take only slight notice of Taylor, of this prophet who saw ten centuries ahead?
Breakfast was over. The hymn of the United State had been harmoniously sung; rhythmically, four abreast we walked to the elevators, the motors buzzed faintly, and swiftly we went down—down—down, the heart sinking slightly. Again that stupid dream, or some unknown function of that dream. Oh, yes! Yesterday in the aero, then down—down! Well, it is all over, anyhow. Period. It is very fortunate that I was so firm and brusque with her.
The car of the underground railway carried me swiftly to the place where the motionless, beautiful body of the Integral, not yet spiritualized by fire, was glittering in the docks in the sunshine. With closed eyes I dreamed in formulae. Again I calculated in my mind what was the initial velocity required to tear the Integral away from the earth. Every second the mass of the Integral would change because of the expenditure of the explosive fuel. The equation was very complex, with transcendent figures. As in a dream I felt, right here in the firm calculated world, How someone sat down at my side, barely touching me and saying, “Pardon.” I opened my eyes.
At first, apparently because of an association with the Integral, I saw something impetuously flying into the distance—a head; I saw pink wing ears sticking out on the sides of it, then the curve of the overhanging back of the head, the double-curved letter S.
Through the glass walls of my algebraic world again I felt the eyelash in my eye. I felt something disagreeable, I felt that today I must...
“Certainly, please.” I smiled at my neighbor and bowed. I saw Number S-4711 glittering on his golden badge (that is why I associated him with the letter S from the very first moment: an optical impression which remained unregistered by consciousness). His eyes sparkled, two sharp little drills; they were revolving swiftly, drilling in deeper and deeper. It seemed that in a moment they would drill in to the bottom and would see something that I do not even dare to confess to myself. . . .
That bothersome eyelash became wholly clear to me. S- was one of them, one of the Guardians, and it would be the simplest thing immediately, without deferring, to tell
