Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/89

Rh and it is used in combination with different gases. Furthermore, we don't torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did. We use it for a higher purpose: to guard the security of the United State—in other words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries ago, when the work of the Operation Department was only beginning, there were yet to be found some fools who compared our Operation Department with the ancient Inquisition. But this is as absurd as to compare a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cutthroat. Both use a knife, perhaps the same kind of knife, both do the same thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man; yet one is a well-doer, the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus All this becomes perfectly clear in one second, in one turn of our wheel of logic, the teeth of which engage that minus, turn it upward, and thus change its aspect.

One other matter is somewhat different: the ring in the door was still oscillating, apparently the door had just closed, yet she, I-330, had disappeared, she was not there! The wheel of logic could not turn this fact. A dream? But even now I still feel in my right shoulder that incomprehensibly sweet pain of I-330 near me in the fog, pressing herself against me. “Thou lovest fog?” Yes, I love the fog, too. I love everything, and everything appears to me wonderful, new, tense; everything is so good!

“So good,” I said aloud.

“Good?” The porcelain eyes bulged out. “What good do you find in that? If that man without a number contrived to sneak in, it means that there are others around here, everywhere, all the time, here around the Integral, they—”

“Whom do you mean by ‘they’?”

“How do I know who? But I sense them, all the time.”

“Have you heard about the new operation which has been invented? I mean the surgical removal of fancy?” (There really were rumors of late about something of the sort.)