The Long Way Back

The appointment had been made for three a.m.

Grame was punctual, although it had taken him eight hours to climb the free track up the shoulder of the Mountain. When he arrived, it took him less than eight minutes to discover that he was alone in the building with the night guard.

‘Patience is demanded,’ the man said to him, marching up and down the small ante-room, while the hot light from the walls barred his black face with silver. ‘The machine-staff arrives at seven.’

‘Do you think I could go out and find a tobacco-room somewhere?’

‘You will lose your turn,’ the guard said, continuing to march.

‘But there’s no one else here.’

‘No talking to the guard,’ the guard said, turning with a smart double stamp.

‘Then I’ll go out and find a tobacco-room,’ Grame said.

‘No exit without an exit pass signed by the controller— and he won’t be here till seven.’

‘I’ll go to sleep,’ Grame said. He stood up and stretched himself as if he hoped to pull the roof down.

The guard went on marching. ‘No sleeping in the ante-room,’ he said to the wall in front of him.

‘What about death?’ Grame asked him. ‘Is death allowed in the ante-room?’

He lifted his hands a little, bending the fingers experimentally, and began to walk up and down beside the guard.

‘It is indifferent to me if you kill me,’ the guard said.

‘I have marched up and down in this room every night for thirty years.’ Tears began to drop from his eyes, but his emotion was not strong enough to affect his feet. He marched on. ‘Six paces across the room and six paces back,’ he said.

‘I’m going to sleep,’ Grame said in a calmer voice. ‘Don’t stop me, guard.’

He lay down on the floor. The guard marched on, pretending not to see him. Grame watched the tears that still ran from the old man’s eyes. Outside the huts, on summer evenings, he had seen other old men cry. He was glad he hadn’t been forced to strike this one.

He slept until the morning, when the other applicants began to arrive, stumbling over him, trampling on his arms and chest, as they came through the doorway. They were in higher grades than his; that was why they had been asked at a friendlier hour. Some of them looked at Grame with surprise, as though he had been a lemon growing on an orange tree, then turned away, content to suppose that a ridiculous but wholly irrelevant mistake had been made.

Two yellow boys brought in coffee, and as they drank it some of the applicants began to rehearse their claims in whispers.

‘… to be on the censors’ panel-flair, gift, practice—oh, yes, practice only privately…’ ‘… Air bus pilot 369 ten years’ experience flying, qualified for express transcontinental duties. … Small crimes manager here by appointment applying as already stated for vacant post of assistant director of serious crime…’

More applicants arrived, and the whispering went on ceaselessly, like the buzzing of flies against a window pane.

At seven the official staff entered, and pushed their way without interest through the packed ante-room. At nine, Grame was called.

He fixed a smile on his face, walked briskly through the door, and down the ramp for sixty strides. He was deeper in the earth than he had ever been before, and in front of him stood the biggest machine in the world. When he came in, it was purring feebly like a young kitten, but at sight of him it gave an experimental shriek, and then told him to move forward.

He looked in appeal at the men, but their eyes were on the machine, or on the parts of it for which each was responsible: He advanced reluctantly, stood, and turned, while the machine took an X-ray photograph of his skull; a superficial photograph of his person; an impression of his finger-prints; a record of his voice; and a sample of his blood.

One of the machine-tenders moved a lever, and the conversation began.

‘You, Grame, mechanical-repetitive worker, hut 498, age 24 years on this fifteenth day of March, AD 3,406, why do you apply for regrading?’ The record stopped, and the machine was silent, waiting for Grame to feed propositions on to its tape. These propositions, separated from their emotional adornments, would pass through the selector to emerge as a wave-length that could pick up the correct replies.

Grame was silent for a moment. He had prepared arguments flexible enough to outwit an enemy or to impress a friend, but not to affect the responses of a machine.

‘I was graded as a mechanical-repetitive worker at the age of seven,’ he began uneasily.

‘Were you graded by men or by machine?’ ‘I was passed through the grading machine.’

‘Then no mistake was made. Men make mistakes, machines do not.’

‘Children can alter,’ Grame said. He was speaking carefully, trying to suppress his hatred of the grading system. ‘The child grows and sees the world and wants to have an interesting place in it. Perhaps the boy of seven who can’t move button two on the machine will turn into the boy of seventeen who can build a machine of his own.’

The machine digested this. ‘Have you any complaints about your education?’

‘I was educated like the other mech-rep children. Two hours daily speed and accuracy practice in press-button and pull-lever techniques; simple arithmetic; label reading; annual lectures on food values and biology.’

 ‘Have you any complaints about your education?’ the machine repeated, without altering its previous inflections.

 ‘It wasn’t an education at all,’ Grame said. ‘But I’ve educated myself. I’ve taught myself to read and write and think. I’ve taught myself science and high-level mathematics. In every factory I’ve worked in I’ve been round every department and mastered every process. I’ve been studying physics for years. I am prepared to produce as evidence formulae that I believe to be original. I will welcome examination by any body of professional physicists. I claim that my proper career is in physics,’ he said, beginning to shout at the machine.

‘Have you any complaints about the food in your hut?’ the machine asked calmly.

‘I don’t want to talk about food. I want to talk about my life. I want to work in physics.’

There was an unprecedented silence of several seconds, then the machine spoke again.

‘You must explain clearly the work you want to do.’

‘I want to study cosmic rays.’

The machine put up a no-response signal. It had not been equipped to discuss cosmic rays. One of the attendants pulled a lever, and speech emerged again.

‘Have you any complaints about conditions in your hut? Have you an adequate tobacco-room?’

‘I don’t want to discuss tobacco-rooms. I want to appeal against my grading.’

‘Have you any complaints about sex facilities in your hut? Have you an adequate sex-cubicle?’

‘Damn sex facilities. I want to be regraded as a physicist. I appeal to you,’ Grame said wildly. ‘I appeal to you as a machine. I appeal to you for regrading.’

‘You have already been graded. You have given no reason to be regraded. Have you any complaints about physical recreation?’

‘I won’t talk to this machine,’ Grame cried angrily to the machine-tenders. ‘It’s puerile.’ The adjective, being merely a subjective emotional term, was ignored by the machine, but one of the attendants, who had seemed indifferent to the conversation, pulled a switch and the machine began to speak in different tones.

‘Look at this thing reasonably,’ it said. ‘So far as civilisation goes, we think we’ve evolved something pretty decent for people in general. Food, religion, and sex for all. That’s a pretty big achievement, isn’t it? And don’t forget that our sanitary arrangements are excellent. We’ve also given every consideration to the filling of leisure hours, and we’re really rather proud of the results. But we must never forget that work is part of the picture, and that’s where the grading machine comes in. It’s a rather miraculous machine, when you think of it. And what does it do? It ensures that everyone gets the job he’s fit for, the job he can do with satisfaction and pride, and isn’t made miserable by struggling with something that’s just that little bit beyond his powers.’

‘Regrading?’ Grame said desperately. ‘What about my regrading?’

‘The grading machine acts in the interests of the people graded,’ the machine went on smoothly. ‘It fits all the round pegs snugly into the round holes, where they have no chance to grow uncomfortable square corners. And the grading machine doesn’t suffer from human fallibility. It is always right.’

‘But I came here to prove it isn’t.’

‘Next, please,’ the machine said indifferently.

Grame stood still. ‘The grading machine is never right,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it works at all. It couldn’t tell the difference between a rabbit and a crocodile. It works on percentages and it knows nothing more. It just puts through 30 per cent mechanical-repetitives; 25 per cent soldiers; 20 per cent farmers, and so on. It doesn’t grade children. It deals them into heaps. The machine’s wrong. Always and forever wrong. Machines know nothing about people. They can give information about the number of colour-blind road-sweepers who are likely to break their legs in the next twenty-five years, but they don’t know what a road-sweeper thinks. Machines can give information, but they have no emotions, they can’t imagine, they can’t set their own problems. They can’t understand people who imagine and hope. Machines aren’t even infantile.’ ‘Next please,’ the machine repeated.

‘The machine is wrong,’ Grame shouted. ‘Always and forever wrong.’

The machine began to hum impatiently. Two of the attendants seized their tools and moved towards the giant doors.

‘Wrong!’ Grame shouted. ‘And people know it. They’re tired of being graded by idiotic lumps of steel and electricity. The people will destroy the grading machine. What do you think we mech-reps talk about when we put the Drunk and Angry notice on the door and the officers are frightened to come in? We talk about smashing the machines and throwing the pieces in your works. We talk about high explosives and bombs.’

The humming changed to an electrical crackling.

‘You’ll buzz a lot harder when the bomb goes up under you,’ Grame shouted. 

The crackling developed into a rumbling of minor explosions. Flashes of white light leapt out of the apertures. There was a noise like a waterfall, then, for a few moments, absolute silence and absolute stillness except for the smoke that whirled around the machine.

One of the attendants spoke.

‘It will take weeks to get it going again,’ he said bitterly.

‘Well, the regrading will have to be done by hand, that’s all. I’m not working overtime on this baby.

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ Grame asked. ‘Exemplary death?’

‘We don’t care what happens to you. Not our business or we’d strangle you now. Better go through that door and talk to one of the controllers.’

Grame walked up the ramp towards the centre of the building and kept walking until the machine was far beneath him.

He went through a door marked sub-controller. A man Sitting at a desk, reading the morning papers.

‘I’ve wrecked the machine,’ Grame told him. ‘I was arguing with it.’

The sub-controller sighed and put down the newspaper. ‘There will be a penalty,’ he said.

‘I came to be regraded. I want to study cosmic rays. It had never heard of cosmic rays. I suppose it lost its temper.’

‘The machine never loses its temper. Without any desire to be alarming, I had better tell you that this is a serious matter. It’s very serious indeed,’ he said sighing. ‘You see, the machine is state property. Practically everything is, after all.’

‘It makes no difference,’ Grame said gloomily. ‘No difference to me, anyway. I’m a mechanical-repetitive. I knew I wouldn’t be regraded. So did the other mech-reps.

You may take it as a fact,’ he said spitefully, ‘that you’ll have trouble when you’ve killed me.’

The sub-controller looked at him with sudden geniality, as though he had just recognised another sub-controller.

‘Oh, you’re the mech-rep, are you? And you’ve wrecked the machine? My dear fellow, my dear potential martyr, why are you so against the machine? It may not be always right, but it gives you just the answers you’d get from us, only in a more concise and less irritating form. When answers have to be given a hundred times a day, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and a hundred years in every century, it saves time and temper to have a machine to give them. Do you know that before the machine was built, we recorded twenty thousand interviews, purely in order to ensure that the machine was fitted with every correct response, and with nothing but correct responses? Before my time of course. Now, we’ll say nothing more about penalties. Come back in a month’s time and try again. I’ll have some of the boys fit it with a cosmic ray reaction.’

‘I won’t come back in a month. I’ll stay and be killed now if I can’t be regraded.’

‘But there wouldn’t be any point in regrading you. We simply don’t have any vacancies in the cosmic ray team.

Nothing that would interest you, anyway. You don’t want to be a cosmic bottle-washer?’

Grame sat down, trembling. ‘Kill me,’ he begged, ‘but without jokes.’

‘Now, that’s where the machine is superior,’ the subcontroller pointed out, immensely pleased. ‘It doesn’t make these little jokes you rightly find so annoying. The machine doesn’t get bored. It never feels the need to entertain itself. You illustrate my point perfectly. We most certainly mustn’t kill you. Now, let me see. Science is your line. Scientific investigation. We can’t fit you into cosmic rays. Sit there and relax: I’ll have a word with our science man.’

He tipped his chair back and pressed a button with his knee.

‘Oh, Lore,’ he said. ‘I’ve a man I rather want to fit into one of your teams. What? Oh, he fancies cosmic rays. What? Yes, I know. Any other vacancies? Oh, have you? Have you really? When was that decided? Oh, so it’s their idea? And exactly what are the minimum qualifications? Yes, I suppose he could. And it’s the only vacancy? Positively? Well, it sounds perfectly splendid. He’ll love that. When do you want him? I say! I suppose it can be done. We’ll have a chat later in the day, when I see how things are going. Good-bye.

He settled down in his chair, and beamed at Grame.

‘What would you say to a really cushy job in anthropology? We’re sending a team to investigate primitive Britain. Yes, I know what you’re going to say. It’s not quite cosmic rays. Admittedly it’s not even physics. But there are myriads, positively myriads, of interesting facts to be discovered about these primitive races. It’s a science we’ve inevitably neglected. Nearly as far back as our history goes it’s been safer to stay where we are and mind our own business. We did send out a few expeditions once, I believe, but none of them ever returned. And yet what an enthralling business anthropology is!’ he said musingly.

‘I’ve always claimed it’s a pity we couldn’t have kept the Boers in their natural state. I’m afraid they’ve degenerated a little in their reserve soil erosion—religious riots-inbreeding. But in spite of it all, there’s something to be learnt, even from them, although I’m afraid our anthropologists will get a little restive if they’re asked to spend all their time studying the Boers. Anyway, there it is. The expedition will fly to Britain in an Amphibian on one of the longest flights ever attempted. But you need have no fears on that score Amphibians always get there, or so I’m told.’ He stopped, and looked at Grame impatiently ‘Well?’

‘If you’re offering me a job,’ Grame said numbly, ‘could you perhaps tell me what it is?’

‘You know I’m offering you a job. And don’t refuse it too quickly. Think it over. Take your time.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I can give you five minutes more. Remember, this job is important. It isn’t just science for the sake of science. We’re beginning to believe that if we’re to survive we must find why other people didn’t. We don’t think the Britons ever got very far, and we don’t know how they stopped. There’s a legend, you know, that they ended with what our own primitive forbears called the Big Bang, but one mustn’t place too much credence on folklore. We haven’t much else to go on, unfortunately. Our own superstitious ancestors rather foolishly destroyed every record of white civilisation they could lay their ignorant hands on.

Only a few scraps of their literature survive—you know the way—odd pages used to pad out the back of picture frames —that kind of thing. They’ve all been micro-filmed and machine-digested, but they don’t tell us very much.’ Grame was listening to him with the despair of a man who is being sold a rowing-boat when he wants an aeroplane. ‘Cosmic rays,’ he said weakly.

‘However,’ the sub-controller went on smoothly, ‘Britain is unexplored territory, and we’re sending in a team—geologists, physiologists, archaeologists—everyone relevant we can spare. It leaves in twenty-four hours, and there are one or two things you’ll have to do before you go. There’s a primitive intensive history course going on now. Room 26, University building. You’ll just make it. I should think if you spent eight hours on that and managed a pass mark, you could drop into geology and anthropology, which are less exacting; pick up your temperate zone clothing; get back to your hut to say good-bye; and join the others in time for the final briefing. Depart tomorrow from the airport at g a.m. Transport to the hut and back again will be provided. You would never walk it in the time, although I must say that you seem to have a most remarkable physique.’ Anyway, that’s the job. You’ll have to take it or leave it, and take it or leave it instantly, because I am afraid that your five minutes is over.’ He looked at his watch again.

‘Yes or no?’

‘Yes,’ Grame said.

The sub-controller stood up.

‘Don’t forget to tell them at your hut that we’ve given you moderately good treatment, old boy,’ he said. ‘And thanks for a most interesting chat.’