Metropolis | Page 8

to repeat the vain blow of the scythe.
At last the white-red light went out. A voice ceased.
Then the white-green light went out, too.
Silence.
The hands of those writing stopped and, for the space of a moment, they sat as though
paralysed, relaxed, exhausted. Then Joh Fredersen's voice said with a dry gentleness:
"Thank you, to-morrow."
And without looking round:
"What do you want, my boy?"
The seven strangers quitted the now silent room. Freder crossed to his father, whose

glance was sweeping the lists of captured number-drops. Freder's eyes clung to the blue
metal plate near his father's right hand.
"How did you know it was I?" he asked, softly.
Joh Fredersen did not look up at him. Although his face had gained an expression of
patience and pride at the first question which his son put to him he had lost none of his
alertness. He glanced at the clock. His fingers glided over the flexible keyboard.
Soundlessly were orders flashed out to waiting men.
"The door opened. Nobody was announced. Nobody comes to me unannounced. Only my
son."
A light below glass-a question. Joh Fredersen extinguished the light. The first secretary
entered and crossed over to the great Master of Metropolis.
"You were right. It was a mistake. It has been rectified," he reported, expressionlessly.
"Thank you." Not a look. Not a gesture. "The G- bank has been notified to pay you your
salary. Good evening."
The young man stood motionless. Three, four, five, six seconds flicked off the gigantic
time-piece. Two empty eyes burnt in the chalky face of the young man, impressing their
brand of fear upon Freder's vision.
One of Joh Fredersen's shoulders made a leisurely movement.
"Good evening," said the young man, in a strangled tone.
He went.
"Why did you dismiss him, father?" the son asked.
"I have no use for him," said Joh Fredersen, still not having looked at his son.
"Why not, father?"
"I have no use for people who start when one speaks to them," said the Master over
Metropolis.
"Perhaps he felt ill... perhaps he is worrying about somebody who is dear to him."
"Possibly. Perhaps too, he was still under the effects of the too long night in Yoshiwara.
Freder, avoid assuming people to be good, innocent and victimized just because they
suffer. He who suffers has sinned, against himself and against others."
"You do not suffer, father?"
"No."

"You are quite free from sin?"
"The time of sin and suffering lies behind me, Freder."
"And if this man, now... I have never seen such a thing... but I believe that men resolved
to end their lives go out of a room as he did..."
"Perhaps."
"And suppose you were to hear, to-morrow, that he were dead... that would leave you
untouched...?" "Yes."
Freder was silent.
His father's hand slipped over a lever, and pressed it down. The white lamps in all the
rooms surrounding the brain-pan of the New Tower of Babel went out. The Master over
Metropolis had informed the circular world around him that he did not wish to be
disturbed without urgent cause.
"I cannot tolerate it," he continued, "when a man, working upon Metropolis, at my right
hand, in common with me, denies the only great advantage he possesses above the
machine."
"And what is that, father?"
"To take delight in work," said the Master over Metropolis. Freder's hand glided over his
hair, then rested on its glorious fairness. He opened his lips, as though he wanted to say
something; but he remained silent.
"Do you suppose," Joh Fredersen went on, "that I need my secretaries' pencils to check
American stock-exchange reports? The index tables of Rotwang's trans-ocean trumpets
are a hundred times more reliable and swift than clerk's brains and hands. But, by the
accuracy of the machine I can measure the accuracy of the men, by the breath of the
machine, the lungs of the men who compete with her."
"And the man you just dismissed, and who is doomed (for to be dismissed by you, father,
means going down!... Down!... Down!...) he lost his breath, didn't he?" "Yes."
"Because he was a man and not a machine..." "Because he denied his humanity before the
machine." Freder raised his head and his deeply troubled eyes. "I cannot follow you now,
father," he said, as if in pain. The expression of patience on Joh Fredersen's face
deepened.
"The man," he said quietly, "was my first secretary! The salary he drew was eight times
as large as that of the last.
That was synonymous with the obligation to perform eight times as much. To me. Not to
himself. To-morrow the fifth secretary will be in his place. In a week he will have

rendered four of the others superfluous. I have use for