He emerged onto the road and wandered for a long time toward the Directorate. Searchlights flashed on unremittingly, shadows flitted, clouds of multi-colored smoke continued rising. As Pepper walked on, water gurgled and squelched in his boots, his drying clothes hung like a tent and slapped together like cardboard; every now and again lumps of mud fell from his trousers and slopped onto the road, every time deceiving Pepper into thinking that he'd dropped his wallet and papers causing him to snatch at his pocket, panic-stricken. When he had almost reached the machine depot the frightful idea seized him that his papers had got wet and all the stamps and signatures had run and were now indecipherable and irretrievably suspicious. He came to a stop and opened his wallet with icy hands, he pulled out all his identity cards, passes, certificates, and chits and began examining them under the moon. It turned out that nothing terrible had happened; water had done some damage only to one prolix document on crested paper, certifying that the bearer had undergone a course of inoculations and was passed for work on calculating machines. He put the lot back in his wallet, inserting banknotes neatly between each, and was about to proceed on his way when he suddenly pictured himself coming out onto the highway and people in cardboard masks and beards stuck on anyhow grabbing his arms, blindfolding him, giving him something to smell.
"Search! Search!" they would order. "Remember the smell, employee Pepper?" "Cherchez, mutt, cher-chez" setting him on. Imagining all this; he turned off the road without checking his pace, and ran, stooping, to the machine depot, dived into the shadow of huge, pale containers, got his legs tangled in something soft, and fell full tilt on a pile of rags and tow.
Here it was warm and dry. The rough sides of the containers were hot, something that pleased him at first, but after a while caused him to wonder. Inside the cases all was silent, but he recalled the tale about the machines crawling out of their containers by themselves; he realized that another life was going on inside there and he wasn't afraid. He felt secure even. He eased his sitting position, took off his old boots, peeled off his wet socks, and used the tow to wipe his feet. It was so pleasant here, so warm and cosy, that he thought: Odd if I'm alone here - surely somebody's realized it's far better sitting here than crawling about the waste lands blindfold or hanging around some stinking bog? He leaned his back up against the hot plywood bracing his feet against the hot plywood opposite and felt a strong desire to purr. There was a tiny crack over his head through which he could see a strip of sky pale with moonlight, complete with a few dim stars. From somewhere came rumbling, crashing, the roar of engines, but all that had no connection with him.
Marvelous to stay here for always, he thought. If I can't make it to the Mainland, I'll stay here. Machines, so what? We're all machines. We are the failed machines, or just badly put together.
... The opinion exists, gentlemen, that man will never come to terms with the machine. We shan't argue that, citizens. The director feels the same. And in addition, Claudius-Octavian Hausbotcher takes the same view. What is a machine, after all? An inanimate mechanism, deprived of the full range of feelings and incapable of being cleverer than a man. Moreover its structure is not albuminous. Moreover life cannot be reduced to physical and chemical processes, therefore reason... Here, an intellectualyricist with three chins and a bow tie climbed to the stand, tore mercilessly at his starched shirt-front and sobbingly proclaimed:
"I cannot bear it ... I don't want that... A rosy babe playing with a rattle ... weeping willows bending over a pond ... little girls in white pinafores... They are reading poetry ... they weep ... weep! Over the poet's beautiful lines... I don't want electronic metal to quench those eyes... those lips ... these young modest cheeks... No, a machine will never be cleverer than a man! Because I ... because we ... We do not wish it! And it will never be! Never!!! Never!!!"
Hands reached out with glasses of water, while two hundred and fifty miles above those snow-white curls, silently, deathly, passed an automatic sputnik-interceptor, keen-eyed and unbearably brilliant, stuffed with nuclear explosive...
