Chapter 2

“It does not strike me as a very good idea, but it is certainly
original. When did it come to you first?”

“In the air-ship—-” He broke off, and she fancied that he looked
sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit _nuances_
of expression. It only gave a general idea of people–an idea that
was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The
imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the
actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just
as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers
of artificial fruit. Something “good enough” had long since been
accepted by our race.

“The truth is,” he continued, “that I want to see these stars again.
They are curious stars. I want to see them not from the air-ship, but
from the surface of the earth, as our ancestors did, thousands of
years ago. I want to visit the surface of the earth.”

She was shocked again.

“Mother, you must come, if only to explain to me what is the harm of
visiting the surface of the earth.”

“No harm,” she replied, controlling herself. “But no advantage. The
surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no life remains on it, and
you would need a respirator, or the cold of the outer air would kill
you. One dies immediately in the outer air.”

“I know; of course I shall take all precautions.”

“And besides—-“

“Well?”

She considered, and chose her words with care. Her son had a queer
temper, and she wished to dissuade him from the expedition.

“It is contrary to the spirit of the age,” she asserted.

“Do you mean by that, contrary to the Machine?”

“In a sense, but—-“

His image in the blue plate faded.

“Kuno!”

He had isolated himself.

For a moment Vashti felt lonely.

Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with
radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were
buttons and switches everywhere–buttons to call for food, for music,
for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a
basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim
with a warm deodorised liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There
was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the
buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though
it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the
world.

Vashti’s next move was to turn off the isolation-switch, and all the
accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was
filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new
food like? Could she recommend it? Had she had any ideas lately? Might
one tell her one’s own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the
public nurseries at an early date?–say this day month.

To most of these questions she replied with irritation–a growing
quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was
horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press
of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been
told one–that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she
doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents,
for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music.

The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned;
neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in
her arm-chair she spoke, while they in their arm-chairs heard her,
fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous
account of music in the pre-Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe
the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote
and primæval as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school,
she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the musician of
today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas.

Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received, and at its
conclusion she and many of her audience listened to a lecture on the
sea; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had donned a
respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to many friends,
had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed.

The bed was not to her liking. It was too large, and she had a feeling
for a small bed. Complaint was useless, for beds were of the same
dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size
would have involved vast alterations in the Machine. Vashti isolated
herself–it was necessary, for neither day nor night existed under the
ground–and reviewed all that had happened since she had summoned the
bed last. Ideas? Scarcely any. Events–was Kuno’s invitation an event?

By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages
of litter–one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were
instructions against every possible contingency. If she was hot or
cold or dyspeptic or at loss for a word, she went to the book, and it
told her which button to press. The Central Committee published it. In
accordance with a growing habit, it was richly bound.

Sitting up in the bed, she took it reverently in her hands. She glanced
round the glowing room as if some one might be watching her. Then, half
ashamed, half joyful, she murmured “O Machine! O Machine!” and raised
the volume to her lips. Thrice she kissed it, thrice inclined her head,
thrice she felt the delirium of acquiescence. Her ritual performed,
she turned to page 1367, which gave the times of the departure of the
air-ships from the island in the southern hemisphere, under whose soil
she lived, to the island in the northern hemisphere, whereunder lived
her son.

She thought, “I have not the time.”

She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light;
she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music
and attended lectures; she made the room dark and slept. Above her,
beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally; she did not
notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth,
carrying her, hummed as it sped through silence, turning her now to the
invisible sun, now to the invisible stars. She awoke and made the room
light.

“Kuno!”

“I will not talk to you,” he answered, “until you come.”

“Have you been on the surface of the earth since we spoke last?”

His image faded.

Again she consulted the book. She became very nervous and lay back
in her chair palpitating. Think of her as without teeth or hair.
Presently she directed the chair to the wall, and pressed an unfamiliar
button. The wall swung apart slowly. Through the opening she saw a
tunnel that curved slightly, so that its goal was not visible. Should
she go to see her son, here was the beginning of the journey.