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METROPOLIS by Thea Von Harbou.
This book is not of today or of the future.
It tells of no place.
It serves no cause, party or class.
It has a moral which grows on the pillar of understanding:
“The mediator between the mind that plans and the hand that builds
must be the Heart.”
–T. von Harbou.
CHAPTER I
Now the rumbling of the great organ swelled to a roar, pressing, like
a rising giant, against the vaulted ceiling, to burst through it.
Freder bent his head backwards, his wide-open, burning eyes stared
unseeingly upward. His hands formed music from the chaos of the notes;
struggling with the vibration of the sound and stirring him to his
innermost depths.
He was never so near tears in his life and, blissfully helpless, he
yielded himself up to the glowing moisture which dazzled him.
Above him, the vault of heaven in lapis lazuli; hovering therein, the
twelve-fold mystery, the Signs of the Zodiac in gold. Set higher above
them, the seven crowned ones: the planets. High above all a silver-
shining bevy of stars: the universe.
Before the bedewed eyes of the organ-player, to his music, the stars
of heavens began the solemn mighty dance.
The breakers of the notes dissolved the room into nothing. The organ,
which Freder played, stood in the middle of the sea.
It was a reef upon which the waves foamed. Carrying crests of froth,
they dashed violently onward, and the seventh was always the
mightiest.
But high above the sea, which bellowed in the uproar of the waves, the
stars of heaven danced the solemn, mighty dance.
Shaken to her core, the old earth started from her sleep. Her torrents
dried up; her mountains fell to ruin. From the ripped open depths the
fire welled up; The earth burnt with all she bore. The waves of the
sea became waves of fire. The organ flared up, a roaring torch of
music. The earth, the sea and the hymn-blazing organ crashed in and
became ashes.
But high above the deserts and the spaces, to which creation was
burnt, the stars of heaven danced the solemn mighty dance.
Then, from the grey, scattered ashes, on trembling wings unspeakably
beautiful and solitary, rose a bird with jewelled feathers. It uttered
a mournful cry. No bird which ever lived could have mourned so
agonisingly.
It hovered above the ashes of the completely ruined earth. It hovered
hither and thither, not knowing where to settle. It hovered above the
grave of the sea and above the corpse of the earth. Never, since the
sinning angel fell from heaven to hell, had the air heard such a cry
of despair.
Then, from the solemn mighty dance of the stars, one freed itself and
neared the dead earth. Its light was gentler than moonlight and more
imperious than the fight of the sun. Among the music of the spheres it
was the most heavenly note. It enveloped the mourning bird in its dear
light; it was as strong as a deity, crying: “To me…to me!”
Then the jewelled bird left the grave of the sea and earth and gave
its sinking wings up to the powerful voice which bore it. Moving in a
cradle of light, it swept upwards and sang, becoming a note of the
spheres, vanishing into Eternity…
Freder let his fingers slip from the keys. He bent forward and buried
his face in his hands. He pressed his eyes until he saw the fiery
dance of the stars behind his eyelids. Nothing could help him–
nothing. Everywhere, everywhere, in an agonising, blissful
omnipresence, stood, in his vision, the one one countenance.
The austere countenance of the virgin, the sweet countenance of the
mother–the agony and the desire with which he called and called for
the one single vision for which his racked heart had not even a name,
except the one, eternal, you…you…you!
He let his hands sink and raised his eyes to the heights of the
beautifully vaulted room, in which his organ stood. From the sea-deep
blue of the heavens, from the flawless gold of the heavenly bodies,
from the mysterious twilight around him, the girl looked at him with
the deadly severity of purity, quite maid and mistress, inviolability,
graciousness itself, her beautiful brow in the diadem of goodness, her
voice, pity, every word a song. Then to turn, and to go, and to
vanish–no more to be found. Nowhere, nowhere.
“You–!” cried the man. The captive note struck against the walls,
finding no way out.
Now the loneliness was no longer bearable. Freder stood up and opened
the windows. The works lay, in quivering brightness, before him. He
pressed his eyes closed, standing still, hardly breathing. He felt the
proximity of the servants, standing silently, waiting for the command
which would permit them to come to life.
There was one among them–Slim, with his courteous face, the
expression of which never changed–Freder knew of him: one word to
him, and, if the girl still walked on earth with her silent step, then
Slim would find her. But one does not set a blood-hound on the track
of a sacred, white hind, if one does not want to be cursed, and to be,
all’ his life long, a miserable, miserable man.
Freder saw, without looking at him, how Slim’s eyes were taking stock
of him. He knew that the silent creature, ordained, by his father, to
be his all-powerful protector, was, at the same time, his keeper.
During the fever of nights, bereft of sleep, during the fever of his
work, in his work-shop, during the fever when playing his organ,
calling upon God, there would be Slim measuring the pulse of the son
of his great master. He gave no reports; they were not required of
him. But, if the hour should come in which they were demanded of him,
he would certainly have a diary of faultless perfection to produce,
from the number of steps with which one in torment treads out his
loneliness with heavy foot, from minute to minute, to the dropping of
a brow into propped up hands, tired with longing.
Could it be possible that this man, who knew everything, knew nothing
of her?
Nothing about him betrayed that he was aware of the upheavel in the
well-being and disposition of his young master, since that day in the
“Club of the Sons.” But it was one of the slim, silent one’s greatest
secrets never to give himself away, and, although he had no entrance
to the “Club of the Sons” Freder was by no means sure that the money-
backed agent of his father would be turned back by the rules of the
club.
He felt himself exposed, unclothed. A cruel brightness, which left
nothing concealed, bathed him and everything in his workshop which was
almost the most highly situated room in Metropolis.
“I wish to be quite alone,” he said softly.
Silently the servants vanished, Slim went…But all these doors, which
closed without the least sound, could also, without the least sound,
be opened again to the narrowest chink.
His eyes aching, Freder fingered all the doors of his work-room.
A smile, a rather bitter smile, drew down the corners of his mouth. He
was a treasure which must be guarded as crown jewels are guarded. The
son of a great father, and the only son.
Really the only one–?
Really the only one–?
His thoughts stopped again at the exit of the circuit and the vision
was there again and the scene and the event…
The “Club of the Sons” was, perhaps, one of the most beautiful
buildings of Metropolis, and that was not so very remarkable. For
fathers, for whom every revolution of a machine-wheel spelt gold, had
presented this house to their sons. It was more a district than a
house. It embraced theatres, picture-palaces, lecture-rooms and a
library–In which, every book, printed in all the five continents, was
to be found-race tracks and stadium and the famous “Eternal Gardens.”
It contained very extensive dwellings for the young sons of indulgent
fathers and it contained the dwellings of faultless male servants and
handsome, well-trained female servants for whose training more time
was requisite than for the development of new species of orchids.
Their chief task consisted in nothing but, at all times, to appear
delightful and to be incapriciously cheerful; and, with their
bewildering costume, their painted faces, and their eye-masks,
surmounted by snow-white wigs and fragrant as flowers, they resembled
delicate dolls of porcelain and brocade, devised by a master-hand, not
purchaseable but rather delightful presents.
Freder was but a rare visitant to the “Club of the Sons.” He preferred
his work-shop and the starry chapel in which this organ stood. But
when once the desire took him to fling himself into the radiant
joyousness of the stadium competitions he was the most radiant and
joyous of all, playing on from victory to victory with the laugh of a
young god.
On that day too…on that day too.
Still tingling from the icy coolness of falling water, every muscle
still quivering in the intoxication of victory he had lain, stretched
out, slender, panting, smiling, drunken, beside himself, almost insane
with joy. The milk-coloured glass ceiling above the Eternal Gardens
was an opal in the light which bathed it. Loving little women attended
him, waiting roguishly and jealously, from whose white hands, from
whose fine finger-tips he would eat the fruits he desired.
One was standing aside, mixing him a drink. From hip to knee billowed
sparkling brocade. Slender, bare legs held proudly together, she
stood, like ivory, in purple, peaked shoes. Her gleaming body rose,
delicately, from her hips and–she was not aware of it–quivered in
the same rhythm as did the man’s chest in exhaling his sweet-rising
breath. Carefully did the little painted face under the eye-mask watch
the work of her careful hands.
Her mouth was not rouged, but yet was pomegranate red. And she smiled
so unselfconsciously down at the beverage that it caused the other
girls to laugh aloud.
Infected, Freder also began to laugh. But the glee of the maidens
swelled to a storm as she who was mixing the drink, not knowing why
they were laughing, became suffused with a blush of confusion, from
her pomegranate-hued mouth to her lustrous hips. The laughter induced
the friends, for no reason, only because they were young and care-
free, to join in the cheerful sound. Like a joyously ringing rainbow,
peal upon peal of laughter arched itself gaily above the young people.
Then suddenly–suddenly–Freder turned his head. His hands, which were
resting on the hips of the drink-mixer, lost hold of her, dropping
down by his sides as if dead. The laughter ceased, not one of the
friends moved. Not one of the little, brocaded, bare–limbed women
moved hand or foot. They stood and looked.
The door of the Eternal Gardens had opened and through the door came a
procession of children. They were all holding hands. They had dwarves’
faces, grey and ancient. They were little ghost–like skeletons,
covered with faded rags and smocks. They had colourless hair and
colourless eyes. They walked on emaciated bare feet. Noiselessly they
followed their leader.
Their leader was a girl. The austere countenance of the Virgin. The
sweet countenance of the mother. She held a skinny child by each hand.
Now she stood still, regarding the young men and women one after
another, with the deadly severity of purity. She was quite maid and
mistress, inviolability–and was, too, graciousness itself, her
beautiful brow in the diadem of goodness; her voice, pity; every word
a song.
She released the children and stretched forward her hand, motioning
towards the friends and saying to the children:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
And, motioning towards the children, she said to the friends:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
She waited. She stood still and her gaze rested upon Freder.
Then the servants came, the door-keepers came. Between these walls of
marble and glass, under the opal dome of the Eternal Gardens, there
reigned, for a short time, an unprecedented confusion of noise,
indignation and embarrassment. The girl appeared still to be waiting.
Nobody dared to touch her, though she stood so defenceless, among the
grey infant-phantoms, Her eyes rested perpetually on Freder.
Then she took her eyes from his and, stooping a little, took the
children’s hands again, turned and led the procession out. The door
swung to behind her; the servants disappeared with many apologies for
not having been able to prevent the occurrence. All was emptiness and
silence. Had not each of those before whom the girl had appeared, with
her grey procession of children, so large a number of witnesses to the
event they would have been inclined to put it down to hallucination.
Near Freder, upon the illuminated mosaic floor, cowered the little
drink-mixer, sobbing uncontrolledly.
With a leisurely movement, Freder bent towards her and suddenly
twitched the mask, the narrow black mask, from her eyes.
The drink-mixer shrieked out as though overtaken in stark nudity. Her
hands flew up, clutching, and remained hanging stiffly in the air.
A little painted face stared, horror-stricken at the man. The eyes,
thus exposed, were senseless, quite empty. The little face from which
the charm of the mask had been taken away, was quite weird.
Freder dropped the black piece of stuff. The drink-mixer pounced
quickly upon it, hiding her face. Freder looked around him.
The Eternal Gardens scintillated. The beautiful beings in it, even if,
temporarily, thrown out of balance, shone in their well-cared-for-
ness, their cleanly abundance. The odour of freshness, which pervaded
everywhere, was like the breath of a dewy garden.
Freder looked down at himself. He wore, as all the youths in the
“House of the Sons,” the white silk, which they wore but once–the
soft, supple shoes, with the noiseless soles.
He looked at his friends. He saw these beings who never wearied,
unless from sport–who never sweated, unless from sport–who were
never out of breath, unless from sport. Beings requiring their joyous
games in order that their food and drink might agree with them, in
order to be able, to sleep well and digest easily.
The tables, at which they had all eaten, were laid, as before-hand,
with untouched dishes. Wine, golden and purple, embedded in ice or
warmth, was there, proffering itself, like the loving little women.
Now the music was playing again. It had been silenced when the girlish
voice spoke the five soft words:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
And once more, with her eyes resting on Freder:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
As one suffocating, Freder sprang up. The masked women stared at him.
He dashed to the door. He ran along passages and down steps. He came
to the entrance.
“Who was that girl?”
Perplexed shrugs. Apologies. The occurrence was inexcusable, the
servants knew it. Dismissals, in plenty, would be distributed.
The Major Domo was pale with anger.
“I do not wish,” said Freder, gazing into space, “that anyone should
suffer for what has happened. Nobody is to be dismissed…I do not
wish it…”
The Major Domo bowed in silence. He was accustomed to whims in the
“Club of the Sons.”
“Who is the girl…can nobody tell me?”
“No. Nobody. But if an inquiry is to be made?”
Freder remained silent. He thought of Slim. He shook his head. First
slowly, then violently. “No–One does not set a bloodhound on the
track of a sacred, white hind.”
“Nobody is to inquire about her,” he said, tonelessly.
He felt the soulless glance of the strange, hired person upon his
face. He felt himself poor and besmirched. In an ill-temper which
rendered him as wretched as though he had poison in his veins, he left
the club. He walked home as though going into exile. He shut himself
up in his workroom and worked. At nights he clung to his instrument
and forced the monstrous solitude of Jupiter and Saturn down to him.
Nothing could help him–nothing! In an agonising blissful omnipresence
stood, before his vision the one, one countenance; the austere
countenance of the virgin, the sweet countenance of the mother.
A voice spoke:
“Look, these are your brothers.”
And the glory of the heavens was nothing, and the intoxication of work
was nothing. And the conflagration which wiped out the sea could not
wipe out the soft voice of the girl:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
My God, my God–
With a painful, violent jerk, Freder turned around and walked up to
his machine. Something like deliverance passed across his face as he
considered this shining creation, waiting only for him, of which there
was not a steel link, not a rivet, not a spring which he had not
calculated and created.
The creature was not large, appearing still more fragile by reason of
the huge room and flood of sunlight in which it stood. But the soft
lustre of its metal and the proud swing with which the foremost body
seemed to raise itself to leap, even when not in motion, gave it
something of the fair godliness of a faultlessly beautiful animal,
which is quite fearless, because it knows itself to be invincible.
Freder caressed his creation. He pressed his head gently against the
machine. With ineffable affection he felt its cool, flexible members.
“To-night,” he said, “I shall be with you. I shall be entirely
enwrapped by you. I shall pour out my life into you and shall fathom
whether or not I can bring you to life. I shall, perhaps, feel your
throb and the commencement of movement in your controlled body. I
shall, perhaps, feel the giddiness with which you throw yourself out
into your boundless element, carrying me–me, the man who made–
through the huge sea of midnight. The seven stars will be above us and
the sad beauty of the moon. Mount Everest will remain, a hill, below
us. You shall carry me and I shall know: You carry me as high as I
wish…”
He stopped, closing his eyes. The shudder which ran through him was
imparted, a thrill, to the silent machine.
“But perhaps,” he continued, without raising his voice, “perhaps you
notice, you, my beloved creation, that you are no longer my only love.
Nothing on earth is more vengeful than the jealousy of a machine which
believes itself to be neglected. Yes, I know that…You are imperious
mistresses…Thou shalt have none other Gods but me. Am I right? A
thought apart from you–you feel it at once and become perverse. How
could I keep it hidden from you that all my thoughts are not with you.
I can’t help it, my creation. I was bewitched, machine. I press my
forehead upon you and my forehead longs for the knees of the girl of
whom I do not even know the name…”
He ceased and held his breath. He raised his head and listened.
Hundreds and thousands of times had he heard that same sound in the
city. But hundreds and thousands of time, it seemed to him, he had not
comprehended it.
It was an immeasurably glorious and transporting sound. As deep and
rumbling as, and more powerful than, any sound on earth. The voice of
the ocean when it is angry, the voice of falling torrents, the voice
of very close thunderstorms would be miserably drowned in this
Behemoth-din. Without being shrill it penetrated all walls, and, as
long as it lasted, all things seemed to swing in it. It was
omnipresent, coming from the heights and from the depths, being
beautiful and horrible, being an irresistible command.
It was high above the town. It was the voice of the town.
Metropolis raised her voice. The machines of Metropolis roared; they
wanted to be fed.
Freder pushed open the glass doors. He felt them tremble like strings
under strokes of the bow. He stepped out on to the narrow gallery
which ran around this, almost the highest house of Metropolis. The
roaring sound received him, enveloped him, never coming to an end.
Great as Metropolis was: at all four corners of the city, this roared
command was equally perceptible:
Freder looked across the city at the building known to the world as
the “New Tower of Babel.”
In the brain-pan of this New Tower of Babel lived the man who was
himself the Brain of Metropolis.
As long as the man over there, who was nothing but work, despising
sleep, eating and drinking mechanically, pressed his fingers on the
blue metal plate, which apart from himself, no man had ever touched,
so long would the voice of the machine-city of Metropolis roar for
food, for food, for food…
She wanted living men for food.
Then the living food came pushing along in masses. Along the street it
came, along its own street which never crossed with other people’s
streets. It rolled on, a broad, an endless stream. The stream was
twelve files deep. They walked in even step. Men, men, men–all in the
same uniform, from throat to ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in
the same hard shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the same black caps.
And they all had the same faces. And they all appeared to be of the
same age. They held themselves straightened up, but not straight. They
did not raise their heads, they pushed them forward. They planted
their feet forward, but they did not walk. The open gates of the New
Tower of Babel, the machine center of Metropolis, gulped the masses
down.
Towards them, but past them, another procession dragged itself along,
the shift just used. It rolled on, a broad, an endless stream. The
stream was twelve files deep. They walked in even step. Men, men,
men–all in the same uniform, from throat to ankle in dark blue linen,
bare feet in the same hard shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the
same black caps. And they all had the same faces. And they all seemed
one thousand years old. They walked with hanging fists, they walked
with hanging heads. No, they planted their feet forward but they did
not walk. The open gates of the New Tower of Babel, the machine centre
of Metropolis, threw the masses up as it gulped them down.
When the fresh living food had disappeared through the gates the
roaring voice was silent at last. And the never ceasing, throbbing hum
of the great Metropolis became perceptible again, producing the effect
of silence, a deep relief. The man who was the great brain in the
brain-pan of Metropolis had ceased to press his fingers on the blue
metal plate.
In ten hours he would let the machine brute roar anew. And in another
ten hours, again. And always the same, and always the same, without
ever loosening the ten-hour clamp.
Metropolis did not know what Sunday was. Metropolis knew neither high
days nor holidays. Metropolis had the most saintly cathedral in the
world, richly adorned with Gothic decoration. In times of which only
the chronicles could tell, the star-crowned Virgin on its tower used
to smile, as a mother, from out her golden mantle, deep, deep down
upon the pious red rooves and the only companions of her graciousness
were the doves which used to nest in the gargoyles of the water-spouts
and the bells which were called after the four archangels and of which
Saint Michael was the most magnificent.
It was said that the Master who cast it turned villain for its sake,
for he stole consecrated and unconsecrated silver, like a raven,
casting it into the metal body of the bell. As a reward for his deed
he suffered, on the place of execution, the dreadful death on the
wheel. But, it was said, he died exceedingly happy, for the Archangel
Michael rang him on his way to death so wonderfully, touchingly, that
all agreed the saints must have forgiven the sinner already, to ring
the heavenly bells, thus, to receive him.
The bells still rang with their old, ore voices but when Metropolis
roared, then Saint Michael itself was hoarse. The New Tower of Babel
and its fellow houses stretched their sombre heights high above the
cathedral spire, that the young girls in the work-rooms and wireless
stations gazed down just as deep from the thirtieth story windows on
the star-crowned virgin as she, in earlier days, had looked down on
the pious red rooves. In place of doves, flying machines swarmed over
the cathedral roof and over the city, resting on the rooves, from
which, at night glaring pillars and circles indicated the course of
flight and landing points.
The Master of Metropolis had already considered, more than once,
having the cathedral pulled down, as being pointless and an
obstruction to the traffic in the town of fifty million inhabitants.
But the small, eager sect of Gothics, whose leader was Desertus, half
monk, half one enraptured, had sworn the solemn oath: If one hand from
the wicked city of Metropolis were to dare to touch just one stone of
the cathedral, then they would neither repose nor rest until the
wicked city of Metropolis should lie, a heap of ruins, at the foot of
her cathedral.
The Master of Metropolis used to avenge the threats which constituted
one sixth of his daily mail. But he did not care to fight with
opponents to whom he rendered a service by destroying them for their
belief. The great brain of Metropolis, a stranger to the sacrifice of
a desire, estimated the incalculable power which the sacrificed ones
and martyrs showered upon their followers too high rather than too
low. Too, the demolition of the cathedral was not yet so burning a
question as to have been the object of an estimate of expenses. But
when the moment should come, the cost of its pulling down would exceed
that of the construction of Metropolis. The Gothics were ascetics; the
Master of Metropolis knew by experience that a multi-millionaire was
more cheaply bought over than an ascetic.
Freder wondered, not without a foreign feeling of bitterness, how many
more times the great Master of Metropolis would permit him to look on
at the scene which the cathedral would present to him on every
rainless day: When the sun sank at the back of Metropolis, the houses
turning to mountains and the streets to valleys; when the stream of
light, which seemed to crackle with coldness, broke forth from all
windows, from the walls of the houses, from the rooves and from the
heart of the town; when the silent quiver of electric advertisments
began; when the searchlights, in all colours of the rainbow, began to
play around the New Tower of Babel; when the omnibuses turned to
chains of light-spitting monsters, the little motor cars to scurrying,
luminous fishes in a waterless deep-sea, while from the invisible
harbour of the underground railway, an ever equal, magical shimmer
pressed on to be swallowed by the hurrying shadows–then the cathedral
would stand there, in this boundless ocean of light, which dissolved
all forms by outshining them, the only dark object, black and
persistant, seeming, in its lightlessness, to free itself from the
earth, to rise higher and ever higher, and appearing in this maelstrom
of tumultous light, the only reposeful and masterful object.
But the Virgin on the top of the tower seemed to have her own gentle
starlight, and hovered, set free from the blackness of the stone, on
the sickle of the silver moon, above the cathedral.
Freder had never seen the countenance of the Virgin and yet he knew it
so well he could have drawn it: the austere countenance of the Virgin,
the sweet countenance of the mother.
He stooped, clasping the burning palms of his hands around the iron
railing.
“Look at me, Virgin,” he begged, “Mother, look at me!” The spear of a
searchlight flew into his eyes causing him to close them angrily. A
whistling rocket hissed through the air, dropping down into the pale
twilight of the afternoon, the word: Yoshiwara…
Remarkably white, and with penetrating beams, there hovered, towering
up, over a house which was not to be seen, the word: Cinema.
All the seven colours of the rainbow flared, cold and ghostlike in
silently swinging circles. The enormous face of the clock on the New
Tower of Babel was bathed in the glaring cross-fire of the
searchlights. And over and over again from the pale, unreal–looking
sky, dripped the word: Yoshiwara. Freder’s eyes hung on the clock of
the New Tower of Babel, where the seconds flashed off as sparks of
breathing lightning, continuous in their coming as in their going. He
calculated the time which had passed since the voice of Metropolis had
roared for food, for food, for food. He knew that behind the throbbing
second flashes on the New Tower of Babel there was a Wide, bare room
with narrow windows, the height of the walls, switch-boards on all
sides, right in the centre, the table, the most ingenious instrument
which the Master of Metropolis had created, on which to play, alone,
as solitary master.
On the plain chair before it, the embodiment of the great brain: the
Master of Metropolis. Near his right hand the sensitive blue metal
plate, to which he would stretch out his right hand, with the
infallible certainty of a healthy machine, when seconds enough had
flicked off into eternity, to let Metropolis roar once more–for food,
for food, for food–
In this moment Freder was seized with the persistent idea that he
would lose his reason if he had, once more, to hear the voice of
Metropolis thus roaring to be fed. And, already convinced of the
pointlessness of his quest, he turned from the spectacle of the light
crazy city and went to seek the Master of Metropolis, whose name was
Joh Fredersen and who was his father.
CHAPTER II
THE BRAIN-PAN of the New Tower of Babel was peopled with numbers.
From an invisible source the numbers dropped rhythmically down through
the cooled air of the room, being collected, as in a water-basin, at
the table at which the great brain of Metropolis worked, becoming
objective under the pencils of his secretaries. These eight young men
resembled each other as brothers, which they were not. Although
sitting as immovable as statues, of which only the writing fingers of
the right hand stirred, yet each single one, with sweat-bedewed brow
and parted lips, seemed the personification of Breathlessness.
No head was raised on Freder’s entering, Not even his father’s.
The lamp under the third loud-speaker glowed white-red.
New York spoke.
Joh Fredersen was comparing the figures of the evening exchange report
with the lists which lay before him. Once his voice sounded,
vibrationless:
“Mistake. Further inquiry.”
The first secretary quivered, stooped lower, rose and retired on
soundless soles. Joh Fredersen’s left eyebrow rose a trifle as he
watched the retreating figure–only as long as was possible without
turning his head.
A thin, concise penal-line crossed out a name.
The white-red light glowed. The voice spoke. The numbers dropped down
through the great room. In the brain-pan of Metropolis.
Freder remained standing, motionless, by the door. He was not sure as
to whether or not his father had noticed him. Whenever he entered this
room he was once more a boy of ten years old, his chief characteristic
uncertainty, before the great concentrated, almighty certainty, which
was called Joh Fredersen, and was his father.
The first secretary walked past him, greeting him silently,
respectfully. He resembled a competitor leaving the course, beaten.
The chalky face of the young man hovered for one moment before
Freder’s eyes like a big, white, lacquer mask. Then it was blotted
out.
Numbers dropped down through the room.
One chair was empty. On seven others sat seven men, pursuing the
numbers which sprang unceasingly from the invisible.
A lamp glowed white-red.
New York spoke.
A lamp sparkled up: white-green.
London began to speak.
Freder looked up at the clock opposite the door, commanding the whole
wall like a gigantic wheel. It was the same clock, which, from the
heights of the New Tower of Babel, flooded by searchlights, flicked
off its second-sparks over the great Metropolis.
Joh Fredersen’s head stood out against it. It was a crushing yet
accepted halo above the brain of Metropolis.
The searchlights raved in a delirium of colour upon the narrow windows
which ran from floor to ceiling. Cascades of light frothed against the
panes. Outside, deep down, at the foot of the New Tower of Babel
boiled the Metropolis. But in this room not a sound was to be heard
but the incessantly dripping numbers.
The Rotwang-process had rendered the walls and windows sound-proof.
In this room, which was at the same time crowned and subjugated by the
mighty time-piece, the clock, indicating numbers, nothing had any
significance but numbers. The son of the great Master of Metropolis
realised that, as long as numbers came dripping out of the invisible
no word, which was not a number, and coming from a visible mouth,
could lay claim to the least attention.
Therefore he stood, gazing unceasingly at his father’s head, watching
the monstrous hand of the clock sweep onward, inevitably, like a
sickle, a reaping scythe pass through the skull of his father, without
harming him, climb upwards, up the number-beset ring, creep around the
heights and sink again, to repeat the vain blow of the scythe At last
the white-red light went out. A voice ceased.
Then the white-green light went out, too.
Silence.
The hands of those writing stopped and, for the space of a moment,
they sat as though paralysed, relaxed, exhausted. Then Joh Fredersen’s
voice said with a dry gentleness:
“Thank you, to-morrow.”
And without looking round:
“What do you want, my boy?”
The seven strangers quitted the now silent room. Freder crossed to his
father, whose glance was sweeping the lists of captured number-drops.
Freder’s eyes clung to the blue metal plate near his father’s right
hand.
“How did you know it was I?” he asked, softly.
Joh Fredersen did not look up at him. Although his face had gained an
expression of patience and pride at the first question which his son
put to him he had lost none of his alertness. He glanced at the clock.
His fingers glided over the flexible keyboard. Soundlessly were orders
flashed out to waiting men.
“The door opened. Nobody was announced. Nobody comes to me
unannounced. Only my son.”
A light below glass–a question. Joh Fredersen extinguished the light.
The first secretary entered and crossed over to the great Master of
Metropolis.
“You were right. It was a mistake. It has been rectified,” he
reported, expressionlessly.
“Thank you.” Not a look. Not a gesture. “The G–bank has been notified
to pay you your salary. Good evening.”
The young man stood motionless. Three, four, five, six seconds flicked
off the gigantic time-piece. Two empty eyes burnt in the chalky face
of the young man, impressing their brand of fear upon Freder’s vision.
One of Joh Fredersen’s shoulders made a leisurely movement.
“Good evening,” said the young man, in a strangled tone.
He went.
“Why did you dismiss him, father?” the son asked.
“I have no use for him,” said Joh Fredersen, still not having looked
at his son.
“Why not, father?”
“I have no use for people who start when one speaks to them,” said the
Master over Metropolis.
“Perhaps he felt ill…perhaps he is worrying about somebody who is
dear to him.”
“Possibly. Perhaps too, he was still under the effects of the too long
night in Yoshiwara. Freder, avoid assuming people to be good, innocent
and victimized just because they suffer. He who suffers has sinned,
against himself and against others.”
“You do not suffer, father?”
“No.”
“You are quite free from sin?”
“The time of sin and suffering lies behind me, Freder.”
“And if this man, now…I have never seen such a thing…but I believe
that men resolved to end their lives go out of a room as he did…”
“Perhaps.”
“And suppose you were to hear, to-morrow, that he were dead…that
would leave you untouched…?” “Yes.”
Freder was silent.
His father’s hand slipped over a lever, and pressed it down. The white
lamps in all the rooms surrounding the brain-pan of the New Tower of
Babel went out. The Master over Metropolis had informed the circular
world around him that he did not wish to be disturbed without urgent
cause.
“I cannot tolerate it,” he continued, “when a man, working upon
Metropolis, at my right hand, in common with me, denies the only great
advantage he possesses above the machine.”
“And what is that, father?”
“To take delight in work,” said the Master over Metropolis. Freder’s
hand glided over his hair, then rested on its glorious fairness. He
opened his lips, as though he wanted to say something; but he remained
silent.
“Do you suppose,” Joh Fredersen went on, “that I need my secretaries’
pencils to check American stock-exchange reports? The index tables of
Rotwang’s trans-ocean trumpets are a hundred times more reliable and
swift than clerk’s brains and hands. But, by the accuracy of the
machine I can measure the accuracy of the men, by the breath of the
machine, the lungs of the men who compete with her.”
“And the man you just dismissed, and who is doomed (for to be
dismissed by you, father, means going down!…Down!…Down!…) he
lost his breath, didn’t he?” “Yes.”
“Because he was a man and not a machine…” “Because he denied his
humanity before the machine.” Freder raised his head and his deeply
troubled eyes. “I cannot follow you now, father,” he said, as if in
pain. The expression of patience on Joh Fredersen’s face deepened.
“The man,” he said quietly, “was my first secretary! The salary he
drew was eight times as large as that of the last.”
“That was synonymous with the obligation to perform eight times as
much. To me. Not to himself. To-morrow the fifth secretary will be in
his place. In a week he will have rendered four of the others
superfluous. I have use for that man.”
“Because he saves four others.”
“No, Freder. Because he takes delight in the work of four others.
Because he throws himself entirely into his work–throws himself as
desiringly as if it were a woman.”
Freder was silent. Joh Fredersen looked at his son. He looked at him
carefully.
“You have had some experience?” he asked.
The eyes of the boy, beautiful and sad, slipped past him, out into
space. Wild, white light frothed against the windows, and, in going
out, left the sky behind, as a black velvet cloth over Metropolis.
“I have had no experience,” said Freder, tentatively, “except that I
believe for the first time in my life to have comprehended the being
of a machine…”
“That should mean a great deal,” replied the Master over Metropolis.
“But you are probably wrong, Freder. If you had really comprehended
the being of a machine you would not be so perturbed.”
Slowly the son turned his eyes and the helplessness of his
incomprehension to his father.
“How can one but be perturbed,” he said, “if one comes to you, as I
did, through the machine-rooms. Through the glorious rooms of your
glorious machines…and sees the creatures who are fettered to them by
laws of eternal watchfulness…lidless eyes…”
He paused. His lips were dry as dust.
Joh Fredersen leant back. He had not taken his gaze from his son, and
still held it fast.
“Why did you come to me through the machine-rooms,” he asked quietly.
“It is neither the best, nor the most convenient way.”
“I wished,” said the son, picking his words carefully, “Just once to
look the men in the face–whose little children are my brothers–my
sisters…”
“H’m,” said the other with very tight lips. The pencil which he held
between his fingers tapped gently, dryly, once, twice, upon the
table’s edge. Joh Fredersen’s eyes wandered from his son to the
twitching flash of the seconds on the clock, then sinking back again
to him.
“And what did you find?” he asked.
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. “Nobody 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 gods 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 god–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 god-machines, the slaves of the god-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 god-
machines, and that the Moloch of glass, 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 substitute 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 shining radiance, themselves shining,
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, massively, 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 III
THE MAN WHO had been Joh Fredersen’s first secretary stood in a cell
of the Pater-noster, the never-stop passenger 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. Nobody paid the least attention
to him. One or two certainly recognised him. But, as yet, nobody
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 space 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 passed 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: Yoshiwara…
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 crashing 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 god 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 pushing 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 masses 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 hell 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 hell. 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 trespasses…what trespasses, Pater-
noster? The trespass 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. Nobody 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.
“We shall now exchange lives, Georgi. You take mine, I yours. I shall
take your place at the machine. You go quietly