They say that the ancients used to conduct their elections secretly, stealthily like thieves. Some of our historians assert even that they would come to the electoral celebrations completely masked. Imagine the weird, fantastic spectacle! Night. A plaza. Along the walls the stealthily creeping figures covered with mantles. The red flame of torches dancing in the wind.... Why was such secrecy necessary? It has never been satisfactorily explained. Probably it resulted from the fact that elections were associated with some mystic and superstitious, perhaps even criminal ceremonies. We have nothing to conceal or to be ashamed of; we celebrate our election openly, honestly, in daylight. I see them all vote for the Well-Doer and everybody sees me vote for the Well-Doer. How could it be otherwise, since “all” and “I” are one “we”? How ennobling, sincere, lofty, is this compared with the cowardly, thievish “secrecy” of the ancients! Moreover, how much more expedient! For even admitting for a moment the impossible, that is the outbreak of some dissonance in our customary unity, in that case our unseen Guardians are always right there among us, are they not, to
register the Numbers who would fall into error and save them from any further false steps? The United State is theirs, the Numbers’! And besides....
Through the wall to my left a she-number before the mirror-door of the closet; she is hastily unbuttoning her unif. For a second, swiftly—eyes, lips, two sharp, pink ... the curtains fell. Within me instantly awoke all that happened yesterday and now I no longer know what I meant to say by “besides....” I no longer wish to;—I cannot. I want one thing. I want I-330. I want her every minute, every second, to be with me, with no one else. All that I wrote about Unanimity is of no value; it is not what I want; I have a desire to cross it out, to tear it to pieces and throw it away. For I know (be it a sacrilege, yet it is the truth), that a glorious Day is possible only with her and only then when we are side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Without her the Sun of tomorrow will appear to me only as a little circle cut out of a tin sheet, and the sky a sheet of tin painted blue, and I myself ... I snatched the telephone receiver.
“I-330, are you there?”
“Yes, it is I. Why so late?”
“Perhaps not too late yet. I want to ask you ... I want you to be with me tomorrow—dear!”
“Dear” I said in a very low voice. And for some reason a thing I saw this morning at the docks flashed through my mind: just for fun someone
put a watch under the hundred-ton sledge-hammer.... A swing, a breath of wind in the face and the silent hundred-ton, knife-like weight on the breakable watch....
A silence. I thought I heard someone’s whisper in I-330’s room. Then her voice:
“No, I cannot. Of course you understand that I myself.... No, I cannot. ‘Why?’ You shall see tomorrow.”