Through the whistling of the wind all at once I heard, as if splashing through ditches, the familiar footsteps coming from some unseen point. At the corner I turned around, and among the clouds, flying upside-down reflected in the dim glass of the pavement I saw S- . Instantly my arms became foreign, swinging out of time, and I began to tell O-90 in a low voice that tomorrow, yes tomorrow, was the day of the first flight of the Integral , and that it was to be something that never happened before in all history, great, miraculous.
“Think of it! For the first time in life to find myself outside the limits of our city and see—who knows what is beyond the Green Wall?”
O-90 looked at me extremely surprised, her blue eyes trying to penetrate mine; she looked at my senselessly swinging arms. But I did not let her say a word—I kept talking, talking. … And within me, apart from what I was saying and audible only to myself a thought was feverishly buzzing and knocking. “Impossible! You must somehow … you must not lead him to I-330 !”
Instead of turning to the right I turned to the left. The bridge submissively bent its back in a slavish way to all three of us, to me, to O- , to him behind. Lights were falling from the houses across the water, falling and breaking into thousands of sparks which danced feverishly, sprayed with the mad white foam of the water. The wind was moaning like a tensely stretched string of a double-basso somewhere not far away. Through this basso, behind, all the while. …
The house where I live. At the entrance O- stopped and began:
“No! You promised, did you not, that. …”
I did not let her finish. Hastily I pushed her through the entrance and we found ourselves in the lobby. At the controller’s desk—the familiar, hanging, excitedly quivering cheeks, a group of Numbers around. They