The Machine Stops | Page 9

had taught the use of his stops and buttons, and to whom she had
given his first lessons in the Book? The very hair that disfigured his lip
showed that he was reverting to some savage type. On atavism the
Machine can have no mercy.
"There was a handle, and I did catch it. I hung tranced over the
darkness and heard the hum of these workings as the last whisper in a
dying dream. All the things I had cared about and all the people I had
spoken to through tubes appeared infinitely little. Meanwhile the
handle revolved. My weight had set something in motion and I span
slowly, and then--

"I cannot describe it. I was lying with my face to the sunshine. Blood
poured from my nose and ears and I heard a tremendous roaring. The
stopper, with me clinging to it, had simply been blown out of the earth,
and the air that we make down here was escaping through the vent into
the air above. It burst up like a fountain. I crawled back to it--for the
upper air hurts--and, as it were, I took great sips from the edge. My
respirator had flown goodness knows here, my clothes were torn. I just
lay with my lips close to the hole, and I sipped until the bleeding
stopped. You can imagine nothing so curious. This hollow in the
grass--I will speak of it in a minute,--the sun shining into it, not
brilliantly but through marbled clouds,--the peace, the nonchalance, the
sense of space, and, brushing my cheek, the roaring fountain of our
artificial air! Soon I spied my respirator, bobbing up and down in the
current high above my head, and higher still were many air-ships. But
no one ever looks out of air-ships, and in any case they could not have
picked me up. There I was, stranded. The sun shone a little way down
the shaft, and revealed the topmost rung of the ladder, but it was
hopeless trying to reach it. I should either have been tossed up again by
the escape, or else have fallen in, and died. I could only lie on the grass,
sipping and sipping, and from time to time glancing around me.
"I knew that I was in Wessex, for I had taken care to go to a lecture on
the subject before starting. Wessex lies above the room in which we are
talking now. It was once an important state. Its kings held all the
southern coast form the Andredswald to Cornwall, while the Wansdyke
protected them on the north, running over the high ground. The lecturer
was only concerned with the rise of Wessex, so I do not know how
long it remained an international power, nor would the knowledge have
assisted me. To tell the truth I could do nothing but laugh, during this
part. There was I, with a pneumatic stopper by my side and a respirator
bobbing over my head, imprisoned, all three of us, in a grass-grown
hollow that was edged with fern."
Then he grew grave again.
"Lucky for me that it was a hollow. For the air began to fall back into it
and to fill it as water fills a bowl. I could crawl about. Presently I stood.

I breathed a mixture, in which the air that hurts predominated whenever
I tried to climb the sides. This was not so bad. I had not lost my
tabloids and remained ridiculously cheerful, and as for the Machine, I
forgot about it altogether. My one aim now was to get to the top, where
the ferns were, and to view whatever objects lay beyond.
"I rushed the slope. The new air was still too bitter for me and I came
rolling back, after a momentary vision of something grey. The sun
grew very feeble, and I remembered that he was in Scorpio--I had been
to a lecture on that too. If the sun is in Scorpio, and you are in Wessex,
it means that you must be as quick as you can, or it will get too dark.
(This is the first bit of useful information I have ever got from a lecture,
and I expect it will be the last.) It made me try frantically to breathe the
new air, and to advance as far as I dared out of my pond. The hollow
filled so slowly. At times I thought that the fountain played with less
vigour. My respirator seemed to dance nearer the earth; the roar was
decreasing."
He broke off.
"I don't think this is interesting you. The rest will interest you even less.
There are no ideas in it, and I wish that I had not troubled you to come.
We are too different, mother."
She told