INTRODUCTION
Simon Fedorovich Savchenko was born in 1873 and wrote as a journalist and science fiction writer under the pseudonym S. Belsky. He was a participant in the Union of October 17, and wrote more than 50 short stories between 1903 and 1917, some of possible interest to science fiction readers include the "The End of the History of the People of the Sun" (1914), "A Special Taste of the Country" (1914), "At the Foot of the Sayans" (1916), "Golden Valley" (1914), "Ship of the Dead" (1914), "My Meeting with Nero" (1914), "30 Years in Ancient Babylon" (1914), "Laboratory of Great Destruction" (1916), and "Between the Sky and the Earth" (1917). Savchenko died on August 23rd, 1923.
"Under the Comet: Notes in stone from an eyewitness about the death and destruction of the Earth" was originally published in standalone form in 1910 by the St. Petersburg publisher "The Printed Work" ("Печатный Трудъ"), and was anthologized at least four times, starting with 2015's "World of Adventure: 1901-1916, Volume 2". Numerous names in the text are inconsistently written, including Elza/Eloiza, Plumper/Plumpert, etc, which we have left as-is.
This translation is taken from the modernized Russian version here: https://traumlibrary.ru/book/belskiy-ss-02/belskiy-ss-02.html
A good scan of the original 1910 printing, where we took the illustrations from, can be found here: https://www.livelib.ru/book/1001488141-pod-kometoj-vysechennye-na-kamne-zapiski-ochevidtsa-o-gibeli-i-razrushenii-zemli-s-belskij
UNDER THE COMET: NOTES IN STONE FROM AN EYEWITNESS ABOUT THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH
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| Original 1910 cover |
Chapter I
From the hole where I'm sitting, visible on my right are a black, jagged wall of mountains, burnt, fallen tree trunks in the valley enshrouded in purple mist, and a slightly curved ridge of stone. A reddish fog obscures the distance and gives all the objects on the disfigured black earth a fantastic outline.
The Oldet Peak looks like a giant, who, bending his knees and bowing his head, carefully examines something in the ruins of Heliopolis. A tortoise of stone buries the bridge, the Arch of the World, and hundreds of small houses surrounded by greenery, in which the workers of the main power plant lived. The burnt forest reminds one of a cemetery.
On the hill where the observatory stood, fallen stones and destroyed buildings resembled the keel of an upturned ship. Clouds of black dust creep over the earth and flutter like a veil of mourning.
The black, silent desert! All the colors destroyed by heavenly fire. I can hardly imagine the green hillsides, the white peaks of the mountains, the silvery sea, the yellow rocks - the familiar living face of the Earth. Was it a dream, or was it real?
Fire destroyed not only the cities and the forests - it burned the history of mankind, its religion, art, science - the whole of Earth has been rendered a charred corpse, but the sky is so beautiful now, so magnificent, like it has never been before.
The comet, with its six rays, resembles a white lily with a ovary of fire; these celestial lilies slowly curve and are what scorched the earth; it looks like they're blowing in the wind, carrying the comet into the depths of the sky. In the evening, the lily transforms into a soft golden color, with a tranquil silvery radiance spreading all around it.
Yesterday at dawn, old Vincent climbed onto the ruins of the observatory and shouted:
- "Hey, you there, up in heaven! Can you hear us? We don't want to stay on an Earth littered with the dead... Who are you? What's your name, thou who art in heaven? I want to hear you..."
He screamed until the sun rose and the bright colors of the firmament died out.
We are six: two women and four men. It's the third month we've been living in the ruins of the Royal Antiquities Museum. The eldest, Vincent Enrio; 67 years old; was a monk, and half a year before the appearance of the comet, he settled in one of those subterranean crypts under the monastery of St. Jacob, one of those that would terrify anyone who descended into its narrow, winding passages. Enrio knelt in his crypt for several days, praying and making hundreds of prostrations. He was often tempted by the devil, who came out of the damp wall, blew out the wax candle, moved the coffin where the monk rested, and poured the water out of the stoup. On the surface of the earth, in the light of the sun, all his antics would have seemed like foolish jokes. However, Enrio himself did not consider this demon to be smart, and set up ambushes and traps for him, like he was a dumb animal. Accustomed to the black walls of the crypt and the constant dead silence, Father Vincent endures suffering the best of all. It seems to him that nothing special has happened, only that the grave's walls in which he's buried himself have moved themselves apart in immense proportions, from the earth to the sky. Chiefly, the monk mourns the disappearance of the demon, without whom he doesn't know how to fill half his time. The sky appears like an ocean to Father Enrio, on which a rescue ship is about to appear. As if he were inside of a lighthouse, he stands for hours with his head raised to a pile of stones stacked on top of a mountain. Sometimes Father Vincent raises both hands, calling on someone in a fit of desperation, and then dies down again - blackness upon the black stones.
The second is my comrade, Olrid, who was the curator of the Royal Antiquities Museum.
- "I knew that it would all end like this" - Olrid said - "a few fragments of stone, a bunch of broken pottery, old coins, a rusty weapon, some sort of crockery, fragments of a statue, a half-worn inscription - in the end, that's all that survives from any civilization. In one corner of the Royal Museum, there stood a dusty box that could be lifted by a child, and stored in this box was the entire heritage of a people who lived for twenty centuries."
Like Father Vincent, the curator of the museum, who spent many years among the stone debris ejected from the depths of the centuries, like the sea ejects the planks and masts of dead ships onto a sandy beach, was freed from the horror sooner than all of us.
The madman's name was Philip Evert. For us people of the old world, the name is all too familiar. Evert was the great surgeon who was the first to replace a worn-out heart, much like one replaces a weakened spring in a watch.
He became obsessed with the monstrous idea of creating a higher thinking being from the brain and other artificially developed animal tissues. For an entire century, our chemists have been making all sorts of organic substances. In the Biological Museum, in the first room to the right of the entrance, there was a rich collection of animal organs that were developed in a laboratory. Every biological engineer knew how to make an excellent bile-producing liver, an eye, strong healthy muscle - and the muscular machine began to replace steel mechanisms in many small factories.
Evert took it into his head to build a thinking brain; and as we didn't have enough artists, poetry was long dead, there were no prophets, the surgeon gave himself the task of creating the head of a brilliant thinker from salts, acids and alkalis in his laboratory.
The world needed new brilliant ideas, great delusions and great truths. Without inspiration from palaces, temples, and colossal structures, humanity suffocated like a fish at the bottom of a dried-up lake. Life became too insipid, and since not a single head produced anything that wasn't previously known, many agreed that Evert's attempt was reasonable and useful.
The government ceded an old chemical plant to the scientist, where Evert worked diligently for two years on the creation of his prophet. On behalf of "The Southern Gazette", I once visited this plant on a day when pupils from two orphanages in light blue dress and about three dozen teachers were gathered to become acquainted with the latest achievements in technology. Evert was already showing signs of mental distress. He talked about how he was afraid of his job and was waiting in horror for the moment when consciousness and thought, like a sunbeam breaking through heavy rain clouds, would awaken in the gray mass of the artificial brain. He was afraid of their wild, spontaneous grandeur.
"The Southern Gazette" was the first to note that "Evert's health causes concern" (No. 1273). I mention this fact without vanity, and only because that vapid scribbler and corrupt journalist of "The Heliopolis Herald", V.G.M., subsequently claimed, with his characteristic impudence, that it was he who first brought Evert's madness to the attention of the public. However, now there are no newspapers, no readers, no publishers. I'm ending world literature and there is no need to bring up old disputes.
By a strange coincidence, the global fire that destroyed millions of worthy people, scientists, politicians, and philanthropists, spared a man who spent three quarters of his life in prison, who did not even have his own name and called himself No. 369. The Nameless One denies any guilt and says that the parliaments and kings were constantly held up in passing the laws that would allow the officials to release him, and that only because of this constant delay he spent 34 years across eleven prisons.
No. 369 escaped with chains on his legs, and since we didn't have any tools to unchain him, for hours, the runaway convict smashed his shackles with stones that fell from the accursed comet. While engaged in this work, he sang prison songs, scolded the parliament, the kings, the courts, the laws, and expressed complete joy at the terrible destruction, the collapse of all civilization.
But on the other hand, fate spared one of the most remarkable people of Heliopolis, the glorious and kind King Meredith XVI. Portraits give the wrong impression of His Majesty's appearance. It's as if all the artists agreed to depict Meredith not as he is, but as he should be. There is nothing majestic about him, and when the king is silent, sitting in the hole where the star drove us, he could be mistaken for one of those unemployed, exhausted by hunger and constant failure, who roamed the cities of the old world by the thousands.
Yesterday, No. 369 sat beside Meredith for a long time, examining him as intently as if he were solving a puzzle.
- "So this is the king?" asked the Nameless One, addressing me, - "the same king who could take a pen and write: 'No. 369 is appointed governor of Heliopolis' or 'No. 369 complains of the count's dignity' and I would be made governor, count, or whatever he pleases. But he could take the same pen and write: 'take No. 369 to the rock where the executions are conducted, and throw him headfirst from a height of 500 feet.' Could you do all this?"
- "I could," the king replied, smiling.
- "Well, and who are you now?"
- "I am now the king." No. 369 laughed.
- "Come out, Your Majesty, from the pit and look again at what the sky has done to the earth and to Heliopolis. A pile of rubble, like an express train crash. We've crashed at full speed quite nicely. The comet's tail wiped out all the laws. Your power and my prison were carried away by that white thing that's hanging over our heads."
- "And still, I am the king," Meredith repeated stubbornly.
No. 369 whistled a convicts' march, and clanging his shackles (he had hygienic ones, of the latest model), he headed for the exit out of the collapsed gallery.
Today, they've been arguing about royalty since morning. Meredith XVI is supported by the monk and the museum curator. The mad Evert endorsed the Nameless One.
- "I'll beat this nonsense out of you," the Nameless One shouted. - "The old world's burnt down like a straw wicker, and there won't be anything to talk about for a long while."
- "The comet couldn't destroy history. You were and will remain, a runaway convict; Meredith, the King; and the venerable Father Vincent has grace and holiness that no one and nothing can take away from him."
- "What then, in your opinion, did the comet destroy?"
- "Walls, just the walls. No fire can destroy old eternal ideas."
- "And eternal delusions," Evert replied in a hoarse voice.
They were arguing on a narrow black platform, bathed in the bright light of the sun, and in their rags, next to piles of random piles of debris, they looked like scrap dealers who, while quarreling, rummage through a pile of garbage.
The women kept out of it. There are two of them. The youngest, the girl Susanna, was the daughter of a rich cheese maker, and the prostitute Elza, who served in the syndicate's pleasure institute which had a monopoly on the entire trade of public women. Susanna is very beautiful, and even when she's crying, sitting on a block of stone, her strong flexible body arouses sensuality. All of us, with the exception of the surgeon Evert, wanted to have her; she knew this and timidly avoided us when one of us approached her, but in her lazy body and the expression of her large eyes, there was something that contradicted her timidity and seemed to cry out:
- "Take me, I want to submit!"
And this girlish body's mute, constant call destroyed what the comet couldn't destroy with its fire. An ancient man was awakening in us, one who didn't know shame, the power of religion or law; animal passion seized the first, then the another; and then wild scenes took place on the slope of the hill where we lived, during which Father Vincent cursed women and called Susanna and Elza heavenly punishments upon us all.
- "We need to put an end to this," - said No. 369 one evening. - "I'll take the girl as my wife and that's it."
Olrid rose from the heap of metal dust brought by the comet and answered for everyone.
- "If you touch Susanna, I'll break your head open."
The Nameless One picked up a stone and threw it at Olrid. The stone tore some skin off his cheek and a red trickle flowed down the curator of the museum's face and neck.
- "Blood," he said hoarsely, looking at the red fingers that he wiped his cheek with, and his gray face immediately turned pale.
- "I'm stronger than you, and I'm taking this girl," the Nameless One repeated and slowly moved towards the direction where Susanna was sitting. His large head with long tangled hair, the strong bronzed body covered with the rags of a prisoner's jacket, and the shiny chain of metal rings on his dirty bare feet were illuminated to the smallest detail by the red light of the comet, which was all visible in the wide aperture of the gallery. It seemed as if we were sitting in a huge forge with black stone walls, and heaps of metal were melting in the open furnace.
- "Stop," Evert cried; there was such authority in the mad scientist's voice that No. 369 turned around and hesitated. - "This woman will become a mother, and her children will create a new world on the ruins of the old..."
- "I will be the patriarch," answered No. 369 with a grin. Evert took the Nameless One by his crude, hairy hand.
- "You won't leave until I've said everything."
- "Speak, and yet she'll be my wife, I want her so bad, do you all hear, I want her so bad!"
The Nameless One folded his hands behind his back and stood near the black rock as if he did not care what Evert and all the others would say.
- "Who among us is most worthy to be the father of a new people?" - the scientist looked inquiringly at the group of people huddled together at the entrance of the gallery. - "You are the king, the last descendant of a family whose history everyone knows. Your father was weak-minded, your grandfather a drunkard, a debauchee, and your great-grandfather suffered from religious insanity. Can you be the husband of this last woman of the old world, and the first in the world of the future? You'll bring a whole swarm of heavy visions that gravitate over the thoughts and feelings of the people."
The king was silent.
- "Olrid, curator of the royal museum - a weak, flaccid body. Come closer. Tilt your head. Like this!" - Evert's thin fingers quickly moved over Olrid's small head. "Lack of imagination. A boring, pale brain."
- "I've written ten volumes on ancient monuments," the curator of the royal museum said in an offended voice.
- "Your own head is of an ancient type... The frontal lobes are completely undeveloped. You get scared sometimes, Olrid!"
- "Scared, what?"
- "Well, you yourself don't even know, and that's the whole point. A dark danger is coming, you're afraid of the sky, the king, the darkness; you feel as small as an ant lost in a forest centuries old."
- "Yes, it happens."
- "Primal animal fear. Horror, the most ancient of all feelings, it grows at the roots of life and only the mind conquers it. The shadows of the night flee from the sun. Now Vincent."
- "What do you mean Vincent?!" the monk shouted angrily. - "You dare not touch me because the devil possesses you. I'll curse you, and when we all go to our heavenly abode, you'll be alone hiding in the holes in this damned scorched earth, lit by hellish red flames. I don't want this girl, although the demon is seducing me."
- "Now Enrio Vittorino," - Evert turned to me. - "Writer, 37 years old. Neurasthenia due to hereditary alcoholism." (I describe this scene with all possible accuracy in view of its importance for future generations, but for the sake of justice I must say that Evert was mistaken in relation to me: I drink very little and only sometimes; when there is no inspiration, I look for it with the help of stimulants).
- "That leaves only one, No. 369, or whatever his name is, come here."
The black figure separated from the rock and slowly moved towards the illuminated area.
- "Well?" said the giant in a dull voice, looking down at Evert.
- "Murderer!" The doctor spoke softly and clearly. It seemed to me that this short word swept over all the surrounding rocks.
- "We fought honestly and it's not my fault that his knife broke," No. 369 answered just as quietly. Raising his voice, he continued: "I'll take this girl, I want her so bad! Do you all hear: because I want her so bad! I don't care what happens. The doctor here is examining us like horses in a stud farm. According to him, it turns out that the king brought out all his feeble-minded crazy ancestors here, Olrid is just a new version of ancient man; a dozen drunkards sit in the writer's body and mind, I'm a murderer. Don't believe this madman: the comet's burnt up all the old trash, our ancestors and their graves. Why the hell would you drag dead men here, with their royal robes, laws, parliaments, and even that stupid demon that was with this vile monk, swaying between the earth and the sky like a spider in a strong wind. I'm stronger than you and this woman will be mine!"
The Nameless One walked slowly towards the direction where the women were sleeping.
- "Damn you!" - Father Vincent cried after him, rather than parting pleasantries.
We separated, laid down and silently looked at the fiery flower in the silvery abyss above the black charred Earth.
There were still poisonous gases from the comet in the valleys, and in three months we have not once descended from the mountain where the Royal Antiquities Museum's collapsed gallery extends to the eastern slope.
I feel very amiss, there is constant noise in my ears, as if from the ocean. It seems to me that I'm hearing the storm that's carrying the comet away and bending its six fiery rays.
Evert says I've been poisoned by cyanide gas. I hasten to look through the papers about the death of the Earth. The notes in the margins of the manuscript were made by me and Dr. Evert. The latter are marked with the letter E.
Chapter II
The first news of the comet's appearance - Newspapers before the end of the world. - The Venturio Monument. - Vera Square. - The Temple of Man. - Sleep and resurrection.
The first time I heard about the comet was in the editorial office of "The Southern Gazette", where I directed the news section and wrote feuilletons twice a week. At three o'clock, as always, I sat at my desk and looked through the reporters' notes, an occupation that can bring gloom to the most cheerful person. Additionally, this work demanded a great deal of attention since the morals of Heliopolis writers were rotten and each news writer cleverly concealed the fee he received from those interested in any news appearing; as a result, newspapers suffered heavy losses, since half of the total collected by the journalists from the theaters, the joint-stock companies, the banks, the restaurants, the parliament, the baths, and so on was deducted in favor of the publishers. Not a single one, even the most insignificant business, could be arranged without first spending a decent amount on bribing newspapers and the newspaper employees.
There were four thousand daily publications in Heliopolis before the appearance of the comet. All of them were located in a special quarter, in the western part of the city, next to the streets populated by the public women.
The newspaper quarter was the busiest part of the global city. From ten o'clock in the morning, giant gramophones placed over the editorial office doors began to call out the news received from all over the world, and were immediately refuted.
Hundreds of other gramophones scolded the conservatives, the radicals, the republicans, the ministers, the parliamentary majorities and minorities, the joint-stock companies, the new religions, in a word, everything in the world.
To drown out the unbearable howl of the metallic voices, their literary opponents launched steamship sirens, the roar of which was heard throughout Heliopolis; newspaper vendors, dressed in colorful costumes and accompanied by acrobats and street musicians, shouted the titles of articles through horns and scattered thousands of advertisements that, like flakes of snow, swirled across the street and covered the pavement. A turbulent stream of people moved around the houses, needing the help of the press or looking for their whereabouts. Beggars, courtiers, monks, artists, mystics, poets, bankers, inventors, charlatans all poured into the wide-open editorial office doors and engaged in loud haggling with the newspaper owners, and with their trusted employees.
Copies of newspapers were published every hour in the millions, distributed by aeroplanes, and their influence was limitless.
To give the future of mankind an idea of the respect that world literature enjoyed in its last days, I will tell you how the newspapers erected a monument to the honorable and worthy Venturio, head of the syndicate for trafficking in women.
I don't know exactly how much it cost Venturio, but one morning the voices of all the gramophones in the newspaper district merged in his glorification and praise. The small newspaper "The Wasp" tried to object with its gramophone, which buzzed like a mosquito over a swamp, but "The Herald of Truth" set a colossal siren in motion, powered by a machine of a hundred-fold strength, and silenced "The Wasp". Four thousand articles about Venturio's intelligence, Venturio's generosity, Venturio's magnanimity, appeared every hour and were transmitted to all the corners of the globe by wireless telegraph. The wave of newspapers washed away everyone who dared to oppose the glorification and exaltation of the main owner of the brothels. During this campaign, two ministries fell and, what is especially grievous, good old Kempel, the leader of the people's party, committed suicide, because every hour he was accused of various crimes.
But what could one do? Venturio paid, and Kempel was as poor as a church rat.
I remember that his death greatly upset the editor of "The Southern Gazette".
The poor fellow was weeping in distress as the gigantic gramophone on the roof of the office blared all around for five miles:
- "Kempel is a fraud! Kempel is a briber! Another one of Kempel's crimes!.."
The little "Wasp" buzzed: "Murderers!.. murderers!..", but the siren of "The Herald of Truth" howled nearby, and no one was intimated by the denunciation of "The Wasp".
In order to maintain the zeal of the journalists, Venturio allowed them free access to all his places of entertainment, and even to the famous Castle of the Fountains, where a select few were admitted for enormous sums of money.
The syndicate not only delivered the most beautiful women from all the corners of the world, it also raised and nurtured them in special nurseries. Here, the body and psyche of the girls were formed and, since this work was carried out under the supervision of experienced scientists, psychologists and artists, the syndicate, after many years of effort, managed to create a new breed of women who resembled the goddesses and nymphs of the ancient world.
In Heliopolis, women carried hard labor on an equal footing with men. They worked on the ground, under the ground, and in the air. The General Directorate of aeroplanes hired only women. There were more of them in state institutions than men. At the cost of an enormous struggle, women long ago won the right to occupy all the highest positions in the country's government. Several times the ministry was composed of only women; in the end, in appearance and mentality, they completely merged with the men.
Gender was dying and a new creature was being created, which was called 'chelovek' in everyday life. [Translator's note: The English word "Man" in used in the original, I've translated this as the Russian word "chelovek" for 'person'/'man' to distinguish it with the other uses of the words 'man' or 'people' in this paragraph.] It was possible to sit for a whole year somewhere in an office next to a comrade, dressed, like everyone else, in a blue blouse and wide trousers, and not know whether this comrade was a man or a woman. Continuous work, occupational diseases, lack of movement and air, poisoning from various stimulants affected women more severely than men. Late in the evening, when the 'cheloveks' filled the labyrinth of streets and alleys, bathed in the bright light of electric suns, it seemed that all these millions of people, with gray faces, with boring tired eyes, were made according to the same model in one factory. Neither age nor gender could be determined. The love described by the old poets is long dead. At first, like ivy, she coiled around the machines, then her leaves turned to yellow, wilted and crumbled. As a relic, love sometimes sparked up in a bright flame, and as it happened, it gave rise to old jealousies and even led to crime, but usually men and women converged and dispersed indifferently, and sought momentary pleasure in rapprochement when there was no other entertainment. Venturio revived an ancient woman, infinitely distant from a man, and mysterious. He himself - small, ugly, with a sagging belly, similar to an Indian idol, said that in every workeress - gray and dull like the dried earth, the seeds are present for transforming her into the kind of woman that populated the syndicate palaces.
A month after Venturio opened his gardens to the press, everyone from the king to the last beggar saw that a monument must be erected. One of the assemblymen who waited twenty years for a minister's portfolio made a great speech in parliament on the merits of Venturio and the ways to perpetuate his name. Nobody objected. This ministerial candidate demanded an open vote "so that we know, like he said, the names of those who would oppose the glory of the people." It was adopted unanimously.
Only one assemblyman left the hall: a seventy-year-old man who won the great battle in Africa many years ago and saved Heliopolis from destruction. Not wanting his glorious name to be dragged through the mud, the folk hero killed himself, sending letters to the editors with a request not to write anything about him. His will was faithfully fulfilled, and only 69 newspapers called him an idiot and a decrepit debauchee who lost his mind.
With the money collected by nationwide subscriptions, a magnificent monument was erected to the owner of the brothels in bronze and marble. Venturio himself crowned his bronze image with a laurel wreath, and when the small, bald man with a sagging belly climbed the stairs onto the shoulders of the statue, a crowd of thousands, who always say what the newspapers say, cried out, glorifying the great Venturio.
Such was the power of the press in Heliopolis. I'm not writing this out of vanity, as some might think, but only so that a future people will know how world literature ended.
On the day when I first heard about the comet, the conservatives were fighting with the radicals, and our parliamentary reporter, a professor at the University of Heliopolis sitting opposite me on the edge of the table, spoke about this incident as if it were not living people doing the fighting, but rather paragraphs, articles and clauses of "constitutional law" entering into a scuffle. He called this method of presentation "legal analysis".
- "Paragraph No. 27 caused this whole scandal, it's good that the note to Article 94 made it possible to raise the issue of voting, but paragraph 5 has spoiled the matter..."
He was a dull man, and it was not at all fun to listen to him.
Suddenly the telephone rang.
- "Observatory speaking. The elements of Comet B have just been determined, a collision seems to be imminent."
- "A collision with what?"
- "With Earth. Are you listening to me? We'll be struck on August 25 or 27." I didn't hear the end of the sentence.
- "What's the matter?" the professor asked. "It must be about the results of the vote."
- "Not at all! The observatory's announcing that the Earth will collide with some kind of comet."
- "They're pulling your leg.[Translator's note: In Russian something along the lines of 'derailing you with nonsense'] Give me three hundred lines, I'll write an article about paragraph 94."
The editor-in-chief tossed the article about the comet into the trash.
- "I know their games. Have them pay for a thousand lines first, at the highest rate."
- "Surely it was the observatory."
- "Listen, Vittorino, you can't fool me," - the editor raised his small, narrow eyes from the manuscript. - "An aeroplane competition is scheduled for August 26th. If they want to kill that story, then they can pay."
For this, or for some other reason, not a single major newspaper printed the news of the comet's appearance, and when the gramophones cried out over the windows of those cheap publications that had no influence on the course of public political life:
- "Earth's destruction! Worldwide fires! Only sixty days left...-" their voices were drowned out by the roar of the sirens of "The Heliopolis Herald" and other serious publications.
Nevertheless, the news of the comet's appearance quickly spread throughout Heliopolis.
The monks, the mystics, the theosophists and the mediums were the first to be alarmed.
There was no dominant religion in Heliopolis, but every citizen who reached 25 years of age was required by law to select whatever religion they want, and stick with it for at least one year. According to the official lists, the vast majority were listed as Christians, but they had no idea what their faith was, or what duties Christianity imposes upon a person.
In the Square of the Star, and in its adjacent streets and alleyways, one could always see the noisy crowd that flocked here to select a faith. Others came to this square to propose a new religion that they invented, or to find followers. Here, a labyrinth was formed by temples from every century and nation, through which thousands of people hopelessly wandered in search of God.
The priests of Osiris crowded on the steps of a wide marble staircase, adorned with two rows of lions with feminine faces. Inside their temple, which they entered through a small triangular door, it was dark and cold, like in an empty well. In silver vases, muddy water from the Nile was preserved which was used by the ill to moisten their bodies; fat black cats with disgusting meows ran between the rows of stone tombs that held the embalmed bodies of the ancient Egyptian religion's rich followers.
The priests of Osiris, in long white robes with golden sashes, were constantly quarreling with the whirling dervishes who were raging in the round balagan opposite them;[Translator's note: Balagan: A temporary wooden building for theatrical and circus performances, which became widespread at fairs and folk festivals in Russia in the 18th-19th centuries, often associated with farcical performances.] the sharp roof of the balagan was supported by two rows of columns, and from the street one could see dozens of ragged, dirty people whirling in a frenzied dance or wallowing on the trampled sand with pale faces.
In the square between the temple of Osiris and the balagan of dervishes, the atheist Plumper, who called himself a prophet, was preaching. He was dressed in a wide red toga and sat under a canopy at a table covered in piles of books, pamphlets and newspapers that refuted all the religions, both old and new. The dance of the dervishes sometimes turned into some sort of spontaneous movement; it captivated the spectators as a gust of wind carries away dry leaves; the ring of circling quickly expanded, went beyond the pillars of the balagan; new little whirlpools formed, and it so happened that the atheist Plumper in his flowing toga spun around on the platform to the point of complete exhaustion with the white priests of Osiris.
The huge white temple of Zeus the Thunderer covered the two rows of houses where the Believers in Something lived. Glittering blocks of marble were adorned with gilded images of the god of gods, soothsayers and amulet dealers sat at the entrance.
The Believers in Something were divided into 36 sects, and every day they held public competitions behind the temple of Zeus. They could be differentiated by the color of their clothing, otherwise it would've been easy to mix them up with one another, as the difference in opinion between the most irreconcilable - green and red - boiled down to the fact that the greens considered the Great Something to be discernible, and the reds - not to be discernible, but distinguishable. Their priests were like litigants who are perpetually suing heaven. They gave every new convert access to their book repositories and archives of dusty manuscripts, and left them to sort through all these conflicting documents as much as they wanted.
In the neighboring narrow dark alley, covered with glass, there were offices of mediums and clairvoyants, who, for a small fee, took upon the relations with the other world themselves. In this alley, the living and the dead strangely intermingled.
- "Who wants to speak with the spirit of a girl who died 200 years ago? With an Egyptian from the time of the first pharaohs! The late father of the banker Gierfeld is requesting his son! Does anyone need Karl XII?"
All of this was shouted out by dozens of anxious acolytes who appeared on the balconies and at the doors of the offices.
In the waiting rooms, on wicker sofas at round tables with photographs of spirits laid out on them, visitors were constantly sitting, waiting for their turn.
The mediums often quarreled with each other, for every day it so happened that the same spirit appeared in ten different offices at the same time, much to the great temptation of those who watched and listened to this industry's supernatural branch. Litigants from the Believers in Something quarter now and then appeared to the mediums and started quarrels with them, in which the souls of the dead also took part.
The enclosed street of the mediums opened onto a platform paved with pink marble. On this site stood a temple dedicated to Man. In Heliopolis, there were a great many people who considered themselves gods, but only a few of them dared to publicly accept the sacrifices and adoration from sycophantic priests in this temple behind the street of the mediums. The crypt of the suicides was located on the south side of the temple. Here, in long rows of gray marble slabs, the bodies of those who withdrew from life were temporarily laid. The priests in the temple of Man injected a special poison of non-existence into the blood of these suicides; sleep did not come immediately, but after two or three weeks, and sometimes even after a month. During this interval, the suicide slowly turned into a corpse; their sight and hearing weakened, their sensitivity to pain became dull; a complete petrification of the body came before the end of their spiritual life. In the crypt of suicides, there were always numerous corpses, in whose open eyes consciousness shone like a ray of sunset on a dark stretch of water. They most frequently died for ten years, but there were also those who wanted to wake up in a hundred years - the limit of the poison of non-existence. After their resurrection, the suicides lived as long as they would have lived if they hadn't suspended their lives.
The government sent officials to the future decades very frequently, just as it sent them on various assignments to the outskirts of the nation; such officials received all their assigned tasks, daily allowances and runs. Each ministry had its own special crypt, where, important and motionless, tens and hundreds of people lay, clutching briefcases stuffed with papers and packages in their yellow petrified hands, which they had to present upon their resurrection. Sometimes the papers contained instructions concerning criminals who managed to take the poison of non-existence and were placed in a special department of the central prison. It so happened that no one knew when some important criminal would wake up, and then two or three officials were sent in for him, equipped with the broadest powers. During the trial of the famous Ketman, who bribed the entire parliament, the defendant went into sleep for 80 years on the eve of the announcement of the verdict. In view of the exceptional importance of the case, judges, defense lawyers and a prosecutor were sent after the accused. They all lay side by side in a side corridor in the Palace of Justice, and, since it was rather crowded in there, Ketman himself was placed under the Prosecutor General, and all the paperwork was heaped on top.
In the Temple of Man, only the bodies of those suicides who could pay a rather large sum for their place were kept. The priests earned a decent side income by showing the corpses to visitors and telling incredible stories about the dead. One very respectable philanthropist, who wished to go into non-existence for a hundred years in order to see what would become of the charitable institutions he founded, was defamed by the servants of the temple to such an extent that the name of the deceased became a common term for all swindlers and rogues.
Another occurrence was that lovers stopped their lives temporarily, wanting their bodies to lie side by side until their resurrection. The lazy priests mixed up all the locations, and I saw for myself how one young man, who fell asleep fifty years ago, demanded of the cemetery superintendent that he immediately find some Elza, with whom the lover fell asleep hand in hand.
- "I sacrificed everything for her," the unfortunate man yelled, "I have nowhere, and no reason to go from this temple!"
The fat priest, placing his fingers behind a wide, golden belt, listened indifferently to the complaints of the young man.
- "Choose any one, tomorrow this pretty girl will wake up in the corner, by the round window. Will she do? Yes, take a closer look. Her companion was transferred to the basement under the temple twenty years ago because there was a need to make room nearby for one of the jewelers. I assure you, she is no worse than your Elza."
The lover did not listen.
- "Elza, Elza!" he called, loitering between the stone slabs.
- "I think you're searching in vain," - the priest said, - "she's left like most of the others. Are you sure you know how many years she's been asleep for? Now, what a blessing, your beloved already has grandchildren."
The priest addressed himself to me:
- "There, on the right, where that band of light stretches, a dead man has been lying for twenty years; look at how happy his facial expression is. When he came here, he had three children, two sons and a daughter, whom he raised according to a particular system that he invented. This eccentric believed that saints or heroes would come out of his children, and desired, upon awakening, to hear all about their glory and holiness. I remember well how all four of them stood right here, where we're standing..."
The priest turned the poet by his hand, who had been numb for a hundred years, so that he would be facing his own monument, and went towards the exit.
- "Wait, wait; what about the end of the story!" I called after him.
- "The elder son died of drunkenness, the younger is a pawnbroker, the daughter is somewhere with Venturio."
Gravediggers in ordinary cemeteries were not so indifferent to human grief and suffering as the priests in the Temple of Man, because the latter saw not only death, but also resurrection, which was often worse than death.
In Heliopolis there was a whole sect of sleepers who were waiting for the establishment of the kingdom of God, justice and love on earth. But at the same time, they absolutely did not want to interfere in the course of history and slept for thirty-three years in dry, warm cellars that stretched under the market building; the room was quite comfortable and was lit by two rows of narrow windows protected by iron bars. Those who were waiting for the coming of the Kingdom of God only woke up to look at the degree of perfection that humanity attained.
When they found out that everything remained the same, or was even worse than before, they began to curse, deliver all kinds of sermons and lectures, and raised such a nuisance that they had to be pacified with the assistance of the police. Every day at Vera Square, one could see several people from this strange sect pestering passers-by with admonitions and accusations. Pale, with swollen faces, dressed in white clothes, in which they wished to appear at the Festival of Global Love, these people aroused general contempt and ridicule. The imaginary world they created was so different from reality that many sectarians preferred to end their lives somewhere in the river, rather than remain among the population of Heliopolis.
From the Temple of Man, one could descend a wide marble staircase of three hundred steps into a quarter inhabited by mystics, magicians, soothsayers, theosophists, and miracle workers.
In this gloomy quarter where the sun seldom peeked, hungry philosophers carved out new religious systems from scraps of past beliefs; here you could order a deity to your liking, just like ordering furniture or a dress.
According to the decree of the Heliopolis Parliament, miracles were only allowed to be performed in a special area surrounded by a high fence, and where spectators were admitted for a small fee. In this courtyard, paved with red stone, all the laws of nature disappeared. In a few minutes, bushes and entire trees grew, stones that were thrown did not return to the ground; the stars and the moon were visible during the day; people rose into the air and walked on the surface of the water in a wide pool, which adjoined the wall on one side. All these were tricks for the undemanding crowd of artisans and workers who poured in a wide stream through the gates of the Courtyard of Miracles; for more demanding or unbelieving viewers, magicians undoubtedly performed tricks that were more complex and difficult. One of the most amazing tricks was the reincarnation of personality. Any poor man, for a modest fee, could turn into anyone he liked for a while. I knew an old man who worked as an accountant in the United Bank, who spent all his free time in the Courtyard of Miracles in a dim room with a low ceiling, where he, by some inscrutable fate, was transformed into a king. But the magicians' art went even further and, at will, they could reincarnate a person into any living creature. For several minutes, a person experienced vivid pictures from an unknown world. They saw themselves either among virgin forests, or among deserts, in the depths of the ocean, or even on other planets. All these pictures swept in like the wind, and when the sleeper returned to real life, he refused to believe that he slept for two to five minutes.
The day after the observatory announced the appearance of the comet, I returned from the office at six o'clock and stopped near the Temple of Man to look at the sky. The sun already set, but a silvery glow was pouring in from the west, so bright that everything cast visible shadows. The buildings across the river and the aeroplanes circling over the city seemed surrounded by a glowing mist. The comet was not visible, although in the crowd that gathered in the square between the temple of Osiris and the pulpit of Plumpert the atheist, dozens of hands were pointing at it; some said that they saw the white tail of the comet on the right, above the line of houses, others directly above their heads, and a third group took the formidable lumination for the green lights of a mail aeroplane slowly flying along the destroyed railway embankment. Theosophical priests and other intermediaries between heaven and earth, scurrying around the square, behaved very strangely. They seemed to rejoice at the ominous comet and spoke in great detail, with great enthusiasm, about the horrors that people would experience as punishment for their wickedness. Around me, a respectable crowd was gathered by the dissolute priest Claudius, who had no religion and served all the gods.
- "We've been waiting," - Claudius shouted, waving a black staff over the heads of the audience. - "You'll burn, because you didn't honor the altars and servants of heaven, now neither science nor politics will help you!.. you can pray but prayer won't save you, judgment has been decreed, and you've all been condemned to death under the heavenly banner."
The priest walked down the hill, shouting incoherent threats. A group of people followed him, some of whom wept, while others cursed at Claudius and threw handfuls of sand at him. Some boy, perched on the wall, poured a bucket of water on Claudius. Walking further along Vera Square, I saw the same scenes everywhere. The crowd, apparently, did not yet realize the significance of the prophecies made by the priests, who, however, never ceased to frighten the superstitious population of Heliopolis with the vengeance of heaven. These altar acolytes were like a menagerie keeper, with keys to the cages holding predatory animals in his pocket. At any moment, the cages could be unlocked, and ferocious, hungry animals would be released onto the defenseless population.
Remembering all the events that preceded the destruction of the Earth, I can say with certainty that the panic began to spread from the Vera quarter. At a time when ordinary life was still going on in the rest of the city, which occupied more than a thousand square miles, scenes reminiscent of the last days of the Earth were already taking place around the temples. Huge crowds of people, predominately women, randomly rushed from one altar to another; fell to their knees, crawled in the dust on stone slabs, prayed or cursed. The measured beats of huge brass gongs merged with funeral chants and the wild cries of the soothsayers. Here, at the foot of the altars, that great horror was born, which subsequently caused millions of people to commit suicide before the Earth met the comet.
The days were dazzlingly bright and the sun penetrated even into the darkest corners of the temples. Specks of light lay here and there on the stone steps, on the floor and walls, metal ornaments scattered sheaves of the sparkling rays, marble statues bathed in sunlight seemed to come to life. A motley, noisy crowd gave the picture a festive look. In the temple of Osiris, at a time when a solemn service was going on in one corner, in another, a crowd of weavers who came from the suburbs, broke the sacred image into small pieces, trampled on the debris and threw fragments of stone through the colored glass. Bluish smoke from large bronze braziers mingled with the heavy, white dust from the toppled, broken statues. Already in these first days of panic, many atheists suddenly found themselves among the ranks of believers, and religious people now and then turned into irreconcilable enemies of a silent deity. The fights took on such a dangerous character that the government wanted to send in troops and police to the Vera quarter, but since, according to Article 176 of the Fundamental Laws of Heliopolis, armed people were forbidden from entering the temples, a bill was hastily submitted to parliament to repeal this article "on the occasion of completely exceptional circumstances", as was stated in the explanatory note. Unfortunately, the debate in Parliament dragged on for a very long time, because on this issue the leader of the Conservatives decided to destroy the Liberal Ministry. The opponents argued until humanity was left without any religion. The whole city was more occupied with the events in the Square of the Star than with the comet, which, however, was still only seen by astronomers.
Chapter III
A concert on aeroplanes. - Cemetery of the old agricultural culture. - The wild people. - War becomes a natural disaster. - At the observatory. - A vagrant's opinion on the golden age.
On the platform, surrounded by high grating, members of a musical society gathered, who were giving a concert that day in the upper layers of the atmosphere. The law strictly forbade the playing of musical instruments below a height of three hundred meters above the ground. This beneficent measure was introduced when mechanical musical instruments began to pose a serious threat to public peace. Musicians acquired or rented cheap little aeroplanes, and whole swarms, together with their listeners, circled over the city. A fat man was flying next to me, clutching a blindingly bright brass trumpet to his chest. He mistook me for a music lover and, waving his handkerchief, shouted:
- "What an unbearable heat ... let me introduce myself - Ernst Timbol, assistant notary... Look, the violin has already begun!"
The fat man put his trumpet to his lips, sounded a deafening blast, and like a bumblebee, began to dart between the aeroplanes. In front, with long legs bent and neck stretched out, a young flautist was flying; the violinist smoothly circumscribed wide circles, the cello soared up to the sky, then descended to the glass dome above the aeroplane station. The kapellmeister, who was placed in the center of this noisy swarm, shouted into a speaking-trumpet:
- "Maestro, for God's sake, not lower than three hundred meters! Maestro, stop playing! Ascend another twenty meters. A police boat is on the right with a megaphone."
For the future people who will only find a bunch of charred debris from our world, I will explain that a megaphone was a mechanical musical instrument driven by machines of one hundred to five hundred horsepower or more. It was hellish music that could bring down the strongest walls, just as the walls of ancient Jericho fell.
The megaphone, playing Beethoven's sonatas, was what destroyed the entire great army of Negroes who were moving to conquer Europe. The weakest megaphones were installed on police ships that maintained order in this airy ocean, which were used in cases where it was necessary to drown out the voices of speakers who were objectionable to the government, or to interrupt illegal music.
Once, I saw hundreds of fiddlers rushing over a blue rain cloud like mosquitoes over a pond, and above them, like a storm, the police musical machine roared. All went well this time, and as my aeroplane turned east, I saw the musicians arranged in a semicircle, two rows of listeners in front, and the kapellmeister at the top, half hidden by a cloud. For two hours, we flew over the deserted purple fields that surrounded the global city. From the aeroplane's basket, these dead fields looked like a muddy seabed at low tide.
The soil, depleted by thousand-year-old cultivation without artificial fertilizers, ceased to nourish the plants; stunted small shrubs like lichen spread over the bare ground. Deep ravines intertwined in a dense network; abandoned villages, collapsed embankments, and washed-out roads overgrown with weeds reminded us that here was a cemetery of an ancient world, incomprehensible to us, when agriculture everywhere occupied a million working hands.
A description of their meals can tell us the extent of how these ancient peoples' lives differed from ours. They ate fried meat, mealy tubers, leaves, roots and the seeds of various plants that they cultivated in the fields near their houses. It took a great deal of time to eat an enormous amount of food, and according to credible historians, it took from two to three hours to digest it; very often during the digestion of ingested plant and animal substances, our distant ancestors slept or dozed, sitting in armchairs. Now we eat pills that contain everything necessary to sustain life. Four or five pills in the morning, up to a dozen in the afternoon, and two or three in the evening make up the entire diet of an adult. Mills, chemical laboratories and factories, in which machines are set in motion by the force of the sea surf and the warmth of the sun, have replaced the grain fields, the gardens and the cattle of the ancients. The greatest revolution in the world was brought about by those scientists who learned how to easily convert inorganic substances into organic ones, and as discoveries in this field followed one another very quickly, and technology managed to use the data obtained in laboratories on a large scale in mills and factories, agriculture then suddenly found itself on the edge of the abyss. Peasants were forced to abandon their fields and head for the city. This led to a great migration of a poor, ruined people whose labor was made redundant by science and technology. Some of the peasants continued to cultivate wheat, rye and other grain crops for a while, but it was just as profitable and lucrative as, for example, the weaver's handiwork under the walls of huge factories capable of clothing an entire state's population in a week.
Vodka, wine and other drinks were replaced by the "laughing bacterium". Pleasure is vaccinated like smallpox, but many drunkards prefer to use hypnosis. Several hundred hypnotists worked in the central restaurant on the royal square. As a curious relic of antiquity, these expressions remained: hypnosis in a bottle, in half a bottle, in a glass, and so on. In cheap hypnotic taverns, patrons sing, dance between tables, curse their lives, rail against progress and government, and abuse and fight with one another. In a word, everything here looks just like their kind's ancient institutions, with the difference, of course, that bottles, glasses and other utensils are nowhere to be seen, pieces of which have been preserved in the museum of antiquity.
Those wishing to inoculate themselves with the laughing bacterium, or become intoxicated under the influence of hypnosis, pay a special state tax which went to the maintenance of parliament and numerous temperance societies. Going on walks for pleasure, our ancestors were pre-loaded with baskets of wine and provisions, and now we take a box of pills and go to one or two good hypnotists. Before the end of the world, a certain Salme was especially famous, who always imparted degrees and shades of intoxication. He was a great artist, and at the competition that was organized by the Academy of Fine Arts, he rightly received the top prize. Frankly speaking, our pleasure was of a gloomy nature, and in Heliopolis one could very rarely meet a group of people where one could hear natural laughter.
Note. There are many kinds of humor, but the best kinds are those combined with revenge. Fools are carried away by laughter, which carries them on its free wings into regions where they would never dare to penetrate if they never surrendered to its power. Laughter, born among the fields, on the banks of streams, was dying in the stone walls of Heliopolis, all of our science and all of our art were powerless to revive it.
E.
The aeroplane landed on the ground at the foot of the hill where the observatory stood, but we immediately had to ascend again, as a dense crowd of people were pouring into the clearing from the thicket of the surrounding bushes, who were officially referred to as "wolf-men" and "demi-humans". Naked, thin children began to throw clods of dry earth at us, and the adults, seeing that we needed time to ascend, tried to evoke pity in me with cries and lamentations and, pushing one another, offered us all sorts of junk that they scavenged from garbage piles in the abandoned cemetery fields. A disgusting old crone, more like an ape than a woman, lifted broken pieces of a bottle and some pottery shards above her head, and the men were holding fragments of rails and rusty axes above their heads in long thin hands. Seeing that I did not intend to buy anything, they began to pile abuse on me and chased the aeroplane up the hillside. To get rid of the wild pack, I threw away all my spare change, a box of nutritional pills and a pack of newspapers. A scuffle broke out in the crowd, which was halted by a police aeroplane that unexpectedly took off from the observatory's courtyard.
As I descended before the majestic portal of the Temple of Science adorned with the inscription "A Mind Beyond the Limits of the World", I heard the howling of the wild crowd, and the cracking of electric whips, with which the policemen dispersed the demi-humans.
Before the end of the world, feral people inhabited the outskirts of all the large cities and waged a continuous war with civilized society. Or rather, the cities represented small oases among the vast reaches where poverty, hunger, and vice murdered humanity. The government and various religious communities often dispatched preachers and teachers to the abandoned fields, just like in ancient times when Europeans shipped out missionaries to admonish and enlighten the savages in the forests of Africa and the deserts of Australia. Unfortunately, all these preachers had very little success and were in constant need of the police.
In every political upheaval, on every step along the path of progress, new achievements in the field of science and technology thrust hundreds of thousands, millions, of people outside the midst of civilized humanity, who, not finding a place for themselves in cities, first joined the ranks of those dregs of society that huddle anywhere, roam homeless near the walls of magnificent temples and palaces. They'd retreat to the suburbs, but since they've always posed a serious danger to the state there, in the end they were pushed into the deserted wild fields, under the threat of violence. When power fell into the hands of the one hundred and forty members of the academy who planned to establish a kingdom of Reason on earth in the vicinity of Heliopolis, several cave cities were formed in a year, where people settled in pits and holes, who turned out to be completely unprepared for the magnificent state building, erected by scientists and philosophers according to their elegant theories.
War transformed into natural disaster, air squadrons destroyed entire cities in a few minutes; the explosions were so powerful that they looked like volcanic eruptions. Having seized new colossal sources of energy, we didn't know how to limit the scope of their operations; each war was a duel of blind titans, conjured by inventors and scientists from the mysterious depths of heaven and earth; artificial storms swept away armies like dry steppe dust and caused a disruption in the entire atmosphere's balance; air waves, carrying mountains of purple clouds with a roar like the cascade of a waterfall, crashing into areas very distant from where the battles took place, and leaving chaotic heaps of stone, forest, trees and corpses behind them.
Note. Matter, which our ancestors considered everlasting and indestructible, turned out to be a reservoir of power: a stone, a piece of metal, or a piece of earth could be turned into rays of electricity and light; the energy contained in a raindrop could produce as much destruction as a projectile discharged from an ancient twelve-inch gun. The inverse problem of the reversal of the light, electricity and so forth, into matter was solved in Europe and in China simultaneously. Electrical waves were transformed into a white sparkling metal, from which a grate was built on one of Heliopolis' embankments.
E.
Lightning and thunder became child's play. Despite the prohibition on selling thunderstorm generating pocket batteries, many people who loved strong sensations stockpiled these toy projectiles and shot them off somewhere outside the city, over the sea or in the deserted fields. I had a friend, a reporter for a small newspaper, who went into the outskirts of Heliopolis for every holiday, and arranged a violent thunderstorm in the gorges between the mountains. The key to such destructive forces of nature, which our ancestors in the 19th and 20th centuries could never dream of, was in the hands of every criminal, fanatic or lunatic. At the beginning of each war, the population abandoned the cities which met with the initial strikes, and fled to the fields. A civilized society, divided into a thousand groups, was like an archipelago of islands, flooded and eroded from all sides by the advancing ocean.
Every day, new barbarians were ready to advance in conquest towards the centers of where the several centuries-old culture was continuing and progressing. In order to protect themselves from destruction, the governments of every country entered into an agreement, according to which the dissemination of science and technical knowledge among the savages was made the most serious of crimes. The guilty were sent to hanging cemeteries - this was the name for the upper layers of the atmosphere, where the criminals were taken up in cages strapped to aeroplanes of a special construction. With an enormous store of energy, the machines of these floating tombs, could function automatically for several decades. The criminal dies from lack of oxygen and from cold; together with the aeroplane, their corpse wanders through the abyss that is the ocean of air. Such an eternal journey was devised after civilized peoples abandoned the use of the death penalty once and for all. In a very solemn mood, the convict was read the articles of the international treaty on the abolition of the death penalty. Then they locked them in the cage, wished them a happy journey, and a shiny, light tomb like a coffin lined with eyelets, smoothly ascended to such a height where all laws ceased to apply - both international and each individual nation.
The observatory, like all the other buildings of that time, was surrounded by high walls that shielded it from the barbarian attacks.
From the viewpoint of these savages at the end of the world, all the scientific institutions - museums, academies, libraries, observatories - were the strongest fortifications of the system they hated. Science forged the chains of slavery for millions of people, which they never had the power to break. Weak, helpless masses stood before the gigantic structures erected by the labors of scientists that concealed access to power and the blessings of life from them. The scientists divided themselves into many closed sects, into which it was only possible enter with a certain amount luck and many years of work that required total detachment from life.
Knowledge grew to such immense dimensions that not a single specialist, no matter how narrow the area of their study, could fully read even a thousandth of the books written by their predecessors. Eventually, study was reduced to memorizing a number of formulas and rules, the meaning of which was understood by neither teachers nor students. Creativity in science became impossible, because a scientist's entire life was spent reading and memorizing encyclopedias, in which past centuries' conquests were intermixed in a dry and concise presentation. Science is dead. Her dry frame remained, a mummy in a tomb with spells and magic formulas. Using these formulas, it was possible to conjure thunder and lightning, thwart epidemics, build mechanisms of an amazing complexity, and perform in ways that seemed more strange and mysterious to everyone than the miracles in the temple of Osiris and the tricks of the fakirs in Vera Square.
I was met at the observatory by the younger observer, Hockey, an astronomer of the sixty-fourth degree who had the right to wear a pink robe. Majestic instruments, incomprehensible and forgotten, stood on solid marble pedestals. Some of the latter were broken and in the far corners of the hall, the telescopes, levers and screws looked like a forest felled by a storm. Among these instruments, Hockey, in his pink robe dragging across the dusty slabs, seemed small and insignificant. He seemed to be lost among the telescopes, brass discs and stone pedestals that looked like tombs.
- "Have you ever visited us?" - Hockey asked. - "Here's something for you to see. All of these tools, with the exception of the broken ones of course, accumulate facts! Thousands, millions of facts! They write them down on tape and they wind the tape onto reels by themselves, which we store in the vaults under the hill where the observatory stands. Not a single change in the most distant star's brightness escapes their glassy eyes; with the greatest precision, they determine the chemical composition of the nebulous masses scattered in space; this instrument here, behind the bars and to the right, produces more than a thousand photographs a minute."
The astronomer looked at the mechanism surrounding us with an expression like how the ancient pagans approached their idols. One could read timidity and reverence in his look.
- "What do you do with these accumulated facts?" - I asked.
- "Like what? We keep them."
- "Well, and then what?"
- "What else can we do with them? Indeed, in order to examine and study the photographs taken by this instrument in just the time we've been talking, one would have to spend at least an entire year on it. The human mind is too weak and life is too short to be able to make sense of even a tiny part of the endless records of the universe that this mechanism continuously makes. There was a time when scientists still tried to manage the tide of facts and illuminate the mountains of growing raw material with their theories and hypotheses, but now we can't even dream of such efforts. If you go down to the cellars under the hill, you can wander all day in the narrow passages between the mountains of printed and handwritten paper, and then the very idea that it was possible - I don't say to study, but to only consider these materials, would seem like the manifestation of madness to you. We collect facts and nothing more!"
All around, a faint buzz from the rotating discs was heard, and it seemed that the waves of an invisible tide were really approaching this observatory, flooding out science and transforming scientists into servants of soulless, dead mechanisms.
We climbed a narrow, spiral staircase up to a wrought metal platform hanging between two brass telescopes, like a magpie's nest. Hockey seated me on a chair and offered me a look through the telescope's eyepiece.
- "The comet hasn't had time to fully form yet. It's in a period of growth. Don't look at it for very long if you don't want to ruin your eyesight."
I bent my head down to the glistening glass and saw a picture that I'll never forget for the rest of my life.
Against the black background of the sky, a red triangular spot was burning brightly; around it, whirlwinds of sparks swirled. It looked like it was a blizzard; a terrible storm raised flakes of fiery snow which created bizarre images; the comet did not have rays yet, but narrow bluish lines stretched along its sides, curving like strands of algae in flowing water.
I saw creation. I felt as if I were in the presence of the great masters while they were painting, and never did the comet make a stronger, more amazing impression on me afterwards than it did at this moment. Like all the other inhabitants of Heliopolis, I rarely looked at the sky - boring, cold, mute with a brass reflection from the electric suns, it has long lost all mystery for us. The red spot of the comet and the whirlwinds revolving around it, appeared to me as a fiery sign, the meaning and significance of which I did not understand, but only could vaguely guess at. It was as if someone's fiery hand was drawing an incomprehensible hieroglyph in the sky, and in this hieroglyph lies Earth's judgment. When I looked up from the glass, I could see neither the playground, nor Hockey, who stood next to me.
- "Maybe it will bypass the Earth yet", - Hockey said indifferently, - "mistakes are always possible here, especially as the calculations aren't ours, but rather our mathematical machine."
But I already knew that a collision was inevitable, this conviction somehow formed inside of me all at once and nothing could shake it. It's strange that when the comet became visible to the naked eye, the same conviction appeared in everyone, despite the fact that the government took all measures to pacify the population.
With Hockey's help, I descended the spiral staircase and in a few minutes I was over the wild fields again, shrouded in the purple evening fog. The water in the ponds and lakes looked black, the birds were flying with piercing cries, a cold wind carried clouds of fine dust over the dried earth, and far ahead, the lights of electric suns burned over Heliopolis, their light seemingly deathly pale.
Not far from the city, a slight misfortune befell us; something broke inside the machine and it started to quickly descend. We found ourselves in a clearing, lit by the lights of Heliopolis. A deep ravine stretched on one side, in which an invisible stream was roaring, and on the other, stood a half-dismantled building surrounded by a knocked down fence. While the machinist was fiddling with the aeroplane, I took a few steps towards the ravine and almost ran into a man sitting on a well made from logs. From his clothes, I could immediately see that before me was one of those people who had not yet completely broken off contact with the city, and lived partly in the wild fields, partly in the remote, dirty suburbs. When this man raised his head and looked at me attentively, I saw that he was either ill or had been starving for a long time.
- "What are you doing here?" - I asked, in order to say something.
The vagrant shrugged.
- "I don't understand why you're asking me this question, but if it's of interest to you, all right: I left town so that I could see the comet."
- "You won't see it for a while: it will be ten days or more before until it can be made out with the naked eye."
- "Is that so!" - the vagrant said with a hint of regret, - "and I thought that in ten days everything would be over and that all this," - he vaguely gestured around him with his hand, - "would be a pile of ashes. However, maybe this is a new trick of the learned charlatans and rogues from the Vera quarter."
- "I've just come from the observatory and I can tell you for sure that the comet exists."
The vagrant's face brightened, and he burst out in hoarse laughter.
- "Yes! Have you seen it? Excellent, so I'm not waiting in vain."
And suddenly, with a surge of frankness, he spoke.
- "If you only knew how much I'd like to be present when all the trash burns, starting with the parliament and ending with the scientists in robes."
I was unpleasantly struck by the joy of this man in rags, sitting in the middle of a wasteland, talking about the death of everything that was accumulated through much difficulty by the thousand-year history of mankind. I couldn't resist telling him this directly.
- "And what do I care about your humanity?" the vagrant replied with irritation. "What did it do for me? Here I am, sitting under this black sky, hungry. And if I die here, do you think this humanity would even notice?"
He stood up and spoke, waving his long sinewy arm.
- "But, allow me, no one can be indifferent to the future of mankind! All the sufferings of people, both those living now and those living before, are necessary in order to establish the happiness of future generations; there will come a time when there will be no suffering..."
The vagrant interrupted me with a contemptuous gesture.
- "You must understand that I don't want to be the slave of these future people! And what good is it for me, and the millions of others like me, that sometime, in ten thousand years, people will live in the Garden of Eden or something. I want to live, and all the others who died without waiting for this bliss of yours on earth, they also wanted to live. They needed happiness for themselves, and not for some unknown inhabitants of a blessed country somewhere."
I didn't know how to answer to this short speech delivered with great malice, and I silently looked at the thin face of my interlocutor, illuminated by a faint bluish light.
- "Yes, I won't give a single day of my life for all the happiness of this future humanity. And what will it consist of, this happiness? I already hate these healthy, happy parasites of your future age, who'll have a perfect life from my suffering."
He suddenly fell silent, sank down on the edge of the log house and said calmly:
- "I'm waiting for the comet. It will at least satisfy my desire for revenge. In my opinion, anyone who talks about the fat deadbeats who might appear after our bones rot is either a fool or doesn't know the price of tears and blood."
Not wanting to get into an argument, I silently walked to the aeroplane.
A light, cold, misty rain fell.
The fog thickened and the lights of Heliopolis appeared like a glow that covered half the sky.
Chapter IV
The language of the idiots. - In the red light. - Collapsing walls. - Invasion of the barbarians.
I started to write an article about my trip to the observatory several times, and each time I threw down my pen, tore up the written pages and went out into the street, where under a sultry white sky that hid the fiery signs of destruction, the old familiar life was still going on. Our artificial written language was completely unsuitable for expressing new, deep and unexpected ideas. If Esperanto, the founder of hundreds of artificial languages, was invented in antiquity and become the language of writers and scientists, then the world would not have seen the likes of Shakespeare, Newton, Pushkin or Dostoevsky. The most ingenious sculptor can't make anything out of garbage. But Esperanto was only the first step, the first crime on the path that led human thought into a stuffy dungeon, deprived it of its wings and leveled genius with idiocy.
Before the end of the world, when people were transported with the greatest ease from one country to another and all the tribes mingled in city squares, in hotels, on the decks of a aeroplanes, the international language was so simple that even the stupidest person could learn it in a day, and it was found under all geographical latitudes.
The grammar consisted of three rules. All words were derived from four roots: pi, ri, fyu, klyu.
This universal language was called birdspeak, since the conversation in it resembled the chirping of birds.
Here are two sample sentences:
- Fyuti piklyu (I want to eat).
- Pi pi fyu? (What time is it?).
I implore the people of the future world not to start an artificial universal language, unless among them weak-minded and complete idiots prevail. The large newspapers, distributed in the millions among the multi-ethnic population, were all printed in birdspeak, and therefore writers had no style. Like dry leaves that fell from the green, tumultuous tree tops, meaningless words swirled under the pen, and composed themselves into empty, dead phrases.
Whoever speaks and writes in a living language is surrounded by mystery; storms and wind rush around their mind; the sun and the stars blaze above it. The living word flies from the night that was left behind us, and carries the power of creativity of those who've departed and won't return.
The inventors of artificial language were constantly insisting that they wanted to help unite mankind - and they could only achieve this, when anywhere - in Tokyo or Madrid, you could receive information from the first person you meet about the name of a street, the direction of a road, or the price of nutritional pills. For this magnificent result, this bird language killed creativity, because no one was willing to write for a limited circle of readers, and books turned into crypts where the intelligent and the stupid, the new thoughts and the old were immured with the assistance of three grammatical rules and four roots of a universal language.
On the streets of Heliopolis, I didn't notice anything that would indicate a growing panic among the many millions of people in the global city.
Almost no one was talking about the comet. It began to seem like I had a bad dream and that the sky couldn't hide those swirling, fiery whirlwinds that blinded me in the observatory, in its clear, calm abyss. On one street I met a procession of monks, they walked with lighted candles and were singing something. A crowd began to gather, but the police immediately intervened and, after a little bit of confusion, the procession was driven off into a deaf, dark alley.
The crowd stood silently, as if waiting for something.
A delivery boy, pressed against the window of a store, pushed the glass out with a tray and started arguing with the clerk. This little event diverted the street mob's attention away from the gloomy procession, and when the door to the store closed, the crowd began to disperse.
Elsewhere, not far from the Royal Square, I saw a group of people gathered near a wall where an announcement from the governor of Heliopolis was posted, declaring that all rumors about the comet were greatly exaggerated. The paper was still damp and some individual ripped it off and threw it into a ditch.
The newspapers were filled with news of the comet, which was reported by telegraph from all over the world, and by evening, the mood of the street crowds changed.
Thousands of people stood in dense rows on the bridges and the embankment, waiting for the comet to appear.
The first aeroplane society arranged pleasure trips to such a height where the light of the electric suns did not interfere with the viewing of the sky.
Seats on the aeroplane were claimed by fighting; however, many were attracted not so much by the comet as by the dancer from the Royal Theater, Emilia Loduo, who recently strangled her lover.
On August 15th, Parliament decided to elect a Special Cometary Commission to consider means to avert the impending catastrophe, but unfortunately, no agreement was reached between the majority and the minority of the legislative chamber on the composition of this commission.
The opposition resorted to obstruction, and one deputy spoke for seventeen hours in a row about the disasters that Paragraph 26 of the Parliamentary Mandate would cause, allowing the election of members to various commissions by a simple majority of votes.
The government convened an interdepartmental conference with the participation of one hundred and forty academicians.
The most beneficial results were expected from this conference, but at the very first gathered assembly, two serious obstacles were encountered that hindered the work's further progress.
First, there was a major disagreement about the authority of the chairman, and second, the academicians quarreled over the question of what a comet is.
They argued until they saw the comet so close that there was no need for further discussion.
For a whole week, a thick yellow fog hung over Heliopolis. On the evening of August 23rd, the foggy curtain parted and a red triangle, surrounded by sheaves of flame, appeared over Heliopolis. The huge city roared like the ocean at the onset of a storm. The entire population found itself on the streets, and the ragged, dirty figures of savages flashed among them, to which no one now paid attention.
At seven o'clock in the evening, in order to dampen the rising ominous light of the comet, the government ordered the light from all the electric suns and searchlight beams directed into the sky, which served to illuminate the wild fields.
The comet was hardly visible until ten o'clock, but later, it again stood out distinctly against the black background of the sky; and its reddish glow trembled in the black water of the rivers and canals, in the artificial lake in the royal square, and on the polished marble of the palaces and temples.
Huge crowds of people rushed to the Vera quarter, from where the priests were running towards them, having lost faith in the gods, and stripped the gold jewelry and precious stones from the statues.
All the houses were lit up, and sitting in my room, I saw how a frightened family was rushing about across the street; the father put his papers and money in a drawer, which fell onto the floor; the mother and two servants were dressing the children, tying the clothes and linen, which they threw out in heaps from the closets and the chests.
Below, between the walls of houses, with a noise like the roar of the surf, an animated human torrent was raging.
I fell asleep without undressing, and when I woke up the sun filled the entire room with bright light.
My friend, the artist Whitman, was standing near the bed. His coat was torn, his hat was dusty; the hand in which the artist held a glass of water trembled, and near the paintbrush, a silk handkerchief was tied, stained with dried blood.
In the brightly lit room, where everything remained in its usual place, Whitman's black figure, next to a wide mirror with iridescent borders, was reminiscent of the chaos and confusion that reigned outside the window.
The artist brought in a part of this chaos, and a sudden disorganization came out of the orderly rows of books on the shelves near the bed, carpets, paintings, and furniture.
I had the feeling that a storm was about to burst through the doors that stood open following Whitman, and turn the entire room into rubble.
- "Hurry up and get dressed," my friend said. - "People from the wild fields are coming to the city who'll turn out to be more terrible than the comet. I spent the whole night on the outskirts. Hundreds of houses were looted there. Mankind dies in dishonor; the cowardly, stupid herd! I think the comet's come just at the right time."
When we went out into the street, Whitman struck the mirror with his stick and the sparkling fragments poured over the floor with a cheerful clinking.
- "Anyway, you won’t come back here."
I looked regretfully at the room, where I had some fondness for the old things.
- "Hurry," the artist urged. "Let's go to the Royal Square, it’s safer there, although a lot people are running to the Vera quarter and out of town."
The streets were crowded with people. Some moved towards the center, others ran in the opposite direction, towards the bridge and the Arch of the World.
There was no comet to be seen, but golden streaks stretched across the sky, converging on the eastern horizon.
I went to the corner shop to buy cigars.
The price the shopkeeper asked for ten was the same as one hundred yesterday.
- "Your goods will burn nicely," Whitman said, lighting a cigar.
- "I have insurance for it. Let it burn."
After walking two more blocks, we came across a wrecked aeroplane, the propellers of which continued to spin. There were pools of blood on the pavement that some old woman was trying to cover with dirt that she was hastily grabbing from a ditch.
A huge poster was posted on the wall nearby, which, in view of its historical importance, I am enclosing with these notes.
----------------------
UPCOMING
Non-stop Fun
On August 26, the Royal Government is arranging a huge carnival for all Heliopolis' inhabitants!
Procession of Jesters
Participation of the entire Royal Ballet
----
All danger from collision with the comet has passed
---------------------------
- "What are they doing? Instead of taking measures to protect the population from the comet, they've started fighting the savages who came here with the most peaceful intentions. I'd go out to meet these unfortunate stepchildren of civilization and make a speech about reconciliation and love. There is, however, nothing surprising in that things are going so poorly: there's not a single intelligent person in Parliament; every day seven hundred fools combine their efforts to create another new absurdity."
The old man spoke with irritation and looked for opponents in the crowd. The animated torrent carried us to the other end of the stone pipe. From here, far below, one could see the embankment and the high, ornate Bridge of Peace. Above the river, stretched out in a single line, black warships flew west. One of them traced huge circles under the city.
Despite all Whitman's persuasion, I refused to go further and remained alone near the huge unfinished building. Climbing over piles of logs and stone, I sat comfortably behind a boarded-up window. Through the wide cracks, one glance could take in half of Heliopolis.
The yellow streaks in the sky became brighter, expanded, and moved like the leaves of an unfolded fan from the horizon to the zenith.
At six o'clock in the evening, streams of red light suddenly poured out. It looked like a second sun was rising.
When the comet rose above the line of houses, all the buildings, the embankment, the river were all painted in a crimson light.
Shots were heard more often, but now they were coming from the other side. From the royal square came the sounds of music. The Carnival was starting there.
It was like something's fiery wings were flying over the earth and the air was becoming unbearably stuffy.
- "A beautiful sight," someone behind me said. "Beautiful, and soon it will be even better."
Looking around quickly, I saw a small man who looked like a monkey. He sat on a pile of rubble, his hands wrapped around his thin knees, and looked at me with a grin.
- "I don't think it's beautiful, but frightening."
- "But you don't feel dread. All of this is too majestic and huge for people to succumb to a fear that they would feel, well, at least during a fire in some theater. More are afraid of the demi-humans driven into wastelands than comets. It's said that the aeroplanes have heaped mountains of corpses in the western suburbs, but the battle is far from over. Do you know what the orbital time of this comet is?"
- "No."
- "Forty-two thousand years. This red light has already flooded the earth once before. But there were no people then. The streams of fire that fell from the sky melted the glaciers that covered half of Europe. Mankind, building its civilization and culture, in essence, has always been in the position of a person sentenced to death. The earth was a prison, and the comet was the executor of the sentence."
The old man stood up, his face, illuminated like all the other objects, looked like a mask, through the deep slits of which his living eyes stared.
- "I think it came just in time," he said slowly. - "The Earth, with the sun and other planets, is moving, as you know, towards the constellation Hercules. But here's what neither you nor everyone else knows: on this endless path, we've met with several spheres that have different influences on the spirit, the thoughts and the feelings of the people. We'd left the realm where we were equal to the gods, and we're moving into a realm of low levels of life and psyche. Humanity still stands on the edge of the abyss. Physical laws also change, but they're more stable than a spirit that fluctuates, goes out or flares up to the sky at a distance of some billion kilometers, running past the Earth over several centuries."
- "Before us is a spiritual desert," repeated the small man, "the horror of animal life, and it's best to just let the comet do its job."
The sky is changing its appearance, albeit very slowly. Ten thousand years ago it was different than it is now. Each century has its own horoscope. The fate of mankind is drawn by the orbit of the Earth and the stars forming into silent letters, which guard our fate. Astrologers divined the truth.
Note. Old Anvers, whom Enrio met, was one of the greatest mathematicians of the end of the world. His theory of the heterogeneity of space provides a unified explanation for many phenomena from the Earth's history, the development of the organic world, and illuminates the history of mankind.
Anvers explored the abysses of the world surrounding us with the help of a device that he invented, similar to how sailors used a plumb to study the inaccessible depths of the sea.
E.
The Carnival in Royal Square. - About the theatre. - In a sea of mist. - The last hour.
Royal Square and the seventeen wide streets that radiated from it were flooded with the light of the projectors and the electric suns.
Orchestras of music, on and above the ground, drowned out the talking and shouting from the crowd that moved between the houses like a stormy river in a flood.
Government-employed actors and actresses from all the Heliopolis theaters performed in the last play that was seen by the people of the Old World.
In all the big theaters, the main roles have long been entrusted, not to people, but to clockwork talking automata.
The best of them, which took up little space when disassembled and required rare lubrication and cleaning, were made in a factory by the Aplon brothers.
The work of the Aplon brothers was so perfect that in Parliament, there was once an entire warehouse of mechanical duplicates of the deputies of the majority party.
When there was not enough for a quorum, the friends of those members absent from parliament committed the greatest fraud.
They entered the meeting room with puppets that took their place, listened attentively to the routine speakers, and applauded or booed.
The vile deceit was revealed when members of the opposition began to do the same. During the debate on the question of the colonies, as was later proved, there were 280 puppets in the hall and only 27 living listeners, including the chairman (there's doubt about the latter), stenographers and two ministers. The Aplon brothers' automatons could be controlled by wireless telegraph. Cylinders with recordings of speeches, monologues, etc. were inserted as needed, and their supply in the automaton could be very large.
Entrepreneurs, and especially the directors, preferred to deal with puppets rather than actors. The former never quarreled, put up with any role, and while travelling on tour, the entire disassembled troupe fit into one medium-sized chest.
Very often the authors, sitting in a mechanical booth, performed their play themselves. Dramatic improvisations were widely used. The play was created on the stage, creativity took place before the eyes of the viewer.
Hungry actors willingly agreed to perform with the puppets for a negligible fee. Entrepreneurs always kept several living women in the troupe in order to more accurately extract income from puppet actresses.
In one of the largest theaters in Heliopolis, a beautiful ballerina debuted, whom the famous writer Volney began to court.
This beauty kept herself unapproachable, but willingly accepted expensive gifts and once asked Volney for a large sum of money. She told him, with tears, in the presence of her mother, that she needed this money in order to become free.
- "I want to belong to only you alone," she said, saying goodbye to the writer backstage.
Volney sold all his work three years in advance and, having invested in a bouquet of roses, handed them over to the ballerina. From that day on, the actress stopped accepting the enamored novelist who enslaved himself to literary day labor, and during intermissions she sat in a locked dressing room, and after the performance she disappeared to no one knows where.
Volney was convinced that she was cheating on him, began to drink, and one day grabbed a long pair of scissors from the office with which he compiled a daily review of the press, went backstage, tore the door off the hook and saw that the ballerina was sitting on the sofa next to some gentleman in a black cloak. Volney stabbed her in the chest with the pair of scissors and screamed in fright when his weapon appeared to be wedged between two rows of shiny copper wheels.
The Aplon brothers' apparatuses were so perfect that an hour later, the sewn-up ballerina danced as usual, only being unable to bow, as Volney's scissors knocked the two wheels out of her chest which were absolutely necessary for this movement.
There were many puppets among those veiled in the Royal Square. They moved in groups accompanied by machinists and laughed so cheerfully and contagiously that it unintentionally seemed as if the most unartificial cheer was reigning in the square.
I spent that night with my friend Whitman, who lived in the city center.
The next day, red light flooded the streets of the global city from morning to evening.
The comet with its six rays occupied half the sky.
Sometimes sheaves of sparks flashed around it, scattering like fireworks. At five o'clock in the evening it began to rain small stones, injuring and killing several thousand people.
The streets were empty. Only corpses remained and the automata were abandoned to the mercy of fate, which, not controlled by anyone, wandered around in their red and yellow jester's suits and laughed merrily.
By evening, the shots ceased, and a rumor spread throughout the city that the crews of the warships fled, leaving the aeroplanes to their fate. Only one air destroyer, the "Perseus", continued to defend the city from the invasion of savages.
From Whitman's window, I saw how the "Perseus", traversing ever narrowing circles, launched one air mine after another at some invisible target.
The earth was illuminated by the comet as all the workers at the power stations left their jobs.
Dirty, ragged figures flashed through the streets, at first they appeared one by one, timidly, then in small crowds, and then finally moved in a solid mass. The savages moved from the eastern part of the city, and before them, the population of Heliopolis retreated further and further to the west.
Whitman and I left the city before dawn, as the light of the comet was already eclipsing the light of the sun, or more correctly - when the comet's nucleus was at its zenith.
On the bridge near the Arch of the World, we had to wait more than an hour until we managed to cross to the other side of the river. The lucky ones who managed to get on the aeroplanes had long since escaped, and now only huge cargo ships were flying, on which the government saved the papers from the parliament and governmental offices, the gold from the pantries of the state bank, and the criminals of upmost importantance.
Walking across the field was very difficult. At every step there were holes and burrows in which savages lived before the appearance of the comet.
I fell into these pits several times and only got out of them with great difficulty.
All around us, the field was littered with refugees. Tired, exhausted people were dragging things that now were completely unnecessary.
In the bushes, which in the crimson light of the comet looked like heaps of black ash of burnt paper, sat and lay the owners of their plunderings, tied in knots and lying on the wet ground. We caught up with a family whose father was carrying a typewriter, whose mother could hardly move her legs, bending under the knot from which protruded the handle of an umbrella and the corner of a gilded frame, the son carrying a cage of birds, and the daughter a magnificent bouquet of paper flowers.
I think these people would die of fright if they were left in the middle of a black desert under a red sky without all the things that reminded them of their old, familiar world.
- "You dropped the silver spoon," the man said to his wife.
Whitman picked up his shiny spoon and was thanked so warmly, as if he had done these people a genuine good deed. The refugees barely spoke to each other. Each thought only of himself and paid no more attention to his chance companion than to the bushes along the road.
Mankind at once dispersed into having a constitution of its living units being like dry sand blown around by a storm.
The red light of the comet destroyed all the seemingly eternal bonds that were created over millennia.
In the last hours of the old world, each person was as lonely as if he were in a desert inhabited by predatory animals. We spent the night in some kind of pit, next to an actor who inoculated himself with a huge dose of laughing bacteria. He sang all night, danced in the clearing between the pit and the bushes, and invited Whitman and I to prey upon women.
The day never came, although the sun has long since risen. Its rays could not penetrate the dry reddish fog, which hurt the eyes and tormented with a constant thirst. It was difficult to see anything ten paces away. It was like a forest was burning somewhere nearby and the ground was covered with clouds of acrid crimson smoke.
Afraid of losing Whitman, I tied myself to him with a three-meter rope. We walked without aim, vaguely distinguishing the outlines of people, abandoned buildings and hills, on which the fog was even heavier and wavered like a curtain blown by the wind. It was so hot that I took off my frock and vest.
Whitman complained of a headache and said that all objects were oscillating and detatching from the ground, as if they were being washed away by a turbulent surf.
Having traversed a huge circle of twenty or thirty kilometers, we again found ourselves in front of Heliopolis, almost in the very place from which we left.
From fatigue and poisoning by the fog, I was no longer clearly aware of everything that was happening, I only remember that the black walls of Heliopolis seemed to me like jagged rocks rising from the bottom of the bottomless sea.
Suddenly, the rope became very taut, I fell to the ground, painfully hitting my shoulder on a sharp stone, and, rising, I saw that Whitman was sitting on the staircase stoop with a bloody head.
Someone cut the rope and grabbed my arm, pushing me into a narrow dark corridor.
Through the high window, protected by an iron grating, I saw a crowd of people rapidly gathering around Whitman through a sea of fog.
They looked like black crabs crawling around a corpse.
- "Get away from the window," I heard someone whisper behind me, but I was already seen from the street. Someone from the crowd threw a stone, and the glass fell on the stone slabs with a crash.
Then three of us silently walked for a long time along some galleries, through the broken windows from which a crimson fog poured in with a nasty sweetish taste, hid in the cellars and in the garden, surrounded by a high stone wall.
One of my companions tied up my mouth and nose with a handkerchief soaked in a liquid with the smell of ammonia.
I obeyed everything that was demanded of me, I most of all wanted peace. Once I even laid down on the sandy garden path, but they immediately picked me up and led me on.
My last memory was the heavy roar of stone rain on the roofs and walls of houses.
I woke up in that underground deep gallery of the Royal Museum of Antiquities, where Evert led the Nameless One and I.
* * *
We confirm that all events are laid out correctly in the notes of Enrio Vittorino.
King Meredith XVI.
Doctor of Chemistry, head chairman of the Heliological Society for the Study of Nature.
Evert.
And me, no. 369.
Susanna.
Signed for her by,
No. 369
Eloiza
----
The dissenting opinion of the curator of the royal museum and gentleman Olrid.
The frivolous tone of the story does not correspond to the importance of the events. I propose destroying all thirty-six slabs taken from the museum, on which Enrio Vittorino has scrawled the history of our disasters.
Olrid.
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