The Chamber Of Life Part 2

"Why ... I don't know," I stammered, "I don't remember." For a few moments there was silence, except for the shouting of the wind past our s.h.i.+p. Then Selda asked me another question.

"Where are you from?" I shook my head helplessly, and answered again, "I don't know--I don't remember."

A moment later we dipped into the shadow of the building, which they called Richmond. We slipped by a succession of vast and intricate facades until we came to a court-like terrace, hundreds of feet above the ground and sheltered on three sides by walls that leaped up toward the sky for hundreds of feet more. The effect of height was dizzying and magnificent.

Selda brought the s.h.i.+p to a quick and graceful landing. I found that we were in a large paved court like a public square, facing the east and the sun, which bathed it in cool bright light. It was still early in the morning. Innumerable windows looked down upon us, and a number of doorways led into the building on all sides. From one of these a girl stepped forward. Edvar spoke to her, evidently reporting himself and Selda. The girl pushed several b.u.t.tons on a small cabinet which hung from her shoulder. It rang, low and silvery, twice. Then she pointed to me.

"Who is that?" she asked.

"His name is Baret," Edvar told her. "I was sent to meet him."

"But where is he from? He is not registered."

"We don't know. It's an unusual circ.u.mstance," he explained, while the girl examined us all carefully. "Very well," she said finally, "you must attend him until he is registered. I'll notify Odom." Edvar nodded, and we turned away.

Glancing back as we crossed the court, I saw the s.h.i.+p descending noiselessly, on the square of pavement where it had landed, into the depths of the building, while the girl made other gestures with her little cabinet. Then we pa.s.sed through a doorway into the subdued glow of artificial lighting.

"Why was she so worried?" I asked Edvar. "I don't understand anything, you know."

"You were not registered," he said. "We are all registered, of course, in our own cities. The authorities know where to find us at any moment of the day during our routine. If we leave the city, or depart from our usual program, naturally we note down where we are going, registering ourselves upon our departure and upon our return. If we visit another city, our arrival there is expected and reported here, as well as our departure."

"Is all that necessary?" I asked him. "Is there a war, perhaps?"

"No," he said, "it's customary. It prevents confusion. Everything we do is recorded. This conversation, for instance, is being recorded in the telepathic laboratory at this moment--each of us has a record there.

They are open to the public at any time. It makes dishonor impossible."

We paused at a doorway, and Edvar spoke a word. It opened noiselessly and we went into his apartment.

"We are a.s.signed to you this morning," Edvar said. "We are at your service."

The apartment was hardly very different from what I had unconsciously expected. It seemed to have two rooms and a bath. The room we entered was a sort of study. It was hung with drapes closely woven from some light metal, with cold designs that were suggestive of mechanical, mathematic conceptions, but inspiring in much the way that the lines of the building were inspiring. There were no pictures and no mirrors. All the furniture was made in straight lines, of metal, and somewhat futuristic in design. The chairs, however, were deep and comfortable, although the yielding upholstery appeared at first sight hard and brittle as metal sheets. The room was perfectly bare, and the color scheme a dull silver and black. To me it seemed extremely somber, but it pleased Edvar and his companion.

The first thing I noted when we sat down was the absence of any small articles--books or papers or lamps--and I remarked on this, somewhat rudely perhaps, to Edvar.

"Whatever you wish is accessible," he explained with a smile. He rose and went to the draped wall. Drawing back the folds of the curtains in several places, he showed the metal wall covered with dials and apparatus. I noted especially a small screen, like a motion picture screen. Later I was to find that it served not only for amus.e.m.e.nt, showing sound-pictures projected automatically from a central office, but also for news and for communication, like a telephone.

"Would you care for breakfast?" Edvar asked me. I accepted eagerly, and he manipulated some dials on the wall. A moment or two later a small section of the wall opened, and a tray appeared. Edvar placed it on the table by my chair.

"We have had our breakfast," he explained, and I began to eat with a keener appet.i.te than I thought I had. It was a simple meal with a slightly exotic flavor, but without any strange dishes. During the course of it, I asked Edvar questions.

"Your life is amazingly centralized," I said. "Apparently all the things you need are supplied at your rooms on a moment's notice."

"Yes," he smiled, "it makes life simpler. We have very few needs. Many of them are satisfied while we sleep, such as cleansing and, if we like, nourishment. We can study while we sleep, acquiring facts that we may want to use later from an instrument which acts upon the subconscious mind. These dials you see are mainly to give us pleasure. If we care to have our meals served in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, as you are having yours, we can do so, but we reserve those meals for the occasions when we feel the need of eating as a pure sensation. We can have music at any time--"

He paused. "Would you care for some music?"

"There's nothing I'd like better," I told him. He went to the wall and turned the dials again. In a moment the room was filled with the subdued sound of a cool, melancholy music--Grieg, or some other composer, with whom I was unfamiliar, exotic and reminiscent in mood, cool, and quiet with a touch of acutely sweet pain. I listened to it in silence for a while. It was so subtle and pervasive, however, that it seemed to play directly upon the subconscious mind, so that the listener could go on thinking and talking uninterruptedly without losing any of the feeling of the melody.

"Have you no private possessions?" I asked. "Things that you share with no one? Your own books, your own music, your own jewelry, perhaps?"

"We have no need of them," he replied. After a moment's thought, he added, "We have our own emotions, and our own work--that's all. We do not care for jewels, or for decoration for its own sake. The things we use and see daily are beautiful in themselves, through their perfect utility and their outward symbolism of utility and creation. Our tools and our furniture are beautiful according to our own conceptions of beauty--as you can see." He made a gesture about the room.

"And who serves you with those meals, and the music, and the knowledge you learn in your sleep? Who does the work?"

"We all do the work. Each of us has his own work. Each of us is a craftsman and a creative artist. The real work is done by machine--our machines are the basic structure of our life. But we have men, highly trained and fitted temperamentally for their professions, who watch and direct the machines. It is a matter of a few hours a day, devoted to fine problems in mechanics or building or invention. The rest of our time is our own, and the machines go on moving automatically as we have directed them to move. If every man on earth should die this morning, it would be perhaps fifty years or a century before the last machine stopped turning."

"And the rest of the time?"

It was Selda who answered this time. "We live. We devote ourselves to learning and creative thought. We study human relations, or we wander through the forests and the mountains, increasing the breadth and significance of our minds and emotions." Selda's voice, rising suddenly after her long silence, startled me, and I looked at her, disturbed again by some subtle attraction exercised over me by her body. We were silent a while, then I relapsed into my inner questionings, and turned to Edvar.

"You must live under a sort of socialistic system," I said thoughtfully.

"Even a sort of communism?"

"In a sense. Rather it is an automatic life. The soul of the machine pervades us all, and the machines are beautiful. Our lives are logically and inevitably directed by environment and heredity just as the machines are inevitably directed by their functions and capabilities.

When a child is born, we know already what he will do throughout his life, how long he will live, what sort of children he will have, the woman he will marry. The Bureau could tell you at this moment when my great-grandson will be born, when he will die, and what his life will do for the State. There are never any accidents in our lives."

"But how did you develop so highly technical a civilization?" I asked.

"We came to it gradually from the last government system. It was called the _phrenarchic system_--the rule of the mind. It was neither democracy nor monarchy nor dictators.h.i.+p. We found that we could tell the temperament and characteristics of a child from his early years, and we trained certain children for government. They were given power according to the qualities of their minds and according to the tasks for which they were fitted. We even bred them for governing. Later, when the machine began to usurp the place of labor all over the world and gave men freedom and peace and beauty, the task of government dwindled away little by little, and the phrenarchs turned gradually to other occupations."

I learned innumerable details of that life from Edvar, and occasionally Selda would add some fact. They are not important now. It is the narrative which I must tell, not the details of a social system which, as I would discover later, was purely hypothetical.

The three of us spent the morning in conversation there, until the entrance of another man I had not seen before. He came in without knocking, but Edvar and Selda did not seem to be surprised. He was the representative of the Bureau.

"You are Baret?" he said, looking at me keenly.

"Yes," I replied.

"I have been directed to tell you that your visit here is temporary, and that you will be returned to your previous life at the end of a certain period of time which we have not yet calculated precisely. You have been registered with the Bureau, and you are free to come and go as you see fit, but you are not to interfere with anything you see. You are an observer. You will be expected to comply with our methods of living as Edvar or Selda will explain them to you."

With a slight bow, he turned to go. But I detained him.

"Wait," I said. "Can you tell me who I am, and where I've come from?"

"We are not yet certain. Our knowledge of you has come to us in an unusual manner, through a series of new experiments now being conducted at the Bureau. If possible, we will explain them to you later. In any case you may be a.s.sured that your absence from your usual life will not cause you any harm, and that you will return after a definite time. Rest here, and keep your mind at peace. You will be safe."

Then he turned and left. I was puzzled for a while, but I forgot that shortly in the strangeness and wonder of the life I was living in a strange world....