organiser. 'You are tired?' she asked, and old Karenin shook his

head.

'Cramped,' he said. 'I have wanted to visit such a place as

this.'

He spoke as if he had no other business with them.

There was a little pause.

'How many scientific people have you got here now?' he asked.

'Just three hundred and ninety-two,' said Rachel Borken.

'And the patients and attendants and so on?'

'Two thousand and thirty.'

'I shall be a patient,' said Karenin. 'I shall have to be a

patient. But I should like to see things first. Presently I will

be a patient.'

'You will come to my rooms?' suggested Ciana.

'And then I must talk to this doctor of yours,' said Karenin.

'But I would like to see a bit of this place and talk to some of

your people before it comes to that.'

He winced and moved forward.

'I have left most of my work in order,' he said.

'You have been working hard up to now?' asked Rachel Borken.

'Yes. And now I have nothing more to do-and it seems strange…

And it's a bother, this illness and having to come down to

oneself. This doorway and the row of windows is well done; the

gray granite and just the line of gold, and then those mountains

beyond through that arch. It's very well done…'

Section 2

Karenin lay on the bed with a soft white rug about him, and

Fowler, who was to be his surgeon sat on the edge of the bed and

talked to him. An assistant was seated quietly in the shadow

behind the bed. The examination had been made, and Karenin knew

what was before him. He was tired but serene.

'So I shall die,' he said, 'unless you operate?'

Fowler assented. 'And then,' said Karenin, smiling, 'probably I

shall die.'

'Not certainly.'

'Even if I do not die; shall I be able to work?'

'There is just a chance…'

'So firstly I shall probably die, and if I do not, then perhaps I

shall be a useless invalid?'

'I think if you live, you may be able to go on-as you do now.'

'Well, then, I suppose I must take the risk of it. Yet couldn't

you, Fowler, couldn't you drug me and patch me instead of all

this-vivisection? A few days of drugged and active life-and

then the end?'

Fowler thought. 'We are not sure enough yet to do things like

that,' he said.

'But a day is coming when you will be certain.'

Fowler nodded.

'You make me feel as though I was the last of

deformity-Deformity is uncertainty-inaccuracy. My body works

doubtfully, it is not even sure that it will die or live. I

suppose the time is not far off when such bodies as mine will no

longer be born into the world.'

'You see,' said Fowler, after a little pause, 'it is necessary

that spirits such as yours should be born into the world.'

'I suppose,' said Karenin, 'that my spirit has had its use. But

if you think that is because my body is as it is I think you are

mistaken. There is no peculiar virtue in defect. I have always

chafed against-all this. If I could have moved more freely and

lived a larger life in health I could have done more. But some

day perhaps you will be able to put a body that is wrong

altogether right again. Your science is only beginning. It's a

subtler thing than physics and chemistry, and it takes longer to

produce its miracles. And meanwhile a few more of us must die in

patience.'

'Fine work is being done and much of it,' said Fowler. 'I can

say as much because I have nothing to do with it. I can

understand a lesson, appreciate the discoveries of abler men and

use my hands, but those others, Pigou, Masterton, Lie, and the

others, they are clearing the ground fast for the knowledge to

come. Have you had time to follow their work?'

Karenin shook his head. 'But I can imagine the scope of it,' he

said.

'We have so many men working now,' said Fowler. 'I suppose at

present there must be at least a thousand thinking hard,

observing, experimenting, for one who did so in nineteen

hundred.'

'Not counting those who keep the records?'

'Not counting those. Of course, the present indexing of research

is in itself a very big work, and it is only now that we are

getting it properly done. But already we are feeling the benefit

of that. Since it ceased to be a paid employment and became a

devotion we have had only those people who obeyed the call of an

aptitude at work upon these things. Here-I must show you it

to-day, because it will interest you-we have our copy of the

encyclopaedic index-every week sheets are taken out and replaced

by fresh sheets with new results that are brought to us by the

aeroplanes of the Research Department. It is an index of

knowledge that growscontinually, an index that becomes

continuallytruer. There was never anything like it before.'

'When I came into the education committee,' said Karenin, 'that

index of human knowledge seemed an impossible thing. Research had

produced a chaotic mountain of results, in a hundred languages

and a thousand different types of publication…' He smiled

at his memories. 'How we groaned at the job!'

'Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall