Orwell's Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

ability of any kind, least of all technical.
    Blair let out the water and disgustedly removed the clot of human hair that hadblocked up the pipe. There was a dreary logic to it all. A decaying pipe, clotted by a decaying human scalp. And with human minds rotting all around, no one knew how to fix anything any more. Nothing worked, nothing was properly maintained.
    Except the telescreens. There must have been a time when science and technology had developed at a prodigious speed to createdevices as intricate as these. The electric power might be off—had been off all afternoon, in fact—but the telescreens were still on. What powered them? No one could answer even a question as simple as that any more. Hardly anyone understood anything scientific;engineers worked with the constant knowledge that an error in calculation might take them toprison or the scaffold. Few of the Police Patrol helicopters, once used so widely forsnooping into people’s windows, could get off the ground. But somehow . . . somehow the Ministry of Love still functioned, as it always had. It was a curious thing: the giant machine beneath the Ministry kept on working perfectly, in the midst of such universal decay
    All the more curious because the system was maintained by the likes of Vaughan Wilkes. The Party despised anyone of a truly scientific bent. Some people did still know how to use a spanner or a screwdriver—occasionally Blair would see someone at the office with oily hands, who had just done somesimple job on a printer. But that was about as much as the authorities could tolerate. The Party attracted people of the opposite temperament, small fat men, a breed of uninquisitive snoops, always watching and listening but quite incapable of real thought. It attracted people who simply swallowed everything. What they swallowed left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigestedthrough the body of a bird. Science was knowledge. The Party’s strength was ignorance.
    Blair took his leave of Mrs. Wilkes and made for the door. Back in the flat, he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down in the alcove again. The music from the screen had stopped. Instead, a clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress which had just been anchored between Iceland andthe Faroe Islands.
    Blair picked up Smith’s diary again. He meant to explore it further, but the feel of the book in his hand reminded him of the market. He remembered again the noise and bustle of the morning, the florid, fat faces of the older women, the great bellies of the men under their coarse shirts and aprons. Even the smells returned, the stink of the proles’ cigarettes, the reek of fish from a stall nearby, and the whiff of coffee, real, roasting coffee, drifting from some other corner of the market.
    He had stumbled away from the razor-blade man, sick with disappointment,stuffing the brown packet into his pocket unthinkingly. The proles shouted and shoved their way around him, and he went where he was pushed, overwhelmed by the loudness of their voices and their sheer dense, smelly humanity.
    â€œCheer up, ducks!” a woman had said, smiling at him brightly, and he cringed at the sight of her brown teeth and garish red lips.
    â€œOut of me way, there!” bellowed another voice in his ear, and a hulking young fellow strode by with a great box on his shoulder. Blair struggled out of the main stream of traffic, and stared around him. He found a still spot where a board fence met the protruding wall of a house.
    Beside him was a steel pillar, dominating the market, but ignored by the proles. He glanced up, then immediately made his face blank. A telescreen was mounted at the top of the pillar. He brought his hand up to his face, and half turned away. It was then that he had seen him, the man they called the phreak. He was wearing an old, tattered tweed