The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (42 page)

"Nor to me."

"He does not refer, I suppose, to the trouble there has
been lately with the music?"

"Oh no, of course not. Let us talk about music."

"Have you complained to the authorities?"

"Yes, and they say it wants mending, and referred me to
the Committee of the Mending Apparatus. I complained of those curious gasping
sighs that disfigure the symphonies of the Brisbane school. They sound like
some one in pain. The Committee of the Mending Apparatus say that it shall be
remedied shortly."

Obscurely worried, she resumed her life. For one thing, the
defect in the music irritated her. For another thing, she could not forget
Kuno's speech. If he had known that the music was out of repair—he could not
know it, for he detested music—if he had known that it was wrong, "the
Machine stops" was exactly the venomous sort of remark he would have made.
Of course he had made it at a venture, but the coincidence annoyed her, and she
spoke with some petulance to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus.

They replied, as before, that the defect would be set right
shortly.

"Shortly! At once!" she retorted. "Why should
I be worried by imperfect music? Things are always put right at once. If you do
not mend it at once, I shall complain to the Central Committee."

"No personal complaints are received by the Central
Committee," the Committee of the Mending Apparatus replied.

"Through whom am I to make my complaint, then?"

"Through us."

"I complain then."

"Your complaint shall be forwarded in its turn."

"Have others complained?"

This question was unmechanical, and the Committee of the
Mending Apparatus refused to answer it.

"It is too bad!" she exclaimed to another of her
friends. "There never was such an unfortunate woman as myself. I can never
be sure of my music now. It gets worse and worse each time I summon it."

"I too have my troubles," the friend replied.

"Sometimes my ideas are interrupted by a slight jarring
noise."

"What is it?"

"I do not know whether it is inside my head, or inside
the wall."

"Complain, in either case."

"I have complained, and my complaint will be forwarded
in its turn to the Central Committee."

Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer. The
defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues in that latter day had
become so subservient, that they readily adapted themselves to every caprice of
the Machine. The sigh at the crisis of the Brisbane symphony no longer
irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody. The jarring noise,
whether in the head or in the wall, was no longer resented by her friend. And
so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with the bath water that began to
stink, so with the defective rhymes that the poetry machine had taken to emit.
All were bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten.
Things went from bad to worse unchallenged.

It was otherwise with the failure of the sleeping apparatus.
That was a more serious stoppage. There came a day when over the whole world—in
Sumatra, in Wessex, in the innumerable cities of Courland and Brazil—the beds,
when summoned by their tired owners, failed to appear. It may seem a ludicrous
matter, but from it we may date the collapse of humanity. The Committee
responsible for the failure was assailed by complainants, whom it referred, as
usual, to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus, who in its turn assured them
that their complaints would be forwarded to the Central Committee. But the
discontent grew, for mankind was not yet sufficiently adaptable to do without
sleeping.

"Some one is meddling with the Machine—" they
began.

"Some one is trying to make himself king, to
reintroduce the personal element."

"Punish that man with Homelessness."

"To the rescue! Avenge the Machine! Avenge the
Machine!"

"War! Kill the man!"

But the Committee of the Mending Apparatus now came forward,
and allayed the panic with well-chosen words. It confessed that the Mending
Apparatus was itself in need of repair.

The effect of this frank confession was admirable.

"Of course," said a famous lecturer—he of the
French Revolution, who gilded each new decay with splendour—"of course we
shall not press our complaints now. The Mending Apparatus has treated us so
well in the past that we all sympathize with it, and will wait patiently for its
recovery. In its own good time it will resume its duties. Meanwhile let us do
without our beds, our tabloids, our other little wants. Such, I feel sure,
would be the wish of the Machine."

Thousands of miles away his audience applauded. The Machine
still linked them. Under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains, ran the
wires through which they saw and heard, the enormous eyes and ears that were
their heritage, and the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in one
garment of subserviency. Only the old and the sick remained ungrateful, for it
was rumoured that Euthanasia, too, was out of order, and that pain had
reappeared among men.

It became difficult to read. A blight entered the atmosphere
and dulled its luminosity. At times Vashti could scarcely see across her room.
The air, too, was foul. Loud were the complaints, impotent the remedies, heroic
the tone of the lecturer as he cried: "Courage, courage! What matter so
long as the Machine goes on? To it the darkness and the light are one."
And though things improved again after a time, the old brilliancy was never
recaptured, and humanity never recovered from its entrance into twilight. There
was an hysterical talk of "measures," of "provisional
dictatorship," and the inhabitants of Sumatra were asked to familiarize
themselves with the workings of the central power station, the said power
station being situated in France. But for the most part panic reigned, and men
spent their strength praying to their Books, tangible proofs of the Machine's
omnipotence. There were gradations of terror—at times came rumours of hope—the
Mending Apparatus was almost mended— the enemies of the Machine had been got
under—new "nerve-centres" were evolving which would do the work even
more magnificently than before. But there came a day when, without the
slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire
communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they
understood it, ended.

Vashti was lecturing at the time and her earlier remarks had
been punctuated with applause. As she proceeded the audience became silent, and
at the conclusion there was no sound. Somewhat displeased, she called to a
friend who was a specialist in sympathy. No sound: doubtless the friend was
sleeping. And so with the next friend whom she tried to summon, and so with the
next, until she remembered Kuno's cryptic remark, "The Machine
stops."

The phrase still conveyed nothing. If Eternity was stopping
it would of course be set going shortly.

For example, there was still a little light and air—the
atmosphere had improved a few hours previously. There was still the Book, and
while there was the Book there was security.

Then she broke down, for with the cessation of activity came
an unexpected terror—silence.

She had never known silence, and the coming of it nearly
killed her—it did kill many thousands of people outright. Ever since her birth
she had been surrounded by the steady hum. It was to the ear what artificial
air was to the lungs, and agonizing pains shot across her head. And scarcely
knowing what she did, she stumbled forward and pressed the unfamiliar button,
the one that opened the door of her cell.

Now the door of the cell worked on a simple hinge of its
own. It was not connected with the central power station, dying far away in
France. It opened, rousing immoderate hopes in Vashti, for she thought that the
Machine had been mended. It opened, and she saw the dim tunnel that curved far
away towards freedom. One look, and then she shrank back. For the tunnel was
full of people—she was almost the last in that city to have taken alarm.

People at any time repelled her, and these were nightmares
from her worst dreams. People were crawling about, people were screaming,
whimpering, gasping for breath, touching each other, vanishing in the dark, and
ever and anon being pushed off the platform on the live rail. Some were
fighting round the electric bells, trying to summon trains which could not be
summoned. Others were yelling for Euthanasia or for respirators, or blaspheming
the Machine. Others stood at the doors of their cells fearing, like herself,
either to stop in them or to leave them. And behind all the uproar was
silence—the silence which is the voice of the earth and of the generations who
have gone.

No—it was worse than solitude. She closed the door again and
sat down to wait for the end. The disintegration went on, accompanied by
horrible cracks and rumbling. The valves that restrained the Medical Apparatus
must have been weakened, for it ruptured and hung hideously from the ceiling.
The floor heaved and fell and flung her from her chair. A tube oozed towards
her serpent fashion. And at last the final horror approached—light began to
ebb, and she knew that civilisation's long day was closing.

She whirled round, praying to be saved from this, at any
rate, kissing the Book, pressing button after button. The uproar outside was
increasing, and even penetrated the wall. Slowly the brilliancy of her cell was
dimmed, the reflections faded from her metal switches. Now she could not see
the reading-stand, now not the Book, though she held it in her hand. Light
followed the flight of sound, air was following light, and the original void
returned to the cavern from which it had been so long excluded. Vashti
continued to whirl, like the devotees of an earlier religion, screaming,
praying, striking at the buttons with bleeding hands.

It was thus that she opened her prison and escaped—escaped
in the spirit: at least so it seems to me, ere my meditation closes. That she
escapes in the body—I cannot perceive that. She struck, by chance, the switch
that released the door, and the rush of foul air on her skin, the loud
throbbing whispers in her ears, told her that she was facing the tunnel again,
and that tremendous platform on which she had seen men fighting. They were not
fighting now. Only the whispers remained, and the little whimpering groans.
They were dying by hundreds out in the dark.

She burst into tears.

Tears answered her.

They wept for humanity, those two, not for themselves. They
could not bear that this should be the end. Ere silence was completed their
hearts were opened, and they knew what had been important on the earth. Man,
the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once
made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations,
beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven.
Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly the garment
had seemed heavenly at first, shot with the colours of culture, sewn with the
threads of self-denial. And heavenly it had been so long as it was a garment
and no more, so long as man could shed it at will and live by the essence that
is his soul, and the essence, equally divine, that is his body. The sin against
the body—it was for that they wept in chief; the centuries of wrong against the
muscles and the nerves, and those five portals by which we can alone
apprehend—glozing it over with talk of evolution, until the body was white pap,
the home of ideas as colourless, last sloshy stirrings of a spirit that had
grasped the stars.

"Where are you?" she sobbed.

His voice in the darkness said, "Here."

"Is there any hope, Kuno?"

"None for us."

"Where are you?"

She crawled towards him over the bodies of the dead. His
blood spurted over her hands.

"Quicker," he gasped, "I am dying—but we
touch, we talk, not through the Machine."

He kissed her.

"We have come back to our own. We die, but we have
recaptured life, as it was in Wessex, when Elfrid overthrew the Danes. We know
what they know outside, they who dwelt in the cloud that is the colour of a
pearl."

"But, Kuno, is it true? Are there still men on the
surface of the earth? Is this—this tunnel, this poisoned darkness—really not
the end?"

He replied:

"I have seen them, spoken to them, loved them. They are
hiding in the mist and the ferns until our civilisation stops. To-day they are
the Homeless—to-morrow—"

"Oh, to-morrow—some fool will start the Machine again,
tomorrow."

"Never," said Kuno, "never. Humanity has
learnt its lesson."

As he spoke, the whole city was broken like a honeycomb. An
airship had sailed in through the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It crashed
downwards, exploding as it went, rending gallery after gallery with its wings
of steel. For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they
joined them, scraps of the untainted sky.

And so they were married.

The bride and groom made a beautiful couple, she in her
twenty-yard frill of immaculate white, he in his formal gray ruffled blouse and
pleated pantaloons.

It was a small wedding—the best he could afford. For guests,
they had only the immediate family and a few close friends. And when the
minister had performed the ceremony, Morey Fry kissed his bride and they drove
off to the reception. There were twenty-eight limousines in all (though it is
true that twenty of them contained only the caterer's robots) and three flower
cars.

"Bless you both," said old man Elon sentimentally.
"You've got a fine girl in our Cherry, Morey." He blew his nose on a
ragged square of cambric.

The old folks behaved very well, Morey thought. At the
reception, surrounded by the enormous stacks of wedding gifts, they drank the
champagne and ate a great many of the tiny, delicious canapes. They listened
politely to the fifteen-piece orchestra, and Cherry's mother even danced one
dance with Morey for sentiment's sake, though it was clear that dancing was far
from the usual pattern of her life. They tried as hard as they could to blend
into the gathering, but all the same, the two elderly figures in severely
simple and probably rented garments were dismayingly conspicuous in the
quarter-acre of tapestries and tinkling fountains that was the main ballroom of
Morey's country home.