Chapter 3

Of course she knew all about the communication-system. There was
nothing mysterious in it. She would summon a car and it would fly with
her down the tunnel until it reached the lift that communicated with
the air-ship station: the system had been in use for many, many years,
long before the universal establishment of the Machine. And of course
she had studied the civilisation that had immediately preceded her
own–the civilisation that had mistaken the functions of the system,
and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing
things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air
instead of changing the air in their rooms! And yet–she was frightened
of the tunnel: she had not seen it since her last child was born. It
curved–but not quite as she remembered; it was brilliant–but not
quite as brilliant as a lecturer had suggested. Vashti was seized with
the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and
the wall closed up again.

“Kuno,” she said, “I cannot come to see you. I am not well.”

Immediately an enormous apparatus fell on to her out of the ceiling, a
thermometer was automatically inserted between her lips, a stethoscope
was automatically laid upon her heart. She lay powerless. Cool pads
soothed her forehead. Kuno had telegraphed to her doctor.

So the human passions still blundered up and down in the Machine.
Vashti drank the medicine that the doctor projected into her mouth, and
the machinery retired into the ceiling. The voice of Kuno was heard
asking how she felt.

“Better.” Then with irritation: “But why do you not come to me
instead?”

“Because I cannot leave this place.”

“Why?”

“Because, any moment, something tremendous may happen.”

“Have you been on the surface of the earth yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Then what is it?”

“I will not tell you through the Machine.”

She resumed her life.

But she thought of Kuno as a baby, his birth, his removal to the public
nurseries, her one visit to him there, his visits to her–visits which
stopped when the Machine had assigned him a room on the other side of
the earth. “Parents, duties of,” said the book of the Machine, “cease
at the moment of birth. P. 422327483.” True, but there was something
special about Kuno–indeed there had been something special about
all her children–and, after all, she must brave the journey if he
desired it. And “something tremendous might happen.” What did that
mean? The nonsense of a youthful man, no doubt, but she must go. Again
she pressed the unfamiliar button, again the wall swung back, and she
saw the tunnel that curved out of sight. Clasping the Book, she rose,
tottered on to the platform, and summoned the car. Her room closed
behind her: the journey to the northern hemisphere had begun.

Of course it was perfectly easy. The car approached and in it she
found arm-chairs exactly like her own. When she signalled, it stopped,
and she tottered into the lift. One other passenger was in the lift,
the first fellow creature she had seen face to face for months. Few
travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the
earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the
previous civilisation had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself.
What was the good of going to Pekin when it was just like Shrewsbury?
Why return to Shrewsbury when it would be just like Pekin? Men seldom
moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

The air-ship service was a relic from the former age. It was kept up,
because it was easier to keep it up than to stop it or to diminish
it, but it now far exceeded the wants of the population. Vessel after
vessel would rise from the vomitories of Rye or of Christchurch (I use
the antique names), would sail into the crowded sky, and would draw up
at the wharves of the south–empty. So nicely adjusted was the system,
so independent of meteorology, that the sky, whether calm or cloudy,
resembled a vast kaleidoscope whereon the same patterns periodically
recurred. The ship on which Vashti sailed started now at sunset, now
at dawn. But always, as it passed above Rheims, it would neighbour the
ship that served between Helsingfors and the Brazils, and, every third
time it surmounted the Alps, the fleet of Palermo would cross its track
behind. Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man
no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature, with its
praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of
a child.

Yet as Vashti saw the vast flank of the ship, stained with exposure
to the outer air, her horror of direct experience returned. It was
not quite like the air-ship in the cinematophote. For one thing it
smelt–not strongly or unpleasantly, but it did smell, and with her
eyes shut she should have known that a new thing was close to her. Then
she had to walk to it from the lift, had to submit to glances from the
other passengers. The man in front dropped his Book–no great matter,
but it disquieted them all. In the rooms, if the Book was dropped, the
floor raised it mechanically, but the gangway to the air-ship was not
so prepared, and the sacred volume lay motionless. They stopped–the
thing was unforeseen–and the man, instead of picking up his property,
felt the muscles of his arm to see how they had failed him. Then some
one actually said with direct utterance: “We shall be late”–and they
trooped on board, Vashti treading on the pages as she did so.

Inside, her anxiety increased. The arrangements were old-fashioned and
rough. There was even a female attendant, to whom she would have to
announce her wants during the voyage. Of course a revolving platform
ran the length of the boat, but she was expected to walk from it to her
cabin. Some cabins were better than others, and she did not get the
best. She thought the attendant had been unfair, and spasms of rage
shook her. The glass valves had closed, she could not go back. She saw,
at the end of the vestibule, the lift in which she had ascended going
quietly up and down, empty. Beneath those corridors of shining tiles
were rooms, tier below tier, reaching far into the earth, and in each
room there sat a human being, eating, or sleeping, or producing ideas.
And buried deep in the hive was her own room. Vashti was afraid.

“O Machine! O Machine!” she murmured, and caressed her Book, and was
comforted.

Then the sides of the vestibule seemed to melt together, as do the
passages that we see in dreams, the lift vanished, the Book that had
been dropped slid to the left and vanished, polished tiles rushed
by like a stream of water, there was a slight jar, and the air-ship,
issuing from its tunnel, soared above the waters of a tropical ocean.