Metropolis. Part 2

Seconds, seconds, seconds of silence. Then it was as though the son, up-rooting and tearing loose his whole ego, threw himself, with a gesture of utter self-exposure, upon his father, yet he stood still, head a little bent, speaking softly, as though every word were smothering between his lips.

"Father! Help the men who live at your machines!"

"I cannot help them," said the brain of Metropolis. "n.o.body can help them. They are where they must be. They are what they must be. They are not fitted for anything more or anything different."

"I do not know for what they are fitted," said Freder, expressionlessly: his head fell upon his breast as though almost severed from his neck. "I only know what I saw-and that it was dreadful to look upon... I went through the machine-rooms-they were like temples. All the great G.o.ds were living in white temples. I saw Baal and Moloch, Huitziopochtli and Durgha; some frightfully companionable, some terribly solitary. I saw Juggernaut's divine car and the Towers of Silence, Mahomet's curved sword, and the crosses of Golgotha. And all machines, machines, machines, which, confined to their pedestals, like deities to their temple thrones, from the resting places which bore them, lived their G.o.d-Like lives: Eyeless but seeing all, earless but hearing all, without speech, yet, in themselves, a proclaiming mouth-not man, not woman, and yet engendering, receptive, and productive-lifeless, yet shaking the air of their temples with the never-expiring breath of their vitality. And, near the G.o.d-machines, the slaves of the G.o.d-machines: the men who were as though crushed between machine companionability and ma chine solitude. They have no loads to carry: the machine carries the loads. They have not to lift and push: the machine lifts and pushes. They have nothing else to do but eternally one and the same thing, each in this place, each at his machine. Divided into periods of brief seconds, always the same clutch at the same second, at the same second. They have eyes, but they are blind but for one thing, the scale of the manometer. They have ears, but they are deaf but for one thing, the hiss of their machine. They watch and watch, having no thought but for one thing: should their watchfulness waver, then the machine awakens from its feigned sleep and begins to race, racing itself to pieces. And the machine, having neither head nor brain, with the tension of its watchfulness, sucks and sucks out the brain from the paralysed skull of its watchman, and does not stay, and sucks, and does not stay until a being is hanging to the sucked-out skull, no longer a man and not yet a machine, pumped dry, hollowed out, used up. And the machine which has sucked out and gulped down the spinal marrow and brain of the man and has wiped out the hollows in his skull with the soft, long tongue of its soft, long hissing, the maching gleams in its silver-velvet radiance, anointed with oil, beautiful, infallible-Baal and Moloch, Huitzilopochtli and Durgha. And you, father, you press your fingers upon the little blue metal plate near your right hand, and your great glorious, dreadful city of Metropolis roars out, proclaiming that she is hungry for fresh human marrow and human brain and then the living food rolls on, like a stream, into the machine-rooms, which are like temples, and that, just used, is thrown up... "

His voice failed him. He struck his fists violently together, and looked at his father.

"And they are all human beings!"

"Unfortunately. Yes."

The father's voice sounded to the son's ear as though he were speaking from behind seven closed doors.

"That men are used up so rapidly at the machines, Freder, is no proof of the greed of the machine, but of the deficiency of the human material. Man is the product of change, Freder. A once-and-for-all being. If he is miscast he cannot be sent back to the melting-furnace. One is obliged to use him as he is. Whereby it has been statistically proved that the powers of performance of the non-intellectual worker lessen from month to month."

Freder laughed. The laugh came so dry, so parched, from his lips that Joh Fredersen jerked up his head, looking: at his son from out narrowed eyelids. Slowly his eyebrows! rose.

"Are you not afraid, father (supposing that the statistics are correct and the consumption of man is progressing increasingly, rapidly) that one fine day there will be no more food there for the man-eating G.o.d-machines, and that the Moloch of gla.s.s, rubber and steel, the Durgha of aluminium with platinum veins, will have to starve miserably?"

"The case is conceivable," said the brain of Metropolis.

"And then?"

"Then," said the brain of Metropolis, "by then a subst.i.tute for man will have to have been found."

"The improved man, you mean-? The machine-man-?"

"Perhaps," said the brain of Metropolis.

Freder brushed the damp hair from his brow. He bent forward, his breath touching his father.

"Then just listen to one thing, father," he breathed, the veins on his temples standing out, blue, "see to it that the machine-man has no head, or, at any rate, no face, or give him a face which always smiles. Or a Harlequin's face, or a closed visor. That it does not horrify one to look at him! For, as I walked through the machine-rooms to-day, I saw the men who watch your machines. And they know me, and I greeted them, one after the other. But not one returned my greeting. The machines were all too eagerly tautening their nerve-strings. And when I looked at them, father, quite closely, as closely as I am now looking at you-! was looking myself in the face... Every single man, father, who slaves at your machines, has my face-has the face of your son... "

"Then mine too, Freder, for we are very like each other," said the Master over the great Metropolis. He looked at the clock and stretched out his hand. In all the rooms surrounding the brain-pan of the New Tower of Babel the white lamps flared up.

"And doesn't it fill you with horror," asked the son, "to know so many shadows, so many phantoms, to be working at your work?"

"The time of horror lies behind me, Freder."

Then Freder turned and went, like a blind man-first missing the door with groping hand, then finding it. It opened before him. It closed behind him, and he stood still, in a room that seemed to him to be strange and icy.

Forms rose up from the chairs upon which they had sat, waiting, bowing low to the son of Joh Fredersen, the Master of Metropolis.

Freder only recognized one; that was Slim.

He thanked those who greeted him, still standing near the door, seeming not to know his way. Behind him slipped Slim, going to Joh Fredersen, who had sent for him.

The master of Metropolis was standing by the window, his back to the door.

"Wait!" said the dark square back.

Slim did not stir. He breathed inaudibly. His eyelids lowered, he seemed to sleep while standing. But his mouth, with the remarkable tension of its muscles, made him the personification of concentration.

Joh Fredersen's eyes wandered over Metropolis, a restless roaring sea with a surf of light. In the flashes and waves, the Niagara falls of light, in the colour-play of revolving towers of light and brilliance, Metropolis seemed to have become transparent. The houses, dissected into cones and cubes by the moving scythes of the search-lights gleamed, towering up, hoveringly, light flowing down their flanks like rain. The streets licked up the s.h.i.+ning radiance, themselves s.h.i.+ning, and the things gliding upon them, an incessant stream, threw cones of light before them. Only the cathedral, with the star-crowned Virgin on the top of its tower, lay stretched out, ma.s.sively, down in the city, like a black giant lying in an enchanted sleep.

Joh Fredersen turned around slowly. He saw Slim standing by the door. Slim greeted him. Joh Fredersen came towards him. He crossed the whole width of the room in silence; he walked slowly on until he came up to the man. Standing there before him, he looked at him, as though peeling everything corporal from him, even to his innermost self.

Slim held his ground during this peeling scrutiny.

Joh Fredersen said, speaking rather softly: "From now on I wish to be informed of my son's every action."

Slim bowed, waited, saluted and went. But he did not find the son of his great master again where he had left him. Nor was he destined to find him.

Chapter 3.

THE MAN WHO had been Joh Fredersen's first secretary stood in a cell of the Pater-noster, the never-stop pa.s.senger lift which, like a series of never ceasing well-buckets, trans-sected the New Tower of Babel.-With his back against the wooden wall, he was making the journey through the white, humming house, from the heights of the roof, to the depths of the cellars and up again to the heights of the roof, for the thirtieth-time, never moving from the one spot.

Persons, greedy to gain a few seconds, stumbled in with him, and stories higher, or lower, out again. n.o.body paid the least attention to him. One or two certainly recognised him. But, as yet, n.o.body interpreted the drops on his temples as being anything but a similar greed for the gain of a few seconds. All right-he would wait until they knew better, until they took him and threw him out of the cell: What are you taking up s.p.a.ce for, you fool, if you've got so much time? Crawl down the stairs, or the first escape...

With gasping mouth he leant there and waited...

Now emerging from the depths again, he looked with stupified eyes towards the room which guarded Joh Fredersen's door, and saw Joh Fredersen's son standing before that door. For the fraction of a second they stared into each other's over-shadowed faces, and the glances of both broke out as signals of distress, of very different but of equally deep distress. Then the totally indifferent pumpworks carried the man in the cell upwards into the darkness of the roof of the tower, and, when he dipped down again, becoming visible once more on his way downwards, the son of Joh Fredersen was standing before the opening of the cell and was, in a step, standing beside the man whose back seemed to be nailed to the wooden wall.

"What is your name?" he asked gently.

A hesitation in drawing breath, then the answer, which sounded as though he were listening for something: "Josaphat... "

"What will you do now, Josaphat?"

They sank. They sank. As they pa.s.sed through the great hall the enormous windows of which overlooked the street of bridges, broadly and ostentatiously, Freder saw, on turning his head, outlined against the blackness of the sky, already half extinguished, the dripping word: Yos.h.i.+wara...

He spoke as if stretching out both hands, as just if closing his eyes in speaking: "Will you come to me, Josaphat?"

A hand fluttered up like a scared bird.

"I-?" gasped the stranger.

"Yes, Josaphat."

The young voice so full of kindness...

They sank. They sank. Light-darkness-light-darkness again.

"Will you come to me, Josaphat?"

"Yes!" said the strange man with incomparable fervour. "Yes!"

They dropped into light. Freder seized him by the arm and dragged him out with him, out of the great pump-works of the New Tower of Babel, holding him fast as he reeled.

"Where do you live, Josaphat?"

"Ninetieth Block. House seven. Seventh floor."

"Then go home, Josaphat. Perhaps I shall come to you myself; perhaps I shall send a messenger who will bring you to me. I do not know what the next few hours will bring forth... But I do not want any man I know, if I can prevent it, to lie a whole night long, staring up at the ceiling until it seems to come cras.h.i.+ng down on him... "

"What can I do for you?" asked the man.

Freder felt the vice-Like pressure of his hand. He smiled. He shook his head. "Nothing. Go home. Wait. Be calm. Tomorrow will bring another day and I hope a fair one... "

The man loosened the grip of his hand and went. Freder watched him go. The man stopped and looked back at Freder, and dropped his head with an expression which was so earnest, so unconditional, that the smile died on Freder's lips- "Yes, man," he said. "I take you at your word!"

The Pater-noster hummed at Freder's back. The cells, like scoop-buckets, gathered men up and poured them out again. But the son of Joh Fredersen did not see them. Among all those tearing along to gain a few seconds, he alone stood still listening how the New Tower of Babel roared in its revolutions. The roaring seemed to him like the ringing of one of the cathedral bells-like the ore voice of the archangel Michael. But a song hovered above it, high and sweet. His whole young heart exulted in this song.

"Have I done your will for the first time, you great media-tress of pity?" he asked in the roar of the bell's voice.

But no answer came.

Then he went the way he wanted to go, to find the answer.

As Slim entered Freder's home to question the servants concerning their master, Joh Fredersen's son was walking down the steps which led to the lower structure of the New Tower of Babel. As the servants shook their heads at Slim saying that their master had not come home, Joh Fredersen's son was walking towards the luminous pillars which indicated his way. As Slim, with a glance at his watch, decided to wait, to wait, at any rate for a while-already alarmed, already conjecturing possibilities and how to meet them-Joh Fredersen's son was entering the room from which the New Tower of Babel drew the energies for its own requirements.

He had hesitated a long time before opening the door. For a weird existence went on behind that door. There was howling. There was panting. There was whistling. The whole building groaned. An incessant trembling ran through the walls and the floor. And amidst it all there was not one human sound. Only the things and the empty air roared. Men in the room on the other side of this door had powerless sealed lips. But for these men's sakes Freder had come.

He pushed the door open and then fell back, suffocated. Boiling air smote him, groping at his eyes that he saw nothing. Gradually he regained his sight.

The room was dimly lighted and the ceiling, which looked as though it could carry the weight of the entire earth, seemed perpetually to be falling down.

A faint howling made breathing almost unbearable. It was as though the breath drank in the howling too.

Air, rammed down to the depths, coming already used from the lungs of the great Metropolis, gushed out of the mouths of pipes. Hurled across the room, it was greedily sucked back by the mouths of pipes on the other side. And its howling light spread a coldness about it which fell into fierce conflict with the sweat-heat of the room.

In the middle of the room crouched the Pater-noster machine. It was like Ganesha, the G.o.d with the elephant's head. It shone with oil. It had gleaming limbs. Under the crouching body and the head which was sunken on the chest, crooked legs rested, gnome-Like, upon the platform. The trunk and legs were motionless. But the short arms pushed and pushed alternately forwards, backwards, forwards. A little pointed light sparkled upon the play of the delicate joints. The floor, which was stone, and seamless, trembled under the pus.h.i.+ng of the little machine, which was smaller than a five-year-old chief.

Heat spat from the walls in which the furnaces were roaring. The odour of oil, which whistled with heat, hung in thick layers in the room. Even the wild chase of the wandering ma.s.ses of air did not tear out the suffocating fumes of oil. Even the water which was sprayed through the room fought a hopeless battle against the fury of the heat-spitting walls, evaporating, already saturated with oil-fumes, before it could protect the skins of the men in this h.e.l.l from being roasted.

Men glided by like swimming shadows. Their movements, the soundlessness of their inaudible slipping past, had something of the black ghostliness of deep-sea divers. Their eyes stood open as though they never closed them.

Near the little machine in the centre of the room stood a man, wearing the uniform of all the workmen of Metropolis: from throat to ankle, the dark blue linen, bare feet in the hard shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the black cap. The hunted stream of wandering air washed around his form, making the folds of the canvas flutter. The man held his hand on the lever and his gaze was fixed on the clock, the hands of which vibrated like magnetic needles.

Freder groped his way across to the man. He stared at him. He could not see his face. How old was the man? A thousand years? Or not yet twenty? He was talking to himself with babbling lips. What was the man muttering about? And had this man, too, the face of Joh Fredersen's son?

"Look at me!" said Freder bending forward.

But the man's gaze did not leave the clock. His hand, also, was unceasingly, feverishly, clutching the lever. His lips babbled and babbled, excitedly.

Freder listened. He caught the words. Shreds of words, tattered by the current of air.

"Pater-noster... that means, Our Father!... Our Father, which are in heaven! We are in h.e.l.l. Our Father!... What is thy name? Art thou called Pater-noster, Our Father? Or Joh Fredersen? Or machine?... Be hallowed by us, machine. Pater-noster!... Thy kingdom come... Thy kingdom come, machine... Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven... What is thy will of us, machine, Pater-noster? Art thou the same in heaven as thou art on earth?... Our Father, which art in heaven, when thou callest us into heaven, shall we keep the machines in thy world-the great wheels which break the limbs of thy creatures-the great merry-go-round called the earth?... Thy will be done, Pater-noster!... Give us this day our daily bread... Grind, machine, grind flour for our bread. The bread is baked from the flour of our bones... And forgive us our trespa.s.ses... what trespa.s.ses, Pater-noster? The trespa.s.s of haying a brain and a heart, that thou hast not, machine?. And lead us not into temptation... Lead us not into temptation to rise against thee, machine, for thou art stronger than we, thou art a thousand times stronger than we, and thou art always in the right and we are always in the wrong, because we are weaker than thou art, machine... But deliver us from evil, machine... Deliver us from thee, machine... For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen... Pater-noster, that means: Our Father... Our Father, which are in heaven... "

Freder touched the man's arm. The man started, struck dumb.

His hand lost its hold of the lever and leaped into the air like a shot bird. The man's jaws stood gaping open as if locked. For one second the white of the eyes in the stiffened face was terribly visible. Then the man collapsed like a rag and Freder caught him as he fell.

Freder held him fast. He looked around. n.o.body was paying any attention, either to him or to the other man. Clouds of steam and fumes surrounded them like a fog. There was a door near by. Freder carried the man to the door and pushed it open. It led to the tool-house. A packing case offered a hard resting place. Freder let the man slip down into it.

Dull eyes looked up at him. The face to which they belonged was little more than that of a boy.

"What is your name?" said Freder.

"11811... "

"I want to know what your mother called you... ."

"Georgi."

"Georgi, do you know me?"

Consciousness returned to the dull eyes together with recognition.

"Yes, I know you... You are the son of Joh Fredersen... of Joh Fredersen, who is the father of us all... "

"Yes. Therefore I am your brother, Georgi, do you see? I heard your Pater-noster... "-The body flung itself up with a heave.

"The machine-" He sprang to his feet. "My machine-"

"Leave it alone, Georgi, and listen to me... "

"Somebody must be at the machine!"

"Somebody will be at the machine; but not you... "

"Who will, then?"

"I.".

Staring eyes were the answer.

"I," repeated Freder. "Are you fit to listen to me, and will you be able to take good note of what I say? It is very important, Georgi!"

"Yes," said Georgi, paralysed.