ACT THREE

Scene: Helena’s drawing-room as before. The room is dark and gray. The steel shutters which are outside are still closed as at the end of Act II. Alquist is sitting in chair down stage at extreme R. Domin comes into the room, L.2. (Subdued voices.) Dr. Gall is looking out of the window at Center. He is seated in a chair.

Domin. (Gets binoculars from desk; crosses up to window. To Gall) Any more of them?

Dr. Gall. Yes. There standing like a wall, beyond the garden railing. Why are they so quiet? It’s monstrous to be besieged with silence.

Domin. (Looking through the barred windows) I should like to know what they are waiting for? They must make a start any minute now. If they lean against the railings it will snap like a match.

Dr. Gall. They aren’t armed.

Domin. (Puzzled) We couldn’t hold our own for five minutes. Man alive, they overwhelm us like an avalanche. Why don’t they make a rush for it? I say. (Turns to Gall.)

Dr. Gall. Well?

Domin. I’d like to know what will become of us in the next ten minutes. They’ve got us in a vise. We’re done for, Gall.

Dr. Gall. You know, we made one serious mistake.

Domin. What?

Dr. Gall. We made the Robots’ faces too much alike. A hundred thousand faces all alike, all facing this way. A hundred thousand expressionless bubbles. It’s like a nightmare.

Domin. You think if they’d been different—

Dr. Gall. It wouldn’t have been such an awful sight!

Domin. (Looks through binoculars towards the harbor) I’d like to know what they’re unloading from the Amelia.

Dr. Gall. Not firearms.

Fabry. (Enters L.2 with a plug-box to which is attached a long cable or wire. Hallemeier following him. Fabry attaches the cable to an electric installation which is on the floor near the wall, down stage at L.1 entrance) All right, Hallemeier, lay down that wire.

Hallemeier. (Just inside the room) That was a bit of work. What’s the news? (Seeing Domin and Gall at the window.)

Dr. Gall. We’re completely surrounded.

Hallemeier. (Crosses to window) We’ve barricaded the passages and the stairs. (Going to window) God, what swarms of them. I don’t like the looks of them, Domin. There’s a feeling of death about it all. Any water here?

Fabry. Ready!

Dr. Gall. (Turning round in the chair) What’s that wire for, Fabry?

Fabry. The electrical installation. Now we can run the current all along the garden railing. (Up to window) Whenever we like. If anyone touches it he’ll know it. We’ve still got some people there anyhow.

Dr. Gall. Where?

Fabry. In the electrical works. At least, I hope so. (Goes to lamp on table L.C. and turns on lamp) Ah,[65] they’re there, and they’re working. As long as that’ll burn we’re all right. (To window.)

Hallemeier. The barricades are all right, too, Fabry.

Fabry. Your barricades! I can put twelve hundred volts into that railing. (Helena is playing Rachmaninoff’s Elegie off L.1.)

Domin. Where’s Busman? (Domin has left window and is walking up and down stage across front.)

Fabry. Downstairs in the office. He’s working out some calculations.

Domin. I’ve called him. We must have a conference. (Crosses to L.)

Alquist. Thank God Madame Helena can still play. (Hallemeier crosses to L.1 door, opens it slightly and listens to music. Enter Busman L.2.)

Fabry. Look out, Bus—look out for the wires.

Dr. Gall. What’s that you’re carrying?

Busman. (Laying the books on the table L.C.) The ledger, my boy. I’d like to wind up the accounts before—before— (Domin crosses up to window.) Well, this time I shan’t wait till the New Year to strike a balance. What’s up? (Goes to window) Absolutely quiet.

Dr. Gall. Can’t you see anything?

Busman. Nothing but blue—blue everywhere.

Dr. Gall. That’s the Robots.4

Domin. The Robots are unloading firearms from the Amelia.

Busman. Well, what of it? How can I stop them? (Returns to L.C. table, sits and opens ledger.)

Domin. We can’t stop them.

Busman. Then let me go on with my accounts. (Goes on with his work.)

Domin. (Picks up telescope) Good God! The Ultimus has trained her guns on us.

Dr. Gall. Who’s done that?

Domin. The Robots on board.

[66]

Fabry. H’m, then of course— (Pause) Then—then that’s the end of us. (To R. corner of desk.)

Dr. Gall. You mean?

Fabry. The Robots are practised marksmen.

Domin. Yes. It’s inevitable. (Pause.)

Dr. Gall. (Swinging around; looking into room. Pause) That was criminal of old Europe to teach the Robots to fight. Damn them. Couldn’t they have given us a rest with their politics? It was a crime to make soldiers of them.

Alquist. It was a crime to make Robots.

Domin. (Quietly. Down C.) No, Alquist, I don’t regret that even today.

Alquist. Not even today?

Domin. (Dreamily) Not even today, the last day of civilization. It was a colossal achievement.

Busman. (Sotto voce) Three hundred sixty million.

Domin. (From window) Alquist, this is our last hour. We are already speaking half in the other world. That was not an evil dream to shatter the servitude of labor. The dreadful and humiliating labor that man had to undergo. Work was too hard. Life was too hard. And to overcome that—

Alquist. Was not what the two Rossums dreamed of. Old Rossum only thought of his Godless tricks, and the young one of his milliards. And that’s not what your R. U. R. shareholders dream of either. They dream of dividends, and their dividends are the ruin of mankind.

Domin. To Hell with your dividends. (Crossing R. in front of couch) Do you suppose I’d have done an hour’s work for them? It was for myself that I worked, for my own satisfaction. I wanted man to become the master. So that he shouldn’t live merely for the crust of bread. I wanted not a single soul to be broken by other people’s machinery. I wanted nothing, nothing, nothing to be left of this appalling[67] social structure. I’m revolted by poverty. I wanted a new generation. I wanted—I thought—

Alquist. Well?

Domin. (Front of couch) I wanted to turn the whole of mankind into an aristocracy of the world. An aristocracy nourished by millions of mechanical slaves. Unrestricted, free and consummated in man. And maybe more than man.

Alquist. Superman?

Domin. Yes. Oh, only to have a hundred years of time. Another hundred years for the future of mankind.

Busman. (Sotto voce) Carried forward—four hundred and twenty millions. (Domin sits on couch.)

Hallemeier. (Pauses—back of couch) What a fine thing music is. We ought to have gone in for that before.

Fabry. Gone in for what?

Hallemeier. Beauty, lovely things. What a lot of lovely things there are. The world was wonderful, and we—we here—tell me, what enjoyment did we have?

Busman. (Sotto voce) Five hundred and twenty million.

Hallemeier. Life was a good thing, life was— (Looking out of window. Directly to Fabry) Fabry, switch the current into that railing.

Fabry. Why? (Rushes to electric installation at L.)

Hallemeier. They’re grabbing hold of it. (Domin rises—straightens up. All rise.)

Dr. Gall. Connect it up.

Hallemeier. Fine, that’s doubled them up. Two, three, four killed.

Dr. Gall. They’re retreating. (Domin sits.)

Hallemeier. Five killed.

Dr. Gall (Pause) The first encounter.

[68]

Hallemeier. They’re charred to cinders, my boy. Who says we must give in? (MUSIC stops.)

Domin. (Alquist and Gall sit. Wiping his forehead) Perhaps we’ve been killed this hundred years and are only ghosts. It’s as if I had been through all this before, as if I’d already had a mortal wound here in the throat. (Looking at each as he speaks) And you, Fabry, had once been shot in the head. And you, Gall, torn limb from limb. And Hallemeier knifed.

Hallemeier. Fancy me being knifed. (Looks at each. Then speaks) Why are you so quiet, you fools? (Steps down) Speak, can’t you?

Alquist. And who is to blame for all this?

Hallemeier. Nobody is to blame except the Robots.

Alquist. No, it is we are to blame. You, Domin, myself—all of us. For our own selfish ends, for profit, for progress, we have destroyed mankind. Now we’ll burst with all our greatness.

Hallemeier. Rubbish, man. Mankind can’t be wiped out so easily.

Alquist. It’s our fault. It’s our fault. (Rises, coming R. of Gall.)

Dr. Gall. No! I’m to blame for this, for everything that’s happened. (He leaves the window and comes down to end of couch.)

Fabry. You, Gall?

Dr. Gall. I changed the Robots.

Busman. What’s that?

Dr. Gall. I changed the character of the Robots. I changed the way of making them. Just a few details about their bodies. Chiefly—chiefly, their—their irritability.

Hallemeier. Damn it, why?

Busman. What did you do it for?

Fabry. Why didn’t you say anything?

Dr. Gall. I did it in secret. I was transforming[69] them into human beings. In certain respects they’re already above us. They’re stronger than we are.

Fabry. And what’s that got to do with the revolt of the Robots?

Dr. Gall. Everything, in my opinion. They’ve ceased to be machines. They’re already aware of their superiority, and they hate us as they hate everything human.

Domin. Perhaps we’re only phantoms.

Fabry. Stop, Harry. We haven’t much time, Doctor Gall.

Domin. Fabry, Fabry, how your forehead bleeds where the shot pierced it.

Fabry. (Crosses to Gall) Be silent! Doctor Gall, you admit changing the way of making the Robots.

Dr. Gall. Yes.

Fabry. Were you aware of what might be the consequences of your experiment?

Dr. Gall. I was bound to reckon with such a possibility.

Fabry. (Amusing) Why did you do it, then?

(Helena enters L.1.)

Dr. Gall. For my own satisfaction. The experiment was my own.

Helena. That’s not true, Doctor Gall! (Crosses to couch.)

Domin. (Rises) Helena, you? (Crosses to her) Let’s look at you. Oh, it’s terrible to be dead. (He rises and crushes her in his arms.)

1. Helena. Stop, Harry.
2. Domin. No, no, Helena, don’t leave me now. You are life itself.
3. Helena. No, dear, I won’t leave you. But I must tell them. Doctor Gall is not guilty.
4. Fabry. Excuse me. Gall was under certain obligations.
5. [70]
6. Helena. No. He did it because I wanted it. Tell them, Doctor Gall—how many years ago did I ask you to—?
7. Dr. Gall. I did it on my own responsibility.
8. Helena. Don’t believe him. I asked him to give the Robots souls.
9. Domin. This has nothing to do with the soul.
10. Helena. That’s what he said. He said that he could change only a physiological—a physiological—
11. Hallemeier. (From up at window) A physiological correlate?
12. Helena. Yes. But it meant so much to me that he should do even that.
13. Domin. Why?
14. Helena. I thought that if they were more like us they would understand us better. That they couldn’t hate us if they were only a little more human.

Domin. Nobody can hate man more than man.

Helena. Oh, don’t speak like that, Harry. It was so terrible, this cruel strangeness between us and them. That’s why I asked Gall to change the Robots. I swear to you that he didn’t want to.

Domin. But he did it.

Helena. Because I asked him.

Dr. Gall. I did it for myself as an experiment. (Up to window.)

Helena. No, Doctor Gall! I know you wouldn’t refuse me.

Domin. Why?

Helena. You know, Harry.

Domin. Yes, because he’s in love with you—like all of them. (Fabry up to window. Pause. Domin takes her in his arms.)

Hallemeier. Good God, they’re sprouting up out of the earth. Why, perhaps these very walls will change into Robots.

Busman. (Rises; crosses to Gall) Gall, when did you actually start these tricks of yours?