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Title: The Messiah of the Cylinder
Author: Rousseau, Victor
Language: English
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THE MESSIAH OF THE CYLINDER
[Illustration:
I put my feet inside and squeezed down to the bottom
[_Page 28_]
]
[Illustration:
The Messiah
of the
Cylinder
by
Victor Rousseau
Illustrated by
Joseph Clement Coll
]
CHICAGO
A.C. McCLURG & CO.
1917
Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1917
Published October, 1917
_Copyrighted in Great Britain_
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian._
W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Over the Coffee Cups 1
II The Great Experiment 16
III In the Cellar 30
IV The Road to London 41
V London’s Welcome 53
VI The Strangers’ House 66
VII Hidden Things 79
VIII How the World Was Made Over 89
IX The Book 102
X The Domed Building 108
XI The Goddess of the Temple 122
XII The Lords of Misrule 137
XIII The Palace of Palms 151
XIV The House on the Wall 164
XV The Airscouts’ Fortress 174
XVI The Messiah’s Annunciation 186
XVII The Chapel Underground 198
XVIII Sanson 214
XIX The Story of the Cylinders 225
XX The Sweep of the Net 237
XXI Amaranth 247
XXII Esther 261
XXIII The Heart of the People 271
XXIV Lembken 280
XXV The Coming of the Cross 292
XXVI The Admiral of the Air 302
XXVII The New Order 312
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
I put my feet inside and squeezed down to the bottom _Frontispiece_
I made my difficult way toward the stairs 34
I glanced from one to another, and met hard, mirthless
eyes, and mouths twisted in sneering mockery 50
“Woe to you, accursed city!” he screamed, “Woe to you in
the day of judgment! Woe to your whites and harlots
when the judgment comes!” 150
It pulled me through the window-gap and I swung far out
above the Airscouts’ Fortress 172
A man near me leaped up and craned his neck, looking
into the gloom 242
A tall man with a black beard and a curved sword sheath
that clanked on the stones. I recognized in him
Mehemet, the Turkish commander 244
Sanson’s indomitable will flamed out. “I will not
drink!” he cried, and flung the cup to the floor 258
The giant leaped out before his followers. “Where is
Lembken?” he roared. “Where are the men?” 286
Upon the walls the Guard were swarming toward the
defenders. Out of their midst the Ray artillery
belched 300
The giant jaws upon our aircraft gaped. I saw steel
teeth within them 308
The Messiah of the Cylinder
CHAPTER I
OVER THE COFFEE CUPS
If I recall the conversation of that evening so minutely as to appear
tedious, I must plead that this was the last occasion on which I saw Sir
Spofforth alive. In such a case, one naturally remembers incidents and
recalls words that otherwise might have been forgotten; besides, here
were the two opposed opinions of life, as old as Christianity,
confronting each other starkly. And, as will be seen, the test was to
come in such manner as only one of us could have imagined.
I picture old Sir Spofforth as on that evening: courteous, restrained,
yet with the heat of conviction burning in his measured phrases; and
Esther listening with quaint seriousness, turning from her father to
Lazaroff and back, and sometimes to me, as each of us spoke. Outside, in
the moonlight, the shadow of the Institute lay black across the garden
of Sir Spofforth’s house. The dining-room was fragrant with the scent of
the tea-roses that grew beneath the windows.
The Biological Institute was less than five years old, but the London
smoke, which drifted beyond Croydon, already had darkened the bright-red
bricks to a tolerable terra cotta. The ivy had grown a good way up the
walls. The Institute was accommodating itself to the landscape, as
English buildings had the knack of doing. Lazaroff and I had been there
under Sir Spofforth since the foundation, and there never had been any
others upon the staff, the Institute being organized for specialized
work of narrow scope, though of immense perspective.
It was devoted to private research into the nature of life, in the
application of the Mendelian law to vertebrates. The millionaire who had
endowed it for this purpose and then died opportunely, had not had time
to hamper us with restrictions. Next to endowing us, his death was,
perhaps, the most imaginative thing that he had ever accomplished. The
Government concerned itself only about our vivisection certificates. But
our animal experimentation was too innocuous for these to be much more
than a safeguard. Carrel’s investigations in New York, a year or two
before, had shown the world that cell and tissue can not only survive
the extinction of the general vital quantity, but, under proper
conditions, proliferate indefinitely. We were investigating tissue life,
and our proceedings were quite innocuous. It will be seen that we
already had gotten away from Mendel, though we did breed Belgian hares,
whose disappearance always caused Esther distress, and we made fanciful
annotations inside ruled margins about “agoutis” and “allelomorphs.”
I am conscious now that we worked constantly under a sense of
constraint; there was an unnecessary secrecy in all our plans and
actions. Why? I think, when I look back, that it was not because of what
we were doing, but rather of what it might become necessary some day to
do. The work was so near to sacrilege—I mean, we viewed the animal
structure as a mechanism rather than as a temple. That, of course, was
then the way of all biologists; but that, I think, was the cause of our
rather furtive methods. We were hot on the trail of the mystery of life,
and never knew upon what intimacies we might stumble. We sought to
discover how and where consciousness is born out of unconscious tissue
vitality. Lazaroff had the intuition of genius, and his inductions were
amazing. Still, that problem baffled him.
“Pennell,” I hear him say, “at a certain period of growth, when millions
of cells, working cooperatively, have grouped themselves in certain
patterns, completing the design, consciousness comes into play. Why? Is
it a by-product, the creak that accompanies the wheel? But Nature
produces nothing in vain. Then why should we know that we exist? Why?”
Lazaroff was a Prussian Pole, I believe, though he spoke half a dozen
languages fluently. Keen and fanatical, daring, inflexible, he seemed to
me the sort of man who would welcome the chance to proclaim a Holy War
for Science and die in the front rank. He had the strange old German
faith that was called monism, and his hope for the human race was as
strong as his contempt for the man of our day.
“The race is all, Pennell,” I hear him say again. “We of this age, who
pride ourselves on our accomplishments, are only emerging from the dawn
of civilization. We are still encumbered with all the ghostly fears that
obsessed our ancestors of the Stone Age. But others will build the
Temple of Truth upon the foundations that we are rearing. Oh, if I could
have been born a hundred years ahead! For the change is coming fast,
Pennell!”
And, when I professed to doubt the nearness of that change: “If your
frontal area varied by only five centimeters, Pennell, you would
believe. That is your tragedy, to fall short of the human norm by five
centimeters of missing forehead.”
I can see his well-proportioned figure, and the mane of black hair
thrown back; the flashing eyes. Animated by religious impulse, Lazaroff
would have gone to the stake as unconcernedly as he would certainly have
burned others. He had invented a system of craniometry by which he
professed to discover the mentality of his subject, and I was his first.
Certainly the conditions were ideal for our work. We were both young
men, enthusiasts; and Sir Spofforth Moore, our chief, was nearing
eighty. The Trustees had picked him for the post because of his great
name in the medical world. He was an ideal chief. He interfered with us
no more than the Trustees did. He asked for no results. The Institute
existed only for patient research. Yes, the millionaire had certainly
displayed imagination for a millionaire, and it was fortunate that he
died before his hobby, whose inception came to him, I believe, from
reading sensational newspaper articles, grew into an obsession.
The Trustees refused to accept Sir Spofforth’s resignation when he
became infirm. He lent the Institute dignity and prestige. I doubt
whether he knew much of Mendelism, or had followed the work of the past
five years. He knew little of what we were doing, and initialed our
vouchers without ever demurring. Of course he tried to keep in touch
with us, and I will confess that our routine work was mainly a cover for
the daring plan that Lazaroff had, bit by bit, outlined to me.
“You see, Pennell,” he explained in self-justification, “the work must
be done. And where are there such opportunities as here? Science cannot
be bound by the provisions of a dead man’s deed. It is not likely that
Sir Spofforth would object, either, but the Trustees might have
intelligence enough to pick up the idea from the quarterly reports if we
were entirely frank, and a biologist with imagination is called a
charlatan. And we must work quickly, while we have this chance. When Sir
Spofforth dies the Trustees will probably pick some fussy little
busybody who will want to poke his nose into everything and take
personal charge. Then—what of our experiment?”
The idea aroused me to as much enthusiasm as Lazaroff. And yet there was
disappointment in the knowledge that we should never know the results of
it.
In brief, Lazaroff’s scheme was this: If animal tissues, removed from
the entire organism, can exist in a condition of suspended vitality for
an indefinite time, at a temperature suited to them in conditions which
forbid germ life to flourish, why not the living animal? Lazaroff had
selected three monkeys from among our stock for the experiment. They
were to be sealed each in a vacuum cylinder of special design, and left
for a century.
“The more I think about the plan, the more enthusiastic I become,
Pennell,” Lazaroff cried. “If the unconscious cell life survives
indefinitely, why not the entire organism plus consciousness?”
“Much may happen in a hundred years, Lazaroff,” I answered.
“True, Pennell. But they will never find the vault. Even now, before it
is sealed, it would not be looked for, built as it is into the cellar
wall beneath the freezing-plant. It was to this end, you know, that I
brought down workmen from London, instead of employing local talent.
Well—we shall leave papers. Earthquakes and revolutions may happen
overhead, but a hundred years hence, when the papers are opened, a
search will be made. Our traveling simians will be found by a very
different world, I assure you, Pennell!”
He had the light of an enthusiast in his eyes, and his mood aroused my
own imagination.
“What use is that, Lazaroff?” I cried. “We shall not know the results of
our experiment. And what message can monkeys carry to that world
concerning ours? If monkeys, why not men?”
He looked at me fixedly, smiling ever so little, and I perceived that he
had drawn the expression of that thought out of the depths of my own
mind by his strong will. Now he nodded in approbation.
“Pennell—” he began, with hesitation, “do you want to know why I myself
do not—?” He stopped. “I am almost ashamed to tell you what it is that
makes me wish to live out my life among my contemporaries,” he
continued. “How strong the primal instincts are in all of us, Arnold!
Nature, with her blind, but perfectly directed will, warring on mind,
and mind rising slowly to dominate her, armed, as she is, with her
dreadful arsenal of a thousand superstitions, instincts, terrors. It is
a fearful battle, Arnold, and many of us fall by the way.”
He turned aside abruptly, as if he regretted the half-confidence. I
thought I knew what he meant, and I was stirred too.
We dined that night with Sir Spofforth and Esther in their new house
within a stone’s throw of the Institute. Esther was the only child; her
mother had died during her infancy. We four had been intimates during
the whole five years of the Institute’s existence; strangely alone, we
four, in the busy Surrey town. The memory of that last night is the most
poignant that remains to me. How far away it seems, and how long ago! If
I could have known then that our companionship was ended!
The argument to which I have referred began after dinner, over our
coffee. It was our usual hour for disputations, but they had never been
so keen, nor Lazaroff so outspoken. Sir Spofforth was a man of the old
school of thought, religious, tolerant, and withal more disquieted than
he himself was aware, by the dominant materialism of the younger men;
and Lazaroff had all the tactlessness of his Jena training. There were
rumors of war with Germany, but Sir Spofforth was too old to adjust his
mind immediately to this conception. He grew heated, as always, on the
cynical scheme of the democratic government, dictated by its greed for
power, to force Ulster beneath an alien yoke, upon the loud and stunning
silence of our English pacifists and lovers of oppressed nations where
their sincerity would be best proved. He deplored the new and dangerous
doctrines that were permeating society, the decay of morals, the loss of
reverence and pride in service. Civilization, he said, seemed dying, and
democracy its murderer.
“Dying! It is still struggling in its birth throes!” cried Lazaroff
impetuously. “I grant that the democracy of today has proved its
futility. But there is a new democracy to come. We are enslaved by the
traditions of the past, by a worn-out religious system based upon the
primitive animistic notion of a soul. There is the fatal weakness of our
democracy. Science has never found the smallest trace of a soul; on the
contrary, we know beyond doubt that we live in a mechanistic universe of
absolute determinism.”
I see Sir Spofforth’s tolerant, yet eager look as he answered him.
“I grant you that the soul is not to be found in the dissecting-room,
Herman,” he answered. “I, as you know, have devoted my life to the
empirical investigation of truth, and I do not decry the method. But you
cannot ignore the interior way of analysis, through the one thing we
know most intimately—consciousness.”
“A by-product of matter,” answered Lazaroff contemptuously. “Or, if we
want to be precisely true, the sum and substance of cell consciousness.”
“Well, throw the blame on the cell, then, in the modern fashion,” said
Sir Spofforth, smiling. “I doubt, though, whether you have solved the
one big problem by creating some million smaller ones. On the contrary,
you are postulating a hierarchy of intelligences, quite in the Catholic
fashion. If brain consciousness is not a specialized form of omniscient
consciousness, how does the brainless amoeba find its food and engulf
it, or the vine its supports? If you have robbed us of the abortive hope
of saving the little empire of the brain beyond the change of death—and
I deny even that entirely—some of us have identified consciousness with
a non-material personality functioning through all life and fashioning
it.”
“Vitalism!” scoffed Lazaroff.
I watched Esther’s eager face as she looked from one speaker to the
other. Sir Spofforth seemed more agitated than the situation warranted,
and I saw him glance at his daughter a little nervously before he
answered.
“Herman, I repeat that I have given my life to scientific
investigation,” he replied. “But I have always recognized the validity
of the metaphysical inquiry. I believe Faith and Science have found
their paths convergent. Lodge thinks so, too. Kelvin took that stand.
James, your great psychologist, shifted before he died. Science must
confine her activities within their natural bounds and not seek to play
a pontifical part, or the excesses of the Scholastics will be repeated
in a new and darker age.”
“I cannot agree with you,” cried Lazaroff vehemently. “An age is dawning
when, relieved from their chains, men will look open-eyed into Nature to
learn her secrets. Today civilization is being choked to death by the
effete, the defective, whom a too benign humanitarianism suffers to live
beneath the shelter of a worn-out faith. The fearful menace of a race of
defectives has laid hold of the popular imagination. Soon we shall
follow the lead of progressive America, and forbid them to propagate
their kind. Here any statesman who dared suggest sterilization would be
hounded from office. But England is awakening.
“It will go, that relic of degrading, savage superstition called the
soul, the barbarous legacy of the ages enshrined in a hundred fairy
stories. Science will rule. Man will be free. The logical State, finely
conceived by Wells, without its rudimentary appendixes and fish-gills,
will be the nation of the future. For we are outgrowing childish things.
Man is coming of age. If only I could live to see it! But I was born a
century too soon!”
The expression on Lazaroff’s face at that moment was so singular that I
could not take my eyes away from it.
“It will be a world of physical and mental perfection, too,” he cried.
“Of free men and women, freely mating, separating when the mating
impulse is dead—”
“Yes, he is right, Father,” Esther interposed eagerly. “Whatever else
may come, the hour of woman’s liberation is striking.”
“That hour struck many times in the ancient world, my dear,” her father
answered. “And it brought, not liberation, but slavery.” He turned to
Lazaroff. “You want a world of men and women reared like prize cattle
and governed by laws as mechanistic as your universe,” he said. “Well,
Herman, you have had that world. That was the pre-Christian world. Your
free love, your eugenics has been tried in Rome, in Sparta, in many an
ancient kingdom. And we know what those civilizations were.
“If you eugenists only knew the dreadful crop of dragon’s teeth that you
are scattering today upon the fertile soil of the unthinking mind!
Because we, fortunately, live in the millennial lull of a transitional
age, you think that human nature has changed; that the fury of the
Crusades will never be renewed in fantastic social wars, and the madness
of religious fratricide in the madness of Science become Faith. All the
old evils are lying low, lurking in the minds of men, ready to spring
forth in all their ancient fury when the wise and illogical compromises,
evolved through centuries of experience, have been discarded. I
sometimes think that Holy Russia has man’s future in her charge. For
without Christianity the moral nature of man will be where it has been
in ages past. Social and economic readjustments leave it unchanged.”
“A religion of slaves, of the weak and incompetent,” said Lazaroff
loudly.
“You think, then, that human passions have become emulsified by
education? What a delusion!”
“Unquestionably. Permit me to refer to myself as an example of the crass
materialist. For I do not believe in anything but matter. Matter is
soul, as Hæckel proves. Yet, I am not on that account a man of base
impulses. I do not want to wound, to kill, to steal, to torture—”
“Are you quite sure you know yourself, Herman?”
“But I utterly reject the efficacy of your Christianity, except in this
low order of civilization. It is a dead faith, with its foolish
miracles, its preposterous and unscientific dualism.”
“And I say,” cried Sir Spofforth, rising out of his chair, “that it is
precisely the Christian norm, the unattainable ideal of Christ, working
in the human heart, that has freed civilization from cruelty and shame.
Why, look backward before Christ lived, and forward: don’t you see that
we are actually indwelling in Him, according to His promise? Think of
the Christians burned as living torches in Nero’s time, and read the
writings of contemporary Romans, men of disciplined lives and a
mentality as great as ours. Read Pliny, Tacitus, Seneca; read of the
hopelessness of life when Rome was at her highest, and see if this
stirred them. Picture Marcus Aurelius, the noble Stoic, presiding over
the amphitheater. Study the manners and morals of Athens when her light
burned most brightly. Contrast a thousand years of man’s abasement, and
try to set the Inquisition against that.
“Future ages will say this: that nobody, not one of our statesmen saw
the course that had been set when the civil State was first established.
Never before in history had tribe or nation existed but grew up round
the focus of some god. The churchless State is a body without a soul.
Warnings multiply—in France and in America—but who can read them? When
religion goes, the spirit of the race is dying. It is just the ideal of
Christ, enshrined in the minds of a few leaders of character and trained
conviction, that has kept the world on its slow course of progress. And
nothing else saves us from the unstable tyrannies of ancient days.”
I was so stirred by Sir Spofforth’s eloquence that I clapped my hands
vigorously, although I did not wholly agree with him. Esther was staring
at Lazaroff; she was partly convinced and wanted him to answer her
father. But Lazaroff, ignoring her gaze, scowled at me across the table.
“So you are of the same mind, are you, Pennell?” he asked, not trying to
disguise his sneer. “And you don’t imagine that it is your missing five
centimeters? Well, I hope that you may have your chance to find out for
yourself. I hope you may, indeed.” He nodded and smiled in a rather evil
fashion.
“Well, I must really offer you all an apology,” said Sir Spofforth,
penitently. “Enough of these debatable subjects for a week at least. We
two shall never agree on politics or religion, Herman. Let us go
upstairs.”
CHAPTER II
THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
Since Sir Spofforth was a little infirm, and leaned on my arm to make
his slow ascent of the stairs, we entered the drawing-room a full minute
after the others. The room was empty; Esther and Lazaroff had gone into
the big conservatory that opened out of the south side. I heard the
rustle of the girl’s dress as she moved among the palms, and Lazaroff
speaking earnestly in a low voice.
“Sit down, Arnold,” said Sir Spofforth, subsiding stiffly into his arm
chair. “Thank you, my boy. I feel old age coming swiftly upon me
nowadays. No, I am not self-deceived. It is strange, this sense of the
daily diminution of the physical powers, and not at all unpleasant,
either. It seems familiar, too, as if one had passed through it plenty
of times before. It is something like bedtime, Arnold, but I hope and
believe there will be a tomorrow, for I assure you I have an almost
boyish zest for life, though rather contemplative than energetic for a
while, till I have rested. There is a little forgetfulness of names and
places, but memory seems to become more luminous as it falls back upon
itself. Well, some day you will experience this. You two must carry on
the work of the Institute. Herman is an able fellow, in spite of his
mechanistic notions. But I wonder whether any woman could be happy with
him?”
He watched me rather keenly as he said that.
“There’s only one thing makes me want to live a little longer, Arnold,”
he continued, “and that is Esther’s future. It would be a great
satisfaction to me to see her settled happily before I go. Forgive an
old man’s frankness if I say that sometimes I have almost thought you
two cared for each other.”
“You are quite right in part, sir,” I replied. “I do care for Esther a
good deal.”
“And she, I am sure, has a very warm feeling for you, Arnold. There is
nobody whom I would rather have for Esther’s husband than yourself.”
“Well, sir, the fact is, we are not sure that our views are altogether
harmonious,” I confessed. “I am, as you know, rather sceptical about the
newest views for revolutionizing woman’s status, while Esther—”
“Is a full-fledged suffragist and has exalted notions about the race of
the future. Tush, my boy! Never hold back proposing marriage because of
intellectual differences. The race spirit, sitting up aloft and pulling
the strings, is laughing at you.”
“But, Sir Spofforth, to be candid, it was not I who held back,” I
answered.
“Hum! I see!” he answered, nodding his head. Then, very seriously, “My
boy, I want you to win her. It would embitter my last days to see my
daughter the wife of Herman Lazaroff. I have watched and tried to study
him: it isn’t his materialism, Arnold, it’s his infernal will. He’ll
break everything and everybody that conflicts with it when he wakes up
and knows his powers. Now he doesn’t understand himself at all. He can
see nothing interiorly, as good old Swedenborg would say. I tell you,
Herman Lazaroff, able fellow as he is, and splendid brain, is a machine
of devilish energy, and, unfortunately, fashioned for purely destructive
purposes.”
Like most old men, he had the habit of falling into soliloquy, and
toward the end of his speech his voice dropped, and he spoke rather to
himself than to me. Though I remembered his words afterward, at the time
I regarded his indictment as the prejudice of an octogenarian. He was in
his eightieth year, and there was no doubt his keen mind was failing. I
was searching for a reply when Esther and Lazaroff came back from the
conservatory.
Esther’s face was flushed and she looked utterly miserable. But I was
amazed to see the expression upon Lazaroff’s. He was deathly white, and
his black eyes seemed to gleam with infernal resolution. At that moment
it did occur to me that Sir Spofforth might be wiser in his judgment
than I. Lazaroff came forward quietly and sat down, and I tried to make
the occasion for conversation. But he, seated motionless and abstracted,
seemed hardly to hear me, and rose from his chair after a few moments,
looking toward Esther, who was standing near the conservatory entrance.
Her brown-colored gown gleamed golden in the lamplight.
“Sir Spofforth, Miss Esther is interested in our new freezing-plant,” he
said. “I thought, with your permission, that I would take her to see it
lit up by electricity. You’ll come too, Pennell?”
“Wouldn’t daytime be better, Lazaroff?” I suggested, and I did not know
what was the cause of the vaguely felt distrust that prompted my words.
Certainly I had no fears of any sort, or reason for any. Yet, looking at
Lazaroff’s face, now flushed and somehow sinister, I remembered Sir
Spofforth’s words again.
“Let us go tonight,” said Esther, and it seemed to me that there was a
note of penitence in her voice, as if she wished to make Lazaroff
amends.
She came slowly across the room toward us. She looked at Lazaroff—I
thought remorsefully, and at me with an expression of understanding that
I never had seen in her eyes before. My heart leaped up to meet that
message. But that was the instant signal-flash of souls, and the next
moment I detected in her glance the same sense of foreboding that mine
must have shown her.
It is strange how instantaneously such complexities present themselves
with convincing power. Though the knowledge lay latent in my mind, I am
sure now I was aware that I should never set eyes upon Sir Spofforth, in
life or death, again.
He rose up slowly. “Don’t be long, my dear,” he said to Esther. “I shall
not wait up for you. Good night, Herman. Good night, Arnold.” He passed
the door and began to ascend the stairs. He turned. “Arnold!” he began.
“No, never mind. I will tell you tomorrow.”
He never told me. He was gone, and we three went downstairs, out of the
house, and crossed the garden toward the Institute, whose squat form
blocked the view of the road. Croydon, in the distance, hummed like a
huge dynamo. The Bear dipped slantingly above; the wind was shaking down
the fading petals of the rambler roses. I remember the picture more
vividly than I perceived it then; the intense darkness, the white lights
of the distant town, the yellow lamp glow on the short grass, cut off
squarely by the window-sash and trisected by the window-bars. Lazaroff
led the way, walking a little distance in front of us, toward the annex,
a building just completed, in which was the new freezing-plant, with our
few guinea-pigs, and the monkeys that had been bought recently, out of
our own money, for the great experiment. He drew a key from his pocket
and began fumbling with the lock. Esther stopped in the shadows at my
side.
“He asked me to marry him,” she said. “I told him never—never! That was
the word I used. I used to think that I could care for him, Arnold, but
in that instant I knew—yes, I knew my heart.”
I knew mine too, and I took her in my arms in the shadow of the
Institute. She lifted her mouth to mine. All the while Lazaroff was
fumbling with the lock. Yet I am sure he was aware, by virtue of that
intuition which tells us all vital things.
When he had opened the door he turned a switch, and the interior leaped
into view round twenty points of light that pierced the shadows.
“Come in, Arnold,” he said, turning to me—and I thought there was blood
on his lip. “I will lead, and you and Miss Esther can follow me. Don’t
be alarmed, Miss Esther, if you hear the monkeys screaming. They grow
lonely at night.”
“Poor little things! How dreadful!” Esther said.
“We shall not keep them here very long,” Lazaroff answered in
extenuation. He stooped over a cane chair and picked up a warm shawl.
“You will need to put this about you,” he continued, standing back and
leaving me to adjust it about Esther’s shoulders.
So he had planned to bring her here; his subtle mind had foreseen even
this detail. He left nothing to the unexpected. He lived up to his
principles.
We passed between two silent dynamos. The freezing-plant was already in
operation, but George, the machinist, went off duty at six, after
stopping the dynamos, and the temperature did not rise much during the
night. It was very cold. The moisture on the brick walls had congealed
to a thin film of ice, and a frosted network covered the ammonia pipes.
Lazaroff stopped in front of a large wooden chest, with a glass door.
“In this very ordinary-looking icebox we keep our choicest specimens,”
he said to Esther.
“Don’t open that!” I exclaimed.
He laughed disagreeably. “I had no intention of doing so,” he answered.
“You applauded Sir Spofforth’s mediaeval vitalistic views tonight,
Pennell, and the transition from the dream to the reality might prove
too disturbing for your peace of mind. Dream on, by permission of those
five missing centimeters. It is such an extinguisher of the soul theory
to see parts of the organism flourishing in perfect health, all ready to
work and grow, devoid of consciousness and brain attachments. We have
two-fifths of a guinea-pig’s heart, Miss Esther, that is yearning to
begin its pulsations as soon as it is placed in a suitable medium.”
He passed on. Esther’s fingers gripped my wrist tightly. “What an
abominable man!” she whispered. “Arnold—my dear—to think I didn’t know
my mind until an hour ago! When he asked me, something seemed to strip
the mask from his face and the scales from my eyes. I hate him—but I’m
afraid of him, Arnold.”
I drew her arm through mine and held her hand. Lazaroff preceded us down
a flight of new concrete steps which had just dried. The cellar into
which we descended had been used for storing packing-cases, and we had
always gone down by a short ladder. It was here that the experiment was
to be made. I had been shown nothing of Lazaroff’s preparations.
The cellar had been paved with concrete since my last visit, and I
thought it looked smaller than formerly. As we went down we heard the
monkeys begin to chatter. Lazaroff switched on a light. I saw a cage of
guinea-pigs close at hand. They squealed and scurried among their straw.
Two monkeys, awakened by the light, put their arms about each other and
grimaced at me. A tiny marmoset stretched out its black, human-like arms
between the bars appealingly. It looked very lonely and child-like as it
blinked at us. What a terrific journey into the future Lazaroff, like
some god, planned for that atom of flesh.
He stopped at the end of the cellar. I perceived now that the brick wall
was new; it seemed to be an inner wall, bounding a partition; that was
why the cellar looked smaller. The half-dried mortar clung flabbily to
the interstices.
“Can you find the entrance, Arnold?” asked Lazaroff.
“The entrance?” The light was not strong, to be sure, but still it
seemed impossible that there could be an ingress into that solid wall.
Lazaroff touched a brick, and a large mass swung inward, like a door. In
fact, it was a door, with bricks facing it, the outer edge contiguous
with the outer edge of the fixed rows, so that the deception was
perfect.
“You didn’t tell me that the chamber was completed, Lazaroff!” I
exclaimed in surprise.
“No, Arnold? Well, but I don’t tell you everything,” he answered.
We stepped through the doorway, and Lazaroff switched on a tiny light
within. Now I perceived that we were standing in a long and very narrow
space, with cement-faced walls and roof, making the chamber impervious
to sound and light. It was below the level of the ground, and thus, as
Lazaroff had said, earthquakes might happen above, and it would never be
discovered, not even though the annex were pulled down, unless one
blasted out the foundations.
The sole contents were three large cylinders of metal, looking like
giant thermos bottles. Each was about six feet long—too long for a
monkey, it seemed to me—and had a glass plate in front. Lazaroff drove
his heel against the glass of the nearest cylinder with all his might.
“It is quite unbreakable, you see,” he said. “It will turn a rifle
bullet. ‘Suffragette glass,’ the maker calls it.”
“But what are these for?” asked Esther.
“These, Miss Esther, are to convey three monkeys into the twenty-first
century,” answered Lazaroff. “By instantaneously suspending animation at
a temperature of twenty-five degrees, we hope to maintain the bodily
organism without change until the time for their awakening comes. The
problem is, whether that mysterious by-product of matter called
consciousness will return.”
“How dreadful!” exclaimed Esther, shuddering.
“But the temperature will rise, Lazaroff,” I interposed, “and however
carefully your cylinders are made it is impossible to hope to maintain
the internal heat at only twenty-five degrees during a century.”
“You forget that our monkeys will be sealed in a vacuum,” he answered.
“There is an inner and an outer case of vanadium steel mixed with a
secret composition which will resist even thermite. And even if the
temperature does rise—well, if a homely instance may be allowed—you are
aware that canned beef, as the Americans term it, will remain fresh in
an air-tight tin even in the tropics. That is dead matter, while our
monkeys will be millions of living cells. The vacuum is created by
simply screwing on this cap.”
“But not a perfect vacuum,” I interposed. “That is impossible.”
“Sufficiently near to eliminate the aerobic bacilli which flourish on
oxygen, and the infinitesimal amount of that remaining in the cylinder
is probably absorbed and transmuted by the surface capillaries and
lungs, leaving simply carbon dioxide, neon, crypton, et cetera.”
I examined the cylinder nearest me with interest. A small dial was set
into its cap. Lazaroff anticipated my question.
“That is the most ingenious part of the mechanism,” he explained. “It is
a hundred-year clock, made specially for me by Jurgensen, of Copenhagen,
and, to salve your conscience, paid for, like the cylinders, out of my
private purse. It runs true to within three-tenths of a second. The
alarm can be set to any year, if necessary. A good alarm clock for lazy
people, Miss Esther. This one, you see, I have already set to a hundred
years ahead. This is at sixty-five; I shall set that to a hundred
presently, for we don’t want one of our monkeys to awaken several
generations ahead of his friends. This one is not set. Now, observe, I
turn the hands on the dials. The large figures are years. The smaller
ones are days. Now as soon as the cap is screwed on, the internal vacuum
causes this lever to fall, catching this cam and starting the mechanism.
We have then a bottled monkey in an indestructible shell, for really I
do not know what could make much impression on steel of this thickness,
which is both resistant and malleable, and fireproof too. It is
impossible, in short, to release the inmate before the appointed time,
and, even then, immediate death would ensue.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because resuscitation must be gradual. I base my hopes upon the chance
that the lungs and heart will automatically resume their functions,
being in their most perfect medium. But if air were admitted before the
bodily machine had become, so to say, synchronized, the swarm of
micro-organisms would make short work of our subject. Besides, the hasty
respiration produced by this rush of air would produce immediate death
by its transformation into carbon dioxide. The air must enter under
slight pressure, in minute quantities, during a period of about ten
days. Very well! As the timepiece gradually runs down, the cap slowly
unscrews, and a tiny quantity of filtered air leaks in. It is so
arranged that, at the exact end of the period, the cap flies off, and
the subject awakes.”
“Herman,” said Esther, hurriedly, “I don’t like this. It isn’t right.
And I am sure my father does not know about it.”
“My dear Miss Esther, I assure you that it is a very ordinary scientific
experiment,” Lazaroff answered, laughing. “Come, Arnold,” he added, “why
not get in yourself and try how it feels? You are not afraid?”
“In my clothes?”
“Certainly.”
“Arnold, I don’t want you to get into that thing,” Esther protested.
“Of course, if our friend is afraid that I am going to screw him up for
a century—” began Lazaroff.
“I am not at all afraid,” I returned, a little nettled. “How do I get
in?”
“I’ll have to help you,” Lazaroff answered. “It was not made for a big
man in clothes. Button your coat. Now—put your arms down by your sides.”
He rolled a cylinder upon the floor, and I put my feet inside rather
reluctantly and squeezed down to the bottom. Lazaroff looked at me and
burst into loud laughter.
“Not much room to turn round, is there?” he said, raising the cylinder
with an effort and standing it on its base again.
“Come out, Arnold,” pleaded Esther; and I saw that her face was white
with fear.
But I was quite helpless, and above me I saw Lazaroff, smiling at my
predicament.
“Now if I were going to be so unkind as to send you into the next
century,” he said, “to be the only animist, with a defective skull, in a
world of vile materialism—”
“Please, Herman, for my sake!” Esther implored.
“I should put on the cap,” he said, and fitted it.
He must have touched some mechanism that I had not seen, for instantly
the cap began to whir on the screw. Through the glass face I caught a
last glimpse of Esther’s terrified eyes. The image blurred and vanished
as my breath dimmed the glass and frosted it. I heard the swift jar of
the cap mechanism end in a jarring click. I gasped for air; there was
none. My head swam, my throat was closed; the blackness was pricked into
flecks of fire. I groped for memory through unconsciousness—and ceased.
CHAPTER III
IN THE CELLAR
I have heard patients, emerging from the chloroform swoon, describe how,
before awakening, they had seemed to view themselves lying unconscious
upon their beds, detailing the posture of their motionless bodies and
inert limbs. In this way, now, I seemed to see myself.
I am sure that was no dream of the vague borderland between death and
life. I saw the pallid face, so shrunken that the skin clung to the
edged bones, and the dry hair, the pinched lips and waxen hands. I saw
myself as if from some non-spatial point, and with singular
indifference, except that one fragment of knowledge, detached from my
serene omniscience, troubled me. I had to return within that physical
envelope; and behind me lay dim memories, quite untranslatable, but
ineffably rapturous, which made that projected incarnation an event of
dread.
Vague images of earthly things began to float upward out of the dark, as
it were, symbols of physical life whose meaning remained obscure. I
pictured a spring-board, on which a swimmer stood poised, waiting to
dive into the sea and set the plank behind him quivering, and a large
roll of some material, like a carpet, blocking a cellar door.
Gradually, through an alternation of dreams and blankness, I began to be
aware of the parched and withered body that cloaked me. The point of
consciousness had shrunk within its earthly envelope. Soon it diffused
itself throughout my members. Now I could translate my symbols into
ideas. That coiled-up substance that blocked the door was my tongue,
fallen back into the throat. And the spring-board on which the swimmer
stood—that was my heart, waiting to beat. And unless and until the
swimmer—I—made that plunge into life’s ocean, it could not. Slowly the
need of physical resurrection urged me onward.
A thousand darts were stabbing in my flesh, like purgatorial fire. No
motor nerve had yet awakened, but the capillaries, opening, pricked me
like red-hot needles. Faint memories of the past flashed through my
mind, and, though I recalled no intervening period, I was sensible that
those events had happened infinitely long before.
Suddenly I plunged. I felt as if a sword had pierced my body. I felt the
waters of that living ocean close over my face, and gasped. I breathed.
Simultaneously, with a loud click, the cap of the cylinder flew off, air
rushed in, a stabbing light broke through my closed eyelids; I fainted.
It was, of course, the gradual unscrewing of the cylinder cap as the
mechanism ran down, and the consequent admission of minute quantities of
oxygen, that had begun to restore me. I must have passed several days in
semi-consciousness before the cylinder opened. When the last thread of
the screw was traversed, the inrush of air caused the respiration to
begin.
I was breathing when I became conscious once more, and my heart was
straining in my breast. I got my eyes open. There followed hours of
light-tortured delirium, during which I struggled to regain the motor
powers. With infinite endeavor I placed one hand upon the other and
passed it up the wrist and forearm. The muscles were all gone. The ulna
and radius were perfectly distinguishable, and I could encircle either
with my fingers, after I had managed to flex them. I noticed that my
joints creaked like rusty hinges.
I tried to bend my elbows, and this next grim battle lasted an
incalculable time. Gradually I became aware of some obstacle on each
side of me. Then, for the first time since my awakening, I knew that I
was inside the cylinder. But I did not know that it had fallen upon its
side until it slid forward, and my puny struggles dislodged me and flung
me free into a pool of water. I drew in a deep breath, feeling my lungs
crackle like old parchment, and plunged my face and shoulders beneath
the surface. My skin sucked up the moisture like a sponge, and I
contrived to get a few drops past my swollen tongue. I had just sense
enough and time to turn my face upward before I became unconscious
again.
I must have slept long, for, on my next awakening, the light was
brighter and still more torturing. Memory began to stir. I recalled my
conversation with Sir Spofforth, our journey into the annex, Lazaroff’s
invitation to me to enter the cylinder. He must have shut me in for a
moment by way of a practical joke, and gone away with Esther, persuading
himself and her that I could free myself and would follow. I tried to
call him. But only a croaking gasp came from my lips. I tried again and
again, gradually regaining the power of vocal utterance. But there came
no answer, and each time that I called, the echoing, hoarse susurrus
brought me nearer to the realization of some terror at hand which I did
not dare to face.
I looked about me. Beside me lay the cylinder, almost buried in mud. I
was still within the secret vault, but a part of the brick partition had
fallen inward in such a way as to screen the few visible inches of the
steel case that had housed me, so that nobody would have suspected its
presence in the mud of the little chamber. I remembered that there had
been two more; I looked about me, but there was no sign of them.
Now I began to realize that there had been a considerable change in my
surroundings since I became unconscious. The light which had distressed
me came through a hole in the roof of the adjoining cellar, filtering
thence through the aperture in the broken wall, and was of the dimmest.
In place of the concrete floor there was a swamp of mud, with pools of
water here and there, and the dirt was heaped up in the corners and
against the walls. Moss and splotched fungi grew among the tumbled
bricks, and everywhere were spore stains and microscopic plant growth.
I was bewildered by these signs of dilapidation everywhere. The
guinea-pigs and monkeys were gone; the cellar was empty, save for some
low, rough planks of wood fitted on trestles and set about the floor. On
the wall at the far end hung something that gradually took form as I
strained my aching eyes to a focus.
It was a crucifix. The cellar had become a subterranean chapel. The
cross was hewn coarsely of pine, and the figure that hung upon it
grotesquely carven; yet there was the pathos of wistful, ignorant effort
in the workmanship that bespoke the sincerity of the artist.
[Illustration:
I made my difficult way toward the stairs
]
I made my difficult way upon hands and knees through the gap in the
wall, across the mud floor of the cellar, toward the stairs, resting
several times from weariness before I reached my destination. But when I
arrived at the far end, where the stairs should have been, I received a
shock that totally unnerved me. The stairs were gone. In place of them
was a debris of rubble and broken stones, as firmly set as if workmen
had built it into the wall. The mass must have been there for years,
because, out of the thin soil that had drifted in, a little oak tree
sprang, twisting its spindling stem to rear its crown toward the patch
of daylight.
At last I understood. I had come to realize the fact that my sleep had
been a prolonged one; it might have lasted weeks—even months, I had
thought, as with cataleptics; but an entire century! that idea had been
too incredibly grotesque for consideration. That Sir Spofforth, with
whom, it seemed, I had dined almost yesterday, had gone, ages ago, to
his long home; Lazaroff; Esther, whom I loved; that generations had come
into birth and died ... it seemed too cruel a jest. I wept. I raved and
called for Esther. Surely a hundred years had never passed, turning her
brown hair to gray, lining her gentle face, bringing at last the gift of
death to her, while I lay underground, encased in steel and air!
I cried aloud in terror. I hammered helplessly upon the walls. Again I
called Esther, Lazaroff, George. There was no answer of any kind.
Presently a ray of light quivered through the hole, falling upon the
heap of debris that blocked the stairway. The yellow beam moved onward,
and now it bathed the thin branches of the little twisted tree that, by
the aid of those few minutes of sunlight daily, had ventured into life.
It had grown cunningly sidewise, so as to expose the maximum of wood to
the light. I watched the ray till it went out; I wanted to show the
plant to Lazaroff, to ask him whether the mechanics of heliotropism
could suffice to answer the problem of the tree’s brainless
consciousness; and my chagrin that this whim could not be fulfilled
assumed an absurd significance. It was, in fact, the realization of this
loss of responsiveness to the reality of the situation that constantly
urged me to find some way of escape when I might have relapsed otherwise
into an acquiescence which would have brought insanity and death.
The stairs being gone, I turned my consideration to the cellar roof. To
reach this it would be necessary to drag one of the planks beneath the
hole and scramble up, clinging to the sides with my fingers and bracing
my feet against the wall. This feat was not a difficult one for a normal
man, but for me clearly impossible. I must wait until I became stronger.
It is a strange thing, but I had not associated the need of waiting with
the idea of food until I found the box of biscuit. I stumbled upon the
box by the accident of scratching my wrist against the edge as I crawled
along the wall. I saw the corner projecting from a mound of earth, and,
scraping some of the dirt away, I lifted the pine-wood lid.
Inside the box I found a quantity of biscuit which seemed to have been
baked recently. It was crisp, and too hard for me to break. I dipped a
piece in the stagnant water, and, as I swallowed the first morsels,
became aware of my ravenous hunger.
I can hardly estimate the duration of the imprisonment that followed. It
was of days and nights which succeeded each the other in monotonous
succession, during which, like a hibernating beast, I crouched and
groped within the cellar, dozing and shivering, and gnawing incessantly
at my food. Only those few minutes of sunshine daily saved my reason, I
am convinced now. My evening clothes, which at first had appeared to
have suffered no injury during my century of sleep, had begun to
disintegrate, and hung upon me in tattered fragments. It was a period of
despair, with very little alternating hope. Sometimes I prayed wildly
beneath the crucifix, sometimes, in an access of madness, I cried for
Esther and Lazaroff again. And for whole hours I convinced myself that
this was a dream.
But my strength returned with amazing swiftness. As in the case of a
typhoid convalescent, every particle of food seemed to build up my body.
I must have put on pounds each day. The barrel framework of my ribs
filled out, the muscles showed their old outlines beneath the skin, the
fluid rushed into the joints and restored their suppleness. And daily I
practiced exercises. I managed to drag one of the benches beneath the
hole at last, and, standing on this, tried often to draw myself up; but
on each occasion my struggles only brought down a shower of earth and
stones, and I resigned myself to a period of further waiting, watching
for dawn like a troglodyte, and for the sun like a fire-worshiper.
In the end my escape developed in a manner the least imaginable. It
began with my discovery of a second box in another of the mounds. I
opened it hastily, in the greedy anticipation of finding something more
palatable than biscuit.
Instead of this I found a number of strange batons of wood. They
resembled policemen’s truncheons, but each had a tiny rounded plate of
glass near the head, and there evidently was some sort of mechanism near
the handle, for there was a push-button, fitted with a heavy guard of
brass, so strong that I could not raise it with my fingers. It was
indeed providential that I was unable to do so.
I carried the strange implement beneath the hole in the roof and laid it
on the bench, intending to examine it more carefully as soon as the sun
appeared. Meanwhile, this being the time for my daily exercise, I
mounted the bench and tried to pull myself up. I failed; yet I detected
a considerable improvement in my muscular power, and, becoming
exhausted, I prepared to descend. Inadvertently, but without
anticipating any serious result, I placed my foot against the truncheon
in such a way as to elevate the guard.
I heard it click as it rose into position, and, in setting down my foot
again, depressed the push-button.
The truncheon tipped to the ground, pointing upward. I saw a ray of
blinding light, of intense whiteness tipped with mauve, shoot from the
head, and, with a crash, a shower of stones fell on me, bearing me to
the ground and enveloping me in a cloud of dust.
I must have lain half stunned for some minutes. I was aroused by feeling
the sunlight on my eyelids. I started to my feet. The hole in the roof
was nearly twice the former size, and a heap of fallen stones and pieces
of brick afforded me a perfect stepway. I was scratched by the falling
debris, but happily the explosion, as I deemed it, seemed to have been
in an upward direction.
In a moment I was scrambling up the stones. I slipped and clutched and
struggled; I got my head and shoulders in the air and pulled my body
after me; I trod upon leaves; I looked about me.
I was standing in the midst of what appeared to be an ancient forest of
oak and beech trees, whose bare boughs, covered with snow, shook under a
gray sky above a carpet of withered, snow-spread leaves, and under these
were endless heaps of disintegrating bricks. In vain I looked about me
for the Institute. There was no sign of it, nor of Sir Spofforth’s
house. Nowhere was anything to be seen but the same forest growth, the
dead leaves scurrying before the chill wind, and the vast brick piles. I
had emerged from the cellar into a trackless wilderness.
And now at last my final doubt, which had bred hope, was gone. I ran
through the forest, on and on, shouting like a madman and beating my
breast, stumbling over the brick heaps that lay everywhere, plunging
through thorny undergrowth, heedless of any course. I must have been
running for ten minutes when my strength failed me, and I collapsed
beside an ancient road, overgrown with shrubs and saplings, yet
discernible in its course between the tall trees that bordered it.
Before me, far away through the vista line, I saw a white bank against
the gray horizon.
I flung myself upon my face and prayed, with all my will, to die.
CHAPTER IV
THE ROAD TO LONDON
A shadow swept over me, and, looking up, I saw an airplane gliding
noiselessly above; it stopped, hung poised and motionless, and then
dropped slowly and almost vertically into the road, coming to ground
within a dozen yards of where I lay.
There stepped out a man in a uniform of pale blue, having insewn upon
the breast a piece of white linen, cut to the shape of a swan. He came
toward me with hesitancy, and stood over me, staring at me and at my
clothes with an expression indicative of the greatest bewilderment.
“Where’s your brass, friend?” he inquired after a few moments, speaking
in a high-pitched, monotonous, and rather nasal tone. He rubbed his
smooth-shaven face in thought. “Where’s your brass?” he repeated.
I perceived that he wore about his neck a twisted cord whose ends were
tied through the loop of a brass plate, stamped with letters and
figures.
“For God’s sake tell me what year this is!” I cried.
At the profane expletive, which had been drawn from me by my anguish, he
recoiled in dismay; he seemed less shocked than frightened; he glanced
about him quickly, and then cast a very searching look at me. But next
he began to smile in a half-humorous, kindly way.
“You’re one of the escaped defectives, aren’t you?” he inquired. “You
have nothing to fear from me, friend. We airplane scouts have no love
for the Guard. You can go on your way. But where are you lying up? Are
your friends near?”
“Will you tell me what year this is?” I demanded frantically.
“Yap, certainly,” he answered. “This is Thirty-seven, Cold Solstice less
five.” He shook his head and began staring at me again.
I laughed hysterically. “I don’t know what that jargon means,” I
answered, “but I went to sleep in the vault of the Biological Institute
in the year 1915.”
Perplexity had succeeded alarm. The airscout shook his head again. He
was one of those deliberate, slow-moving men whose resolutions, tardily
made, harden to inflexibility; I recognized the type and found the
individual pleasing. He was a good-looking young fellow of about eight
and twenty, with straight, dark hair and a very frank countenance. He
looked like a sailor, and the rolling, open collar, which fell back,
sailor fashion, revealed a muscular throat, tanned, like his face, to
the color of the bricks around us.
“I don’t know what to make of you,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t want
to trap you, but you were better off in the art factories. I don’t know
what to do with you.”
I sprang to my feet, and for an instant I ceased to realize my
predicament. “Will you take me to my friends in London?” I asked. In my
mind was the memory of a university acquaintance who lived in St. John’s
Wood. But then the swift remembrance came back to me, and I hung my head
and groaned.
“Back to London!” exclaimed the airscout. “But you’ll be put to the
leather vats. Doctor Sanson is furious, and the police are searching for
you everywhere. You’re crazed! What’s the sense of running away from
painting pictures and going back to sweat ten years over the hides?”
“Take me to London!” I implored. “I have nowhere to go. Perhaps—I don’t
know—”
I was hoping wildly that somebody whom I had known might still survive.
But by this time I was beginning to pull myself together. I resolved to
wait for his decision.
“Now, friend,” he said, as if he had made up his mind, “your top got
stuffed making those factory pictures, as was very natural. Now, I think
you had better go back to London, and I’ll take you there, since your
friends have shaken you. But of course it must be the police station. I
can’t risk my own liberty. Once more, are you sure you want to go? If
not, I haven’t seen you.”
“I’ll go,” I answered indifferently.
“Yap? Step in, then!”
I took my seat beside him. It will seem incredible, but I had never
ridden in an airplane before. In my other days only a few had seen these
craft. It was hardly more than six years since the Wrights had flown
when my long sleep began. In spite of my oppression of mind, or perhaps
because the days of horror that I had spent in the cellar produced the
unavoidable reaction, I began to feel the exhilaration of the flight as
we ascended to a height of perhaps a thousand feet and drove northward.
The sensation was that of sitting still and seeing the trees flit by
beneath me, and would have been pleasing but for the intense cold, which
pierced through my rags and numbed me. I perceived that the airplane was
under perfect control, and could be stayed without falling. After a
while I realized that there was no motor.
My companion saw me looking at the machine. “Improved solar type,” he
said, patting her caressingly. “Better than a bird, isn’t she?” He
turned toward me. “You’ve been sleeping in the wood these three days?”
he asked. “And find the factories best? I don’t score you for that.
Where’s the rest of you? Five, weren’t there? Why didn’t you keep
together? Where’s that bishop of yours?”
But, seeing that he could elicit no comprehensible answer to his
repeated questions—in truth, I did not know how to reply—he relapsed
into an equal silence. And now the white bank that I had seen on the
horizon began to assume crenellations, which in turn became buildings of
immense height and symmetrical aspect. And I forgot my situation in
admiration and amazement at the panorama that began to unfold beneath
us.
The county of Surrey appeared to be an extensive forest, ending about a
waste of dismantled brick, the suburbs of old London, which extended on
each side as far as I could see. Then the modern town began: an outer
ring of what I took to be enormous factories and storage warehouses; an
inner ring, no doubt, of residences; and then the nucleus, the most
splendid city that the imagination could have devised.
London seemed to be smaller than the metropolis of a century ago. I
could see from the height of Hampstead, in the north, to the region of
Dulwich, and from Woolwich to Acton, all clearly defined, like a great
map unrolled beneath me, though I could recognize none of the old
landmarks, save the unchanging Thames. The interior city was laid out in
squares, huge buildings, sometimes enclosing interior courts, occupying
the blocks formed by the parallel and intersecting streets. As we drove
inward from the outskirts, the buildings became higher, but always
uniformly so, the city thus presenting the aspect of a succession of
gigantic steps, until the summit, the square mile comprising the heart,
was reached.
This consisted of an array of enormous edifices, with fronts perfectly
plain, and evidently constructed of brick-faced steel-work, but all
glistening a dazzling white, which, even at that height, made my eyes
water, and rising uniformly some forty-five or fifty stories. The flat
roofs were occupied by gardens or what I took to be gymnasia, sheltered
beneath tarpaulins. I saw innumerable airplanes at rest, suspended high
above the streets, while others flitted here and there above the roofs,
and a whole fleet lay, as if moored, some distance away, apparently over
the center of the city, above a singular building, which awakened
associations in my mind, though I was unable to name it.
It had a round dome, being, in fact, the only domed building that I
could see. This covered only the central portion of the enormous
architectural mass, and appeared to float in the air above an aerial
garden, laid out with walks that radiated from a flat building, which
filled the space between the floating dome and the roof beneath it. I
surmised that this must be the new House of Parliament. The entire mass
was surrounded by a double wall, with a roofed space of perhaps ninety
feet from rear to front, castellated. Mounted on this were what appeared
to be a number of large, conical-shaped implements, of great size. Long,
graceful bridges on arches connected this wall with the domed building;
and wall and building glistened from top to base so brilliantly that the
glow seared my eyes like sunlight.
As we were now flying at a low altitude, I turned my attention to the
streets, which appeared like canyons far beneath. Along these swarmed a
multitude of travelers, dressed in two colors only, white and blue, the
latter vastly predominating. I could see no vehicles, and I imagined,
what proved to be correct, that the streets themselves were moving. Most
of those journeying seemed content to lean back against the railings,
the lowest bars of which projected, forming a continuous seat, and rest.
Nearly all the streets were traveling in the same direction, those that
reversed this movement being small and comparatively empty. From the
presence of what seemed to be iron stanchions, set along the edges of
these moving ways, I surmised that they were roofed with crystal.
Along the front of the buildings ran single tracks, connecting at
regular intervals with the streets beneath by means of elevators, which
shot up and down continuously, bearing their freight. These tracks were
placed above each other at ten-story intervals, so that there were three
or four rows of these aerial streets, ranging from the ground to the
upper portions of the buildings, all filled with travelers. The
buildings, each comprising an entire block, the elevated streets, with
their graceful bridges flung forth across the chasms, the absence of any
of the old poverty and dirt, and that huge gathering of human beings,
going about their business in so systematic a fashion, fascinated me,
and even aroused my enthusiasm.
Signs evidently indicated to persons approaching in airships the purpose
of each building and landing-stage, but these were in characters
entirely unintelligible to me.
My companion stayed the vessel in the air and tapped me on the arm. I
started, to see him regarding me with the same expression of humorous
perplexity.
“I must put you off here, friend,” he said. “I think I have done the
best I could for you. You would have died in the forest, while
here—well, there’s a chance for you. And it’s better to go to the
leather vats for a few years than to die and go nowhere. I’ll know you
if we meet again. What’s your name?”
“Arnold Pennell,” I answered, clasping the hand that he held out to me.
He almost jumped. “Don’t tell that to the Council, unless you want the
Rest Cure,” he said.
“Don’t tell them my name?”
“Not both names, friend. You know what I mean. If you don’t know—” He
shrugged his shoulders. “Mine’s Jones,” he said. “My father’s was
Williams. My grandfather’s was Jones again. They say it’s one of our
oldest names—common in the days before civilization. Now down we go.”
The airplane swooped down and came to rest upon the roof immediately
beneath us. On this I saw a number of men, apparently practicing
gymnastic exercises; and hardly were we at a standstill when two of them
came running up to us. They were clad in blue uniforms resembling that
of the airscout, but instead of a swan each wore a shield-shaped piece
of linen upon his back and breast.
“What’s this?” they demanded in a breath, pointing at me and bursting
into bellowing laughter.
“One of your defectives,” answered Jones. “I found him in the forest
while patrolling.”
They rushed at me and dragged me from the airplane, swiftly patting me
about the body, as if in search of weapons. Satisfied that I was
unarmed, they turned to the airscout.
“You’ll share the reward!” they cried, again simultaneously.
“Keep it!” replied the airscout tartly, and rose into the air, waving me
a cordial good-bye.
They rushed me across the roof through a crowd of other men, similarly
clad, down an elevator, and into the street. They dragged me upon one of
the moving platforms and conveyed me a short distance, descending at the
entrance to one of the innumerable shining buildings, over which was
inscribed something in the same undecipherable letters.
But, quickly as we had gone, the report of my arrest seemed to have
preceded us, for our way was blocked by a vast and constantly increasing
crowd, that came running up with lively and shameless curiosity, and,
attracted by my rags, I suppose, pressed closely about us and uttered
hoots of laughter. I heard the word “defective” bandied from mouth to
mouth.
I looked at these people attentively. There were both men and women
present, all wearing clothing of the same pale blue color, which seemed
to be prescribed, although the cut of each garment was to some extent
individual. In effect, the men wore sack suits of a coarsely woven
woolen material, with short, loose trousers fastened with laces about
the ankles, and square-cut coats having wide lapels extending to a
broad, turned-back collar that fell over the shoulders like a sailor’s,
revealing a neckpiece of blue linen. The women’s short skirts reached to
the tops of their high boots, and the fashion seemed to run to large
buttons and loose sleeves. They wore no hats. Upon the breast, near the
shoulder, each person wore a small linen badge, indicative of his
occupation.
[Illustration:
I glanced from one to another, and met hard, mirthless eyes, and
mouths twisted in sneering mockery
]
What disconcerted me was the shrewd, mocking smile upon each face. I
glanced from one to another, seeking to find something of the same
friendly interest that animated me, and met hard, mirthless eyes, and
mouths twisted in sneering mockery.
Another thing that startled and almost terrified me was the absence of a
certain conventionality of restraint that had ruled everybody in that
other world of mine. For instance, among those gibing at me was a
gray-bearded man who danced before me like a small urchin. Another made
an expressive pantomime of death. A girl stuck out her tongue at me. I
remembered the plaint, that never since the glorious age of Greece had
the code of public morality coincided with that privately held. This we
all knew; the statesman in parliament was not on bowing terms with the
same statesman in the smoking-room. Some said it was Christianity,
others respectability that bound us in this organic hypocrisy; but now
the two codes seemed to have coalesced. A grandfather grimaced at me; a
gray-haired woman put out her foot to trip me; if there had been stones
I think they would have flung them at me. But suddenly a youngish lad in
white appeared, and the crowd, hastening to make a path for him, shrank
back with servile demeanor. Taking advantage of this, my captors,
linking their arms in mine, made a rush forward, scattering the mob
right and left, and bore me through a swinging door into a small
rotunda, in which a number of other policemen were seated with their
blue-clad prisoners.
CHAPTER V
LONDON’S WELCOME
Inside the rotunda a burly man in blue, with the white shield on his
breast, was standing on guard in front of a second swinging door, above
which was painted something in the same strange characters. A few words
to him from my captors apparently secured us precedence, for he stared
at me curiously, opened the door, and bawled to some person inside. I
was pushed into a large courtroom. It contained no seats, however, for
spectators or witnesses. The only occupants were the magistrate and his
clerk, and a group of policemen who lounged at one end of the room,
joking among themselves. The clerk, a little, obsequious man in blue,
was seated at a desk immediately opposite that of his chief, a pompous,
surly fellow in white, wearing about his shoulders a lusterless black
cape, which seemed to be a truncation of the old legal gown. Placing me
on a platform near the clerk’s desk, the two policemen who were in
charge of me stepped forward and began an explanation in low tones which
was not meant to meet my ears, and did not.
The magistrate started nervously, and, putting his hand beneath his
desk, pulled up a truncheon similar to those that I had seen in the
cellar. He handled this nervously during our interview.
“Well, what have you to say, you filthy defective?” he shouted at me,
when the police had ended.
I heard a suppressed chuckle behind me, and then became aware that all
the police had gathered about me, convulsed with amusement at my rags.
“Stand back, you swine!” bellowed the magistrate. “Give me the Escaped
Defectives Book,” he added, to his clerk.
The clerk handed up to him a small publication which I could see
contained numerous miniature photographs in color. He began studying it,
looking up at me from time to time. Occasionally, at his nod, one of the
policemen would seize my face and push it into profile. At last the
magistrate thrust the book away petulantly.
“This isn’t one of them,” he announced to the policemen. “Who are you?”
he continued, glaring at me. “You’re not on the defectives’ list. Where
do you come from? Tell the truth or I’ll commit you to the leathers. Why
are you in masquerade? Where’s your brass? Your print? Your number? Your
district?”
The clerk wagged his middle finger at me and, drawing a printed form
from a pile, pushed it toward me. I took it, but I could make nothing of
it, for it was in the same unknown characters.
“I can only read the old-fashioned alphabet,” I said.
The room echoed with the universal laughter. The magistrate almost
jumped out of his chair.
“What!” he yelled. “You’re lying! You know you are. You have an accent.
You’re from another province. What’s your game?”
The clerk, ignoring his superior’s outburst, pulled back the form, and,
taking in his hand a sort of fountain pen, began to fill it in with a
black fluid that dried the instant it touched the paper.
“Number, district, province, city, print, and brass?” he inquired. He
paused and looked up at me. “Brach or dolicoph? Whorl, loop, or median?
Facial, cephalic, and color indexes? Your Sanson test? Your Binet
rating?”
But, since I made no attempt to answer these utterly baffling questions,
the clerk ceased to ply me with them and looked up at the magistrate for
instructions. The magistrate, who had been leaning forward, watching me
attentively, now smiled as if he had suddenly grasped the situation.
“I’ll tell you what you are,” he said, shaking his finger at me. “You’re
a Spanish spy, masquerading as a defective in order to get into the
workshops and corrupt the defectives there.”
“Now I should call him a Slav,” said the clerk complacently. “He’s a
brach, you see, Boss. And that makes his offense a capital one,” he
added complacently.
“Put him up for the Council, then,” growled the magistrate. “Standardize
him,” he added to the policemen, “and commit him to the Strangers’ House
pending the Council’s ascription.”
My captors hurried me away. In the street a large crowd, which had
assembled to see me emerge, greeted me with noisy hooting. And, looking
again into these hard faces, I began to realize that some portentous
change had come over mankind since my long sleep, whose nature I did not
understand; but, whatever it was, it had not made men better.
However, the moving platform quickly carried us away, and the mob
dwindled, so that when we reached our destination only a nucleus
remained. This, however, followed me persistently, gathering to itself
other idlers, who ran beside me, peering up into my face, and fingering
my tattered clothes, and pulling at the tails of my coat in
half-infantile and half-simian curiosity.
The building which we entered contained a single large room on the
ground floor, with desks ranged around the walls. Behind each desk a
clerk in blue was seated, either contemplating the scene before him or
listening disdainfully to applications. I was taken to a desk near the
door. One of the policemen now left me, and the other, who had
contrived, without my knowledge, to possess himself of the gold watch
that had been in my pocket for the last century, placed it upon the desk
before the clerk, who came back slowly and resentfully from a fit of
abstraction.
“Committed stranger?” he inquired.
“Yap,” said the policeman. “He had this.”
The clerk stared at the watch, raised it, and let it fall on its face.
The glass splintered, and he jumped in his seat as if a pistol had been
discharged.
“What is it?” he screamed.
“It looks like an antique chronometer,” said the policeman, examining it
curiously. “See the twelve hours on the dial.”
“Well, they aren’t listed,” the clerk grumbled.
“You lie, you thief,” retorted the policeman.
With some reluctance, but without resentment, the clerk opened a large
book in a paper cover, closely printed in fine hieroglyphics
interspersed with figures. He turned from place to place until he found
what he was trying not to find.
“Museum chronometers, first century B.C. Listed at two hektones,” he
mumbled, and began unlocking a drawer.
“B. C.!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean?”
He paused in the act of pulling the drawer out and glared at me.
“I said ‘museum chronometer of the first century before civilization,’
you fool!” he snarled. “That’s what it is, and that’s what it’s listed
at. Here!”
Extracting some metal counters from the drawer, which he closed with a
bang, he thrust them toward me.
“What am I to do with these?” I asked.
The policeman winked at him, and I caught the word “Spain.” The clerk’s
amazement changed to malignant mirth.
“The value of your chronometer,” he screamed in my ear, as if I were
deaf.
“But I don’t intend to sell it,” I retorted.
A shriek of laughter at my side apprised me that the crowd had gathered
about me. The space about the desk was packed with the same sneering,
mirthless faces, and fifty hands were raised in mimicry or
gesticulation.
“What a barbarian!” murmured a young woman with a typewriter badge on
her shoulder.
The clerk looked at her and winked maliciously. Then he addressed me
again.
“If you don’t understand now, you will before the Council ends ascribing
you,” he said. “However, I’ll explain. Your museum chronometer, not
being an object of necessity, is the property of this Province. This is
a civilized country, and you can’t have hoard-property here, whatever
you can do in Spain. Strangers’ effects are bought by the Province at
their listed value, and your chronometer is listed at two hundred labor
units, or ones—in other words, if you have ever heard of the metric
system, two hektones.”
“Ah, give him the Rest Cure!” said the girl with the typewriter badge,
swinging about and stalking away contemptuously.
I picked up the metal counters and began examining them. They were
crudely made, and without milled edges. Two of them appeared to be of
aluminum; on one side was an ant in relief, and under it the
inscription,
LABOR COMMON
37
on the other side, in bold letters, were the words,
HALF HEKTONE
FIFTY ONES
There were two smaller pieces, of a yellowish-gray, each stamped,
TWENTY-FIVE ONES
It did not take me more than a moment’s calculation to see that if the
hektone was a hundred units of currency, or labor hours, I had only a
hektone and a half instead of two. I told the clerk of the deficiency.
“Don’t lie! Sign that!” he shouted, pushing an inkpad and printed form
toward me.
“I shall not sign, and I shall bring this theft to the attention
of—Doctor Sanson,” I said, suddenly recollecting the name.
It was a chance shot, but its effect was extraordinary. The mob, which
had begun to jostle me, suddenly scurried away in the greatest
confusion. The clerk turned white; he picked up the money with trembling
fingers.
“Why, that is so!” he exclaimed. “It was a mistake, Boss. I didn’t mean
it. I’m sorry. I—I thought you were a blue,” he muttered, looking up at
me beseechingly. And he returned me a whole half-hektone too much.
I tossed this back to him and returned no answer. I was looking about
for a pen with which to sign the receipt when the policeman took hold of
my thumb in a comically obsequious manner and pressed the inkpad against
it. So I made my mark upon the paper.
In the corridor outside he turned toward me humbly.
“Are you a trapper, Boss?” he asked.
“A what?”
“A switch. A wipe. I mean a council watcher.”
“A spy, you mean?” I asked. “Certainly not.”
He shook his head in perplexity, and seemed uncertain whether to believe
me or not. “He thought you were,” he said. “That was an old list he
used. You should have had more. Of course I couldn’t get in bad with him
by telling you, but you’d have had nothing if I hadn’t stood up for you.
Isn’t that worth something, Boss?”
I offered him one of the smaller pieces, rather in fear of giving
offense, but he pocketed it at once, and then, with a new aggressiveness
toward the gathering crowd, took me upstairs to the Strangers’ Bureau.
Here I was stripped and examined by two physicians, and photographed in
three positions; my finger prints were taken, and the three indexes.
Then a dapper little clerk in blue passed a tape measure in several ways
about my head and beckoned to me mysteriously to come to his desk.
“It’s too bad,” he exclaimed.
“What is too bad?” I inquired.
“The difference is five centimeters, and—well, I’m afraid you’re a
brach. I’d like to help you out, but—well, if I can—”
The meaning of the word suddenly revealed itself to me. “You mean my
head is brachycephalic?” I asked.
“There is, unfortunately, no doubt,” he answered, and, coming closer
under the pretense of measuring me again, began to whisper. “You know,
the measure is flexible,” he said, glancing furtively about him. “The
revising clerk passes all my measurements without referring back to the
doctors. There’s an understanding between us. Now I could get you into
the dolicoph class—”
“The longheads?”
“Yes,” he murmured, looking at me with an expression of mutual
understanding.
“But what advantage would that be to me?” I inquired.
“They say,” he whispered, “that the Council is going to penalize the
brachs several points. It is Doctor Sanson’s new theory, you know, that
the brachs are more defective than the dolicophs. Now I’d risk making
you a dolicoph for—would it be worth a hektone to you?”
I flushed with indignation. “Do you suppose I am going to bribe you—?” I
began loudly.
The clerk leaped back. “This subject is a brach!” he yelled, and gave
the figures to a clerk at the next desk, who made a note on a form and
looked at me with intense disgust.
So I was set down as broad-headed. Then I was made to sit before a Binet
board, containing wooden blocks of various shapes, which had to be set
in corresponding holes within a period timed on a stop-watch. Word
associations followed, a childish game at which I had played during the
course of my medical training; we had regarded this as one of those
transitory fads born in Germany and conveyed to us through the American
medium, which came and went and left no by-products except a little
wasted enthusiasm on the part of our younger men. I accomplished both
tasks easily, and I thought the physicians seemed disappointed.
Finally I received a suit of bluish-gray color, the strangers’ uniform,
I was informed, and a pair of high, soft shoes. A metal badge, stamped
with letters and figures, was hung about my neck by a cord, and I was
turned over to the charge of a blue-clad, grizzled man of shortish
stature, with a kindly look in the eyes that strongly affected me. For I
realized by now that all these persons about me, all whom I had seen,
with whom I had conversed, had lacked something more than good-will;
they gave me the impression of being animated machines, reservoirs of
intense energy, and yet not ... what? I could not determine them.
There was a patient humility about his bearing, and yet, I fancied, a
sort of stubborn power, a consciousness of some secret strength that
radiated from him.
He came up to me after conversing with the doctors, blue-clad men with
white capes about their shoulders, all of whom had eyed me curiously
during their speech with him.
“I am the District Strangers’ Guard,” he said to me. “You are a
foreigner, I understand, and waiting to be ascribed by the Council. It
is not necessary to make any explanation to me. I am the guard, and
nothing more, and it is my task to provide you with food and lodging in
the Strangers’ House until you are sent for, S6 1845.”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked, before I realized that he was addressing
me by the number on the brass badge that hung from my neck.
“My pardon?” he answered, looking at me with a puzzled expression. “That
is an antique word, is it not?”
“I mean, I did not know the significance of these numbers,” I replied.
“Your brass,” he said, still more bewildered. “That is, of course, your
temporary number until the Council assigns you to your proper place in
the community. It means, as you must be aware, Stranger of the Sixth
District. My unofficial name is David. What is yours, friend?”
He almost jumped when I told him, and glanced nervously about him. We
had just passed through the doorway, and he drew me to one side, looking
at me in a most peculiar manner.
“You must know only one name is legal in this Province,” he whispered.
“Surely you will not hazard everything by such bravado. I mean—”
He checked himself and searched my eyes, as if he could not understand
whether my ignorance was assumed or real.
“Arnold,” he said suddenly, as if he had reached a swift and hazardous
decision, “you are to be my private guest. If you are assuming ignorance
for safety, you shall learn that there is nothing to fear from me. And
when you trust me, you shall give me the news of Paul and all our
friends. If you are actually a Spaniard—no, tell me nothing—it is
essential that you should learn what all our inmates know, before you go
to the Council. Doctor Sanson is not tolerant of strangers unless they
learn to conform.... I shall help you in every way that is possible. The
Bureau Head has asked me to watch you carefully. It is a special order
from headquarters. There is some rumor about you ... but it will be all
right in my own apartment.”
I felt too heartbroken more than to thank him briefly. The sense of my
isolation in this new world swept over me with poignant power. David
must have guessed something of my feeling, for he said nothing more. We
halted for a moment at the entrance to the building, and he pulled a
watch from his pocket. I saw that the dial, which was not faced with
glass, and had the hands inset, was divided into ten main sections, each
comprising ten smaller ones.
“Ten hours and seventy-four,” he said. “We dine at one-fifty.
Seventy-six minutes to get home.”
CHAPTER VI
THE STRANGERS’ HOUSE
During my brief journeys through the streets earlier in the day I had
been too conscious of my surprise and perplexity to examine my
surroundings with any concentration of mind. Now, standing on the middle
platform of what seemed to be one of the principal streets and traveled
at a speed of about eight miles an hour, I looked about me with
increasing astonishment. I do not know which attracted my attention
more, the crowds or the buildings. I asked David for information as we
proceeded, stating that I was unable to read the signs, as I was
acquainted only with the old alphabet. Seeing his incredulity, I added:
“When you are willing, I shall be glad to tell you my history, though I
shall hardly hope to be believed. For the present, let me say that I
know nothing at all of your modern civilization.”
“But surely in Russia—” David began, and checked himself. Thereafter he
seemed to admit the possibility that I was not dissembling, and to
consider me as a bona fide traveler from some interior Russian province.
“Our writing is syllabic,” he said. “We have gone the round of the
circle and now make the syllable the unit instead of the letter, as the
Assyrians did, and the Chinese.”
“And what is the purpose of this blue paint on the buildings?” I asked,
shielding my eyes from the dazzling, blue-white luster.
“Blue?” repeated David in surprise.
“There—and there.”
“Why, that is glow, of course,” he answered. “Surely you are not
color-blind, Arnold? Or can it be that in—where you came from they have
only the old seven colors in the spectrum?”
“From red to violet.”
He shook his head and looked at me whimsically. “We have had nine for at
least twenty years,” he said. “Mull, below red, and glow, above violet;
what our ancestors called ultra-violet and believed to be invisible,
though it was staring them in the face everywhere all the time. There
used to be a theory that the color sense has developed with
civilization. Don’t make any reference to that color-blindness of yours,
Arnold,” he continued, after a brief pause.
It occurred to me that he had not explained the choice of this color,
though he had named it.
“Here is the Bureau of Statistics,” he went on, as we traveled past
another of the interminable buildings. “This is the Bureau of Prints and
Indexes; there are more than a thousand million records within. This is
the Bureau of Economics; this of Pedigrees and Relationships; this of
Defective Germ-Plasm; and this is our Sixth District School.”
The streets were scrupulously clean; they occupied only the central part
of the space between the fronts of the buildings, that which would have
been called the pavement formerly, being used as resting and lounging
places.
“Here is our district store,” he added. “Would you like to look inside?”
I assented, and we stepped off the moving portion of the street into an
open space surrounded by telephone funnels, at which small groups of men
and women were listening. As he halted, a loud voice began calling:
“Latest news! Rain is expected. Don’t forget Freedom Day! Muster for
your amusement in Picnic Park, or the Council will make it hot for you!
The escaped defectives all caught and sent to the leathers. A foreign
spy captured this morning after a desperate resistance and now under
guard. The miserable defective has confessed, involving numerous others.
He is a low-class brach and a filthy degenerate. Boss Lembken is on the
job. Praise him!”
“Hurrah!” shouted the mob.
“Come,” said David, plucking me by the sleeve.
It was only then I realized that the reference was to me. I must have
uttered an indignant exclamation, for he drew me away hurriedly.
“Hush! You must keep your tongue guarded in public,” he whispered. “One
can hear at both ends of the telephone.”
“But it is a lie!” I said indignantly. “Who can spread such news as
that, and why?”
I noticed that one or two people were watching me curiously. Then,
glancing up, I was amazed to see my face outlined upon a screen beneath
a hood that formed a dark circle around it. It was an execrable
caricature, designed to arouse hate and contempt; and yet the likeness
was plainly discernible.
Somehow David got me away. “It will be all right,” he kept repeating.
“It doesn’t mean anything. See, here is our store.”
Bewildered, I allowed him to lead me toward the entrance of a large
building, before which a woman sat within a cage of crystal.
“Change pieces!” she cried at intervals, in a high-pitched voice.
“Change pieces or show brasses!”
“We change our money here,” David explained. “Purchases of more than
half a hektone are made on the credit system. Our brasses are
identification checks. The district clearing-house keeps the complete
record of each citizen’s financial status.”
I had expected to see all the products of the world spread out within. I
found, instead, only a single sample of each kind of merchandise, the
goods themselves being stored in warehouses. Seeing an excellent blue
overcoat of fine cheviot, I paid thirty ones for it, and David ordered a
similar coat to be sent to me at the Strangers’ House.
“Watch the street!” he said, as we emerged.
I perceived the passengers scrambling off the moving portion of the
roadway. A moment later the track began to travel in the opposite
direction.
“We reverse our streets according to the stream of travel,” said David.
“The mechanism is controlled by solar power, transmitted from the
Vosges.”
We journeyed for some five and twenty minutes by the new reckoning—what
would have been a quarter of an hour. We changed streets frequently, and
it seemed to me, although I could not be sure of it, that David
purposely selected a roundabout route. At length, we stopped in front of
a large building of the uniform height and style. Upon the front was
sculptured a man in a laborer’s blouse with a protecting hand laid upon
the head of one who cowered before him—presumably the stranger.
“I shall take you in by the basement and internal elevator,” said David,
“so as to give you a glimpse of our traffic system.”
We had passed numbers of subway entrances, with gentle ramps descending
into clean, white-walled passages, along which I had seen an endless
series of trucks proceeding on single rails. Beneath the Strangers’
House I saw the termination of a branch line; and, as we stood watching,
a porter in blue seized a small truck which had detached itself from the
rail, and, with a slight push, sent it spinning into a goods elevator.
“Gyroscopic action,” explained David. “Above this is the House kitchen,
connecting with the district sub-kitchen by means of a two-foot tube.”
And every now and then he would stop in the midst of his explanations
and cast that searching look at me, as if to inquire whether I could be
ignorant of all this.
We stepped into an elevator, David pressed a button, and the cage shot
up to the top story. Opposite us was a door with a bell at the side, as
in the old-fashioned apartment. David rang, and the door opened,
revealing a girl about eighteen years of age, who looked at me with
parted lips and an expression that was unmistakably fear.
“Arnold, this is my daughter Elizabeth,” said David, kissing her.
“Arnold is under our special care,” he continued. “He comes from a very
distant city outside the Federation, and is waiting to be ascribed. He
knows no more about civilization than if he had just awakened after a
sleep of a century.”
The girl shot a quick, dubious, searching glance at me. I met it
steadily, and she turned her eyes away. Again she looked at me, and my
gaze apparently reassured her, for she gave me her hand in a very
unaffected manner, and we went through a living-room into a simply
furnished dining-room. It much resembled one of my own century, except
that the furniture was in good taste; the curves and spirals and volutes
of our machine-carved chairs and tables were gone; the wall was of a
plain gray, without paper or pictures; the carpet was plain, and the
absence of curls and twists even on the handles of the cutlery was
extraordinarily restful. Between the two rooms was a small enclosed
space containing a telephone funnel with knobs and levers disposed about
it, and a dumb-waiter. The table linen was of a peculiar lusterless
black. Looking out of the window, I saw that the uppermost street ran
past it, and occasionally the hatless head of a pedestrian appeared.
“Anything new to you, Arnold?” inquired my host, as we took our places
at the table.
“Principally the color of the table linen,” I answered. “Black seems
strange to me.”
“Black! Do you call that black?” asked David in surprise. “Why, that is
mull, and not at all like black to me. For my part I prefer the
old-fashioned white, but two years ago, when the plans to dress us in
mull instead of blue were rescinded, the Wool and Linen bosses had
accumulated a large quantity of mull goods in the warehouses on
speculation, the loss of which would have hurt them badly—so we were
asked to use mull-colored table linen.”
“Do you like chicken?” inquired Elizabeth. “It is of last year’s
freezing, and I got it as a special favor, for the supply for 34–5 is
not yet exhausted, and they are supposed not to draw on the new cellars.
If father had told me that he was going to bring home a guest—”
“But I didn’t know it myself,” said David. “Of course, I could have
telephoned, but—”
“Never do that!” exclaimed Elizabeth impetuously; and I saw the look of
fear upon her face again.
A bell sounded, the shaft door clicked open, and a tray lay in the
orifice. Elizabeth carried it to the table, and a well-cooked meal was
smoking before us.
“You may be surprised to know that this tea was made two miles away,”
said David, “in the district sub-kitchen. It came to us at seventy miles
an hour. Before we had the gyroscopic attachments, fluids were
occasionally spilled.”
“And how do you clean the apartment?” I asked Elizabeth.
“In the old-fashioned way,” she answered, smiling. “I am an expert with
the solar vacuum and duster.”
“I believe our friend is accustomed to the existence of a servant
class,” said David, laughing at me.
But there was a subdued melancholy about him, as well as about
Elizabeth. The sense of it, and the constraint it bred, grew on me
momentarily. After dinner the dishes were sent down the shaft, and David
handed me a typical twentieth-century cigar.
“In a sense, this is one of our compromises,” he said, as we sat down in
the adjoining room. “Doctor Sanson wants to forbid the use of nicotine
as impairing the productive efficiency of the race. But the Council
thinks the narcotic has a restraining influence—”
He broke off as Elizabeth looked at him rather significantly.
“I understand, then, that the old tendencies toward the illogical and
the unnecessary have not been entirely conquered?” I asked.
“No, no!” said David emphatically. “Private apartments, for instance,
instead of the phalanstery. And then the tabloid floods! The human
stomach still demands bulk as well as nutriment. Still, it is claimed
that with education—”
“Do you remember the legend of the man who educated his ass to live on a
single straw a day?” asked Elizabeth.
We laughed; but I was still conscious of the restraint.
“Then, of course, people are too lazy, when hungry, to weigh their food
and calculate it in calories,” David continued. “Doctor Sanson is
fighting the abuse of protein. He claims that its decrease will set free
more workers to apply themselves to more productive labor instead of
food-raising, and will also lengthen the productive life of the
individual. But we are still protein gluttons.”
“The chicken—” interposed Elizabeth.
It seemed to me that the girl had some serious purpose in her
interruptions. I was beginning to realize that she still feared me; I
wondered why.
“And you may have observed that the eternal feminine has baffled Doctor
Sanson’s desire to abolish the skirt,” continued David. “In fact, human
nature seems to flow on in much the same old way beneath the surface of
civilization. I am inclined to think that our economic changes have not
seriously amended it.”
“Father, if you are going to talk like a heretic, I shall leave you!”
exclaimed Elizabeth, rising.
She left the room, and David followed her. Presently he came back alone.
“Arnold,” he began, seating himself and knocking the ashes from his
cigar, “my daughter is troubled about my frankness with you. You know
there is a period of necessary restraint just now, owing to the final
adjustment being incomplete. Some of the oldest men remember the former
régime. The Council is strict, and—in short, Arnold, I am putting my own
safety in your hands because I trust you, and also because—” He broke
off in confusion. “You need to know so much before you face the
Council,” he resumed. “Arnold, some time I will receive your confidence,
and then—well, this misunderstanding will be cleared away.”
I shook his hand warmly. “I suppose I am not permitted to leave the
apartment?” I asked.
“By all means. Go where you will. Your gray uniform shows you to be an
unascribed stranger, and every policeman has your photograph in his
thumb-book by now. Only, remember that you must decline to enter into
conversation with anyone who may accost you. Please remember this point
scrupulously, for your own sake. But, Arnold, do you know, I think you
can spend the rest of your day very profitably in learning to read.”
“Learn in a day?”
“To some extent. There are only thirty-five principal characters, and
all the sub-characters are readily discernible as coming under these
heads. I believe Elizabeth has an old spelling-book, and she will be
delighted to instruct you.”
The idea aroused his enthusiasm, and a few minutes later Elizabeth had
begun to give me my lesson. By supper time I had already mastered the
elements, and we continued to study in the evening under the soft solar
light, which, issuing from small, shaded, glass-covered apertures in the
walls, made the room as bright as day.
Soon after dinner the dumb-waiter shaft clicked open and a package lay
there. Inside was my overcoat.
At least, it was meant for me. But instead of the fine cheviot, I
discovered a wretched mixture of cotton and shoddy. I was indignant.
David advised me to do nothing. “A stranger sometimes gets poor
service,” he explained.
“It is a deliberate fraud, then?” I demanded.
He placed his hand restrainingly on my arm. “Is it worth while
quarreling with the Wool Boss before you go to the Council?” he asked.
He went on to explain that each industry was autonomous, and had its own
boss, elected annually by the workers, in theory, but for life in
practice. The Wool Boss, like the other bosses, received one per cent
upon the value of every article made by his department.
“At present our social organization is a little upset,” he explained
again. “When the Russian troubles are ended we shall resume our normal
life. There will be more spaciousness, more freedom ... liberty will be
enlarged....”
We went to bed early. I was grateful to discover that the old-fashioned
bed had not been sent into limbo. But then the bed, of course, antedates
history.
David apologized for mentioning bedtime.
“Nine is the curfew hour,” he explained. “At nine-half the solar light
goes out. It is only a temporary restriction until—” Again he checked
himself.
I mused so long that the solar light, which flooded the bedroom within
and made London a vivid picture in a black frame without, was suddenly
turned off, leaving me to grope my way into bed in the darkness. I lay
thinking of Esther, who had died so long ago, and I knew that when the
first bewilderment of the new life had passed away my loss would seem as
unbearable as before. I was as helpless as a savage in this fantastic
city. It seemed incredible that I had been groping in the cellar that
same morning.
I thought of Elizabeth and the terrified look in her eyes; I heard a
city clock strike ten, and, an hour later, one, and it was long before I
remembered that ten was midnight; my last resolve was to try to forget
my former life and fling myself with all my power into the new. At last
I fell asleep, to be awakened by the sun shining into my eyes along a
canyon that stretched between the high buildings as far as I could see.
CHAPTER VII
HIDDEN THINGS
It was not until a week had passed that the first stimulus of the
amazing life into which I had been plunged abated, leaving me a prey to
melancholy reflections. The memory of Esther, which I had tried so hard
to put away, began to recur incessantly. I felt shut off from humanity,
a survival from a generation whose memory, even, had become legendary.
They seemed to understand my feelings, although they could not know
their cause, and tried to keep me from brooding. By tacit understanding
no references were made to my past. They accepted me as a stranger, and
yet there was the same latent suspicion on Elizabeth’s part. And I could
not help seeing that some heavy grief or apprehension hung over them.
And I felt that I was an intruder upon it. At night I would hear David
pacing his room for hours, and sometimes a groan would break from his
lips.
He gave me to understand that the summons to appear before the Council
might be delayed for days or weeks. It was always presented
unexpectedly, and always peremptory, he said. During the week following
my arrival at the Strangers’ House I never went out alone. Whenever I
made the suggestion, David either volunteered to accompany me or found
some excuse to detain me. In particular, he requested me to stay within
doors during the four hours when he was at the Bureau, in the morning.
Finally I became almost exasperated. “You have told me that I am free,”
I protested.
“And you are free, Arnold,” he answered. “It is for your own sake that I
make this request of you. There are hidden things, shadows against the
sunlight of our civilization, and transitory, I hope, which you would
hardly understand. You must learn them by degrees, Arnold. To me they
have seemed necessary in this transitional epoch; but they are hard,
Arnold; hard to endure.”
And he sighed in so melancholy a fashion that I suspected one of those
shadows rested on his own home.
Yes, there were hidden things, and I got no nearer the heart of them,
although I had hints as to their nature. For instance, there was the
Animal Vivisection Bureau. I wondered why David spoke of the Animal
Vivisection Bureau, and not of the Vivisection Bureau.
I never had realized before how large a share animals played in our
lives. The horse, I was told, had not existed in the British Province
for a generation. Cats disappeared when the rodent virus was invented,
and were now only to be found in a wild state in the woods. There seemed
to be no dogs, and I did not ask David about them.
There was no social life at all. The other inmates of the Strangers’
House were lodged on the different floors and ate in common, living
under the watchful care of the deputies, who occasionally came to David
for advice or instructions. Our only neighbor on the top floor was a
little woman with two children who had come from a northern city and
intended to return as soon as passes for leaving London, which had been
stopped, were again issued. Inspectors from the Children’s Bureau
visited her nearly every day, always leaving her in a condition of
terror, as I inferred from a remark dropped by Elizabeth. Her husband
had dropped dead in the street two months before. David told me that
these sudden deaths were common, and were considered a triumph for
medical science.
And yet I knew that David had visitors after the solar lights went out.
My room was at the end of the apartment near the street; but I heard
strangers tiptoe along the passage, and whispered colloquies in David’s
room. My host would appear abstracted the next morning, and watch me
very thoughtfully. At such times I felt more than ever an intruder in
the household.
Yes, it was a world Lazaroff would have appreciated, could he have had
his wish fulfilled, to be born into it. Would his viewpoint have
changed, I wondered? It was a world from which all the amenities and
charities of life seemed to have been banished. I tried to lead up to
that subject in my talks with David, but he appeared unable to
understand me.
Was it an atheistic world? I had not ventured to question David about
this. But I knew that there was no Sunday upon the calendar, and that
the tenth day was the civil holiday. That day had fallen already, and
endless crowds had marched through the streets, to the music of bands,
to play-places in waste spots outside London. The Council supervised the
games, which were compulsory. Of all the paternal regulations of the
Council, this seemed to me the most arbitrary and oppressive.
“We have to keep the people under discipline,” David explained. “Once
they were allowed to wander at will; but they tore up the trees and
flowers and strewed paper and broken bottles everywhere.”
That was true. I remembered the public fields of my own age. I recalled
how one writer had seen in them a complete indictment of democracy
itself.
I was amazed and alarmed increasingly by what I saw in my journeys about
the town with David: the large brass tags that gave each person his
label, the occupation badges, the insolence of the whites, passing with
bodyguards of blues who elbowed all out of their way. And once there
came a frantic scramble to make a passage for a tall, black-bearded man
in a dark-blue uniform, who passed in the midst of his retinue with
clanking sword.
I had noticed these men in uniform about the streets. They strode like
conquerors amid a servile populace. I learned that the tall man was
Mehemet, a Turk in command of an international force, the bodyguard of
Sanson, and devoted to him.
Perhaps it was as well that, before my enlightenment came, I completed a
cursory survey of the new civilization. At my request David took me to
one of the public schools. I was astonished to discover that no history
prior to 1945 was taught, and no geography. The greater part of the
curriculum was devoted to scientific and economic subjects. So great had
been the progress in knowledge that, on opening some of the text-books,
I discovered that I was quite unable to understand them.
I learned that Oxford and Cambridge had disappeared, with the old public
schools, in 1945, after a revolution, the anger of the people having
been kindled against them on account of their moral influence and the
distinctive stamp of character that they produced. To prevent tutors of
personality from imparting to their pupils the elements of humane
tradition, David told me, the text-books were so written as to eliminate
entirely the personal element in instruction, a reform that the prophet
Wells had urged rather furiously, and perhaps invidiously, in his own
century.
“The Council shapes each citizen’s education from the cradle to the
workshop,” said David. “It is very anxious to secure precision of
knowledge. For instance, it is a criminal offense for mothers to teach
their children fairy stories. It is the duty of the inspectors to
question children rigorously, in order to ascertain whether they are
acquainted with any of this unscientific, heretical folk-lore.”
“Which has doubtless all perished,” I said.
“On the contrary,” he answered, “an immense quantity of it has come down
to us, practically unchanged, through all the revolutions of the past
century, and not only that but new tales have arisen. The authorities
are at their wits’ end to discover who is responsible for the existence
of this masonic secret among the younger generation.”
From the school we went to the workshop. On the way home we stopped at
one of the open-air moving picture shows, and saw two or three
dramatized versions of public affairs. Ingenious mechanism synchronized
the movements of the figures upon the screen, which were in stereoscopic
relief, with speeches made through the telephone funnels. These, David
said, took the place of newspapers when the socialized State destroyed
the printed news-sheet by the simple process of killing the advertising.
We also looked inside the district art gallery. None of the pictures
antedated the year 1978, and each illustrated some phase of the new
civilization in an educational way. I must not forget to say that later
I found a novel in David’s home, which Elizabeth must have read in her
schoolgirl days. The scene was laid in the early twentieth century, and
the story dealt with the adventures of a young man of property,
depicting the romance of his care-free life. A moral at the end, and
copious footnotes, inserted by the Council’s order, drew attention to
the improvement in the human lot since that barbarous period.
So, day by day, I waited, and my eyes were opened more and more to my
environment. Daily I expected the Council summons that did not come, and
daily the constraint grew. I was thinking of suggesting to David that I
should be located among the other strangers in place of continuing to
accept his hospitality; but before I could decide to approach him an
incident occurred which revealed to me the existence of conditions
which, unintelligible though they were, made me decide to approach David
again with a view to a mutual understanding.
David was at the Strangers’ Bureau and would not return for at least two
hours. Under Elizabeth’s instruction I had made swift progress in
understanding the combinations of syllables that make up the written
language. I had just begun, in fact, to master the ingenious Brebœuf
system, whereby the simpler of the syllables have been combined to form
the written speech of four of the five Provinces. David had told me that
the Council’s inability to enforce the invented language Spekezi as the
universal tongue, had been one of the severest shocks that the new
civilization had received. Then came Brebœuf with his universal syllabic
symbols.
Now, if the written language were merely pictorial, it could have been
used to represent all the languages on earth. But since it is syllabic,
and therefore depicts words instead of ideas, it was a supreme
achievement to have invented a written language adapted to four tongues.
The Brebœuf system is based, of course, upon the common Latin and
Sanskrit elements. Brebœuf, who was one of the last of the classical
scholars, was rewarded, as is well known, by being freed from the
defectives’ art factories in his old age, and pensioned.
However, it was not my purpose to touch upon this matter. My interest
was beginning to flag, and I was paying more attention to Elizabeth than
to the lesson. I was trying to trace in her features some elusive
resemblance to Esther. I was wondering whether I could ever become a
normal citizen of this strange world. Suddenly the telephone funnel
shouted Elizabeth’s name.
She sprang from her chair and rushed into her bedroom, which was next to
the external elevator shaft. Her expression and gestures alarmed me so
greatly that I ran after her. When I reached her door I saw her standing
in the middle of the room, deathly white, and clenched in her hand was a
knife, which she was aiming at her heart.
I ran into the room and wrested the weapon from her grasp. She fell upon
the floor unconscious. All the while this was happening the funnel was
shouting stridently, “Elizabeth!” “Elizabeth!” together with the string
of letters and figures that completed her nomenclature.
I went to the funnel and lied to the voice. “She is not here,” I said.
“Then tell her, when she returns, that the price of the dress will be
five units more, on account of the new wool schedule,” the voice
responded.
Such was the half-comic ending of what had nearly been a tragedy. I
revived the girl and explained the matter to her, but for some time she
remained in a condition approaching collapse. When she began to regain
consciousness she wept hysterically.
It was only the fear of causing David anxiety that enabled her to resume
her accustomed demeanor by the time he returned. She begged me to make
no mention of the matter to him, and I agreed on condition that she
would never use the knife except in the last extremity. But I was
working in the dark, for, though she consented to the bargain, when I
begged her to tell me what it was she feared, she remained mute, shaking
her head and closing her mouth obstinately.
“Will you not trust me, Elizabeth?” I pleaded.
Then, to my surprise, she looked accusingly at me. “Will you trust me?”
she asked. “Will you not trust my father and me? Haven’t you news of
Paul?” Her expression was indescribably beseeching.
“We don’t know who you are,” she went on rapidly. “My father trusts
everybody. But I know your assumed ignorance is impossible. You don’t
trust us, Arnold, and you are playing with us. You have been here three
weeks and the Council has not sent for you. If you were what you claim
to be you would know your danger. Trust us, and, if you are what we
hoped you were, tell me about Paul. Is he safe? Is he well?”
“I never heard of him,” I stammered. “I—”
She looked at me with reproach and glided quietly away. I heard her sigh
mournfully. And still I groped in a fog of mystery and could learn
nothing.
CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE WORLD WAS MADE OVER
David possessed a small library of books, nearly all of a scientific
nature. Among them, however, I found two histories, and, in spite of
their obvious bias and violent character, I was enabled to understand
what had happened in the world since my long sleep began.
I learned of the great war that had begun a few days after I entered the
cylinder, when Russia and the democracies of Europe stamped out German
autocracy and laid the foundations of democratic government. I learned
how this democratic spirit burst out in 1945, when all the experiences
of the social order, accumulated by mankind since the dawn of history
were jettisoned, with all their lessons and all their warnings.
It was extraordinary to me that none of us had realized the changes
which had been impending. Warnings there had been, as there always are.
They were the decay of parliamentary government in all lands, the
breaking down of tradition and authority in every phase; only there was
nobody to heed them. Then, previously, whether by acknowledgment or in
spite of denial, society had always been founded on servile labor. The
harnessing of the tides, and, later, the control of solar power, threw
millions out of employment, millions of hungry men with time to think
and nothing to reverence.
The book said that the movement could have been stayed by wise measures.
But it was doubtful, for a frenzy for change was spreading like wildfire
over the civilized world. Now only Spain, restored Russia, and
monarchical and prosperous South America resisted it, among Occidental
nations.
I read that in 1945 democracy initiated the millennium by bursting all
the dykes. Millions were slain. London, Paris, Berlin, New York,
Chicago, Winnipeg were burned to ashes, with scores of other cities.
Peace was restored fifteen years later by a few military chiefs who came
into power owing to the universal exhaustion. At that time whole
populations were turning cannibal. All organized industries had been
destroyed. The path for reconstruction was clear.
Men called that the period of reaction, but it might have been the
period of reconciliation. Both sides failed in the ensuing years; the
mob, because it lacked idealism; the leaders, because they failed to
recognize the unassailable truth in the old Socialist propaganda, that
the era of machinery and of an inexhaustible supply of industrial power
had made the systematization of production inevitable. With half the
people workless, it was ridiculous that they should suffer and starve
because they could not buy the goods rotting in the stuffed warehouses.
The system did not fall because it was ridiculous, however, but because
it had become unworkable. Production had to be for use, not profit. When
profit went, rent had to go, and interest, that leech of society, so
long forbidden by the Catholic Church, and no doubt the direst result of
the Reformation. Failure to realize this need dragged down the old order
in 1978. It fell forever, and with it died all hope of a civilization
built on that of the past.
It was then that the writings of the great Wells, since called the
Prophet, were discovered and proved the inspiration of the new order. In
place of the illogical instinct of nations there was to be a New
Republic, based on pure reason, and shining with facets of unanswerable
facts. The world was to forget its past as thoroughly as it had
forgotten the Stone Age. The new revolution was led by Sanson, I
gathered, and swiftly conquered. There ensued two years of worse anarchy
than before. India was lost to Britain, and became a democracy,
convulsed with civil strife. Our savage wards reverted to barbarism.
Australia fell to China. All the world’s archives were destroyed.
Picture galleries went up in flames; statues were smashed to pieces;
monuments were blasted. The Parthenon perished, the British Museum, the
Louvre; east of the Bosphorus there remained hardly a memorial of the
past, except St. Peter’s and Cologne Cathedral. But, at the end of the
two years, the five Provinces of Britain, France, Skandogermania, Italy,
and Hungary found themselves the nucleus of the future Federation of
Man, under a pure democracy.
Here, amid fulsome plaudits, the tale ended; but I went to David to ask
him for some more particulars. He had seen me reading, and I think he
had been prepared for my question.
“I shall be glad to explain anything, Arnold,” he said.
“I have been reading about the new Federation,” I said. “England is,
then, no longer independent? And the United States? And Russia and
Spain?”
He smiled. “Of course, if you do not know these things, Arnold—” he
began. “But surely you are at least aware of the history of your own
country?”
“I know nothing,” I answered.
“Well, then, the United States is an independent nation. We have made
proposals for a union, but the bosses have not yet come to terms. Spain
stamped out her revolution. We were on the point of compelling her to
come in when she discovered the secret of the Glow Ray, which would have
made the effort unremunerative.”
“What is this Ray?”
“It is a combustion by old light, stored solar energy being transmitted
for that and all other power purposes from the great solar works on the
Vosges Mountains. Its invention made the old warfare obsolete. Our
small-arms are miniature Ray mirrors, charged with a single unit; our
big ordnance is supplied from the Vosges by cable connection. The Ray
destroys everything that it encounters, not protected by the glow paint
which you may have observed on the fronts of our buildings. This is the
last and greatest of the coal tar discoveries, and its manufacture is
based upon the exact relationship between the disintegrating glow rays
and an exact color having a fixed number of vibrations.
“Russia,” he continued, “crushed her revolution, too, as she had crushed
earlier anarchistic outbreaks. But though she has discovered the glow
paint, she has not the Ray. The Federation is consequently at war with
her, for her antiquated ideals make her a menace to civilization.
Besides, we need her wheat-fields. We have an army of ten thousand men,
two from each of the five Provinces, and have cooped up the young Tsar,
Alexander, with his army of a million men, in Tula. His surrender is
expected daily.”
“Ten thousand against a million?”
“Yes, with the Ray. However, even ten thousand were difficult to secure,
though the pay of each soldier is five units hourly. Twelve men have
been killed already. That is the weak point in our civilization, Arnold.
In spite of daily lectures by the most gifted orators that the Council
can obtain, showing that the desire for immortality is an inherited
perversion, and that we are immortal anyway, in the germ-plasm, man is
unwilling to die. In time the Council hopes, by reason and education, to
rid men of this ancient terror.”
“What is the ethical basis of our government?” I asked.
“Science, which alone survived the destruction of knowledge. The
scientific books were saved from the twelve million tons of printed
paper, chiefly from the British Museum shelves, that burned for twelve
days upon Blackheath; and from the contents of the Bibliotheque
Nationale that heated Paris during an entire month.
“A commission quickly synthesized the discoveries of earlier
investigators. World councils of scientists laid down the dogmas of
universal knowledge in the Vienna Creed, which was adopted without
dissentients after those who objected had been put to death. The famous
quarrel whether Force is of the same substance as Matter, or a like
substance, was decided here. The Sames conquered the Similars, by virtue
of a proclamation from Boss Rose.
“We know now that Science has given Nature’s complete and final
revelation to mankind. We tolerate no heresies, no independent judgment.
In vital matters toleration means only a dead faith. The Modernist idea
of criticizing the basic principles of our Science becomes a capital
offense, if preached, because the Boss is himself the repository of all
knowledge, and the pronouncements of Boss Lembken supreme. It is not
that we are bigoted, you understand. It is, indeed, suggested that
Science unfolds like a flower, revealing herself in larger scope to each
generation. But new discoveries can only be adaptations of what is
already known.”
I almost thought that there was irony in his tone; but he met my gaze
steadily, challengingly, as if to say, “If these are not your views,
declare them.”
“One thing I want to know is this,” I said. “The history books make no
mention of the blues and the whites. On what do you base the division of
the State into these two groups of citizens?”
“That is Doctor Sanson’s doing,” he answered. “The blues are the
defectives, the whites the perfect specimens of the race. The whites
alone are admitted to posts of responsibility. But most of them prefer
not to labor, and live in seclusion upon State pensions for the sake of
the race.
“This is considered Doctor Sanson’s crowning achievement for humanity,”
David continued. “Before his advent to power, defectives had been living
among the normal population since the dawn of history unrecognized. We
have now an intricate system of points of deficiency whereby they can be
detected infallibly, based partly upon heredity, partly on measurements,
partly craniometry and the Binet-Sanson tests.
“Doctor Sanson has long been anxious to pass his sterilization measure,
but he has been unable to persuade the Council to face the fierce,
ignorant, popular resentment that it would incur, although this practice
is of respectable antiquity in China and the Mohammedan world, and was
reintroduced to the Occident by progressive America a whole century ago.
Of course, the morons and all below a certain grading are not allowed to
reproduce their kind; but Sanson wishes to include the high-grade
defectives also. However, that would reduce the total productivity, and
thus the question bristles with difficulties.”
As I listened to all this jargon I felt more and more bewildered.
“You appear to have created a new aristocracy, then, based on physical
perfection,” I said.
“No, there you are wrong, Arnold,” said David. “Our democracy will never
endure hereditary privileges. What it has introduced is hereditary
disabilities. We simply disqualify from the white, or normal class, the
ninety-five per cent who are below the standard. It was progressive
America that first conceived the plan of raising man to the level of the
hound and the blooded horse.
“Yet,” he continued, “defectives do crop up, even among the offspring of
the whites. They are hard to discover; but by the Sanson tests we can
discover defectives who are, to all appearance, flawless. This class
exists especially among those of unusual mental power, which is in
itself a stigma of deficiency. Then there are the men who write our
books and paint our pictures in the art factories. They present an
anarchical longing for personal license. But they are isolated and never
allowed to mingle with the world. Yes, there are odd kinks in the human
brain. For instance, there still exists a preposterous sense of
nationality, which is being remedied by a system of forced emigration.
The Prophet Wells did not entirely estimate in its exactness the
tenacity of this illogical notion.
“Then there was that extraordinary outbreak, the Name War. Who could
have anticipated that human beings would object to being classified
under letters and numbers, for the sake of statistical simplicity? Yet a
misguided fifty thousand chose to meet death rather than give up their
names. However, Britain is said to be the province of compromises, and
it was agreed that the whites should retain two names, and the blues
one.”
“But surely,” I said, “the people did not vote for these restrictions?”
“You do not understand our system of government, Arnold. Naturally there
can be no voting in matters of science, sanitation, or statistics. Yet,
even here there is an indirect control, for our rulers, who are whites,
are elected by ballot annually, by the high-grade defectives of both
sexes. The Federal Council, which is not now in session, meets once a
year in London, the capital, and consists of five lay bosses, of whom
Lembken is chief, and five Science bosses under Sanson. You will
appreciate the stability of our government when I tell you that for
twenty years every nominated boss has been re-elected.”
I was almost certain of an undertone of irony in his words now.
“You see,” he continued, “non-votes are counted as ayes. Then those
opposing the Council must give their reason, which is filed in the
Bureau of Complaints. And again all such objections have been found to
be invalid, since they have invariably been made by undetected morons,
who have been sent to the workshops for life in consequence. Every
applicant at the Bureau of Complaints is examined by physicians. That
was Sanson’s idea.”
A most ingenious one. Suddenly I became sure that David was testing me;
the whole tenor of his conversation had been ironical, hesitating,
perhaps, and carefully weighed, lest he was running into danger, but
corresponding in no wise to his convictions. But why was he afraid of
me?
“Who is this Doctor Sanson?” I asked him.
To my surprise his voice dropped, and, before answering, he cast a
cautious glance toward the telephone funnel. Then, rising, he stuffed a
sofa cover into it.
“An illegal act,” he said, reseating himself. “If that were known I
should be liable to forced labor in the leather factories for several
years. Now, Arnold, you see my faith in you. Well, then, I cannot answer
you. He is a man of superhuman powers, more feared than any man has ever
been feared. There is a popular belief that he was born a thousand years
ago, and has wandered from land to land, waiting for the new age to
dawn. The Christians called him Antichrist. Nothing has ever been
learned as to his origin. He appeared like a conqueror, about the year
1980, to lead the hosts of the revolution to victory.”
“He is the ruler?”
David shook his head. “Boss Lembken is the titular head. But all know
that Sanson is supreme, although he chooses to let Boss Lembken hold the
reins of power. He could do anything, make any laws he wished, become
supreme ruler of earth. He is believed to be immortal, and to have the
power of renewing his youth whenever he wishes. Arnold, the people
believe that he can bestow immortality upon them and overcome their last
enemy, death. That is the secret of their terror of him. And—”
His voice sank to a whisper:
“You have come at a critical time. For this expectancy has set a date.
None knows how the rumor started, but during the next few months, ‘soon
after the Cold Solstice,’ the prophecy runs, a Messiah is to come to
earth, ignorant of his destiny. When he learns it he will offer mankind
its ancient liberty. Sanson will offer immortality in place of it. Then
will come the most titanic of all struggles, and the result is not
known.”
His voice quavered and ceased. And, staring at him, incredulous at
first, I realized that David was repeating no foolish, popular tale, but
what he himself believed.
Even Science had not succeeded in banishing faith from the hearts of
men. She had made it superstition instead. My brain reeled as the
dreadful picture David had drawn came home to me.
“David,” I exclaimed impulsively, “you are an educated man and an
intelligent one. Why do you not wear the white uniform? Surely you are
not a defective?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Under the Sanson law. My father had epileptic
seizures in his youth. He had to hide—but some day I will tell you about
that. It penalizes me twelve points, and Elizabeth six, thank God!”
And, just as the airscout’s face had expressed fear at my own expletive,
so David recoiled in horror at the word that had burst from his lips.
“Arnold,” he said, taking me by the arm, “there is a book—an illegal
book, to possess which would mean death. I am going to lend it to
you—and after you have read it you can tell me your story.”
CHAPTER IX
THE BOOK
I found the book beneath my pillow. David had been afraid to hand it to
me, and I was not surprised. For assuredly the anonymous author would
have received the utmost penalty from the Council.
He was a Christian, and he took the ground that democracy, in itself
bad, had become impossible when the atheistic deism of the eighteenth
century pervaded the minds of the voting masses and took the form of
Hæckel’s materialism and that of his school of thinkers.
He claimed that, so far from indicating the spread of enlightenment, it
was due to national decay, and had always preceded periods of national
reconstruction, instancing Rome and Athens, and the America of a century
ago, where democracy had become incompatible with free speech and
assembly, an independent judiciary, and a broad and secure freedom.
Written for circulation among those opposed to the Sanson régime, it was
a fervent prayer for the deliverance of the world. In it I gathered more
of the meaning of the new civilization than I had learned from David.
I read that the War of the Nations was caused by one thing alone: the
breaking down of Christianity in Germany, and the revival of the old
pagan doctrines, with the ensuing challenge against all that humanity
had built up during two thousand years.
But in that period of ferments only a few had seen this meaning. The
challenge had been interpreted as one of aristocracy against democracy,
largely because democracy, then in the saddle, was the creed of the
loudest publicists. For this the writer Wells, known posthumously as
“The Prophet,” a man whose penetrating judgment and synthetic mind were
fogged by class consciousness, was largely responsible.
The hope of democracy was fair in those after-years, when nations,
purged by their ordeal of blood, revived the noble hopes of liberty. Men
would have sacrificed everything for their brethren during that first
decade of peace. There was a splendid spiritual awakening among the
nations. Democracy was the young, smiling god, the guardian of universal
peace.
If only, the writer said, that spiritual enlargement had been joined to
Christian faith. But the backwash of nineteenth century atheism swamped
it. The doctrines of materialism were rooted in the masses. The German
virus could not be rooted out without trained leadership and ideals. I
recalled Sir Spofforth’s words when I read that. “It must not happen
again!” all men had said, when at last peace triumphed. No, not if the
spirit of Christ, governing all men, had drawn them into brotherhood.
But what if insults had been heaped upon the German people? What hope of
peace was there when hate such as this ruled in the mind of the leader
of the new faith?
Instead of Christ, these blind philosophers set up their democratic god.
They labelled war “dynastic,” and believed democracy would destroy it.
Had they not used their eyes? Did they not know that war was the
embodiment of hate? Had they never looked on a mob, shouting for war, or
was human nature to be changed by education, and through prosperity, so
that no nation would ever again gather to itself false doctrines, with
hate, and scorn, and pride, and go forth to destroy?
As every century produced its dominant illusion, so now in the twentieth
this singular delusion of a democracy progressing through graded virtue
unto a perfect day possessed the race. And here the writer paused to
draw another instance from America, not, as he was painstaking to
explain, because her inhabitants were different from other men, but
because they were the same.
He showed how decadence had spread exactly as democracy had spread. He
told of the two counties of Ohio where investigation showed the
inhabitants to have sold their votes universally—merchants and
clergymen, professional men and laborers. Corruption radiated from the
English-speaking centers. Law, principle, and integrity had gone first
in New England and the South, in the withered branches of Anglo-Saxondom
that had broken from the bough. One by one all the traditions of civic
honesty had died; and if life was still tolerable in the early twentieth
century, when justice was a byword and faith in public men had almost
ceased, it was because the State was still largely an abstraction and
people could still keep aloof from politics.
All the while there existed the same pitiable belief that this democracy
would some day become honest, all-good, all-wise; but this was democracy
and the fruits of it, and nowhere had it had a fairer chance to
inaugurate the millennium. And the same mob that ran blindly after its
blind leaders, responsive to every prejudice, to the old Moloch of
race-hatred and the old Mammon of dishonesty, would, had it been
allowed, have followed an ideal with its fund of inexhaustible loyalty
and self-sacrifice.
Men had not changed. The Amazon and Congo valleys were drenched with the
blood of murdered natives, and democracy yawned, just as the blood of
Polish women and children, massacred by State troops, cried from the
Colorado mining camps. In former days Christian orders arose to uphold
justice and to keep down the devil in man. When Christendom was one,
labor guilds had arisen under Catholic auspices whereby all men could
live in freedom; now the Pope, impotent, could only issue an encyclical
against that oppression of labor which, in its turn, begot hatred and
war. The sword of Justice had been snapped in the scabbard.
Was this the hope of the world, he asked, this barren, Christless
democracy? How many hearts had it broken? How many idealists had
sacrificed themselves before this idol, dying with blind faith in a
deity that devoured its votaries? Was there no higher hope? Were
millions of colored men and women in America to be born forever, black
cattle without hope, and die without a part in life? Had not the race at
last turned on itself, when the eugenics madness thrust the sword into
the heart of every family and made life a more loathsome slavery than
any the world had known? What a sinister end to human hopes!
The persecutions of the mob always struck to degrade humanity. And when
England developed, in proportion to her democracy, the same corruption
as the United States, the same lack of loyalty and public sense, the
same violence and the same vindictiveness, that was suspected which
happened afterward—that the same types of men would rise to leadership,
and her faithful, loyal heroes vanish like smoke in a gale.
And all the time the remedy was at hand; no Moloch of hate, no
stock-farm theory of human bodies, but the principles of Christ, imposed
to save the world by leaders who had abdicated their responsibility. The
mob could never understand the need of abstract justice nor subordinate
greed to duty. But for some ideal, however dimly seen, it could obey and
sacrifice itself with matchless zeal, even to death.
Truly the Prophet Wells had prophesied of the years to come: “Not only
will moral standards be shifting and uncertain, admitting of
physiologically sound menages of very variable status, but also vice and
depravity, in every form that is not absolutely penal, will be practiced
in every grade of magnificence, and condoned.”
A shadow fell across the book. I looked up and saw David. He had been
glancing over my shoulder as I read, unconscious of him; and he had
reached these words with me.
His eyes flashed, he shook his fist in vehemence of passion. “No,
Arnold!” he cried. “We’ll fight as long as we live to remain something
better than the beasts; if life is a lie, or a dream, we’ll fight for
that!”
CHAPTER X
THE DOMED BUILDING
“Arnold! Arnold!”
The funnel in the room was calling me, not in its customary strident
tones, but with a muffled, intimate appeal.
David was at the Bureau, and Elizabeth had gone out on one of her
infrequent journeys. It was as if the voice knew I was alone, for it had
never spoken to me before, and had never called in that particular tone
of intimacy and understanding.
“Arnold, I am your friend,” the voice continued. “You will come to no
good in the Strangers’ House. Go out quietly by the external elevator at
once and proceed toward the Temple, where everything will be explained
to you.”
My bewilderment changed to intense expectancy. The Temple was, I knew,
the domed building that seemed to dominate London; I had seen it from
afar each time David and I had gone out together, and each time David
had seemed sedulously to avoid approaching it, proceeding and returning
in a circuitous manner.
“See for yourself the heritage of the new civilization,” the voice
continued. “Do not allow yourself to be made a prisoner by those who
wish you no good. Go out at once by the external elevator. Turn to the
right. Walk slowly. Look about you. Your friends are watching you.”
I went out and descended the building by the external elevator. A minute
later I was upon the traveling street, feeling like a runaway schoolboy,
and animated by an intense desire to solve the secret that lay before
me.
Presently, remembering that I was to proceed slowly, I had the curiosity
to step off the traveling platform into a large, open space on which a
crowd was seated. I took my post beside one of the funnels that
surrounded it, and saw that I was at one of the moving picture
performances. Spelling out the title upon the curtain, I understood that
news from Russia was to be given.
There was none of that blur of vision which was a common defect of the
old-fashioned pictures, and the words spoken from the funnels
synchronized so perfectly with the actions on the screen that the
illusion was complete. Upon the parapet of the fortress reared by our
besieging troops I saw machines with conical tops, faced with large,
glow-painted shields. As I watched, there rushed across the field of
vision a number of men of the most degraded, savage aspect, armed with
long swords, which they brandished furiously, while the funnels yelled
like demons.
“These are the Russian savages, filthy defectives who are attacking the
army of the Federation,” announced the funnel at my side, in such a
personal way that I started, imagining for a moment that someone had
spoken to me.
As the horde neared the fortress a short command was uttered, and from
each of the conical machines a glare of light shot forth. The Russians
wilted and crumpled up. They did not fall; they were rather consumed
like lead dropped into fire, and the next line wilted too as the Ray
caught them, tumbling in charred masses upon the bodies of their
companions. Higher and higher rose the dreadful pyramid of mortality,
until the field was empty.
“The victory of Science over Superstition,” announced each funnel
simultaneously. “The Russians do not possess the Ray. They are degraded
outcasts, refuse from the pre-civilization period, starving in Tula, and
will all die unless they surrender soon. What a pity to have to destroy
so much potential productivity! It is the Tsar’s fault. He is a dirty
moron, full of germ life, and has never produced a hektone in his life.
We shall next see him before the Council. Boss Lembken is on the job.
Praise him!”
“Hurrah” yelled the spectators, rising in their seats to cheer.
The curtain darkened, and the next scene of the drama was displayed. It
was laid in the Council Hall; but inasmuch as the Council was not in
session, and the Tsar was not yet captured, it possessed a certain
unreality for me which the audience did not seem to share. With
considerable interest I watched the ten about the Council table. At the
head sat a figure of enormous girth, dressed in white, with a black, or
probably mull robe about the shoulders. The face, appalling in its
grossness, must be that of Lembken, titular ruler of the Federation, a
fat old man with huge paunch and shrunken throat, on which the sagging
cheeks hung like a dewlap. A fit head for such a people!
Beside him sat a man of about the same age, perhaps sixty years, but
lithe and lean and muscular, and with the keenest, cruelest face that I
ever had seen. His whitening hair was brushed back from his forehead,
and his expression was so full of sinister and malignant power that I
knew this could be none other than Sanson, the devil of this devil’s
world, who ruled the superstitious multitude by the terror of “Science
become Faith,” as old Sir Spofforth had so aptly phrased it.
And, as I looked at him, I seemed to see the features of Herman
Lazaroff, as he might have been in his old age. There was the same
self-confidence, become arrogance, and self-assertion grown with power,
the same demoniac energy and will, trained by its use upon a servile
multitude. Thus Lazaroff might have been, if he could have had his wish
to live again.
What struck me, as I gazed upon the strong, clean-shaven faces about the
Council board, was that they seemed to reproduce the aspect and gestures
of the degenerate emperors of Rome. Was history repeating itself; a
state-fed mob, state-governed industries, the fist of autocracy beneath
the glove of impotent democracy, and those terrific incarnations of
cruelty and insane pride in power?
I saw the Tsar, a dwarfish, wretched figure in a tinsel crown, dragged,
groveling, to Lembken’s feet, while Lembken assumed an attitude of
inflexibility; and then once more the curtain darkened.
“Praise your Boss!” hooted the funnels. “He is the people’s friend.
That’s how he deals with kings! He shows no mercy to the people’s
enemies. The Tsar is a low-grade moron. His heredity is horrible. He
cannot pass Test 1 upon the Binet board. He is a wretched brach, and
will now work in the leathers till he dies, producing for you.”
“Hurrah!” screamed the spectators. “Out with him! To the Rest Cure!”
And the absurdity of the display came home to none except myself. These
citizens were in deadly earnest. How shrewd the mind that had contrived
a pabulum so well calculated to appeal to the mob palate! The contrived
crudeness, the planned abuse betrayed an intimate and assured
acquaintance with the people’s psychology.
“Praise louder!” whispered the intimate voice beside me. “Why do you not
praise when the others do?”
And then I realized that the funnel was speaking to me! Nobody else had
heard, nobody else was meant to hear. I knew that the funnels had a
tele-photophonic attachment whereby one could see as well as hear.
Somewhere, then, the person who had spoken to me that morning was
watching and playing with me. For an instant I felt caught in a trap.
“You do not seem to be an admirer of Boss Lembken,” said a voice upon my
other side; and I swung around to see a little, sallow man in blue, with
a plank badge on his shoulder, indicating that he was a carpenter. “I
see you are a stranger,” he continued, with a glance at my gray uniform.
“What do you think of London?”
“I have not seen much of it as yet,” I answered, remembering David’s
warning.
“Ah, you are diplomatic,” he returned suavely. “One has to be diplomatic
in these days, do you not think? You are of the same opinion as many of
us, only you lack the courage to say it, that certain features of our
civilization are over-developed. Now let us take Doctor Sanson, for
instance—do you not consider that he is pushing his prosecution of
morons to undue lengths? Has he not, in other words, a mania about
them?”
“I think,” I answered, hotly, “that a man whose chief amusement consists
in torturing his fellow-men needs to have his own mentality
investigated.”
“A worthy sentiment,” answered the little man, nodding his head briskly.
“In short, you are with us on that subject. And as for Lembken?”
“I know nothing of him,” I answered shortly.
“No, of course not. You are wise not to commit yourself,” said the
little man eagerly. “One must not pass judgment without investigation.
But still, our democracy has, in some respects, retained the features of
the old despotisms, do you not think? And then, do you consider that the
people are really omnipotent?”
He cocked his head as he spoke, and he had the objectionable habit of
thrusting his face forward, so that he had been forcing me, step by
step, around the circumference of a circle.
“The truth is, you say, we are actually in a condition of slavery,” he
persisted. “We are no better off than our ancestors, for all our boast
of civilization. Is that not so, to your way of thinking?”
“You are very quick,” I answered, “to put words into my mouth before I
speak them.”
“But you think them. Don’t you think them?” he urged, cocking his head
again and watching me with intense eagerness.
The little man had ceased crowding me, and suddenly I saw that he had
contrived to have me speak almost into the mouth of the funnel. It was
only then that the meaning of his pertinacity and of his repulsive trade
grew clear to me.
“Take yourself away!” I cried in anger.
“Oh, certainly! By all means! Yap, yap, if you wish it,” he answered,
drawing back and watching me with a sarcastic smile.
I went upon my way, filled with indignation. I wondered whether the
Council was watching me before summoning me, and why they attributed so
much importance to my views. I stared about me at the streets and the
crowds, the dazzling fronts of the high buildings, and even then I half
believed that this was a dream. Life could not have grown so accursed as
this.
Before I became aware of it I had drawn near to the domed building,
toward which the street was running. The houses suddenly fell away, and
the splendid structure, which had seemed to float above the house-tops
elusively, revealed itself to me. I was near the summit of a rather
steep hill, whose superior portion consisted of a smooth glacis composed
of neatly-jointed stones, across which the converging streets moved
toward the castellated fortification, each terminating before a gate in
this wall. The gate in front of me was composed of huge blocks of stone,
probably with a steel foundation, and swung upon thin hinges of some
metal that must have had enormous tensile strength. It was open and,
like the fortification, was covered with glow paint or plaster, a
dazzling mirror, now white, now blue, and bright as sunlight. Above the
wall were the great conical, glow-painted Ray guns.
I passed through the gateway under a massive arch. Now I saw that the
double wall enclosed a barracks or circular fortress, surrounding the
inner courtyard, and connected with the dome by long bridges, stretched
upon arches. The court within was laid out in grass plots, and was most
spacious.
I stood still and gazed in admiration at the stupendous architectural
scheme of the great building that occupied the center of the circular
space. The dome covered only a small portion of the entire mass, and on
each side was a succession of halls and porticos, approached between
Corinthian columns, and, I thought, intercommunicating. The part
immediately beneath the dome appeared to be of older date than the rest,
and formed the nucleus of the complete conception.
As I stood staring in astonishment, suddenly I knew what the domed
building was. It was St. Paul’s Cathedral; but the cross was gone.
My wonder grew as I watched it. The dome designed by Sir Christopher
Wren remained intact; yet it no longer rested on the summit, but seemed
to soar, supported on numerous low pillars, and, twenty feet beneath it,
on a flat under-roof, was a garden of luxuriating palm trees, and
therefore presumably enclosed by invisible crystal walls. I saw the
gorgeous coloring of tropical flowers, and scarlet creepers that twined
around the trunks of old trees. What a magnificent pleasure-ground for
the Council of the Federated Provinces, high up above the London streets
in the December weather!
An elderly, bent man in blue, with the sign of a hammer on his shoulder,
came slowly toward me.
“Can one obtain a permit to go to the Council garden?” I inquired of
him.
He stopped and looked dully at me. “Eh?” he inquired.
“I want to go up and see the aerial garden,” I responded, pointing.
“You want to go up there?” he exclaimed, and then began to chuckle. He
slapped first one knee and then the other.
“Ho! Ho!” he roared. “That’s good. But listen! You don’t know who you’re
talking to. My daughter lives up there. I’ll never see her again, but I
like to walk here and look up and think about my luck. It gives me
standing. I’ve got to earn a hektone and a quarter monthly, haven’t I?
But I tell you I don’t earn fifty ones a month, and I lay off when I
want to, and there’s not a Labor Boss dares say a word to me. And down I
go on the register for my hektone and a quarter every month, as sure as
the sun rises.”
His hard, shrewd laughter convulsed him again, and he slapped his legs
and leered at me. Then he drew closer to me and laid his hand on my arm
confidentially.
“You’ve heard of this new freedom the people are whispering about?” he
asked, glancing apprehensively about him. “They’re never satisfied, the
people aren’t. They want to get back to the old, bad ways of a hundred
years ago, when there wasn’t food to go around, and the rich sucked the
poor men dry. I’ve read about those days. But the people are forgetting.
Sanson will crush them when they’re ready to break out. Do you know what
they want? Do you? Do you?
“They want God back again, after we’ve put him down. They want their
heaven after their rotten hides are turned into fertilizer. I know. I
know those Christians. London’s full of them today. The defective shops
are full of them. They’re talking and planning for an uprising that will
turn back the hands of the clock. But Sanson will oust them when he gets
ready. He’ll give them the Rest Cure.
“They say there’s a Messiah coming to mate the Temple goddess and bring
back the old, bad days. Do you know what Sanson means to do? He’s going
to mate her himself. And then he’s going to make us all immortal. We’ll
have our heaven on earth then, and keep our bodies too. What’s the use
of a heaven when you haven’t a body to enjoy it with? Sanson will make
us all young again. We don’t want freedom, we want immortality.”
I was so astonished by his gabbling that I remained silent after he had
ended, not knowing how to answer him. He began scanning me slowly from
my feet upward.
“You’re a stranger,” he said, with slow suspicion.
“Yes,” I replied. “Now tell me how I can go up to the Council garden.”
“Garden,” he replied, in apparent stupefaction. “Don’t you know that’s
Boss Lembken’s palace? That’s the People’s House, where Boss Lembken
lives. People can’t go up there. Don’t you know that’s the People’s
House? Who are you?”
Suddenly he started back and a malignant look came over his face.
“You’re a wipe!” he shrieked. “You want to trap me and send me to the
Comfortable Bedroom because I’m too old to work. Never a month passes
but I put up my hektone and a quarter. Look on the register. You want to
switch an old man who minds his own business and puts up his hektone and
a quarter, you rotten moron!”
His old face worked with fear and excitement, and he raised his fist in
a threatening manner; then, suddenly changing his intention, he swung on
his heel and hurried away toward the gate. I saw him glance back
furtively at me and then increase his speed.
As I turned to look at him I perceived that a small wooden gate on the
interior side of the circular fortification stood partly open, and
inside I saw a troop of the international guards at drill.
I crossed the court and came to a halt before the Corinthian columns
that I had seen; and now I perceived that the pedestal of each contained
a bas-relief, a conventionalized figure beneath which was engraved a
tribute to some great leader of mankind. The engravings were in the old
Roman characters, which seemed to have been retained on statues, coins,
and brasses, just as we in our day still inscribed coins and statue
pedestals in Latin. I walked around the columns, reading these
inscriptions.
The first that caught my eye was in honor of Darwin, and read simply,
“The Father of Civilization.”
The next was to Karl Marx. “He interpreted history in the light of
materialism, and gave us the social State, with food for all,” I read.
There was one in honor of Wells, “the Prophet of the Race.”
There was one to Weismann, “who gave us immortality, not in a ghostly
heaven, but in the germ-plasm.”
The next was to Mendel, who had “interpreted man’s destiny in terms of
the pea.” Poor, patient, toiling Abbot, what were you doing in this
galaxy?
And there was one to Nietzsche, “the scourge of Jesus of Nazareth, a
peasant god.”
CHAPTER XI
THE GODDESS OF THE TEMPLE
The man in blue with the machine badge on his shoulder, who was waiting
for me at the entrance, surveyed me with a smile of tolerant amusement.
“You are now at the heart of civilization,” he began. “Let me act as
your guide, for I see that you are a stranger. Is it not wonderful to
contemplate that here, upon a space of a few hektares, man has erected a
monument that shall endure forever! This wing,” he added, “is Doctor
Sanson’s domain, while Boss Lembken exercises his priestly function from
the People’s House, under the dome.”
He led me within the portico and through a swing door on the north side
of the building. I found myself within a circular chamber like a
hospital theater, with marble seats rising almost to the roof around a
small central platform, on which were a crystal table, a large silver
tank, and a cabinet with glass doors, through which I could see surgical
appliances.
“This is the Animal Vivisection Bureau,” said my guide. “It is not open
to the public while demonstrations are being given. The Council does not
permit the laity to acquire medical knowledge. We have several hundred
dogs constantly kenneled beneath, in the sound-proof rooms; they are
born there and, in general, die here.”
“You use only dogs?” I asked.
“At present, yes. Their trustfulness and docility make them the best
subjects, for we are demonstrating to our classes the nature and
symptoms of pain. Now here—”
I followed him through another swing door into a similar room, but at
least twice the size.
“This is the Vivisection Bureau,” he continued, taking his stand beside
a table of reddish marble mottled with blue veins, with a cup-like
depression at the head. “The people call it, jocularly, of course, the
Rest Cure Home. You can guess why. Criminals and other suitable subjects
are never lacking for experimentation. Doctor Sanson is said to be
making investigations which will prove of a revolutionary nature. Then,
the supply of moron children appears to be inexhaustible. Again, of
course, there is the annual Surgeons’ Day, when we round up the
populace. The date being movable, the ignorant are kept in a state of
wholesome apprehension. But let us follow that throng.”
Through the glass of the swing door I perceived a large crowd pouring
into another part of the building, following in the wake of an old man,
perhaps eighty years of age, who was being conducted by two of the
blue-coated guards. Behind him trailed a little rat-faced man in blue,
who glanced furtively about him with a smile of bravado. We went with
the mob into a third chamber.
It was about the size of the second, and in the center was a large
structure of steel, with a swing door. The brass rail which surrounded
it kept back the spectators, who lined it, heaving and staring, and
uttering loud exclamations of interest and delight. The room was filled
with the nauseating stench of an anaesthetic.
One of the guards raised a drop-bar in the rail, and the old man passed
through and walked with firm steps toward the steel structure. His white
beard drifted over his breast, his blue eyes were fixed hard, and he had
the poise of complete resignation. At the door he turned and addressed
the spectators.
“It’s a bad world, and I am glad to go out of it,” he said. “I remember
when the world was Christian. It was a better world then.”
He passed through, and the anaesthetic fumes suddenly became
intensified. I heard the creak as of a chair inside the structure, a
sigh, and the soft dabbing of a wet sponge. That was all, and the mob,
struck silent, began to shuffle, and then to murmur. I saw the rat-faced
man slinking away.
“This,” said my guide, “is popularly called the Comfortable Bedroom. The
old man can no longer produce his hektone and a quarter monthly, and his
grandson, who has the right to take over the burden, has just been
mated. Most of our old qualify for life in senility, but no doubt he
dissipated his credit margin in youth. Again, many prefer to go this
way. Now if he had been a woman he would have been accredited thirty
hektones for each child supplied to the State. That is Doctor Sanson’s
method of assuring productivity.”
But I broke from the man in horror, forcing my passage through the
crowd, which was dispersing already. I ran on through hall after hall,
approaching the central part of the building, until I was again blocked
by a crowd, this time of young men and women in blue, who were reading a
lengthy list of letters and figures, suspended high in the center of
this chamber. Most of these young people were in pairs, and, as they
read, they nudged each other and exchanged facetious phrases.
But one pair I saw who, with clasped hands, turned wretchedly away and
passed back slowly toward the entrance.
“This is more cheerful than the Comfortable Bedroom,” murmured a voice
at my side.
The new speaker was a dapper young fellow with a small, pert mustache
and an air of insinuating familiarity. He placed his hand upon my arm to
detain me as I started to move away.
“The kindly Council, which relieves old age of the burden of life, also
provides that the life to come shall be as efficient for productivity as
possible,” he said. “I see you are a stranger and may not know that
these young people are here to learn the names of their mates.”
“Do you mean that the Council decides whom each man or woman is to
marry?” I asked.
“To mate? Yap, in ordinary cases. There is no mating for one-fourth of
the population—that is to say, those of the morons whose germ-plasm
contains impure dominants, and who are yet capable of sufficient
productivity to be permitted to reach maturity. Grade 2, the ordinary
defectives, who number another fourth of the people, are at present
mated, though Doctor Sanson will soon abolish this practice. The sexes
of this class are united in accordance with their Sanson rating, with a
view to eliminating the dominants.”
“And these are defectives of what you call Grade 2?” I asked.
“No, these are all Grade 1 defectives,” he answered, regarding me with
amusement. “Defectives such as us. We number forty-five per cent of the
population and form the average type. They are free to choose within
limits. The Council prepares periodically lists of young men and young
women in whom the deficiencies are recessive, and those on one side of
the list may mate with any of those upon the other side. Monogamy is,
however, frowned upon. I suppose you, in your country, never heard of
this plan?”
“Yes, it used to be called the totem, or group marriage, and was
confined to the most degraded savages on earth, the Aborigines of
Australia,” I answered. But the little man, who had evidently not heard
of Australia, only looked at me blankly. A rush of people toward the
next hall carried us apart, and, not loath to lose my companion, I
followed the crowd, to find myself in the immense central auditorium,
within which orators were addressing the people from various platforms.
Upon that nearest me a lecturer was holding forth with the enthusiasm of
some Dominican of old.
“Produce! Produce!” he yelled, with wild gesticulations. “Out with the
unproductive who cannot create a hektone and a quarter monthly! Out with
the moron! Out with the defective! Out with the unadaptable! Out with
the weak! Out with him who denies the consubstantiality of Force and
Matter! No compromise! Sterilize, sterilize, as Doctor Sanson demands of
you! There are defectives in the shops today, spreading the moron
doctrines of Christianity. There are asymmetries and variations from the
Sanson norm, cunningly concealed, legacies of malformations from
degenerate ancestors, impure germ-plasm that menaces the future of the
human race. Let us support Sanson, citizens! Go through the city with
sickle and pruning-hook for the perfect race of the future, in the name
of democracy! Praise the great Boss!”
“Hurrah!” shrieked the mob enthusiastically.
“Will you not go up and see the Temple goddess?” whispered a voice in my
ear.
I started, but I could not discern the speaker. I looked up. On either
side of the auditorium a high staircase of gleaming marble led to a
gallery which surrounded it. Doors were set in the wall of this in many
places, and above were more stairs and more galleries, tier above tier.
At the head of each stairway one of the guards was posted. He stood
there like a statue, picturesque in his blue uniform, which made a
splotch of color against the white marble wall.
“Go up and ask no questions,” whispered somebody on my other side; and
again I turned quickly, but none of those near me seemed to have spoken.
I went up the stairway, passing the guard, who did not stop or question
me. As I stopped in the gallery, high above the auditorium, a door
opened, and there came out a man of extreme age, dressed in white, with
a gold ant badge on either shoulder. He propped himself upon a staff,
and stood blinking and leering at me, and wagging his head like a
grotesque idol.
“A stranger!” he exclaimed. “So you have come to see the goddess of the
Ant Temple! Would you like to stand upon the altar platform and see her
face to face? It only costs one hektone, but it is customary to offer a
gratuity to the assistant priest.”
I thrust the money into the shaking hand that he stretched out to me. At
that moment I did not know whether I was still free, or whether this was
that peremptory summons to the Council of which David had warned me. I
realized that the spies who had dogged my path were all links in some
subtle scheme.
The old man preceded me into a large room on the south side of the
auditorium, beyond which I saw another door. This seemed to be a
robing-room for the priests, for white garments with the gold ant badge
hung from the walls, which were covered with mirrors, from each of which
the horrible old face grimaced at me.
“You are to go through that door,” said the old man, pointing to the far
end of the room. “It is a great privilege to look upon the face of the
goddess. Not everyone may do so, but you are not an ordinary man, are
you?”
He shot a penetrating glance at me.
“Thus the Messiah will look upon her when he comes,” he continued. “At
least, so runs the prophecy, and remember, you may be he, for it is
foretold that he will come unknowing his mission. But wait!”—for I was
hastening toward the door—“you must put on a priest’s robes. It is not
proper for a layman to look upon the goddess.”
He indicated a white robe with the ant badge that hung on a table beside
me.
“Don’t be in a hurry,” he mumbled. “It is a great pleasure to me to talk
with strangers from remote countries. Where do you come from? You look
like a man of the last century, come back to life. How the barbarians of
that period would stare if they could see our civilization!”
“What is this Temple?” I inquired. “Do men worship an ant, and are you
its priest?”
He chuckled and leered at me. “Oh, no, I am a very humble old man,” he
answered. “I am only an assistant priest. Boss Lembken is the Chief
Priest. And you ask about the Ant? The people worship it, but it is not
known whether they see it as the symbol of labor, or whether they think
it is a god. The religious ideas of the people were always a confused
and chaotic jumble, even in the old days of Christianity. But the Ant is
only the transition stage from God to Matter. We know there is no God,
nothing but Matter, and man is born of Matter and destined to be
resolved into it. But the people are still ignorant, and it keeps them
calm, to have an ant to pray to. Besides, if there were not the Ant they
would turn to Christianity again and set back the clock of progress.
“I remember Christianity well. In my young days it used to be a power. I
used to go to church,” he cackled. “Not that I believed in God, any more
than the rest. Only the aristocrats and the intellectuals did that. I
didn’t believe in the Devil either, but I do now. Do you know the
Devil’s name? It is human nature.”
I remained speechless beneath the spell that the wretch cast over me.
“Yes, the Devil is human nature,” he resumed. “For it would thwart
progress forever, groveling before its idol of a soul. But already, when
I was a young man, only the intellectuals believed in Christianity. Once
it had been the masses. But Science proved that there was nothing but
Matter, and the momentum of the materialistic impulse was too strong for
the reviving faith. The aristocrats should have guarded their faith
instead of letting the people rise to control. But they were fools. They
set up in little rival bodies when Christ prayed for them to be one.
They permitted divorce when He said no. They tried to compromise with
Him, all except Rome and barbarous Russia, and that is why St. Peter’s
still stands as a Cathedral while St. Paul’s is the Ant Temple. I
remember it all.
“Christ knew. He knew they would go under if they tried to sail with the
wind. When Science said there were no miracles they cut out the
miracles. And when the visionary Myers made his generation think there
might be miracles after all, they put some of them back again, but very
cautiously. They didn’t know that the people weren’t going to follow
them into rationalism and then out again. Nobody was going to believe
when the leaders themselves didn’t believe.
“When He taught them how to heal the sick they preferred to mix His
prescription with drugs. They couldn’t believe in one thing and they
couldn’t believe in the other. He told them to leave Caesar’s things to
Caesar, and they went into politics. They tried to bargain with
Socialism when it became strong, but it wouldn’t have anything to do
with them. Then they preached housing reform and a good living, when He
praised poverty and told them to preach resignation. They couldn’t obey
in anything; they thought they knew better; they tried to follow the
times after they split into pieces; of course they went under.”
“Is there no Christianity anywhere?” I asked.
“In your native Russia,” he jeered. “In St. Peter’s, because the Italian
Province segregates the evil to keep it under observation. In Cologne,
because the bishop learned the secret of the Ray. And in the defectives’
shops. They say they have the Scriptures hidden in there, but the
Council has put dozens to the torture and has never found them. It is
hard to clear the human mind of its inherited rubbish. After the
Revolution, Christianity continued to be taught among other myths. But
it aroused anti-social instincts. Christians were the enemies of human
progress. They used to go into the Rest Cure Home and ask to be
vivisected in place of the wretched morons there. You can’t build up a
progressive civilization out of people like that. So the teaching was
made a capital offense. That was after we burned the bishops.”
“What!” I cried.
“Death by burning came to us from the great trans-Atlantic democracy,
you know,” he said, leering at me. “Europe had forgotten it. But we set
up the stakes again. I saw Archbishop Tremont, of York, and the Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Westminster burned side by side in the ruins of
Westminster Hall. Then there was Bonham, of London, and Bethany, of
Manchester, and Dean Cross, of Chichester; we put them in plaster of
paris and unslaked lime first. The morons could have fled to
Skandogermania, which was not free then. But they went, all three, into
the Council Hall, and preached to the Council. That was in Boss Rose’s
time. So they had to go. And they blessed us while their bones were
crackling. You can’t make a progressive nation out of people like that.”
I hurried toward the door. I pushed it open, and it swung back
noiselessly behind me.
Within the vastness of the Temple I heard a murmur rise, a wail of
misery that made the ensuing silence more dreadful still. For here I
encountered only thick gloom and emptiness, and soundless space, as
though some veil of awful silence had been drawn before the tabernacle
of an evil god. My knees shook as I advanced, clutching the rail beside
my hand.
I found myself upon a slender bridge that seemed to span the vault. It
widened in the center to a small, square, stone-paved enclosure, like a
flat altar-top, surrounded by a close-wrought grille that gleamed like
gold. I halted here, and, looking down, saw, far beneath, a throng whose
white faces stared upward like masks. Again that chant arose, and now I
heard its burden:
“We are immortal in the germ-plasm; make us immortal in the body before
we die.”
Then something beneath me began to assume shape as my eyes grew used to
the obscurity. It was a great ant of gold, five hundred tons of it,
perhaps, erected on a great pedestal of stone; where should have been
the altar of the Savior of the world, there the abominable insect
crawled, with its articulated, smooth body, and one antenna upraised.
The symbol was graven clear. This was the aspiration of mankind, and to
this we had come, through Science that would not look within, through a
feminism that had sought new, and the progressive aims of ethical
doctrinaires that had discarded the old safeguards; Christ’s light yoke
of well-tried moral laws, sufficient to centuries; through all the
fanatic votaries of a mechanistic creed; polygamy and mutilation, and
all the shameful things from which the race had struggled through
suffering upward. All the old evils which we had thought exorcised
forever had crept in on us again, out of the shadows where they had lain
concealed.
I stood there, sick with horror, clinging to the rail.
How far from gentle St. Francis and St. Catherine, and all the gracious
spirits of the dead and derided ages, progress had moved! Were those
things false and forgotten, those saintly ideals which had shone like
lamps of faith through the night of the world? Was this the truth and
were those nothing?
I heard a sobbing in the shadows beneath. I looked down and perceived,
immediately before the Ant, an aged man prostrate. He muttered; and,
though I heard no words that I could understand, I realized that, in his
blind, helpless way, he was groping toward the godhead.
Then I looked up and saw something that sent the blood throbbing through
my head and drew my voice from me in gasping breaths.
At the edge of the platform on which I stood, out of the gloom, loomed
the round body of the second cylinder. And inside, through the face of
unbroken glass, I saw the sleeping face of Esther, my love of a century
ago.
The cap of the cylinder was half unscrewed.
CHAPTER XII
THE LORDS OF MISRULE
I saw her eyelids quiver and half unclose an instant, and, though there
was no other sign of awakening upon the mask-like face of sleep, I knew
she lived. The indicators upon the dials showed that five days remained
before the opening of the cylinder. And, as I stared through the glass
plate, so horror-struck and shaken, some power seemed to take possession
of me and make me very calm. An immense elation succeeded fear and
rendered it impotent. Esther was restored to me. We had not slept
through that whole century not to meet at last.
How many years we two had lain side by side within our cylinders, down
in the vault, I could not know. Yet there had been a sweetness behind
those misty memories of my awakening as if our spirits had been in
contact during those hundred years of helpless swoon.
The eyelids quivered again. But for the emaciation and the dreadful
pallor I might have thought she was only lightly sleeping, and would
awaken at my call. The love in my heart surged up triumphantly. For her
sake I meant to play the man before the Council.
I meant to go there now. I think my instinct must have been the courage
born of hopelessness, such as that which had carried the bishops to
their death. For only a desperate stroke could win me Esther; and such a
stroke must be made, should be made. With steady steps I returned to the
priests’ room.
The dotard was waiting for me, and he came forward, smiling and blinking
into my face, searing my soul with eyes as hard as agates.
“I am going to the Council,” I said quietly.
He looked at me in terror. He seized me by the arm.
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “You are to go to your friends. The Council
is not in session.”
“It is in session. I have been held for it.”
“You don’t understand. That is the Provincial Council. This is a matter
for the Federal Council, and Sanson is not your friend. Don’t you
understand now? Sanson is working on the problem of immortality and
doesn’t suspect. Boss Lembken is your friend. Don’t you know he is your
friend?”
“No,” I answered contemptuously.
The old man clutched me in extreme agitation.
“If you are headstrong you will go to ruin,” he cried. “Boss Lembken is
your friend. He sent for you. Not Sanson. Boss Lembken discovered who
you were while Sanson was dreaming over his victims. If Sanson knew he
would get you into his power and overthrow the priesthood. He means to
destroy the Ant and have no god. He is going to mate the goddess when
she awakens—”
He saw me start and clench my fists, and a deep-drawn “Ah!” of relief
came from his lips. For I had betrayed my identity beyond all doubt; and
it was to make sure of this that I had been sent into the Temple. I
could see it all now.
“Now listen to me,” he said, coming near and thrusting his repulsive old
face into mine. “Boss Lembken wants you. He wants to help you and give
you power. But he was not sure of you; and so he had to use craft and
caution. When the Messiah comes Lembken will overthrow Sanson and make
the world free again. It was Lembken who sent for you.”
He was becoming incoherent with fright at my obduracy.
“The People’s House is above the Temple,” he continued. “Boss Lembken
lives there. He has a beautiful palace. You will be happy there. And
Sanson has no palace and no delights. He wants nothing except to
vivisect the morons. So you will not want to go to Sanson. He can offer
you nothing. We must be cautious, and if he is in the Council Hall we
must wait till he has gone, for he controls the Guard, and if he saw you
he would have you seized. That is why I gave you a priest’s
robes—because Sanson dares not stop the priests, who are under Lembken.
Come with me, then.”
I accompanied him out into the gallery above the auditorium, in which
the orators were still declaiming to a lessening crowd. Sanson or
Lembken, it mattered little to me. I felt enmeshed in some plot whose
meaning was incomprehensible. But I meant to win Esther. I walked like a
somnambulist, feeling that the dream might dissolve at any moment. A
shaft from the western sun struck blood-red on a window. A pigeon that
had perched among the columns fluttered to the ground. Above me I saw
tier upon tier of galleries.
We ascended the marble stairway, the guards making no attempt to stop
us, nor were we challenged. I noticed that they were armed with Ray
rods, similar to those that I had seen in the cellar; and they raised
them in salutation as we passed.
We ascended flight after flight, and always the guards posted at the top
of each saluted us and stepped aside. We passed across a little covered
bridge and presently entered a small rotunda, in which a dozen guards
were seated, sipping coffee and chatting in low tones. Behind them was
an immensely high door marked in large letters
COUNCIL HALL
To the right and left of it were smaller doors.
We entered the door on the right, and the priest, stopping, whispered to
me:
“You must make no sound. If Sanson is in Council he must not discover
us.”
I found myself in a small room, with the inevitable door at the farther
end. Upon one side were two apertures in the wall, disclosed by sliding
panels that moved noiselessly—spy-holes, each as large as the bottom of
a teacup. The priest stooped before one and I looked through the other.
The immense Council Hall was dim, and it took a few moments for my eyes
to grow accustomed to the obscurity. Then I saw at the distant end a
raised platform, on which stood two high chairs, like thrones.
There were three men upon this platform, one occupying each chair, and
the third standing.
One was unmistakably Lembken, the obese old boss of the Federation. He
wore a trailing gown of white, with a short mull cape about his
shoulders, and there were golden ants—as I discovered afterward—stamped
all over the fabric. He was lying rather than standing, and his feet
rested upon a stool. He was smiling in evil fashion, and he was stout to
the verge of disease. I could not see his face distinctly.
Upon the second throne sat a man with a fanatic’s face and a square
beard of black that swept his breast. He had a large ant badge on either
shoulder of his white gown, and on one finger was an immensely heavy
ring of gold that projected beyond the knuckles. This was the Deputy
Chief Priest.
Standing between the two in the shadows, lolling back half-insolently
against Boss Lembken’s chair, to whisper in his ear, and again turning
to the priest, was Sanson. I could not mistake the whitening hair
brushed back, the gestures of intense pride and power, though I could
hardly see the face. He wore a tight tunic of white, without a badge,
and he bore himself with a complete absence of self-consciousness. There
was not a trace of pose in the completeness of that manifested
personality, with its alert poise, cat-like and tense, as if each nerve
and sinew had been disciplined to serve the master-soul within.
As I watched I heard a strident, metallic voice call in loud tones:
“Wait till the Goddess awakens and the Messiah comes! He’ll make an end
of Sanson and his cruelties, and give us freedom again!”
Now I perceived that behind Sanson and between the two thrones stood a
telephone funnel, attached to some mechanism. It was from this that the
voice had issued. It was followed by the clacking sound of a riband of
paper being run off a reel. Sanson stepped back, picked up the riband,
and ran it through his fingers, glancing at it indifferently.
“The speaker lives in District 9, Block 47, but we do not yet know his
name. A trapper is watching,” said the voice in the funnel.
A bell rang, the door on the left of the Council Hall was opened by a
guard, and a girl of about eighteen entered. She was robed in white and
on her shoulder was the sign of a palm tree. She stood before Boss
Lembken’s throne with downcast face and clasped hands, trembling
violently.
“They sent for me,” she said in a low voice.
I saw the smile deepen on Lembken’s face. He sat leering at her; then he
shifted each foot down from the stool and gathered himself, puffing,
upon his feet. He put his hand under her chin and raised it, looking
into her face. The girl twisted herself away, screamed and began running
toward the door.
“Let me go home! Please—please!” she cried.
The guard at the door placed one hand over her mouth and dragged her,
struggling, through a small door behind the funnel, which I had not
seen.
I clenched my fists; only the thought of Esther held me where I was.
“Ascribe the heretics,” said Lembken to the deputy priest, and puffed
out behind the guard.
Sanson stepped backward and touched the funnel mechanism, which
instantly began to scream.
“Heresy in the paper shops!” it howled. “Examine District 5. They say
there is a God. Weed out the morons there!”
The writing mechanism began to clack again. I saw the paper riband coil
like a snake along the floor between the thrones. Sanson stopped the
machine, which was beginning to screech once more. He moved to the
vacant throne and sat down.
Again the bell tinkled, and there came in a man of about thirty years,
in blue, leading a little boy by the hand. He looked about him in
bewilderment, and then, seeing the priest, flung himself on his knees
and pressed his lips to the hem of his robe.
“It is not true that I am a heretic, as they say,” he babbled. “I
believe in Science Supreme, and Force and Matter, coexistent and
consubstantial, according to the Vienna Creed, and in the Boss, the
Keeper of Knowledge. That man dies as the beast dies. And that we are
immortal in the germ-plasm, through our descendants. I believe in
Darwin, Hæckel, and Wells, who brought us to enlightenment—”
“That boy is a moron!” screamed Sanson, interrupting the man’s
parrot-rote by leaping from his chair.
He dragged the child from the father, switched on the solar light, and
set him down, peering into his face. He took the child’s head between
his hands and scanned it. His expression was transformed; he looked like
a madman. And then I realized that the man was really mad; a madman
ruled the world, as in the time of Caligula.
The father crept humbly toward Sanson; he was shaking pitiably.
“He is a Grade 2 defective,” he whispered. “You don’t take Grade 2 from
the parents. He is Grade 2—the doctors said so—” He repeated this over
and over, standing with hands clasped and staring eyes.
“I say he is a moron!” Sanson shouted. “The doctors are fools. He is a
brach. Look at that index and that angle! Look at the cranium,
asymmetrical here—and here! The fingers flex too far apart, a proof of
deficiency. The ears project at different angles, my eighth stigma of
degeneracy. He is a moron of the third grade, and must go to the Vivi—”
With an unhuman scream the father leaped at Sanson and flung him to the
ground, snatched up the boy in his arms and began running toward the
door. From his throne the priest looked on impassively; it was no
business of his. The guard appeared.
But before the man reached the guard at the door Sanson had leaped to
his feet and pulled a Ray rod from his tunic. He pointed it. I heard the
catch click. A stream of blinding, purple-white light flashed forth. I
heard the carpet rip as if a sword had slashed it. A chip of wood flew
high into the air. On the floor lay two charred, unrecognizable bodies.
I confess my only impulse then was of fear. How could I confront that
devil, or Lembken, in his hell, when for Esther’s sake I must be
cautious and wise? I plunged toward the farther door. The priest caught
at me, but I shook him off and flung him, stunned, to the floor. I
opened the door and rushed through.
I was amazed to find myself upon a long, slender bridge that spanned the
central court of the vast structure. I stopped, bewildered, not knowing
where to turn, and the whole scene burned itself upon my brain in an
instant.
The immense mass was divided into four separate buildings. The Council
Hall, from which I had emerged, was on the southern side, and, looking
beyond it, I saw the Thames, winding like a silver riband into the
distance. Facing me was the north wing, by which I had entered,
containing the Vivisection Bureau and other halls of nameless horrors,
with Sanson’s quarters. On my left hand the Temple towered high over me.
Above my head I saw the outlines of the noble dome, and the palm trees
behind their crystal walls. A blood-red creeper trailed down through a
chink in the wall.
Upon my right was a massive fortress that I had not hitherto perceived,
floating above which was a whole fleet of airships, evidently the same
that I had seen when I flew into London. There must have been more than
a hundred of them, ranging from tiny scoutplanes to huge monsters with
glow shields about them, projecting conical machines like those that
studded the top of the enclosing wall, but smaller. On their prows were
great jaws of steel, in some cases closed, in others distended, fifteen
feet of projecting jaw and mandible, capable, as it looked, of crushing
steel plate like eggshells.
The bridge on which I stood ran from the Council Hall to the wing where
Sanson dwelled. A bridge from the Temple building ran straight to the
fortress of the airships at right angles to this, the two thus crossing,
forming a little enclosed space in the center. At various spots, bridges
from the enclosing fortress crossed the court and entered the pile of
buildings. And the whole concept was so beautiful that even then I
stopped to gaze.
But I did not know whither to turn. In front of me, where the bridge
entered Sanson’s wing, a guard stood watching me. As I approached the
central place where the two bridges met he raised his Ray rod with a
threatening gesture.
I turned to the right. Here, where the bridge from the Temple entered
the fort of the airships, I saw an airscout in blue, with the white swan
on his breast, watching me. Again I stopped. My mind was awhirl with the
horrors that I had seen; I could not think! I did not know what to do.
All exit seemed barred to me except that whereby I had come.
Beneath me lay the court, a broad expanse of white, inlaid with
geometrical figures of green grass. On it crawled tiny figures in blue.
I was halfway between the court below and the Temple dome above; yet
everything was so still that the voices below came up to me.
A group had gathered, chattering excitedly, about something that lay
hard by the Temple entrance. As they moved this way and that I saw that
it had been a woman. She had been young; her garments had been white;
there was a gold palm on a torn-off fragment that a gust of wind drove
up toward me. I caught at it, but it went sailing past and fluttered
down in the central court between the buildings.
I saw the spectators look up toward the aerial gardens. The blood-red
creeping vine now swung from an open crystal door. That paradise of
tropic beauty, those flame-colored flowers were such as blossom in hell.
The crystal door above me clashed to and reopened as the wind caught it.
It seemed to clang rhythmically, like a clear tocsin, high up beneath
the dome, a bell of doom to warn the blood-stained city. Again it
sounded like a workman’s hammer; and the silence that covered everything
made the sounds more ominous and dread, as if Fate were hammering out
the minutes remaining before she slashed her thread.
An old man pushed his way through the gathering crowd. He peered into
the white face, and wrung his hands, and wept, and his voice rose in a
high, penetrating wail.
“It’ll all be ended,” I heard him cry. “I can’t work now. I can’t make
up my time. I’ve spent my credit margin. I’m old and outed and done
with. I’ll have to go to the Comfortable Bedroom.”
It was the old man whom I had seen earlier that day. The crowd jeered
and pressed forward, those who were behind craning their necks and
rising on their toes to see the joint spectacle of death and grief. The
old man shook his gnarled fist at his dead daughter.
“You’ve killed me,” he sobbed in rage. “Why couldn’t you have stayed up
there till Sanson has made us all immortal? I’m going to the Comfortable
Bedroom now, and my body will die like a beast’s, and I’ll be ended.”
And he broke into atrocious curses, while the crowd screamed with
delight and mocked his passion.
The little gate on the inner side of the fort opened, and a troop of the
Guard emerged, carrying a stretcher. At the sight of them the mob
scuttled away. The guards picked up the body and carried it within the
gate. One began scattering sand.
Out of the crowd leaped an old man with flowing hair and beard. He stood
out in the court and shook his fist toward the Temple dome.
“Woe to you, accursed city!” he screamed. “Woe to you in the day of
judgment! Woe to your whites and harlots when the judgment comes!”
The crystal door banged and clashed open. A woman in white put out her
hand and closed it. A latch-click pricked the air. The sun gilded the
dome and turned it to a ball of fire. Down in the court the madman cried
unceasingly.
[Illustration:
“Woe to you, accursed city!” he screamed. “Woe to you in the day of
judgment! Woe to your whites and harlots when the judgment comes!”
]
CHAPTER XIII
THE PALACE OF PALMS
The sun dipped behind the western buildings, and the glare of the glow
on fort and Temple and encircling wall was like phosphorescent fire. I
saw the guards stirring in their enclosure. The Airscouts’ Fortress
shone, hard and brilliant, against the sky.
I gathered my wits together. I had seen the hidden things, and, because
I knew of none other to whom to turn, I resolved to appeal to David.
Esther, the prey of these insane degenerates when she awakened ...
David’s own secret troubles ... could we not aid each other? Might not
two men accomplish something in these evil days?
I turned to the right across the bridge that led to the Airscouts’
Fortress. The sentinel stood still, watching me. He raised his Ray rod,
not to threaten me, but to salute, and I remembered that the airscouts
had no love for the Guard, and hence must be under Lembken’s control. He
took me for a priest. But the weapon shook in his hand, and the
astonishment upon his face matched that on mine. I recognized the man
Jones, who had brought me to London.
“I want to leave this hell!” I cried. “Which way? Which way?”
“You want—you want—?” he stammered.
“The Strangers’ House. I am lost here—”
He looked at me in utter perplexity.
“Help me!” I pleaded. “Show me the way!”
The door behind him opened, and there stepped out a man of about fifty
years, dressed in white, with a golden swan on each shoulder. Jones
stepped aside and saluted him. The newcomer approached me. His hard,
clean-shaven face was impenetrable, and his eyes burned with a dull
fire. Behind him crept a second figure; it was the old priest.
“There he is! Seize him!” he shrieked.
The first man laid his hand on my shoulder. “I am Air-Admiral Hancock,”
he said. “You are to accompany me to Boss Lembken.”
I went with him across the bridge into a doorway set in the west side of
the Temple building. I expected again to see the vast interior beneath
me, but we entered a narrow corridor and stepped into a small automatic
elevator. In a moment we had shot up and halted inside the Palace
entrance. Hancock opened the door of the cage.
We were standing in a spacious hall, bare, save for the hanging
tapestries and heavy Persian rugs on the mosaic floor. It was half dark,
and there was a perfume that made my head swim. Before the curtained
aperture opposite us stood a negro boy, with a Ray rod in his hand. As
we approached he threw the curtain aside and saluted us.
There were soft solar lights in the next room, which was rose-red, and
decorated and furnished in the style of Louis Quatorze. Another negro
stood in the doorway opposite; he, too, saluted and threw the curtain
back.
The third room was enameled in blue. The blue lights gave it an
unearthly aspect, which was increased by the baroque style of its
ornamentation. The perfume was stronger.
The negro at the door of the fourth room was a giant. He wore the
uniform of an eighteenth century grenadier. His scarlet coat and white
pigtail formed vivid spots against the dull-gold curtain. The room
within was dark. We waited on the threshold.
At first I could see nothing. Then, gradually, the outlines of the room
came into sight. There were low divans and rugs, and mirrors on every
wall multiplied them. I heard a rasping sound, and a blotch of crimson
and green became a brilliant macaw that scraped its way with its sharp
claws from end to end of a horizontal perch. Behind it I now saw the
white gleam of Lembken’s robe; then the couch on which he lay; then the
girl who crouched, fanning him, at his feet; then the rotund form of the
old man, the sharp eyes and the heavy jowl with the pendulous cheeks.
“I have executed your orders, Boss,” said the Air-Admiral.
The old man rose upon his feet heavily and came puffing up to us. His
heavy soft hands wandered about my robes, patting me here and there,
while he puffed and snorted like some sea monster.
“You haven’t a knife or a Ray rod?” he inquired suspiciously. “You
haven’t anything to harm me? I am an old, weak man. I am the people’s
friend, and yet many want to kill me.”
He seemed to satisfy himself with the result of his inspection, and
withdrew to his couch, picking up a Ray rod and resting it across his
knee.
He dismissed Hancock and the girl. She rose to her feet briskly, with a
mechanical smile. She was about twenty years old, it seemed to me, but
there was a hardness and cruelty about her mouth that shocked me, and
the soul behind the mask of youth seemed centuries old.
“Amaranth wanted to stay, to hear what I was going to say to you,” said
Lembken, “but I make everybody mind his own business in the People’s
House. Besides, she might have fallen in love with you. I like to have
good-looking people about me.” He looked at me and at the Ray rod, and
then at me again; then, with a petulant gesture, he sent the weapon
flying across the room.
“There! You see I trust you!” he said, smiling. “Sit down beside me. We
understand each other, so we will be frank. Men such as we are above
deceptions. You ought to be about a hundred and twenty-eight years old!”
He spoke jocularly, and yet I could see that he wished to be sure I was
the man he sought. Evidently he knew my history. He heaved a sigh of
immense satisfaction when I acquiesced.
“I was not sure it was you,” he said. “One has to be cautious when so
much depends on it. And Sanson was beginning to suspect, but he does not
know that I discovered Lazaroff’s papers. Sanson does not know
everything, you see, Arnold. What do you think of his Rest Cure, as the
people term it? It is his, not mine, you know.”
“I think he is Satan himself,” I answered quickly. Yet I was not sure
that I preferred this perfumed degenerate to Sanson, with his maniac
cruelty.
A smile crept over the flabby face. Lembken looked pleased. He placed
his hand upon my shoulder.
“A classical scholar,” he said. “You refer to the mythical ruler of the
infernal realms. Assuredly we shall soon understand each other. Sanson
is a strong man. When I meet strong men I let them be as strong as they
want to be. They break themselves to pieces. In a democracy like ours
there is no room for strong men. Sanson doesn’t understand that. He
thinks the Mayor of the Palace is going to step into the shoes of the
Roi Fainéant. But the Roi Fainéant always wins—if he sits still. I am
the Roi Fainéant.”
I was so amazed at the strange psychology he was disclosing that I found
no answer ready. I knew he was dissembling some deep-laid purpose, but
why he had need of me I could not imagine. And the man’s affectation of
good-will almost began to delude me.
“Do you like David’s daughter?” he began, so suddenly that I started.
“Ah!” he continued, shaking his finger waggishly, “one seldom sees a
woman approximating so closely to the Sanson norm. There is an
attachment, if I know young men. How would you like her for your own? I
hit the mark, then?”
Before I could reply he was on another tack.
“Now, there is Hancock,” he resumed. “He is a Christian, and ought to go
to the defectives’ shops, according to the law Sanson made. But I don’t
care. I would just as soon have Christianity as the Ant, or Mormonism,
as they have in America. I don’t like tyranny. If I had my way everyone
would be perfectly free. Sanson doesn’t see that he has embittered the
people. He is harrying them with his laws, and they blame me. I am the
people’s friend.”
With a sudden, hoarse scream the macaw flew from the bar and perched on
Lembken’s shoulder, where she sat, preening her plumage and croaking at
me. “The people’s friend,” she screamed, and broke into choking
laughter.
“So you see it is entirely to your interest to help me and not Sanson,”
Lembken continued. “Reasonable men cement their friendships with
self-interest. Come, let me look at you.”
He touched some switch near him, and the room was illuminated with a
blaze of solar light. The golden ants upon his robes leaped into view.
He turned on the divan heavily and stared into my face.
“Yes, I can trust you,” he said in approbation. “Well, Sanson will learn
his error in four days’ time. You shall live here with me and have a
life of pleasure. You need never think about the world below. We do
exactly what we please; that is my rule in the People’s House.”
“The People’s House!” screamed the macaw, leaving his shoulder and
fluttering back to her perch, from which she surveyed us coldly, head on
one side. “The People’s House! The people’s friend!” she alternated, in
a muttering diminuendo.
“My head aches today,” said Lembken petulantly. “That is why I am
sitting here. There has been an accident: one of our ladies fell down
through an open door. It made my head ache.”
I knew he lied when he spoke of an accident. I knew that she had thrown
herself down. The lie brought back my mind to its focus; and in that
instant my lips were sealed, and my half-formed intent to throw myself
on Lembken’s mercy, pleading for Esther and our love, died.
“So we shall talk tomorrow,” Lembken continued. “For the present you are
one of us. You see your interest lies in joining us, and the part you
have to play in return will be short and not difficult for a man of your
discernment. That small part will be paid, four days hence—”
I was sure that it concerned Esther now. “And will be all, and afterward
your life will be free from all laws and bonds. You never need leave the
People’s House unless you want to. Here everyone does as he pleases.
Come, Arnold, I will show you the gardens.”
He stood up, puffing, and gave me his arm like an old friend. The man’s
manners were fascinating. I could well understand how he had worked his
way to power. There was the good-fellowship of the twentieth-century
demagogue, but there was more; there was discernment and culture; and
there was more still; there was a corrupting influence about his candor
that seemed to strike its deadly roots down into my moral nature and
shrivel it.
We passed out through the empty rooms. The Palace was level with the
Temple roof; there were no steps. There was no stairway at all, for the
whole structure, which seemed to extend from side to side of the vast
roof, consisted of a single story. We passed out between two giant
negroes, who stood like ebony statues. And now I saw that the four rooms
in which I had been, comprised only the smallest portion of the
building, which was set out irregularly, receding here to leave space
for a little lawn, projecting there, evidently to enclose a garden. And
I discovered why the interior was so dark; there were no windows—at
least, on this side of the Palace.
It was a fairyland. I thought of the old palaces at Capri. Here, high
above the swarming streets, a man might take his pleasure in ease
indeed. The crystal walls must have been sound-proof, for not a murmur
from below reached us. I heard the music of bubbling brooks, the cries
of birds among the trees, the faint tinkle of a guitar or mandolin
struck somewhere in the recesses of the ramified buildings.
We were traversing a graveled path that ran between the Palace and the
crystal wall. Looking down, I could see the glow circle of the fortress.
It had grown dark; the lights which lit our way, that I had thought
daylight, were from the solar vents, concealed so skilfully that they
shed a soft, diffused radiance everywhere, as of afternoon. We turned
the angle of the building, and I stopped short and looked in involuntary
admiration at the scene before me.
We might have stepped into the heart of some Amazonian forest, for we
were in a tangled wilderness of palms and other tropical trees. The air
was filled with the scent of orange flowers, and in a grove near me
clusters of the bright fruit hung from the weighted boughs. From the
dank earth sprang clusters of exotic, flaming flowers, and ferns. Huge
vines knotted themselves about the trunks of trees, through whose
recesses flew flocks of brilliantly plumaged birds. The path became a
trail, meandering between the trees and crossing rushing brooklets. The
vast concavity of the dome above was like an arched heaven of blue,
studded with golden stars.
“What do you think of the People’s House, Arnold?” Lembken inquired,
turning heavily upon me.
“It is a paradise,” I answered.
I was amazed to see two tears roll down his cheeks. It was the same
strange yielding to emotional impulse that I had discerned before. So
might Nero have wept over his fiddle.
“It is the reward of those who are the chosen of the people,” he
answered. “It will be your reward, Arnold. You must dream over this
tonight, and tomorrow we will make our compact. I have reserved quarters
for you. You will meet nobody you do not wish to meet. That is the chief
charm of the People’s House; we meet only for our festivities; otherwise
we are quite free. Come, Arnold!”
The scene, the atmosphere, the fearful personality of Lembken seemed to
appeal to some being in me whose hideous presence I had never suspected.
A deadly inertia of the spirit was conquering me. Esther, my love of a
hundred years, became in memory elusive as a dream to me. The sensuous
appeal of this wonderland swept over me.
We had threaded the recesses of the groves, passing secluded arbors of
twisted vines, pergolas and rustic cottages about which clung the
scarlet trumpets of pomegranate flowers; now the crystal walls came into
sight again, and, as we approached, a gust of wind blew the door open.
Instantly, to divert my senses from that soul-destroying dominance,
there rushed in, the murmurs of the city, the voices of the multitude
below, and, above all, clear and distinct, the wild accents of the
whitebeard, who had denounced the pleasure-palace that afternoon.
“Woe to you, London, when your whitecoats sit with their harlots in the
high places! Woe! Woe!”
I could not see him; through the door I saw only the circle of the
enclosing walls, a luminous orb beneath, and the glare of the huge Ray
guns; beyond were the mighty buildings. Lembken put out his hand and
closed the door. The voices were cut off into silence. I glanced at him,
but his brow was untroubled and serene.
He led me across a little, shelving lawn, through a small gateway. There
was nobody in the tiny close, surrounded by a high marble wall. There
were no windows in the little house before me. It might have held two
rooms.
“Three rooms,” said Lembken, as if he had read my thoughts. “Good night,
Arnold. Remember, we do what we like to do in the People’s House. There
are no laws, no bonds. Dream of this paradise that shall be yours, and
open the third door softly.”
He left me. I pushed the first door open and entered.
It was a bedroom, furnished in the conventional style which had not
changed appreciably during the century, but all in ebony or teak, and
luxurious almost beyond conception. The floor was covered with a
thick-piled Bokhara rug, of red and ivory, and exquisite texture.
I passed through the inevitable swing door. The second room was fitted
as a combination library and dining-room. There was an ebony bookcase,
filled with magnificently bound books, a sideboard on which stood wines
and distilled liquors, a heavy dining-table, armchairs.
This room had a window, and, looking out, I was surprised to see beneath
me the bridge that led to the Airscouts’ Fortress, and, at the end of
it, a figure in blue, the white swan on his breast brilliant in the
glare of the solar light over his head.
I passed on. But instead of the swing door the further wall contained a
door of heavy, iron-bound wood, with bolts of steel. Then I remembered
Lembken’s words: “Open the third door softly.”
The bolts moved in their sockets with hardly a sound. I drew them; I
opened the door and passed into a tiny chamber.
A girl in white, with the palm badge upon her shoulder, was standing
there. The room had been dark; the sudden influx of the solar light from
the library showed me the pallid face and blazing eyes of her whom I had
least thought to see before me—Elizabeth!
CHAPTER XIV
THE HOUSE ON THE WALL
She stared at me with eyes that seemed to see nothing; and then a look
of recognition came into them, and a twitching smile upon her lips. She
put her arms out and came unsteadily toward me. She threw her right arm
back. I caught her hand as it swung downward, and the dagger’s razor
edge grazed my shoulder.
The next moment she was fighting like a trapped panther. I could not
have imagined that such strength and fierceness existed in any woman.
She twisted her wrists out of my grasp time and again, and we wrestled
for the dagger till the blood from my slashed fingers fouled my priest’s
robe. Each of the stabbing blows she dealt so wildly would have driven
the dagger in to the hilt.
I grappled with her, caught her right arm at last, and forced it upward,
but we swayed to and fro for nearly a minute before I mastered her. Even
then she had one last surprise in store, for, when she saw that she was
beaten, she drew her dagger hand quickly backward, and I seized the
point of the blade within an inch of her breast. I forced her fingers
open brutally, and the steel fell to the floor. Then she wrested herself
away, and crouched in the corner, watching me, motionless, but still
ready to leap. Her gasping breaths were the only sound in the room.
“Elizabeth!” I cried. “I am not here to harm you. Look at me; listen to
me!”
Her eyes were fixed on my face in terror that precluded speech. How she
watched me! Only once did her glance waver, and that was toward the
dagger on the floor. I kicked it backward with my heel.
“Elizabeth, listen to me!” I implored her. “I did not know that you were
here, and I do not know how you came here. I want to help you. I want to
take you home to David!”
“Ah!” she said, shuddering. “This is what you whites call a romance in
the style of the first century B.C., a fashionable pastime, to dress
yourselves as blues or grays and worm your way into the homes of your
prospective victims, in order to study them, and see whether they suit
your taste and are worth adding to your collection. I have read of that
in the Council factory novels. But there was never any romance in it to
me. So I appeared to suit you, after my father had taken you into his
home so trustingly? You deceived him; but you never deceived me.”
I saw her glance turn to the dagger again.
“Elizabeth, you are talking nonsense,” I said, with an affectation of
brusqueness. “Let us sit down in the next room, and I propose a compact.
You shall take the dagger, provided you do not attempt to harm yourself
with it till you have heard me. Is that agreed?”
She scrutinized me for half a minute. Then she nodded. I preceded her
into the library with an affectation of indifference which I was far
from feeling, for I heard her stoop to pick the dagger up, and wondered
each instant whether I was about to feel the point between my shoulders.
However, my faith appeared to inspire her with a measure of confidence,
for she followed me into the middle room and consented to sit down.
But when I faced her, toying with the blade and all aquiver with the
reaction from the terrific nerve-tension, I could hardly find words to
utter. Whatever purpose Lembken might have in using me, I had the full
measure of his mind. He had thought that my three weeks spent in David’s
house had inspired me with a passion for the girl; and he had brought
her here, to leave her helpless in my power, a lure to bind me to his
interests beyond the possibility of double-dealing.
Before I could begin, Elizabeth collapsed. She began to weep without
restraint. I could only wait till she grew more composed. I stared out
through the window, looking down toward the Airscouts’ Fortress, whose
roof rose perhaps twenty feet beneath me.
I saw the sentry with the swan badge, pacing below. Above him was the
luminous wall of the fortress, and over it, floating in the air, was a
host of ghostly shapes, airplanes encased in their phosphorescent glow
armor, which, as I watched them, rose one by one into the air, circled,
and flitted noiselessly away toward the south, like bubbles blown by
children.
It could not have been late, for curfew had not come into operation, and
London was ablaze with the solar light; but the crowds had gone home and
everything was quite still. As I withdrew from the window Elizabeth rose
and came timidly toward me.
“Arnold, have I done you a wrong?” she whispered.
“You misunderstood me,” I answered. “But you could not have thought
otherwise. If we understand each other now we can help each other—isn’t
that so?”
She seized me by both arms and gazed into my face with an imploring,
pitiful appeal that wrung my heart.
“Then I thank God,” she said, “for that impulse which held me from
self-destruction. Arnold, do you remember that promise I made to you one
day? I remembered it; I remembered it, and it was that alone which
stayed my hand this afternoon, when the emissary from Lembken came, and
there was only the one barred door between us, and I stood behind it,
with the knife at my breast. Then I resolved to keep my promise to you,
and to let them bring me here, and—to kill Lembken—but it was you! When
you disappeared from the Strangers’ House this morning we feared for
your safety. We thought you had been seized or lured away. Then my
father was summoned on some pretext back to the Strangers’ Bureau, and
the airscout came—Lembken’s man. I thought I was for Lembken—”
She broke off, and I took her hands in mine.
“Elizabeth,” I said, “my dear, I do not understand anything of what you
tell me. How could they bring you here against your will?”
She looked at me in amazement.
“No, I see you do not understand,” she answered. “And yet you are
dressed as a priest. I cannot tell you now. But the airscout who had
been sent for me was sorry when he saw that I was not willing, like most
women. He took the knife from me, but afterward he let me keep it; he
was kind and promised to carry the news to Jones, our friend. The
airscouts are disloyal to Lembken, and hate his cruelty, but he dared
not disobey. We went by scoutplane from the roof, and Lembken’s women
took me and clothed me in this dress of palms, and carried me here,
laughing at me. They did not find the knife. I hid that; I meant to
serve the Province and the world by killing Lembken. But then I saw you,
Arnold, and—and—”
She burst into a new storm of weeping. I drew her to me and placed her
head on my shoulder. I felt a cold, burning fire of resolution in my
heart which never disappeared. Something, some spiritual door was opened
in me. I became part of the wretchedness of the world and suffered its
sorrows; pleasure seemed the worst part of life then. I think, too, I
loved Esther the better because of that compassion.
When at last Elizabeth raised her head I was struck by the
transformation in her appearance. It seemed the reflection of my own
determination. I had put forth my will and conquered, and her own seemed
one with mine.
“I am going to save you, Elizabeth,” I said. “You are not destined for
this earthly hell.”
“Arnold, are you yourself in danger here?” she asked.
“Only of hell-fire,” I answered.
“You must save yourself and not think of me,” she said.
I bade her sit down, and went back to the entrance of the little house.
I had half expected that the door would have been locked, but it stood
open, having become unhasped, and the sickly odor of the pervading
perfume clung to the warm, stale air. I crossed the close to the gate
that led into the garden of palms, and stood there in hesitation.
The solar lights had been turned off, and all was dark, except for
varicolored lanterns twinkling among the trees. Yet I was aware of souls
peopling that darkness. I heard the tinkle of stringed instruments; I
had the sense of hidden beings in the undergrowth. If hell can wear the
mask of beauty, surely it did that night.
I crossed the lawn and began to skirt the graveled path that extended
before me, working my way toward the front of the Palace. The squat,
white building glittered against the darkness. Nobody stirred at the
entrance; there were no lights, but always I had the sense of something
watching me.
At last I saw the crystal walls on the west side, and, beyond them, the
phosphorescence of the glow buildings. I stood in hesitancy. On my right
stood the thickets; on my left the crystal ended in a stone wall. There
was no egress except through the Palace itself. Lembken left nothing to
surprise.
As I turned I heard the rustle of stealthy footsteps near me. A red
spark drew my eyes along the vista of the orange trees, whose perfumed
flowers dispelled the cloying odor of the scented night. I saw a Mænad’s
face, framed in a leopard skin, peering at me above a bank of hibiscus.
I thought I recognized the girl Amaranth; but it vanished with the dying
of the spark, and subdued laughter followed it.
All that was evil in the world seemed to have its focus there. I felt
it, breathed it, once more its psychic dominance oppressed me heavily. I
saw with sudden intuition why, in a world less stable, witches were
burned, how passionately the souls of simple men fought for their
heritage of truth and law. This was the negation of life, of all that
struggling life that aspired upward, and set its heel upon the serpent’s
head. Old myths, made real in this new light, flashed into memory.
I hurried back to the close and fastened the gate behind me. The sweat
was dripping from my forehead when I regained the safety of the little
house. I burst from the first room into the second.
Elizabeth was not there.
I ran into the third room. She was not there, either. Terror gripped me.
Had she been lured away during the few minutes of my absence? It seemed
impossible. She would have died there.
Then my eyes fell on something that hung outside the window, dangling,
as it seemed, from a fixed point above. It was a rope ladder, and moving
outward. As I watched, I saw it begin to rise in a succession of short
jerks.
I grasped it with my hands. It pulled me from the floor. I clung to it,
striving to get my feet upon the rungs. It drew me to the level of the
window, but I would not let go. It pulled me through the window-gap, and
I swung far out above the Airscouts’ Fortress. Over me I saw the dark
outlines of an unshielded scoutplane, high in the air.
I swung by my hands at the rope’s end, like the weight of a pendulum,
making great transverse sweeps that carried me high above the bridge,
from end to end of the fortress roof. I saw the courts revolve beneath
me. I swept from the crystal wall out into nothingness, and London was a
reeling dance of phosphorescent maze. Then the ladder began to descend.
I felt the roof of the fortress touch my feet, wrenched my numbed hands
away, and fell. A moment later the airplane dropped beside me as
noiselessly as an alighting bird, and two men sprang from it and seized
me.
One was the airscout Jones. He caught me by both arms and forced me
backward. But the other leaped at my throat. It was David; and he would
have strangled me, had not Jones pulled him away.
Then, to my vast relief, Elizabeth ran forward, interposing herself
between us. “Arnold is not to blame!” she cried. “He tried to save me!”
[Illustration:
It pulled me through the window-gap, and I swung far out above the
Airscouts’ Fortress
]
David’s hands fell to his sides. The airscout caught me by the arms and
pulled me toward an elevator entrance. He forced me into the cage, the
others following, and we descended a few feet, emerging into a small,
bare room with walls of unsquared stone.
Jones sent the elevator up and pulled the door of the shaft to.
“Now you can speak. You have five minutes to explain yourself,” he said.
He pulled a Ray rod from his tunic and looked at David, who nodded.
CHAPTER XV
THE AIRSCOUTS’ FORTRESS
So I told them my story from the beginning. I spoke of the days of the
Institute and Lazaroff’s experiment, of my awakening within the cylinder
at the end of a century of sleep, my flight from the cellar and my
discovery by Jones. I continued, telling of my first bewilderment in
London, of David’s kindness which had saved my reason, described my
summons that morning and the relays of spies who had led me to the
Temple. When I narrated my discovery of the cylinder containing Esther’s
living body I raised my eyes to David’s and perceived that I was no
longer in the position of a prisoner awaiting death.
David’s aspect had changed; he was trembling violently and struggling to
speak. He looked fearfully at me, and Jones was hardly less moved. Then
Elizabeth slipped her hand into mine.
“We believe you, Arnold,” she said.
Three times David attempted to speak while I was sketching briefly the
remainder of my story up to the point of my encounter with Elizabeth,
and each time his voice failed him.
“Arnold, forgive me,” he managed to say at last. “We know that every
word you have told us is true, if only you had told me before! But I see
how incredible you must have thought your story. Now listen to me!
“The horrors of this government will not last much longer. Plans are
well under way to make an end of democracy and restore liberty to the
world. You have unwittingly placed a wonderful weapon in our hands. No
man can be neutral in such times. Now, Arnold, you have to make a
decision which will affect not yourself only, but all of us, Britain,
the Federation, and the race of men. You must choose your party.” He
turned to Jones. “He must be told nothing until the time arrives,” he
continued, assuming a tone of authority. “You will say nothing—nor you,
Elizabeth.”
He turned to me again.
“Arnold,” he said, “you must make your choice now. Lembken needs you for
reasons which are patent to us, thanks to your statement. If you go back
to him he can give you power and liberty to lord it over the people
until the quick day of reckoning arrives. If you join us you must become
an outlaw and an associate in the most desperate endeavor, play a
leading part and share our dangers.”
“How can you doubt me?” I asked. “I am with you, now, and at all times.”
David held up his hand. “Wait!” he said. “You must first understand our
situation, and why we are here tonight.”
“It is not necessary, David,” I answered.
“Yes, it is necessary. Because you do not know the depth of our
intolerable bondage. I am going to tell you of my own life, that you may
judge.
“I begin with my father. As I told you, he was epileptic in youth. He
outgrew the attacks, and because the Liberal government never dared to
enforce the Defectives’ Law which it passed in 1930, he was able to
marry, much later, a girl to whom he had been engaged for many years.
They had lived quietly in what was then called Wales, in a rural
community that had somehow managed to escape the excesses which began in
1945.
“But my father was a marked man, because he was on the secret
defectives’ list, and a Conservative. A few weeks after his marriage the
storm of revolution burst over Dolgelly. The army of clerks and civil
officers that followed the troops of the victorious democracy raked the
country fine for victims. With his young bride my father fled to the
mountains, where I was born, and they existed there, heaven knows how,
till an opportunity arrived for flight abroad. When the restoration came
he returned, and rebuilt his ruined home.
“My father was a student of history, and he knew that the peace which
had descended over the distracted country was only a lull in the storm
of violence. He resolved to teach me all the old knowledge, which had
fallen into decay. He wanted me to play a leading part in political
life, as his forebears had done. But the second revolution was upon us
when I was a youth of nineteen. Fortunately, my parents were both dead.
“The mob started burning defectives then. For many there was the chance
of submission to the new government, nominally under Boss Rose, which
Sanson was constructing; but there was none for me, since epilepsy was
then, owing to the ephemeral theory of some forgotten scientist,
regarded as the unpardonable sin. I managed to escape to Denmark, and
spent the next sixteen years upon the Continent, wandering from place to
place as the Federation came into being. I married a Swiss lady at
Lausanne, where Elizabeth was born. We had to fly by night, when the
child was a week old. My wife could not survive the journey over the
mountain passes in the middle of winter. She died in what was called
Austria, two days after our arrival there. With Elizabeth I continued my
flight eastward, and found refuge in Greece.
“I said that the mob had begun to burn defectives. But the Council
changed that. The word ‘productivity’ was the new fetish, and, seeing
that the murder of half the population would decrease the output, the
Council resolved to imprison defectives in the workshops for life
instead. But even this did not work. In 1999 Boss Rose became alarmed at
the depopulation caused by the universal terror. Men denounced their
brothers for small rewards, and wives their husbands, when they grew
tired of them. Men and women were crossing the North Sea in tiny skiffs,
or perishing in the waves, flying into the glens of Scotland, organizing
in bands and living a hunted life within the forests that had begun to
cover the country. Boss Rose issued an amnesty decree. Defectives who
returned and were able to produce a hektone and a quarter monthly were
not to be proscribed. I returned to Britain and secured employment in
the Strangers’ Bureau, which had just been established, a post for which
my education and experiences abroad qualified me.
“Ten years ago Boss Rose fell under an assassin’s dagger. The Council,
under the influence of Sanson, issued a decree that no faith was to be
kept with defectives. Sanson, then supreme behind the mask of Lembken,
began to harry the people. It was then he introduced his system of
mating under Council supervision.”
“It is abominable!” I cried.
“Yet, like all our institutions, it has its roots far back in the past,”
said David, “and only needed the abandonment of the Christian ethic to
spring full-fledged into existence. The Prophet Wells foreshadowed it,
as did also Ellen Key; and on this point the followers of Galton joined
the Socialist government in a concerted attack upon monogamy. This, in
fact, has been the crux of the old battle between Socialism and the
Church: on the one hand the old ideal of the family as the unit of
society, and marriage an indissoluble bond; on the other the individual,
free from responsibility and seeking his own fancied freedom. Even in
the Prophet’s time America had practically abandoned monogamy, while the
anti-social propaganda was being secretly carried on by the teaching of
what was called sex hygiene in the schools. When the churches
compromised with divorce, Protestantism finally collapsed, and flung
half the civilized world back into paganism.”
“It was said that the children—” I began.
“The answer was State rearing, Arnold, as had been urged by many men and
some women of liberal and progressive minds. We tried that in 2002.
Elizabeth was torn from me. For six months we had public crèches in
every city. There was much public dissatisfaction, though the children
were not taken from their mothers till they had been weaned. That was
the time when the Guard was formed, consisting of Janissaries trained
from youth by the Council and pledged to them. However, what caused the
abandonment of the crèche system was a quite unexpected happening.
Despite the utmost care, despite a process of automatic feeding in
germ-proof incubators, which made it impossible for any of the little
inmates to lack the advantages of the latest hygienic theories, the
children died.
“This phenomenon was never explained satisfactorily, and the mortality,
which ranged from eighty to ninety per cent, shocked the Province
profoundly, for it meant an intolerable lessening in the productivity of
the next generation. The children were returned to their parents.
Elizabeth, who was above the age curve of maximum mortality, came back
to me, and, in spite of rigorous inspection by the officials of the
Children’s Bureau, I have managed to keep her.
“But I must be brief, Arnold. I have told you that it was decreed no
faith was to be kept with defectives. The net was cast over all who,
trusting to the proclamation, had returned from the forests and waste
places, and from abroad. Gradually they were sorted out and ascribed.
Many records of heredity had disappeared during the Revolution, but they
had my father’s in the Bureau of Pedigrees and Relationships. Since then
I have waited in suspense daily. They know it, and, if I have not been
condemned to the workshops, it is through Lembken’s favor, for he was
head of the Strangers’ Bureau before the assassination of Boss Rose, and
I worked under him.”
“But is there no law?” I cried. “Is there no charter of liberty at all?”
“Why, yes, Arnold. We still have Magna Charta, and Habeas Corpus, and
many other documents, and occasionally these are invoked. There is an
old man in the paper shops who has appealed against imprisonment and
carried his case through twenty or thirty courts since he was shut up as
a boy, and if he lives long enough his appeal will come before the
Council. But you see, Arnold, one of the first acts of the victorious
democracy was to institute the election and the recall of judges.
“They think I fear for my own liberty,” he continued, beginning to pace
the floor. “They do not know—happily they do not know.”
Then he went on to tell me that which concerned the girl’s arrest that
afternoon.
It appeared that Elizabeth was one of those very few who were physically
almost perfect, and, as such, she had been in danger of being placed on
the list of those who were to enter the harems of the whites. David’s
sole hope of saving her lay in the fact that she was penalized six
points because her grandfather had had epileptic seizures. But she
approximated so closely to the Sanson norm—and the child had been
innocent enough to head the district list of those qualifying in
mentality by examination upon the Binet board—that there had been little
hope for her. This fear had been increased by the fact that Lembken had
seen Elizabeth, and had recently summoned her and her father to the
Council Hall, under the pretext of wishing to confer some favor upon an
old subordinate.
Now I gathered in the last threads of the skein. David had returned from
the Strangers’ Bureau that afternoon to find the apartment empty. Jones
had conveyed the news to him, and had secreted him in the Airscouts’
Fortress, pending a plan of rescue, a task which was only rendered
possible through the disaffection of Lembken’s airscouts. Jones had seen
me in my priest’s robes, and the two had come to the natural conclusion
that I had been a spy, playing one of the romantic parts in fashion
among the whites, and approved in the Council’s novels, in order to see
Elizabeth before selecting her. We had been discovered at the window,
the position of the little house had given Jones the opportunity of
rescuing the girl with his scoutplane, and, but for my return while the
rope still dangled before the aperture, I should never have known the
secret of Elizabeth’s disappearance. No wonder David had flown at my
throat.
“Now, we must act at once,” said David. “We are going to seek refuge in
the forests where our friends are hiding. Jones will carry us there
tonight when he starts in his scoutplane on patrol duty. It is a
difficult problem to pass the night patrol. But Jones can get us
through. And now, Arnold, what is your decision?”
“I made it long ago,” I answered.
“You are with us?”
“Indeed, I am.”
David wrung my hand hard. “You have decided wisely,” he said, “and by
your decision you have taken the only means possible to save the woman
you love. For the Sanson régime is crumbling, and your presence means,
what you cannot yet imagine, to the cause of liberty. We have five
thousand outlaws and fugitives from the defectives’ shops, scattered in
secret hiding places about London. We have made Ray rods in the shops
and have secreted provisions. Tonight the heads of the movement are to
assemble—”
“In the cellar where I lay so long!” I exclaimed, with sudden intuition.
“And Jones had been there with Ray rods when he found me!”
“Correct,” answered Jones, in his laconic manner.
“We remain here until midnight,” said David. “Then Jones will take us
when he starts to relieve the first patrol.”
“Be assured that I am with you to the end,” I said. And I swore that I
would do all in my power, so long as I had life and liberty, to fight
for human freedom. And as I swore I had a vision of the girl, mangled
and crushed upon the stones beneath that tropical, aerial hell beneath
the noble dome of England’s shameful temple.
I think the resolution in my manner must have enkindled David’s hopes,
for he put out his hand and caught mine again, and wrung and held it.
“You do not know, Arnold, how necessary you are to us,” he said. “But
tonight you shall be told. I am old, Arnold, and I have little courage.
I have lived through too many changes and frustrated hopes. I had grown
used and resigned to things that had come to seem unchangeable. The
freedom of my youth was only a dream to me. Sometimes I doubted whether
men had ever been free. It was your surprise, your ignorance, then the
indignation which you thought I did not see that made me begin to
understand my own degradation. And it was today’s events that gave me
heart to work with all my might for the cause to which I had only
languidly adhered. I have been one of the revolutionary committee for
months, and now I shall fight whole-heartedly, and you with me.”
“David,” I said with sudden conviction, “you are a Christian.”
His eyes suddenly seemed to blaze. “I am!” he cried. “As we all are. I
have temporized with evil all these years, but now I cannot do so any
more. The hope of the world can never be crushed out; it is spreading
everywhere. All of us are enlisted under that flag that was raised on
the Mount two thousand years ago. We see that without Christ, life is
intolerable. I knew your faith from the first, Arnold, although I dared
not speak, I knew it at the beginning because I thought you were a
Russian. That was why I befriended you. We know our own!” he cried
triumphantly.
Elizabeth put one arm about her father’s neck and extended her free hand
to me. I clasped it, and then the airscout’s; and so we pledged
ourselves.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MESSIAH’S ANNUNCIATION
Jones left us and came back with some food. Upon his arm he carried a
stranger’s uniform, which he handed to me.
“You cannot wear those robes,” he said. “Take this. It should fit you;
it belonged to one of our recruits who was ascribed last week and has
not yet returned it to the Wool Stores.”
I was glad to see the last of the priest’s robes. He carried them away,
promising to return for us in an hour. Elizabeth made us eat, but we had
little heart to do so. At her insistence, however, we made the best
display of appetite that was possible.
The room was only faintly illumined by the reflected solar light that
issued up the elevator shaft. With it there mounted the sound of the
voices of the airscouts in their barracks below. Sometimes the elevator
rushed by, arousing a thrill of fear in each of us.
David drew me toward him and began speaking softly.
“You know nothing of Paul,” he said. “His name is Paul Llewellyn—for we
observe Sanson’s laws no longer. He was to have mated Elizabeth.”
“Married?”
“Yes, married, before the Cold Solstice. His grandfather was my father’s
steward at Dolgelly. Our families remained in touch through all the
civil turmoil, and he is the last of his, as Elizabeth is the last of
mine. He was given the name Paul, the father retaining the family name,
which was to alternate in each generation, as is the custom nowadays.
That law of Sanson’s must be one of the first to go. It aimed, of
course, to destroy the vestiges of the family that remained.
“Paul was a Grade 1 defective, and we felt sure that Elizabeth would
come under the same classification, so that they would be free to mate.
They were waiting for the lists to be published, but Elizabeth had not
been ascribed when the last list went up, and meanwhile Paul was sent to
the defectives’ shops. Arnold, did you ever hear of the doctrine called
Apostolic Succession?”
“Of course, David.”
“That the functions of the priesthood are transmitted by the laying on
of hands? The English Church possessed the tradition, and it has never
been lost, though most of our people attach, I am afraid, some magical
idea to the ancient rite. Our bishop is a poor, illiterate old man, a
machinist by trade, but Bonham laid his hands on him before he was
burned in Westminster Hall. Bishop Alfred was to have blessed the union.
A week before Fruit Equinox, Paul was taken in the bishop’s home by
Sanson’s spies. Both were condemned to life imprisonment in the
defectives’ shops as Christians. Both escaped among the last batch of
fugitives. Elizabeth hopes to meet Paul tonight.”
“And I hope so, with all my heart,” I answered.
The cage stopped at the door and Jones came in.
“We can go now. The last of the scoutplanes has gone,” he said.
We went up to the roof. Deep night was over and about us. The
phosphorescent fronts of the glow-painted buildings gave London the
aspect of long lines of parallel and intersecting palisades of ghostly
light; but the glow paint illumined nothing, and the deep canyons of the
streets were of velvety blackness. The white circle of the fortress wall
surrounded us. Outside the region of the glow, London was an
indistinguishable blurred shadow, save where the searchlights from the
departing scoutplanes illumined it. They hovered in a long line above
the city, their position only discernible from the white searchrays that
emanated from them as they swept the city below. Slowly they made their
way into the southern distance.
I groped for reality in this succession of bewildering scenes, and
hardly found it. Rain began to fall, spattering on the crystal walls of
the adjacent gardens, in which the flickering colored lights still
twinkled. My face was wet with it. I was thinking of the old days, when
life was free: Sir Spofforth’s rain-swept garden, the scent of Esther’s
tea-roses, and the hum of the ungainly, noisy town of Croydon that last
evening. I saw Esther’s face vividly upon the velvet screen of the
night.
Elizabeth’s hand stole into mine.
“You are our hope, Arnold. You can inspire us to victory,” she
whispered.
Jones had gotten the scoutplane ready, and the vessel now rested on the
flat roof, as a bird on its perching place. It was a little craft, even
smaller than my memory of it had been, and it carried no Ray shield to
betray its presence. Jones drew David aside and held a whispered
colloquy with him.
“We are about ready,” he said, as they came back to us. “I’ve shifted
the searchlight to the rear socket to balance the extra weight. She’ll
carry us. I’ll have time to take you to your destination and report for
scout duty when Hancock comes the round. But if I fly with the
searchlight showing, any of the planes may signal me to stop—”
He rubbed his chin, and the old irresolution came upon his face.
“If I fly dark it’s a leather vat offense,” he added. “And the
battleplanes would fire on us.”
He paused and rubbed his chin again.
“I’ll fly dark,” he said, and so settled the matter firmly in his own
mind. And, his mind thus made up, I knew nothing would change it.
There was some difficulty in disposing of us. Finally Jones placed us
three in the double seat, Elizabeth in the center and David and I on
either side of her. He himself squatted upon the chassis before us, the
wheel in his hands. He touched the starting lever with his right foot,
and the craft rose heavily into the air, straining beneath her burden.
In spite of the counterbalance of the searchlight behind, the nose of
the plane dipped constantly, so that our flight was a succession of
abrupt ascents and declinations.
It was freezing cold up in the air. Gradually we ascended, till I felt
the fresh wind from the Thames estuary beat on my face. Presently the
south was cleft by flaming serpents, with eyes of fire.
“The food airvans from France,” said David, pointing.
Now we soared over the outlying factories and warehouses. A huge,
glow-painted building sprang into view out of the shadows below.
“The defectives’ workshops for this district,” David continued. “Yonder
is the Council’s art factory.”
The darkness in front of us began to be studded with long parallelograms
of dazzling glow, set at wide intervals, each capped with the conical
Ray guns. From these, extending fanwise toward the ground, appearing
pink in contrast with the glow’s intensely purple white, the
searchlights wavered.
Jones halted the scoutplane. “The battleplanes,” he said, pointing.
“They are posted nightly around London now. You know the reason, David?”
David started and placed his hand in inquiry upon the airscout’s
shoulder. Jones’s voice sank to a whisper.
“It is the merest rumor among our men,” he said. “One reads it in their
faces rather than hears it spoken, for we are afraid of one another. One
can be sure that Sanson has his spies among us. But the scoutplanes are
sufficient to patrol London and detect fugitives, and if the
battleplanes are sent out there is hope the rumor may be true. If the
Tsar has broken out from Tula—”
“Thank God!” said David in a tense whisper.
“He will overrun Skandogermania in a week, for it is as disaffected as
Britain. The airscouts there will go over to him. There is no force to
stop him, except our planes and the Guard.”
I saw the joy on David’s face. Could barbarous Russia indeed bring
freedom to the Western World?
“It is only a rumor,” continued Jones. “A rumor, you understand, David,
backed by the presence of the battleplane squadron around the city
nightly, words let fall in the People’s House, retailed by gossiping
servants, the sudden summons last night of Air-Admiral Hancock—”
“But the Russians have been slaughtered in thousands!” I exclaimed. “I
saw the picture upon the screen.”
Jones laughed and David smiled.
“Those pictures are for the people,” said the airscout. “They were taken
by night inside the fortress here. The Guard dressed for the part.”
“Still, how could the Russians win without the Ray?” asked David
doubtfully.
“I can answer that,” I said. “All history shows that no weapon is strong
enough to conquer men who are ready to die for a right idea against an
evil one. Ideas are stronger than the deadliest arm man has contrived.
That has always been so and always will be so.”
Again Elizabeth’s hand crept into mine. “You must tell our people that,
Arnold,” she said. “You know the secret of stirring them.”
“But Hancock will stand by Lembken?” inquired David.
“Yap, and will hold at least a quarter of our men to him,” said Jones.
“He will serve Lembken through Sanson, so long as Sanson remains loyal.
If Sanson turns against Lembken to seize the supreme power, Hancock will
fight him to the death. Sanson sent the Air-Admiral’s son to the Rest
Cure as a moron, years ago, when Hancock was unknown. Sanson doesn’t
remember it, but Hancock remembers.”
I shuddered. “Why, then, is not Hancock with us?” I asked.
“There are traditions of loyalty in his family,” answered Jones.
“Hancock is queer. Now we go up. Hold fast.”
The scoutplane creaked and rocked and plunged like a ship in a gale as,
foot by foot, he jerked her head into the higher air. The gleaming glow
parallelograms of the battleplanes seemed to shoot downward as we soared
above them. We had passed them when, like some black air monster, a
large, dark plane glided beneath us. I felt our scoutplane thrill as she
shot upward, so suddenly that she rose almost to the perpendicular,
jerking us back against the uprights.
Jones was straining madly at the wheel, and I realized that the dark
plane was in pursuit of us. I saw her swoop out of the night, missing us
by a yard. She disappeared. I heard the divided air hiss as she
approached again, and the next instant the blinding searchlight
enveloped us, and a voice hailed us, piping thin through the frosty
night. Then the light was astern, and groping impotently beneath us as
we rose to a higher level. Jones strained at the vertical rudder,
pushing the plane’s nose up and still upward, battling like a
weather-beaten bird against the wind.
Again the searchlight found us, and then, out of the heart of it,
turning the keen white glare to a baby pink that fringed it, there
hissed a light ten times more brilliant, snapping and crackling, into
the void. Jones veered, still mounting. The dazzling light flared out
again. The upright that I held snapped in my hand. I slipped in my seat,
but David reached out and held me.
Once more the Ray flash came, but under us. The darkness and our pilot’s
courage had saved us. The searchlight groped far underneath. Our
scoutplane dipped, soared, dipped, caught the wind, and we volplaned at
furious speed for miles down a gradient of cushiony air.
I felt Elizabeth tremble, and placed my arms around her to hold her.
Jones stayed the plane and clapped his numbed hands together, whistling
through his teeth. He jerked his head around. The moon was beginning to
rise; it was a little lighter, and I saw that his face was dripping wet.
“A thread of an escape!” he said. “If she had struck us fair with the
Ray we’d have buckled up like paper. Snapped one upright, didn’t it?”
There was a cut of two inches in the steel—a clean cut, and the edges
fused as if from fire.
“That was Hancock’s dispatchplane,” said Jones. “He carries no light.
But—the voice didn’t sound like Hancock’s.”
“Are we safe now?” asked David, looking back to where the shrunken
figures of the battleplanes were ranged behind us on the horizon.
“Safe long ago,” said Jones. “But it was touch-and-go while I was trying
to top that southeaster. He lost us at the summit, though, and he
couldn’t have caught us on that down-grade.”
We started again, traveling more slowly, at a lower altitude, and
planing downward until I heard the wind in the tree boughs and saw the
glistening snow beneath. We brushed the top-most twigs. The scoutplane
flitted backward and forward, seeking the old road.
“I ought to know it in the dark,” said Jones. “I don’t want to turn on
the searchlight if I can help it.”
To and fro we went like a fluttering bird, until the cleft of the road
appeared among the trees. Then we dropped softly to the ground. I was
almost too cramped and cold to move. With difficulty I descended and
helped Elizabeth out. David followed, and we three stood chafing our
hands and stamping until the circulation was restored.
Jones leaned forward from the airplane. “I’ll run her into the trees in
case anyone comes along and sees her,” he said.
“We shall not see you until—?” asked David.
“I’m not going back,” answered the airscout. “Not after this night’s
work. You’ll see me in ten minutes.”
“You are going to join us?” inquired David, joyfully. “Is it—do you mean
Hancock knew you?”
“No. That wasn’t Hancock, either. I know who it was—at least, I think I
know. No, I’ve had enough of the Twin Bosses, after Elizabeth’s
adventures. Put me down as the first airscout who went over.”
David grasped him by the hand and shook it warmly. Jones whistled again,
drew back, and the scoutplane rose to the tops of the trees, beat about,
and vanished.
David turned to me. “Arnold, are you prepared for a great and stunning
revelation?” he asked.
“Yes, he is prepared,” answered Elizabeth for me.
We set off through the trees along a small, well-worn trail, until the
crumbling bricks beneath us heaped themselves into a mound, and I saw
the ruined foundations of the Institute before me, and the hole in the
cellar roof. A sentinel leaped out at us.
“For man?” he asked, leveling a Ray rod.
“And freedom,” answered David.
The sentinel called, and in a moment a crowd came rushing up a short
ladder, wild-looking men with beards and hanging hair, all dressed in
tatters and rags, a woman or two, and a youth who ran forward with a cry
and caught Elizabeth in his arms. I saw the happiness they shared.
David led me to a tall old man with bowed shoulders and a ragged white
beard that spread fanwise across his breast. His hands were seared and
twisted like those of one who has lived years of hardest toil, and the
staff on which he leaned had a crooked handle.
“Bishop Alfred,” he said, “this is the Messiah who was to come.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE CHAPEL UNDERGROUND
In the subterranean chapel, lit by rushlights that sent the shadows
scurrying and made fantastically unreal the eager faces and the
dissolving groups that clustered now around me, now around David, and
again gathered about the tall old bishop with his peasant’s face and
child’s eyes, David told them my tale, and then in turn told me the
legend that I had brought so wonderfully to fulfillment.
The more bewildered I appeared, the stronger grew their faith, for the
legend foretold that I was to come unknown to myself, and with no
expectation of my own mission. They saw the cylinder, and there was none
who doubted.
There were some thirty men and women present, of whom a dozen formed an
inner council which had already formulated the plans for the new
government. Some were delegates from outlaw bands in the recesses of the
forests, some, like David, fugitives from the government bureaux, and
three or four, Paul among them, those who had most recently escaped from
the defectives’ shops. There were representatives of various trades, who
had come from London at imminent risk, intending to return: one from the
traffic guild I noticed in particular, a giant of a man with a black
beard as crisp as an Assyrian king’s, who said that, at his signal, his
guild would rise and fling themselves, to a man, upon the Guard.
It was a touching reunion. Two generations had gone by while men
remained in ignorance of all that we and our ancestors had known:
popular freedom, public rights, liberty to choose their trades, the
sanctity of family life, and, above all, the absence of the galling
inquisition and atrocious tyranny of Science run mad.
The elder men remembered with horror the period of the revolutions, in
which a man would have given all that he had for life and bread. They
regarded the epoch that had preceded this as the dark age of the world,
much, I think, as we, in our turn, looked back upon the freer age before
the Reformation. They had a misty tradition of a century in which men
starved, in which the rich oppressed the poor and the poor dwelled in
foul, sunless tenements and dressed in rags.
That tradition was true, and of the Moyen Age, before these things, of
course they knew nothing. Now all had bread to eat, and light and air;
but they lived in a world with neither hope nor joy, resource nor
initiative, nor happiness in labor, in which one cherished the home ties
furtively, while over their children always hung the menace of the
defectives’ workshops, or the horrors of the Temple. And on them preyed
the privileged caste of whites, taking toll of their daughters, lording
it as judges and bureau bosses, in the name of Science emanating from a
madman’s brain.
I began to gather, to my relief, that only the very ignorant believed
that the Messiah would be a supernatural being. There was superstition
enough hidden in the hearts of all, for faith, denied, creeps in, in
strange guises; but the world awaited, rather, the inevitable leader who
must come to set free a people grown over-ripe for freedom. For the
horrors of the new civilization had reached the point where men had
grown reckless of life. Everywhere was the anticipation of the
approaching change, and even Sanson must have seen that neither his
Guard nor his great Ray artillery could save his crumbling power.
Science had overplayed her part when she had bankrupted human hearts.
Everywhere the deep sense of intolerable wrong was spreading. And
although not even the very old remembered the time when Christianity was
a living faith, yet the hopes of all hinged on it. There was no other
hope for the world but the same Light that lit the darkness in the most
shameful days of Rome’s high civilization. So they had enrolled
themselves beneath that ancient banner of human freedom; dozens had died
under torture rather than disclose the hiding place of their treasured
Scriptures—of such parts as had come down to them, rewritten in the new
syllabic characters. There was a rich harvest to come from many a
martyr’s blood.
So, then, there had filtered down through the years the faith that in
2015, or seven and thirty years after the institution of the new era, a
Messiah was to arise and restore freedom to man. It had begun with the
discovery of the cylinder that contained Esther’s body, somewhere about
the middle of the preceding century, and after the first revolutionary
outbreak.
In some manner unknown the cylinder had made its appearance in the
world. At first it was believed that it contained only the embalmed body
of a woman, within a case fashioned so cunningly that none could open
it. But later the rumor spread that at the end of a certain time the
case would open of itself, and the woman awaken and come forth.
I inferred that Sanson, in spite of Lembken’s statement to me, had
obtained access to Lazaroff’s papers, and had shrewdly resolved to turn
the popular legend to his own use by placing the date of the fulfillment
of the prophecy. He set the cylinder within the Temple and diffused the
report that, when Esther awakened, they two would rule the world
together and offer immortality to man.
The cylinder had, then, first appeared about 1950. It had become the
symbol of the Revolution—Freedom sleeping. It had been carried before
marching armies. It had been a rallying point for the defeated. Men had
fought and died over it. It had been struck by unnumbered bullets. It
had been lost and regained upon a dozen battlefields. Then it had
vanished with the inauguration of the reactionary régime, to appear once
more, the inspiration of new hopes, when Sanson sprang to his
leadership, like a god, about the year 1980.
And all this while I had been sleeping within the vault, as heedless of
the passing years as Esther in her undreamed of journeyings. That I had
escaped notice was due, no doubt, to the single fact that the wall of
the vault had fallen in and hidden my cylinder from sight, embedded, as
it was, in mud up to the neck. Those who had read of me in the papers
might not have prosecuted their search hard, thinking that the cylinder
had been removed already.
As the years went by an amplification of the legend had spread until it
grew to be a rooted popular belief that the Messiah who was to come
would issue from a second cylinder. That was the reason why neither
David nor Jones, nor any in the cellar doubted me.
Old Bishop Alfred grasped my hands in his. “This is not chance, but a
wonderful sign from God,” he said. “To think that while we met here you
lay within that case a few feet from us! I have doubted and dreaded, as
all have, but nothing can daunt me now. We shall win freedom, we shall
have our two names again.”
David whispered to me that, grown a little childish with age, the poor
old man longed for the day when he could assume the ancient episcopal
pomp. To sign himself, Alfred London, was his life’s dream, and he had
vowed that till that day came his family name should never pass his
lips.
After I had heard the story we kneeled in prayer, and the Bishop read to
us from the syllabic version of the Bible, as it was known. It comprised
only a few portions of the Old Testament, chiefly parts of Isaiah which
some scribe had thought prophetic and necessary to be saved. Of the
Synoptic Gospels there existed only a few fragments, too, but there was
the “Sermon on the Mount” from the “Beatitudes” to the end, and the
whole of the magnificent “Gospel According to St. John,” together with
most of “Acts” and “Corinthians,” debased to some extent, and containing
interpolations that had crept in, but on the whole faithful to the
original. Though the entire Bible has, of course, been recovered, I am
convinced, and many agree with me, that the world has gained
immeasurably by the removal of the scaffolding of the Temple of Truth
during more than two generations. Never again will literal
interpretation be placed upon Old Testament mythology, the poetic
allegory of “Creation and the Fall,” or the chronology that offered the
life cycles of tribes as the events of one man’s life; nor will the
warrior god, Jehovah, be considered anything but an incompletely
discerned aspect of the divine.
Afterward, at David’s urging, I rose to speak. I hardly knew what I
should say, but, as I stood in hesitation before the meeting some
Pentecostal power seemed to lay hold of me, and a torrent of impassioned
words broke from my lips, till I felt all minds and hearts enkindled
from the flame in mine. I spoke of the old, free world, of old,
illogical, and cherished customs, preserved through centuries, uniting
men in a fellowship that logic could not give; of ideals and traditions
carried onward from age to age, ennobling faith and strengthening a
nation’s soul; of pride of family other than that of pedigreed stock; of
initiative and resourcefulness, charity and good-will for weak as well
as strong; of a ruling class bound by its traditions to public service,
and open to all below who had the character and gifts to enter it.
But one thing I could not explain; when Bishop Alfred, rising,
incredulous that the weak should have been protected, that they aroused
pity instead of wrath, inquired, if we had really had this Christian
use, why we had lost it.
When I ended I came back to myself, to find that I was standing
tongue-tied before them. I heard a sigh ascend from every lip; and then
they were about me, falling upon their knees, grasping my hands,
imploring me to accept their service and devotion. Elizabeth was weeping
happily.
“I knew, Arnold,” she said.
Then the revolutionary committee took their seats upon the benches and,
while the rest gathered about them, proceeded to consider the reports
brought in. It was an informal meeting, hampered by none of those rules
made by democracy for the restriction of free speech, and conducted with
earnestness and quiet decorum. Man after man rose up and made his
report, the leaders of the guilds pledging so many, describing their
enthusiasm, stating the number of Ray rods in his possession, and
pledging absolute obedience to instructions.
Then I was acquainted, as succinctly as possible, with the progress of
the movement. It was known that during the next few days Sanson meant to
address the people in the Temple, using some anniversary celebration as
his occasion. He was universally credited with the plan to effect a
_coup d’etat_, deposing Lembken and assuming the rulership of the
Federation. He had attached the Guard to him with favors and gifts, so
that intense hatred existed between it and Lembken’s airscouts. There
was thus a triangular contest between Sanson, Lembken, and the
revolutionaries; and the fear was that, if the airscouts were split by
faction, the Guard would overwhelm them and establish Sanson in
Lembken’s place, making a greater tyranny still.
It was, therefore, debated whether it might be possible, as unhappily it
seemed necessary, to make some terms with Lembken that should ensure
Sanson’s overthrow.
“We have gained one piece of priceless information from you, Arnold,”
said David. “We know now that Sanson’s plans relate to the awakening of
Esther. Five days is almost too short a period for our plans to mature;
yet we know that Sanson’s coup must synchronize with the opening of the
cylinder. It is believed that he has actually made some discovery, not,
of course, of immortality, but for prolonging life, which he intends to
offer the populace, should any champion, posing as the Messiah, come
forth to challenge him. That will be a test such as has never yet been
made in the world’s history, the choice between liberty and immortality,
so-called. And it will be difficult for the multitude to choose the
former and to reject the latter.”
“If the people have the choice they will choose wisely,” said Elizabeth,
from within Paul’s arm. “Have no doubt as to that.”
“How do you know?” asked David.
“Because they want the love that is their birthright,” she answered
boldly, “and love knows it is immortal and does not fear death.”
I saw the committee leader smile, and there came upon his face a very
affecting look. An elderly man, a member of the privileged caste, he had
voluntarily laid aside the white robes of his order and taken to the
forests, to organize the beginnings of the Revolution. As he spoke, the
detailed scheme began to be clear to me, and I understood that the
rulers of the world were matched by no mean antagonists.
First he alluded to the belief, already current among all the
revolutionary bands, that the Federation’s troops had been overwhelmed
before Tula, and that the Tsar’s forces were already pouring through
Skandogermania to seize the battleplanes from the disaffected airscouts
in Hamburg and Stockholm and launch them against London. It was believed
that the Council must be in desperate straits to have had recourse to
the moving picture lie, as worthless as the falsehood that the escaped
defectives had been retaken.
What seemed to me a psychological confirmation of this report was the
circumstance asserted by him, that the torture of heretics, the
activities of the vivisectionists, and the weeding out of morons were
proceeding with unexampled rigor. For tyranny always becomes most cruel
when it approaches its downfall, by inspiring terror, to create
submission.
“You have heard,” continued the old man, “how Lembken lured Arnold to
the People’s House. Lembken knows who he is. Then he must be aware of
Sanson’s plans and is plotting to use Arnold in a counterstroke.
“He is old and obese and pleasure-loving. But you must not forget that
he rose to power by the most cunning craft, inspiring, as he undoubtedly
did, the murder of Boss Rose, and buying over the airscouts. Sanson
underrates the old fox, but Lembken has his ear to the ground all the
while he is supposed to be roystering in his devil’s palace. Now,
friends, we can despise no weapon that will aid our cause. If we have to
use Lembken, as the lesser evil, in order to unite the airscouts under
Hancock against Sanson—”
“Never!” shouted the black-bearded leader of the traffic guild. “He has
taken—taken—taken—”
The giant broke down and covered his face with his hands.
“My daughter,” he raved, raising his face with the tears streaming down
his cheeks, and clenching his enormous hands. “Only today—today—I would
not desert the cause, or I should have forced my way into the People’s
House and killed him—”
I thanked God, the father did not know that I had seen her in the
Council Hall.
The old leader got up and put his arm about the giant’s shoulder.
“But for the sake of freedom you will consent,” he said.
The other threw back his head. “Yes—for the cause, yes,” he answered
quietly, and moved away. He stood with head drooping upon his breast,
like some huge statue. I understood then the strength of the enmity to
the government. No Ray artillery could withstand such a wild passion as
the deviltries of Science had awakened.
“I can only offer the outlines of my plan,” resumed the old man,
returning to his place, “because, at such a time, we must trust as much
to the spontaneous instincts of our people as to a detailed scheme which
may go wrong. But it seems to me that it is essential first to enter
into communication with Lembken. We will offer him his palace, perhaps,
and an untroubled life hereafter. It is a hard compromise, but there
seems no other way, for Sanson must be destroyed, and everything depends
on Hancock.
“Five days hence, when Sanson summons the people into the Temple, as
many as possible of our men will assemble there, with Ray rods beneath
their tunics. Arnold will advance and challenge Sanson. We shall spring
forward, seize him, possess ourselves of the cylinder, assume possession
of the Temple buildings, and set up our government. Meanwhile the
airscouts will take possession of the barracks and Ray artillery.”
Here I interposed. “Is this the only way?” I asked. “Are there not
annual elections? Would it not be possible—”
I was unprepared for the outburst of bitter laughter that answered me.
“Do you really believe, Arnold,” asked David, “that anything can be done
like that? Even in your other life, history—the history that is not
taught—informs me that the election of popular representatives had
become farcical, especially in the home of democracy, America, through
the refusal to permit unauthorized candidacies, through the demand for
large sums of money to be deposited as a preliminary, by ballots drowned
with names of unknown men, representing nobody knew whom, and fifteen to
twenty feet in length; by ruffians at the polls—a device much used in
Rome when she started on the democratic down-grade that led to tyranny;
by stuffed ballots and lying counts, and voting machines ... in short,
Arnold, we have so far improved upon those crude devices that the ballot
is now the strongest weapon in our masters’ hands. And when freedom has
been restored it will never be seen again. We shall never count heads,
except among small bodies of committees, and the days of so-called
representative government will never recur so long as men remain free.”
It was evident that his words had touched their imaginations in some way
unknown to me, for they sprang to their feet and cheered him wildly. I
learned afterward that all the laws, the most subversive of human
rights, all the most fearful promulgations of Sanson were put to the
farcical test of public approbation. The democratic State had killed
itself, as it always does, but the shell remained to protect the tyranny
that followed, as it always does, too.
Before the noise had quite subsided, Jones, who had come in quietly,
stood up in the midst of the assembly.
“The plan to seize the Ray artillery is impossible,” he said bluntly.
“Why?” demanded a dozen voices.
“Because the small Ray guns upon the battleplanes are useless against
the glow paint on the Guards’ fortress, and the Guards’ great Ray
artillery will pick off our battleplanes one by one as they expose their
unprotected parts while evolving in the air. It is impossible to protect
the parts of a plane around the solar storage batteries, because the
glow rays disturb their action. Then, again, when each of our men has
discharged his Ray rod, where is he to replenish it without access to
the solar storage within the Guards’ fortress? Even our airplanes, with
their week’s supply, have to be replenished there.”
“Hold a battleplane where we can gain access to it, so that the rods can
be recharged from its supply.”
“Not practicable,” said Jones.
“If each man has three Ray rods, he can kill three of Sanson’s men.”
“But unless you take the fortress the Ray artillery can make a desert of
London.”
“What would you do, then?” asked the committee leader.
“Cut the solar supply cables.”
“Twelve feet underground, in steel and concrete?”
“No. At the heart of the world’s power system,” said the airscout. “In
the Vosges. It is not impossible. The Ray artillery there is not
carefully guarded; the early nights are dark. Make Sanson’s Ray guns
useless at a stroke, and then storm the fortress in the old way, man
against man.”
I saw the face of the black-bearded leader redden with blood. “Yes!” he
cried, “that is the way.”
“And then we shall have two names again and life will be free,” said
Bishop Alfred, musing. “Two names, as our fathers had.”
All caught the enthusiasm. The committee leader held up his hand for
silence. “Wait! Who will go?” he demanded.
“I can. I will,” replied Jones, boldly. “I was born there. My father was
a Frenchman, removed to England because he cherished national
aspirations. I will succeed or die there.”
“Where will you get the airplane?”
“I have it here,” said Jones, as simply as if he could produce it from
his pocket.
Again the mad clamor burst forth. Jones, as the first airscout to come
over, filled all with enthusiasm, and belief in our success.
“And who will go to Lembken as our emissary?” asked the committee leader
presently.
“I will,” I answered.
David started toward me. “No! The risk is too great,” he cried. “We need
you in the Temple on the appointed day. We need your leadership for the
sake of the cause. If Lembken refuses, or tricks you, all will be lost.”
I answered rather sadly. “You forget,” I said, “that I, too, have all I
hold dear at stake. For this cause, too, I shall succeed or die.”
CHAPTER XVIII
SANSON
For a long time I could not persuade them to let me go. But I pleaded so
hard and set out the arguments so forcibly that at last I persuaded
them. For it was clear that if Lembken, realizing that his power was
waning, should accept our offer, then my plan was the wisest; and, if he
refused, our desperate chance would lose but little by my death.
It was even possible that the rôle for which he had cast me was the same
that I was to play for the Cause. He had meant to use me against Sanson;
and the more I thought of it the stronger grew my conviction that he had
meant to have me challenge Sanson in the Temple.
So, one by one, the opposing arguments ended, and the committee leader
gave me my instructions.
“You must evade the battleplanes and enter London afoot,” he said. “You
will proceed to the People’s House, demand admission, and offer Lembken
our terms: his palace, honors, wealth and pleasures. If he accepts you
will return to us bearing his acceptance in the form of writing, that we
may have a hold on him to use with Sanson, should he betray us
afterward. If you are detected by the searchlights before you reach
London, you will be taken before Hancock, to whom you will make your
demand for an interview with his chief. A messenger will remain posted
near this meeting place in order to convey you to us on your return,
wherever we may be. Now, God be with you, Arnold!”
I think they understood the turmoil in my heart, for they were very
considerate, and troubled me with no more suggestions than these. For
myself, I confess that the thought of Esther’s peril obliterated from my
mind nearly all other considerations, and, in truth, I cared more for
her safety than for the Cause. I could do nothing till the time of her
awakening came; but, when she awakened, I meant to be at her side.
The rushlights were blown out, and we bade each other adieu at the
cellar entrance, and separated. Many of those who were present had
traveled miles through the forests in order to attend the meeting. It
had been arranged that David and Elizabeth should make their quarters
with the band commanded by the leader, to which the bishop and Paul
belonged. I was to accompany them as far as the old road, where our
paths divided.
When we reached it, Elizabeth turned and, putting her hands upon my
shoulders, looked very earnestly at me.
“Arnold,” she said, “the day is near when we four shall be friends in a
happier world. God bless you and protect the woman you love.”
I pressed her hands. Then David grasped my own in his.
“Good-bye, Arnold,” he said. “The Providence that brought you to me will
act to save us all.”
And he, too, was gone. I waited at the edge of the old road, watching
them disappear among the trees. The last thing that I saw was the
bishop’s white beard, a spot in the darkness. Then I was alone, with the
London road before me, and a mission as desperate as any that was ever
undertaken, and as pregnant with possibilities.
I do not know how long I had been traveling, whether five minutes or
twenty, nor whether I walked or ran. I became conscious of a soft
whistling in the air, and, glancing up, saw a dark airplane, black
against the risen moon.
I sprang from the road and hid myself in the underbrush.
The airplane dipped, passed me, and dipped again, with the purpose,
evidently, of alighting in the road. It passed beyond my sight, flying
low, and veering from side to side as its occupant examined the ground
for a resting place.
As I rose to continue my journey I heard a low hail among the trees. I
started around, to see the old bishop approaching me at a jog-trot. He
came up panting, and stood before me, holding his pastoral staff against
his breast.
“Did you see the airplane?” he asked, following the road with his eyes.
“What are you doing here, Bishop Alfred?” I asked in astonishment, for
there was an expression of supreme, benignant happiness upon his face.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes, alone,” he answered, smiling. “I left them quietly. They would not
have let me go. I followed you until I saw the airplane. I am going to
Lembken in your place.”
“But you will be put to death!” I cried. “Surely, you know—”
“Yes, but that is all right,” he answered. “It is three years now since
any priest was burned for the faith. I have been thinking about it for a
long time. Now I am ready. I am going into the People’s House to preach
the Gospel. I—I ran away from David,” he added, chuckling at the success
of his maneuver.
I threatened and pleaded in vain, for the old man’s face had the
joyousness of a child’s.
“It’s no use talking, Arnold,” he said, patting my arm affectionately.
“I am a stubborn man when my mind is made up, and it is made up now. I
have thought about it a long time. You see, I am the last bishop in
England. I am not a learned man, but the Lord Bishop of London”—how
happily he said that!—“laid hands on me an hour before they burned him
in Westminster Hall. Now it is right that I should follow him and take
on martyrdom. It will give inspiration to the people. It will be a
wonderful encouragement to them to see me among the fagots. I have
prayed the Lord to give me strength, because I am a cowardly old man,
and He has done so. I should like to consecrate my successor before I
die. But the Russians will take care of that, and it is fitter that they
should renew the line in England. They will be here in a few days to
save the world, and then we shall all be one.”
“How do you know?” I cried.
“It is given to me to know,” he answered, wagging his white head. “So
there is no longer any reason why I should not go into the People’s
House and bear testimony to the truth. You can go back now. I will carry
your message to Lembken before I die.”
Before I could restrain him he had started off along the road, and his
quick jog-trot gave him almost as much speed as my scrambling, wild
pursuit. I caught him, however, a hundred yards away.
“Bishop Alfred, you must go back to your friends,” I said. “Your idea is
nonsense. There is no need to sacrifice yourself.”
He shook his head and detached himself. I stumbled over a projecting
root, and when I was on my feet again I saw the old man another fifty
yards away. Once more I was approaching him. And then I halted suddenly
and drew back among the trees, for just beyond the bend in the road lay
the dark airplane, and the old man had stopped beside it, evidently
waiting to be taken in.
However, since he continued to wait there, I advanced noiselessly toward
it, with the hope of rescuing him, until I realized that the dark
airplane was empty.
The occupant had left it, but for what reason, or where he had gone, I
could not surmise.
I was just where the old road joined with a small, twisting path that
struck back among the trees. Some instinct cautioned me to silence. If I
had spoken ... but I did not speak, and then, among the trees, following
the crooked trail not fifty paces away, I saw the aviator, walking with
head bent downward, evidently unconscious of human proximity.
I held my breath in terror lest the old man should speak. But he stood
motionless as a statue beside the dark airplane; he seemed wrapt in a
reverie. The hope arose of saving him. That was Hancock’s airplane; his
fate, then, lay with Hancock, and Lembken had told me that the
Air-Admiral was a Christian. Surely he would take pity on the old,
childish man. He knew me. I might appeal to him....
The twisting track, which had hidden him from my eyes, brought him into
view once more, clear against the low moon that made the moving figure a
silhouette against its circle. I crept up, until suddenly I reeled and
nearly fell, overcome by the magnitude of my discovery. For this was not
Air-Admiral Hancock, but Hugo Sanson, the madman who ruled the
Federation!
For a few moments I was powerless to stir. A raiding beast of night went
rustling through the trees behind me. I heard an owl hoot. I lurked like
some savage in the underbrush, and everything went from my memory, save
Esther in peril, and Sanson, the evil genius of humanity, powerless in
my hands if I could spring on him and strangle him before he had time to
draw his Ray rod.
Then the tracking instinct awoke in me. I began stalking him as
stealthily as any moccasined redskin followed his quarry. He was now
only twenty paces away, and his walk showed that he suspected no danger.
It was a trail unknown to me, and I could only follow in patience. It
wound to right and then to left, until at last it blended in a wider
trail. And then I knew where I was. We were on the road that led to the
cellar.
The scattered bricks became the heaping piles. I crouched low. Almost
upon this site Sir Spofforth’s house had stood. There, where the beeches
waved their leafless arms had been Esther’s tea-roses. And here were
briers, sprung, perhaps, from those. It did not need these remembrances
to make my resolution firm.
Sanson was going down. If he had gone there an hour earlier he would
have walked alone into the presence of men who had a thousand deaths
laid up against him. But Fate had saved him for me!
For an instant the thought occurred to me that possibly Sanson,
acquainted with the details of the popular conspiracy, had come to offer
terms against Lembken. But I dismissed that thought as impossible.
Sanson would hardly have come there for such a purpose; at least, he
would have come with the Guard.
The short ladder had been removed and hidden among the trees, but Sanson
seemed to know the way intimately. Lying upon my face among the bricks,
I saw Sanson enter the cellar, holding in one hand a little solar light.
He passed through the gap in the wall into the vault.
I made my own descent with infinite care, taking pains to dislodge no
stone that might betray my presence. Now I was in the cellar on hands
and knees, watching Sanson as he moved to and fro inside the inner
chamber. My brain was working like a mill—and yet I did not know wholly
what I should do. If I killed Sanson, could I be sure that his death
would set Esther free? Could I seize him and exact terms from him? Then
there was a certain difficulty in springing upon the man quickly enough
to prevent him from drawing his Ray rod; and there was the innate
revulsion against choking a man to death.
As I deliberated, Fate seemed to solve my problem, for my fingers
touched and closed about a smooth object that lay on the ground. For a
moment I thought it was the branch of a tree. But no branch grew so
smooth. A polished stave? It had been fashioned and grooved.... It was a
Ray rod.
If I had doubted my mission I ceased to do so in that moment. I felt
along the weapon in the darkness, from the brass guard, which stood up,
leaving the button unprotected, to the little glass bulb near the head,
through which the destroying Ray would stream. I raised the Ray rod and
aimed it.
The solar light moved in the vault, and the shadow cast by the wall went
back and forth as Sanson tramped to and fro. He was muttering to
himself. He passed across the gap, and the little light shone on me. But
he did not look toward me, and then he was behind the wall again and the
light vanished.
Next time he passed I would fire. Yet I did not fire, and back and
forth, and forth and back he tramped, talking to himself as any lesser
man might have done. I had no compunction at all; I would have killed
him as I would have killed a deadly snake; and yet, so diabolical was
the fascination he exercised over me, I could not press the button.
I gathered my resolution together. I would fire when he passed the gap
again. No, the next time. Well, the next, then. My fingers tightened on
the handle. I saw Sanson emerge, the spark of light in his hand. The
tight, white tunic was in the center of the gap. Now! I pressed the
button, aiming at his heart.
The glass of the Ray rod grew fiery red. The button seared my hand, and
a smell of charred wood filled my nostrils. I dropped the weapon, and it
fell clattering to the ground. Sanson was standing in the gap, unharmed.
My Ray rod was the one that I had unwittingly discharged on the occasion
when I scrambled for the cellar roof. It had given me life then; it
seemed now to have brought me death. Of course it was useless till it
had been recharged; now it emitted only the red-mull rays: heat, not
cold combustion.
Sanson had halted as I aimed. Now, at the sound of the falling Ray rod
he sprang forward and turned his solar light on me. His poise was a
crouching leopard’s. In his left hand he held the light, and in his
right was his own Ray rod, covering me.
I looked at him, I stared at him, I rose upon my feet and staggered to
him. Something in his poise, the whitening hair, brushed back, something
in the man’s soul that the years could not conceal reminded me.... I
stood looking into the face of Herman Lazaroff!
CHAPTER XIX
THE STORY OF THE CYLINDERS
“So it was you, Arnold,” said Sanson quietly. “Well ... what do you
think of Sir Spofforth’s theories now?”
All my hatred and fear of him had died in that blinding revelation.
Bewilderment so intense that it made all which had occurred since my
awakening dim, a sense of pathos and futility at once deprived me of my
fears and robbed him of his power; and we might have been the
fellow-workers of the old days again, discussing the problem of
consciousness.
He seated himself on the mud mound, and his voice was as casual as if we
had just returned to the laboratory after escorting Esther home. And
indeed I could with great difficulty only convince myself that I had not
fallen asleep and dreamed this nightmare.
“You see, it has all come to pass, Arnold,” said Sanson, twirling the
Ray rod idly between his fingers. “A world such as I foretold—a world
set free. Enlightenment where there was ignorance; the soul delusion
banished from the minds of all but the most foolish; the menace of the
defective still with us, but greatly shrunken; the logical State so
wonderfully conceived by Wells, with Science supreme, and almost a world
citizenship. It is a glorious free world, Arnold, to which humanity has
fallen heir, and the fight for it has been a stupendous one. And it is a
world of my creation! I have done what Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon
failed to do; I have brought humanity under one sway, out of the
darkness into light, out of ignorance to knowledge. I have set man, poor
plantigrade, on his feet firmly. He looks up to the skies, not in the
blind and foolish hope of bodiless immortality, but knowing himself the
free heir of the ages. Wasn’t it worth the battle, Arnold?”
My sense of pity deepened. Surely there can be no worse fate for any man
than to accomplish his desires! I thought of all the unknown idealists
who had given their lives to the accomplishment of great projects and
failed, achieving nothing—inventors, dreamers, a gray, fantasmal legion
whose lost hopes ranged back from age to age; and I saw how their works
were blessed and their failures glorified in contrast.
“Yes, I thought that it must be you as soon as I examined the sheets
from the Strangers’ Bureau,” continued Sanson, in his matter-of-fact
manner. But it seemed so incredible that the cylinder had erred that I
allowed my pressing duties to let me forget my impulse to take immediate
action. Unfortunately, while we were fellow-workers I did not take your
finger prints, but I had, of course, observed your characteristic
indexes, and also, if you remember, you were kind enough to my fad to
permit me to take your cranial measurements. I did not think that there
could exist two heads like yours, combined with those indexes, within a
single century. For your occipital region is excellent, approximating my
norm, while your frontal area is that of a moron. In short, you are a
typical Grade 2 defective, Arnold—essentially so; and I have no doubt
that, thanks to your five centimeters of asymmetrical frontal
development, you have emerged into this universe of reality still
clinging fondly and affectionately to your dualistic soul theory.
“But never mind!” he continued, smiling rather grimly. “I have no
intention of handing you over to Lembken’s ridiculous priests to be
tried for heresy. There will be no more priests after a little while.
The public mind is now ripe enough for the abolition of this stupid
compromise of the transition period from God to Matter. One more animist
will do little harm in a world in which they are still far from
uncommon. And then, I am not a man of cruel impulses, Arnold, and I do
not want to penalize you for having come into a world in which you are
an anachronism. So you have spent three weeks in London?” he ended,
scrutinizing me sharply.
“Yes.”
“And came back by night to see your birthplace, I suppose,” he said
maliciously. “I don’t know how you escaped the battleplanes. Unless they
are growing slack.... I found one scoutplane without its searchlight
working, and shall send its commander to the leather vats if I discover
him ... well, Arnold,” he resumed, “I could not believe that you had
come out of your cylinder before your time. You came within an ace of
disrupting my work, my world, if you only knew it—you with your missing
five centimeters! I put implicit faith in Jurgensen’s mechanism, and, as
it proves, I was to blame. I came here tonight to see if you could
really be gone.”
“You knew that I was here?”
“Why not, Arnold, since I put you here?” he returned, looking at me in a
quizzical manner. “I have paid you periodical visits during the last
five and thirty years. You looked charming in your sleep, Arnold! The
fact is, it was a difficult situation. There was no way of destroying
you, even if I had been so minded. I might have buried you ten feet
underground, or thrown you into the sea, I suppose, but the men who
moved you would have betrayed me unless I murdered them—in short, it was
a problem how to dispose of you without violating my naturally humane
impulses. So I did the best thing—covered the cylinder with mud and let
you lie here.
“That Jurgensen timepiece was splendidly contrived, Arnold,” he
continued. “Too splendidly, in fact, for in the haste of sealing you I
left the pointer six months ahead of time, as well as with Esther. It
has perhaps occurred to you that you went to sleep in June and awoke in
December?”
It had not occurred to me, but I made no answer to his sneering
question.
“In fact, Jurgensen gave me a six months’ leeway on his hundred-years
clock, and the complication of figures prevented me from discovering it.
I moved the pointer to the end of the dial, assuming that the last point
was a hundred, and not a hundred and a half. And then, Arnold, there was
another most regrettable mistake. You remember that you were sealed up
quickly, and rather impulsively, so to say? I found that, in hurriedly
capping you down, I forgot entirely to add twenty-four days upon the
smaller dial for the leap-years; and so you returned that much ahead of
Esther. It was a very bungled arrangement excusable in you, but not in
me.”
“Lazaroff!” I began, and then corrected myself with an apology as I saw
his brows contract. “Sanson—”
“Thank you,” he replied ironically.
“You will at least answer two or three questions, will you not?” I
pleaded. “How did you induce Esther to enter the second cylinder? Why
did you trick me? And how have you contrived to outlive the century
without appearing more than half your age? I think my questions
pardonable.”
“I shall answer them all,” said Sanson. “I may tell you that it was
never my plan to send our monkeys ahead of us into this world. I meant
to go, Arnold. But unexpectedly there came into my life something
against which I had made no provision. In other words, absurd as it
sounds, I fell in love. Then I planned to take Esther with me. But this
plan, too, was changed, for, to be quite frank, I gathered that she
preferred you to me. I then conceived the entertaining idea of taking
you both with me, so that our rivalry might be renewed in a world where
your advantages of personality would be counterbalanced by my power.
Arnold, I never for an instant doubted that I should stand where I stand
today. So, having persuaded you to enter the cylinder—and how I laughed
at your imbecile complaisance—I invited Esther to follow you. There was
no difficulty. On the contrary, she could hardly be convinced that I was
in earnest. However, I speedily convinced her by the simple process of
putting on the cap. Then, since the cylinders can be manipulated from
within, I myself entered the third.”
“You, Sanson!” I gasped. “You, too, have slept a hundred years?”
His look became envenomed, and the quick gust of passion that came upon
him was, to my mind, evidence of a mentality unbalanced by unrestrained
authority.
“Arnold,” he cried, “would you believe that an end so carefully planned,
so mastered in each detail, could be thwarted by an instant’s lack of
balance? You remember that, of the three cylinders, one was already set
a century ahead? That, save for the six months’ leeway that existed on
all the dials, and was, therefore, immaterial—that one, calculated to
the utmost nicety, leap-years and all, was the one I had selected for
myself already. That was the one Esther entered. The dial upon the
second cylinder I set in your presence, but omitted the four and twenty
days. That was your cylinder. And the third—mine—do you remember?—was
set to sixty-five.
“I removed this cylinder to a second vault of which you do not know. I
awoke in 1980. Arnold, I entered it and forgot the dial! When I
recovered strength—and I had supplied some food products to last me
during that brief period of recovery—I hurried to this vault. I found
only your cylinder, behind the fallen bricks. When I saw that you still
slept I thought your mechanism had gone wrong. Then, going back to
examine my cylinder, I realized the truth. I, who had loved Esther with
all my power, and vowed with all my will to win her, I, a young man of
twenty-five, must wait for five and thirty years before she awakened.
When my time came to claim her I would be old. O, Esther, what I have
endured during these years!”
The baffled love of half a life-span overcame him. I watched him, almost
as shaken. The tyrant of half the world, greater than any man had been
since the days when the Caesars reigned, he had bound himself to a more
awful law than any he could contrive. It wrung my heart even then, the
man’s grim hopes and long enduring love, checked by so slight a chance.
“I found Esther was gone,” continued Sanson presently, rising and
beginning to pace the vault. “I might have re-entered my cylinder, but I
did not know whether she survived in hers. I knew my ambitions claimed
me, and my duty to save humanity and raise it up from the ape. Even she
had to yield to that sacred and pitiful impulse. I learned soon that the
cylinder which contained her had been discovered and adopted as a symbol
of freedom. I found the world aflame and flung myself into the heart of
the revolution. By will I made myself the master of men. In six months
my dominance was unquestioned. I could have become supreme, but I chose
to work through others, that I might have the leisure to devote myself
to my plans for the regeneration of man. I have succeeded; I have made
the world better, Arnold, and I have made it free. But now, when at last
the reward of my long toil approaches, when at last I can show Esther
what I have achieved for her, and lay the world at her feet, I am an old
man, and the prize has turned to ashes.”
His grief conquered him again, and he paced the vault like a madman,
weeping with all the abandonment of one who is above the need of
conventional repressions. I remembered the antics of the crowd that
followed me to the court. Sanson’s grief was as unrestrained as their
malice. But I was brought back from pity by the realization of this new
and dreadful complication. Sanson loved Esther still. And he had worked
for her. I recalled her immature feminist views. He had believed her
youthful impatience of authority rested upon as firm a conviction as his
beliefs! He thought he had freed humanity. And all the uncountable
wrongs of earth had been heaped up by him as a love-offering to lay at
Esther’s feet.
I flung my prudence away. I clasped him by the hands.
“Sanson,” I pleaded, “don’t you see, don’t you understand what the world
is today? Each age has its own cruelties and wrongs; but, if poverty has
been abolished, have you not set a heavier yoke upon men’s necks? Their
children torn from them, the death-house for the old, the vivisection
table—”
“That is all true, Arnold,” he answered, “and sometimes, even now, that
old, inherited weakness that men termed conscience stirs in me. That
fatal atavistic folly!—for what is death, after all? A painless end, a
placid journey into nothingness, a resolution of the material atoms into
new forms, which shall, in turn, create that consciousness men used to
term a soul. Their children? Bah! Arnold, through suffering we win
upward. In the world-nation that is to come, the narrow, selfish
instinct called parental love—a trick of Nature to ensure the rearing of
the race—will not exist. It will have served its purpose. All I have
done is nothing in comparison with the great secret now almost within my
grasp. That is the meaning of the vivisection table—the research work
that will enable me to offer man immortality!”
I recoiled in horror at the sight of the fearful fanaticism upon his
face.
“Yes, it is that, Arnold, which I am almost ready to bestow upon the
world!” he cried triumphantly. “The old problem of consciousness and
tissue life on which we worked so long has practically been solved by
means at my disposal in a civilized world. Then we shall live indeed.
There will be no requirement that knowledge should progress painfully
through the inheritance of our fathers’ labors. We ourselves shall climb
the ladder of omniscience. The fit shall live forever, and we shall weed
out the moron and defective without scruple, preserving a race of mortal
slaves to labor for us in the factories and in the fields, holding them
subdued by the threatened loss of that life which we shall control and
permit to them so long as they are obedient. That is the noble climax of
man’s aspirations. Immortal life, in these bodies of ours, and Esther
mine, not for a span, but for eternity!”
I believed him—I could not help but believe. Can anything be impossible,
so long as man is gifted with free will for good and evil? Must he not
have the ladder to scale Olympus, and thereby learn of heights beyond? I
flung myself upon my knees before Sanson, like some poor father pleading
for his son’s life, and implored him to draw back. As he stood watching
me I babbled about the terror in the world, the boon of death, the
long-linked chain of humanity, bound all together as a spiritual unit,
which he would sever. I reminded him of the old days under Sir
Spofforth, of the old, free world we had lost. How had he bettered it? I
think I moved him, too, though, when I ended, he was regarding me with a
cold smile of negation.
“You want me to turn back, Arnold,” he said. “Once there was a time when
I hesitated. But ... can even that God of yours turn back? Come with me,
Arnold, and for the sake of the old friendship to which you have
appealed I will give you power. Defective as you are, you shall live
your life to the full capacity of your talent. You shall not suffer
because you came so unkindly into this world of ours. If your mind turns
toward pleasures such as that foul defective Lembken enjoys, they shall
be yours. If not, then you shall work with me as you used to do. When I
and Esther rule the world together, immortal as the fabled gods, you
shall sit at our feet and be our confidant.”
That I hoped still to win Esther had never entered the man’s mind. The
sublimity of his egotism was the measure of his blindness. Just as he
had entered the cellar, so self-absorbed that he had failed to see the
benches and the crucifix, nor dreamed that here, where his evil dreams
began, their end was planned, so, now, he did not see. The devilish will
that had carried him thus far would bring him to destruction.
At my hands, if I played the part shrewdly. But I lost all self-command.
“Though you have all the world at your feet, Sanson,” I cried, “you can
never hold me to obedience, nor Esther either. I love her, and we shall
both die before we yield!”
For an instant I saw his face before me, twisted with all the passions
of his thwarted will; then I saw the blinding white light leap from his
Ray rod as he fired at me.
CHAPTER XX
THE SWEEP OF THE NET
“I am not at all afraid,” I retorted, nettled at Lazaroff’s sneer, “but
how do I get in?”
A dog was yelping somewhere outside the Institute, and all the dogs in
Croydon seemed to have taken up its challenge. It was difficult for me
to make my voice audible above the uproar.
“I am not at all afraid,” I repeated, “but—”
I was back in the cellar with Esther and Lazaroff, and we were examining
the cylinders. As I looked about me, I seemed to be in the cylinder
still, but gradually it expanded, until it became a vast hall, dark,
save for a little window near the ceiling, through whose half-opaque
crystal a little light filtered in dimly.
Lazaroff seemed to have aged. He wore a white beard, and his touch was
very gentle as he bathed my face with water. As I stared at him he
became ... somebody whom I had once known ... Bishop Alfred!
“Now you are better,” said the old man, with his child-like smile.
I put my hand up to my aching head. There was a scarred groove along the
top of the scalp, where the glow ray had plowed its passage. I began to
remember now.
The howling of the dogs broke out afresh. The din was terrific, and the
mournful tones of the poor animals’ cries made the place a pandemonium.
“Arnold!” whispered a soft voice at my side.
Elizabeth was kneeling there, and David stood behind her. Next to David
stood the little woman who had been our neighbor in the Strangers’
House, and a multitude of men and women, and children, too, watched me
through the gloom.
“Where am I? Who are all these?” I asked. Then, lighting upon a more
momentous question, “How long have I been here?”
“Three days, Arnold,” whispered Elizabeth.
“Then in two days—two days—” I gasped.
“No, Arnold, tomorrow is the day,” interposed David, coming up to me
softly. “Sanson has proclaimed a meeting in the Temple at sunrise, and
it is now late afternoon. We are all in his trap. He must have found
you, taken you unaware, and fired at you, but afterward he changed his
mind and brought you here in his dispatchplane, where he found Bishop
Alfred awaiting him, and Elizabeth and myself, who had gone back to find
him. I bought a few days’ respite by surrender, and there was even
pleasure in the thought that my daughter will not meet her fate in
Lembken’s palace.”
“Where, then?” I asked, struggling painfully up.
“In the Vivisection Bureau—with these,” he answered, indicating the
assemblage.
“Where are we, David?” I cried in anguish.
“Beneath it. In the vaults where Sanson keeps his morons, Christians,
criminals, and dogs, to await the table.”
I was upon my feet raving like a madman, making my way round the vault,
striking my fists against the damp stone walls, crazed with the thought
of Esther. They followed me, and some laid their hands on me in
restraint, but I thrust them away. They thought I could not bear to
share their wretched fate. But the nearness of the crisis, the thought
of Esther in Sanson’s power deprived me of my senses.
The vault was an enormous one, the only access being at the far end, by
means of an oak gate, heavily barred. In this further portion were
chained, all along the walls, the dogs destined for the experimental
work above. As I drew near the gate the howling broke forth afresh. It
steadied me; I came back to my senses; somebody was at my side, clasping
my arm and speaking a few timid words in my ear.
I swung around and caught at the little woman who had been our neighbor.
She had her children with her, and the three held each other closely, as
if their last hour had begun.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
I did not know David was near, but at the words he clasped me in his
arms.
“She is here, Arnold,” he answered, “because the last act of terrorism
has brought her. Sanson’s reason has left him, and he has flung his net
wide over London for victims. He has gathered everyone: morons,
Christians, criminals, suspects. She taught her children fairy stories.
The inspectors had long suspected it, and they terrified the little girl
into admission by threatening to kill the mother. They were then
adjudged morons. The mother pleaded to be allowed to accompany them to
the table, alleging that her father had been color-blind. Her prayer was
granted; she is going, Arnold; we all are going—”
“No,” said the old bishop in a regretful tone, “not one of us is going.
You see,” he added in explanation, “the Russians are in Stockholm, and
it will not be long before they arrive in London to free the world. That
is why Sanson lost his self-control. He knows. He wants to finish his
enemies at home before they come.”
“How do you know?” demanded David, while everyone grew still and
listened.
“It is given to me to know,” said Bishop Alfred simply, beaming and
rubbing his hands. “I should like to have followed my dear master, the
Lord Bishop of London, to the fagots, but none of us will go to the
tables now, and we shall all have our two names again.”
David drew me aside. “Arnold,” he said, “this situation would have
robbed stronger men of their wits. I am afraid that our case is
hopeless. One of the Guard, who knows me, has told me that Sanson is
preparing for a holocaust of victims tomorrow, to celebrate his coup. He
will stop at nothing to appease his blood thirst. Arnold, all our people
know who you are. For their sake you must lead and show them how to die,
as the first Christians died. It is hard, my dear boy—”
I knew he was not thinking of death, but of my tragedy.
“Your capture has rendered our plans abortive,” he went on. “But still
there may be some hope unguessed by us. Unto the last we will not impugn
God’s power. Now, my friends,” he added, turning toward the crowd, which
circulated in the vault slowly, always following me, “let us show the
Guard where our strength lies.”
In the gloom of the vast vault, above the howling of the dogs, the hymn
was raised, old Bishop Alfred leading, in a voice singularly sweet,
although in speech the tones were broken. All kneeled.
Afterward David spoke briefly. He reminded us of the brave traditions of
martyrdom and its happy expectancy. We were going to face our fate
together, strengthened by our companionship and in the knowledge that
our death would create a revulsion of sentiment that would sweep Sanson
from power and restore Christianity to the world. They cried out their
approval, and there was no face but reflected David’s dauntless
resolution. Then it was as if some soul of merriment swept over us all.
I saw strangers embracing, there was clapping of hands, and the
concluding hymn was shouted so joyously that a slit in the little window
overhead was thrust back, and I saw the face of a sentinel stare in on
us with something of superstitious awe.
The glass must have been sound-proof, like that which enclosed Lembken’s
gardens, for, as the slit was pushed back, I heard the cries of the
multitude in the courts above:
“Sanson! Sanson! Sanson!” they howled. “Out with the Christian morons!
To the Rest Cure! The Rest Cure!”
The slit was pushed into place, cutting off all sound. Darkness was
falling. The little light within the vault faded. Gradually the voices
died away. Sometimes a hymn would be started, but mostly we sat silent
now, and even the dogs ceased howling, and only stirred and whined at
intervals. I heard the little woman’s children whimper, and fancied her
motherly face bent over them as she quieted their fears. I only felt
Elizabeth’s presence, and that of David, good, fatherly man, on whom I
leaned more than he knew. At last the only sounds were the bishop’s
mumbling voice, as he talked to himself, and the staccato tapping of his
stick on the stone floors.
[Illustration:
A man near me leaped up and craned his neck, looking into the gloom
]
“They are coming,” I heard him say. “They are gathering up the Stockholm
fleets. They will be here—”
“Who?” I burst out.
“The Russians,” he answered gently. “See them coming; big men, with
bloody crosses on their breasts.”
A man near me leaped up and craned his neck, looking into the gloom. One
or two cried out at the old bishop’s words, and some listened and
whispered eagerly. Time passed. Most of the prisoners slept. I was still
too sick and dizzy from my wound; I waited in a sort of apathy, and I
seemed to see Esther within the opening cylinder, and Sanson, creeping
like a foul beast of prey toward her.
I had been dozing. I started up at the sound of bolts being withdrawn,
the heavy door at the far end of the vault was opened, and flashing
lights shone in on us. The dogs, awakened, began to howl again. There
was the stamping of heavy boots upon the stones, and a detachment of the
Guard appeared before us.
They numbered seven. Six of them were privates, carrying solar torches
and Ray rods; and in their midst stood a tall man with a black beard and
a curved sword sheath that clanked on the stones. I recognized in him
Mehemet, the Turkish commander.
Some, who had slept and mercifully forgotten all, sat up in
bewilderment, others leaped up, thinking the hour had come. As we stood
blinking at the lights, Mehemet spoke a few words, and the soldiers
flashed their torches into our faces until they lighted on mine. Then
Mehemet stepped forward and laid his hand on my shoulder, and drew me
toward him; and the soldiers closed about us.
David sprang toward them.
“You shall not take him alone!” he cried. “Let us go with him, every one
of us. We shall go to death together.”
And others sprang forward too, clamoring, beseeching. “Take us all!”
they cried. “Take us together!”
Mehemet shrugged his shoulders and turned away. The captives flung
themselves before the soldiers, who hesitated.
It was then that the old bishop, who had never ceased to mumble, I
think, came quietly up to us.
“It is all right. Let him go,” he said gently. “He will come to no
harm.”
[Illustration:
A tall man with a black beard and a curved sword sheath that clanked
on the stones.
I recognized in him Mehemet the Turkish commander
]
“It is my orders,” said Mehemet, looking with respect at Bishop Alfred.
“I have come for him alone.”
Half quieted by the bishop’s intervention, my fellow-prisoners ceased to
offer forcible resistance. But they wept and prayed, and David grasped
me by the hand.
“We shall be together in spirit, Arnold!” he cried. “God be with you.
God be with you.” He flung his arms about me, and the guards, touched by
the scene, permitted him to accompany me as far as the door. They picked
their way carefully by the light of their torches, to avoid treading on
the dogs, which crept to their feet or strained, yelping, upon their
chains. At the door I found Elizabeth.
“We shall be with you in your hour, Arnold!” she said, embracing me and
fighting back her sobs valiantly. “We shall all think of you tomorrow.”
The crowd dispersed. The last thing that I saw was the white, terrified,
maternal face of the little woman, as she clutched her children to her
breast, and, over her, the bishop’s pastoral staff, held up as if to
shield her.
The door was closed behind me, and the soldiers shot the bolts home. In
front of me was a flight of winding concrete stairs, dividing at a
central space into two portions that ran right and left respectively. We
took the left. I expected to emerge into the Vivisection Bureau, to see
the eager students of the medical school, and Sanson, the presiding
devil, there. But instead I saw a gate above me; a guard unlocked it.
Then I found myself standing alone beside Mehemet, in the interior court
between the Temple and the Airscouts’ Fortress, between the Science Wing
and the Council Building.
High above me the bridges crossed, spanning the gulf in whose recess we
stood. I saw once more the palms against the upreared crystal walls.
As I watched I saw the battleplanes take their flight once more, one by
one, from the roof of the Airscouts’ Fortress, rising into the dark
night like luminous balloons. In the distance London glowed like day.
Behind us, in the outer courts, a multitude was shrieking curses upon
the Christians; and, for the first time, I heard threats against
Lembken, and realized that Sanson’s plans were made for that coup which
I was never to see.
“We are going to Sanson?” I asked Mehemet, nerving myself for his
affirmative reply.
He spat. “The jackal!” he said. “Sooner would I become a Christian than
serve such spawn. We are going to the People’s House.”
Evidently Sanson did not know that the main prop of his new house had
fallen.
CHAPTER XXI
AMARANTH
I stepped out of the elevator into a part of the Palace that I had not
seen before. The room into which the waiting negro ushered me was
completely dark, though a thin line of light at the further end showed
me that there was a lighted room beyond.
I strained my eyes, striving to penetrate the gloom. I took a few steps
forward, stretching out my hands to feel if any obstacle were in the
way. Looking back, I could not even discern the heavy curtain that had
dropped soundlessly behind me.
I knew that there was someone in the room, and that it was not Lembken.
I waited; I heard the rustle of a woman’s garment. Then swiftly the room
was flooded with the soft solar light.
It was bare, except for the rugs and a low divan pushed against one
wall, with a little table beside it. Everything was of the color of
gold: the walls, the ceiling, the rugs upon the floor. And before me,
clothed from head to foot in a sheer, trailing garment of dull gold,
stood the girl Amaranth.
Her dark hair was bound back in a loose Grecian knot, her sandaled feet
gleamed white on the gold fabric under them; she stretched out her white
arms to me and, taking me by the hand, led me to the divan and placed me
at her side.
“Poor Arnold!” she began in a caressing tone, “you have suffered so much
in your ignorance and your desire to help your friends. But all your
troubles are ended now, and your friends shall not be harmed. Do you
think you can love me, Arnold?”
She looked at me with neither boldness nor hesitation, and then, folding
her arms, drummed her sandal heels against the foot of the divan.
“Are you not lucky, Arnold, to have won my love!” she continued. “I gave
my love to you from the moment when I first saw you enter the room in
which I sat with Lembken, looking so stern, so resolute, like one of
those adventurous heroes of the twentieth century of whom we read in our
romances. That is why I made Lembken tell Mehemet to bring you here. He
was so hurt by your departure that I think he would have let his plans
go to ruin rather than himself plead with you. He is very sensitive and
kind.
“You are not afraid to love me, Arnold?” she continued, looking at me
with curious scrutiny. “You need not be afraid. Lembken has grown tired
of me, so I must find another. He has taken a fancy to Coral, my blue,
an absurd little yellow-haired thing. You shall see her.”
She clapped her hands twice, and a door opened, apparently a part of the
wall. A fair-haired girl, dressed in a loose blue tunic and Zouave
trousers, entered, carrying a tray on which were two golden winecups.
Amaranth took the nearest cup in her hands, touched the rim with her
lips, and held it out to me.
“Drink with me, Arnold,” she said.
But I would not drink, lest the corruption of the wine should dull me
and disarm my strength in the spell of that enervating hell. I handed
back the cup to her.
Amaranth looked at me for an instant with quivering lips. Then she burst
into tears and hurled the cup at the maid. She flung the other also. The
first missed its mark and fell against the base of the wall, where it
shed its ruby contents in a widening stain. The second cup struck the
maid’s cheek and cut it, and the wine drenched the blue tunic.
The maid smiled, biting her lips, stooped down, picked up both cups,
and, placing them on the tray, departed silently. Amaranth sobbed as if
her heart was broken. Then suddenly she turned and flung her arms about
me.
“Arnold, I love you!” she cried. “You saw her? She is Lembken’s favorite
now, that yellow-haired fool with the blue eyes like saucers. Lembken
means us for each other. Can you not love me?”
I sat in silence, trying to pick my path cautiously through the mists of
bewildering doubt. Amaranth unclasped her arms from about my neck, and
her face assumed a look of mockery.
“Oh, I know!” she said, “it is that Elizabeth of yours whom you think
you love. And you think you can only love one at a time, in your
romantic twentieth-century way. Well, I will match myself against her.
You shall bring her here, Arnold, and I will fight her for you, and I
will be your blue and she shall be your white, and I will serve you
obediently till I have won your heart. Look on me, Arnold! See how
beautiful I am! For I was born here; I am Boss Rose’s daughter, and I
have never left the People’s House. Look at the whiteness of my skin!
The sun has never shone on it. Look at my lips, Arnold! Put your mouth
to my cheek—it is as soft as the bloom upon a nectarine. Do you think,
then, I am afraid to match myself against your Elizabeth?”
She smiled contemptuously, and tilted back her head, and clasped her
hands behind it, and watched me through her lashes. Yet I detected a
resource of feverish resolve in her; and I knew that she and I, Mehemet,
Sanson, were that night weaving the threads in a fabric upon the loom of
destiny, and that each word we spoke flashed like the thread-bearing
shuttle over it.
So, piecing my words together with infinite care, because the lives of
Esther and all those who were dear to me hung on them, I answered her:
“Forgive my sullen mood. You have promised that my friends shall go
free; yet they expect to die at sunrise, and it is hard to be at ease.
How can I save them?”
Amaranth unclasped her hands and turned to me with a quick gesture of
penitence.
“Ah, it was wrong of me to speak of love first, when you have such a
burden of sorrow, Arnold!” she answered. “I had forgotten that men’s
minds are troubled in the world below. Here we are free and have no
cares, except how we shall take our pleasures. And to think that you
left us to help your friends, when Lembken would have done everything
you wished!
“Now I will set your mind at rest. Lembken has already given the command
that your friends shall live until Sanson has spoken in the Temple, and
when he has spoken he will no longer have power—if you obey Lembken. But
he was deeply hurt by your leaving him, for he is very sensitive to
unkindness, and so he asked me to speak to you on his behalf. Now, if
you act loyally, you may save your friends and the world. Tomorrow there
will be an end to all of Sanson’s mad schemes of tyranny. Mehemet and
his guards have abandoned him. Lembken knows everything; he knows all
the desperate plans his poor people have made, and his heart is wrung
for them.”
She paused, and placing her hand on mine, looked very earnestly at me.
“Arnold, you know that Sanson has been poisoning the people’s minds
against Lembken, in pursuance of his plan to depose him,” she continued.
“So your part, which will be detailed to you later, will be to enter the
Temple tomorrow among the priests. You will defend Lembken against
Sanson. You will remind the people how they elected him from year to
year, because he was their friend. Tell them he has not changed. And in
return liberty shall be established and the hated Guard disbanded.
Lembken asks only for his dignity and wealth, and his friends in the
People’s House. He is growing old, Arnold, and desires power no more.”
She watched me with that centuries-old look, and in my heart I knew I
had not fathomed hers. This was what I had meant to propose. Yet—yet I
doubted her.
“It is agreed, then,” she cried gaily, “and now you will be one of us.
It is past midnight, Arnold, and in a few short hours you shall be
hidden in the priests’ room to be coached for your part. Till then—”
She ceased suddenly, as the sound of voices came from the room beyond
the further door. She slipped from the divan.
“Sanson has been with Lembken,” she whispered. “He is coming this way.
Arnold, do you want to see your enemy broken? That will be a glorious
beginning to this first night of ours, and afterwards we shall go to the
revels in the garden. I shall be proud of you, Arnold, for now the girls
are taunting me because Lembken is tired of me. How I shall be envied!
But come here quickly!”
She took me to the door in the wall through which the girl Coral had
come. At a distance of a few paces it was invisible. I wondered how many
more such doors were set in the walls of Lembken’s palace.
“You shall listen here,” she said, “I trust you Arnold. You will not
lose your self-control and enter, no matter what you hear? Ah, I shall
test your love for that Elizabeth! But I trust you, and the beginning of
this night’s masque shall be the humbling of your enemy. Stay here until
I call you!”
She thrust me behind the door and withdrew, closing it. I heard the
rustle of her garment as she crossed the room—then nothing.
I found myself standing in a dim corridor that ran as far as I could see
in either direction. The nameless horror of the Palace overcame me, and
it was with a strong effort that I controlled my wild impulse of flight.
As I stood there I heard the sound of stealthy footsteps, and, looking
up, saw the maid Coral coming softly toward me. She was carrying the
tray, with two full winecups, and she stopped beside me and set it down
on the carpet.
She stood looking at me. Her eyes were blazing with anger, and her slim
body shook under the blue tunic. But on her mouth was the same set smile
that I had seen when she picked up the cups.
She said nothing, but, placing her hand against the door, opened it an
inch or two without the slightest sound. At that moment I heard a door
opened, the rustle of Amaranth’s robe, and a lithe tread on the floor.
Sanson spoke. “I have said all that there is to say,” he answered. “Why
do you plead with me? Do you think a woman can plead with me where
Lembken failed? He shall have his honors and residence here—no more.”
“But spare your prisoners, Sanson,” said Amaranth softly. “Spare Arnold.
For my sake,” she said, pleading.
Sanson spoke curtly. “All Christians and all morons must be tomorrow’s
sacrifice to the new era,” he answered.
“Do not go, Sanson,” Amaranth besought him, as he moved away from her.
“Listen to me! You, who are so merciless and cruel, why do you not take
all?”
“I have all that I need,” he said impatiently. “What more?”
“Why have you spared Lembken? Why do you not slay him and rule with us?
We hate him. He is a tyrant, and you know the fate of his women when
they have ceased to please. You who have made yourself the master of the
world, for whose sight we throng the sides of the crystal walls as you
cross the courts below—why have you refused the pleasures that are for
the world’s masters?”
He stood still; I fancied that he was looking at her, trying to measure
his problem in the balances once more. Coral cast a glance at me. The
smile was still on her face, but she nodded her head thoughtfully, as if
she, too, had her problem.
“Listen, Sanson,” continued Amaranth fiercely, “when Boss Rose climbed
to power he built the People’s House and made it a pleasure-palace for
the world’s elect. Then he died under a murderer’s dagger, and Lembken,
who had long envied him, came to rule in his place. He, too, has lived
his time. Now he is broken. You, the next ruler of the world—why do you
not do as he did? We are tired of him. We want another lord, Sanson.”
I knew that she was clinging to him as she had clung to me. I did not
look at Coral, but I knew that she was still smiling.
“You can set us free, Sanson,” continued Amaranth gently. “You can rid
us of our tyrant.”
The murmuring voice went on and on, and Sanson made no answer.
“You have not entered the People’s House for seven years until tonight.
Do you think we have forgotten that you exist? Do you think we have not
wondered why the master of the world has left us to the whims of that
fat old man? Sit by me, Sanson. Do you not see how you have toiled while
Lembken has taken his ease? You have waited so long for one woman. Oh,
yes, I know; all a great man’s secrets are known everywhere, though he
thinks them in sanctuary, securely guarded. You can take her—but take us
too. Live your life, Sanson! Save us and reign over us! Take me,
Sanson—”
I heard the man breathe as if in a trance. That strange pity which he
inspired in me awoke again. All the long tragedy of his life, the vigil
of five and thirty years, the love that must prove vain—I realized it
all. For this vain love he had ensnared the world, and now the world
leaped at him to ensnare him. Devil as he was, in will his life had
been, in one respect, a hero’s.
“Drink with me, Sanson,” I heard Amaranth murmur. “You do not know the
taste of wine. A pledge to our love. A pledge to our lives!”
She was conquering. The tyrant of the world was almost prostrate at the
feet of this girl of twenty years. Attila’s fate was to be his. I heard
him groan in bitterness of conflict.
Amaranth clapped twice. Instantly the girl Coral stooped down, pushing
me fiercely from the door, and, taking up the tray, went in. Amaranth
took the brimming winecup and touched it with her lips.
“Drink, Sanson!” she murmured.
I was watching them now. I saw Sanson rise and raise the cup in his
hand. He did not drink, neither did he reject it, but stood like one in
a daze, all movement inhibited by the fierceness of that inner struggle.
Amaranth seized the second cup from the tray, leaped from the couch, and
raised it on high.
“To our love, Sanson!” she cried, and drained it.
At that moment the jagged cut on the girl Coral’s face grew red with
blood again.
Coral stood holding the tray, and she looked at Amaranth and smiled. She
stood like a tinted statue.
Sanson was still standing in front of the divan. He had not drunk; he
held the cup in his hand and was himself as immobile as a statue.
“Will you not drink the pledge that I have drunk?” asked Amaranth,
laying her fingers lightly on his arm and leaning toward him.
And I had underestimated Sanson after all. Now, at the moment of
surrender, his indomitable will flamed out, seeming to possess his body
and mold each feature, every muscle to its unconquerable resolve.
“I will not drink!” he cried, and flung the cup to the floor.
He turned and strode from the room like the conqueror he was. He passed
the curtain, which fell behind him. He had won his hardest battle, taken
unaware, fighting against a cunning ambush; and I knew now that hardly
an earthly enemy could conquer him.
I was in the room now, for there was no need to hide myself any longer.
I watched Amaranth, who, as statuesque as Sanson had been, stood looking
after him. A minute passed.
Suddenly she wheeled about and clapped her hands to her side. She
staggered; a spasm of pain crossed her face, and she looked searchingly
at Coral. The maid in the blue tunic looked back at her, smiling.
Their eyes did not waver until Amaranth swayed backward and fell on the
divan. A scream broke from her lips, and then another; a third; she
wrung her hands and moaned.
I kneeled before her. “What is it, Amaranth?” I cried.
[Illustration:
Sanson’s indomitable will flamed out. “I will not drink!” he cried,
and flung the cup to the floor
]
She raised herself and looked wildly at me. Her face was ashen pale, the
features pinched; dark rings had crept beneath her eyes.
“She gave me the—wrong cup,” she whispered.
I tried to go for aid, but Amaranth clung to me. “There is no hope,” she
sobbed. “I must die. Stay with me, Arnold!”
Her head fell back and she breathed heavily. I turned and saw Coral
beside me, a smiling, waxen doll, the new queen of the harem by the
dying one.
“Go!” I thundered at her.
She shrugged her shoulders daintily and went, leaving the winecups on
the floor.
Amaranth’s hand trembled upon my sleeve. I bent over her. Her eyes fixed
themselves on mine.
“Put your hand under me,” she muttered; “raise me. All is lost now.
Sanson has beaten Lembken, and everything is ended. Save your Elizabeth
if you can.”
She drew my face toward hers and spoke in panting accents:
“It was Lembken’s plot. He learned that Sanson held you in the vaults.
His case was desperate. He asked Mehemet’s aid. Mehemet said he—his men
would not desert Sanson while he lived, but if he died they would follow
him for Lembken. I was to poison Sanson and thus win over the Guard. I
was to drug you only, and keep you out of the way. Lembken liked you; he
would not let you be killed. He has been communicating with the American
bosses. The plan—the plan—”
She gathered her strength with a last effort of will.
“The plan was of long standing. Events hastened it. Mehemet knew it.
Britain was to have a God again, Mehemet’s God, and the American Mormons
were to unite with us, for their faith is nearly the same. The people
would have a god, and this would unite all nations against the Christian
Russians. They are in Stockholm. The American battleplanes are on their
way to help us against them. When Sanson was dead the guards were to
join the airscouts. Now you must go. Save your Elizabeth. Kill Sanson. I
can say no more. Escape—”
She muttered something that I could not hear, and then her eyes, which
had closed, reopened and wavered on mine again.
“I loved you, Arnold,” she said in a weak, clear voice. “I’m glad I died
before I lost you. I used to wish I had been born in other days ... the
twentieth-century days, when ... women were different ... all different
... men mated one only ... give the people those days again if you beat
Sanson, Arnold.”
She tried to stretch out her hands to me. Her eyelids quivered, and she
sighed very deeply.
I saw a crimson stain upon my hands. It was the wine from Sanson’s
winecup.
CHAPTER XXII
ESTHER
I left the dead girl on the divan and went into the hall. My head ached,
and I was still dizzy from my wound, but I had grown suddenly composed,
and all my perplexities had vanished in the face of Esther’s imminent
need of me.
There was nobody in the hall. The negroes were gone, and the palm
gardens were dark and seemed deserted. Silence had descended everywhere.
Withal it was the silence of hushed voices, I knew, and not of
emptiness. Within those walls, in hidden rooms, lurked those who waited
yet for the death agony of the man who had already escaped the baited
trap.
I wondered whether Sanson had bought the attendants, if he had come
alone, whether the fear of him forbade an ambush in case Amaranth’s plot
should fail. He had evidently gone down in the elevator, for it was not
in the cage, but it came up to me when I pressed the button, and I
descended, stopping at the first door I saw, which must, I knew, give
access to the Temple.
The corridor into which I stepped was as empty as the palace hall above.
The airscouts who should have been on duty here were gone. I did not
realize that I had formed no plans and felt no fear until I found my way
unopposed. Before me was a door, leading into one of the numerous small
rooms through which one entered the Temple, and at my side was a little
window, through which the cries of the mob beneath were borne to me
fitfully on the gusty air.
I stopped and looked out. The sky was thick with battleplanes. No longer
at their stations about the city, they cruised hither and thither,
approaching one another and retiring in a manner seemingly confused and
aimless. Sometimes a group would gather as if conferring, forming a
polygon of light with changing sides as they maneuvered; and presently a
single impulse seemed to animate them all, for, like a flock of wheeling
birds, they swung around and sailed off together, till they were only
pin-points of light in the southwest.
Beneath me the courts were packed with a vast multitude that had
assembled for the morrow’s ceremonies. Looking down on them, I saw that
they were held back by two lines of the guards, armed with Ray rods,
drawn up before the Temple.
They jostled and swayed and howled fearlessly, as if they knew the
imminence of change; yet their cries were not all against the Christians
and the morons, nor yet against Lembken, nor all for Sanson. I tried to
fancy that among them were groups of our few thousand, gathered out of
the forests to play their rôle at dawn.
Yet for the moment Sanson had triumphed. I thought upon how little hung
the fate of the world. A palace women’s intrigue, the jealousy of a
girl, a cup of wine, and Lembken’s schemes were broken.
Then it came to me that the conical, glow-painted Ray guns on the
encircling wall were trained no longer outward but inward, dominating
the Temple courts and all the multitude within them. And in a flash of
comprehension I saw the scheme of Sanson. If the people rejected him on
the morrow he meant to kill all those within the walls, all human beings
inside the circle of the fortress, confident that thereby he would
destroy all his enemies. He meant to level the Temple and the palace
above, the Council Hall, the Airscouts’ Fortress, involving everything
in one colossal ruin which he would bestride—the unchallenged master of
the Federation.
This done, the Russian fleet would be attacked and destroyed, and with
it the last obstacle to world dominion.
I saw this with one flash of intuition. Perhaps I lingered in all for
forty seconds beside the window. It was hardly longer, for the thought
of Esther drove me through the doorway in front of me. I found myself
within the dark, enormous area of the Temple.
I was in a circular gallery surrounded by a brass railing, which ran
high up around the interior. The only light was the faint reflection
from a single solar bulb that shone across the gulf. Beneath it I could
discern the shining, golden surface of the Ant.
I felt my way around the gallery, working toward the light, which seemed
to descend as I approached it, until, standing immediately above it, I
looked down and saw it shining an unknown distance beneath. It showed
now the uplifted antenna of the idol, the edge of the stone altar in the
center of the bridge that spanned the Temple, and the round body of the
cylinder, which seemed to hang in space above it.
I had entered the Temple upon a floor one stage too high, and there was
no way down from the gallery; it would be necessary to go back to the
elevator and descend to a lower level, that of the bridges that spanned
the interior court.
But that was too dangerous, and I could wait no longer. I estimated that
the light was five and twenty feet below. I swung from the brass rail
and dropped into space. It was a mad plunge in the dark toward that
slender bridge a hundred feet above the Temple floor. But fortune was
with me, for I struck the golden grille around the altar-stone and
tumbled inside, rising upon my feet with only a bruise or two.
The grille was about four feet high, and the ends formed gates which,
when opened, made the altar-stone one with the two bridge spans that
extended to meet it from either side of the building. It formed thus a
sort of keystone in aspect, though not architecturally, since it did not
support the spans, which seemed to be on the principle of the
cantilever. I saw now that the stone was suspended by steel chains from
the roof, and over it, hung by two finer ones, was the cylinder.
Presently I could grasp the meaning of the mechanism. Cylinder and stone
altar were in counterpoise, so that, when the first was drawn up, the
second would descend from between the spans to the level of the Ant’s
pedestal, forming, as it were, a sacrificial stone immediately before
the idol, disrupting the continuity of the bridges also, and leaving a
gap between them.
But I spared no thoughts on this. I looked through the cylinder’s face
of glass, and, though I saw but the dimmest outlines there, I knew that
I had found Esther again, and that there were to be no more partings, so
long as we both lived.
I do not know what follies I committed there, for I forgot everything
but her. Forgotten was the imminent danger, remembered only our reunion.
I flung my arms about the iron case and called to her, telling her of my
love, as if she heard me. I came back to sanity at length to find myself
kneeling before the case upon the stone, with the tears raining down my
cheeks.
It was a mad wooing of a sleeping woman upon that giant slab, swung by
its chains from the vault above, and vibrant under me. Each movement set
the heavy mass to trembling as the chains quivered, and the cylinder,
too, danced before me, like some steel marionette.
I stretched my hands up, feeling for the cylinder cap. It was still on
the neck, but it had almost reached the end of the thread and moved
under my fingers. I could not see the figures upon the dial, but I knew
that Esther’s awakening was not many hours away.
I twisted the cap between my fingers. I could dislodge it. If I did so
... Lazaroff had told me that would bring death, but surely not when
there remained only a few short hours before the awakening. Air must
have been entering in measurable quantities during some days. And, even
if Esther died—better that than to awaken in Sanson’s arms!
It was a terrific choice. I hesitated only a few moments, but they were
a century of agony to me. Then I set my fingers to the cap, wrenched it
free, and flung it from me. It tinkled upon the stones beneath. And,
hardly venturing to breathe, I clung to the cylinder and waited.
No sound came from within. I clung and tried to place my ear against the
opening.
At last, in maddened resolution, I swung the cylinder toward me by the
chains, tilting it downward until I got purchase upon it. I bore with my
full weight upon the metal edge. I plunged my arms within. I felt the
heavy coils of Esther’s hair, her eyelids, cheek, and chin; I placed my
hands beneath her arms and drew her forth. How I contrived it I do not
know, for platform and cylinder rocked fearfully as they swung; but in a
moment, it seemed, I held her light and wasted body against my own. And
we were on the rocking altar-stone together, while the cylinder swung
rhythmically above, passing our heads in steady, sweeping flights as I
crouched with Esther in my arms behind the golden grille.
I pressed my lips to hers, I chafed her hands and pleaded with her to
awake. And presently, as if in answer to my prayer, I heard a sigh so
faint that I could scarcely dare believe I heard it.
A deeper sigh, a sobbing breath—she lived; and with amazed, awed
happiness I felt her thin arms grope instinctively toward my neck. She
knew!
I kneeled beside her on the altar-stone, listening with choked sobs and
wildly beating heart to the words that came from her lips in faltering
whispers:
“Herman! What have you done? You have killed him! Then kill me, too! I
don’t want to live! Murderer! Kill me! O Arnold, my love, to think that
neither of us knew!”
Then:
“Yes, I love him, Herman, and I have told him so. You were too late to
prevent that. I saw your heart tonight. Kill me, I say! Yes, I am ready
a thousand times to go where Arnold has gone. Be sure that I shall
follow him, through any hell of your devising!”
So Esther whispered, living over again those minutes of dreadful anguish
that she must have passed in the cellar after Lazaroff had put the cap
on my cylinder and driven me on that strange voyage of mine. The little
solar light shone on Esther’s brown gown, turning it golden. And I
remembered—with how strange a pang—the night when she had worn that gown
in the drawing-room of Sir Spofforth’s house.
“Esther,” I whispered, bending over her, “it is I. It is Arnold.”
I saw her eyelids quiver half open, but I knew that she could not see
me. She moaned. I interposed my body between her and the light.
“You have been ill, dearest Esther,” I said. “But now everything is
well. You know me, Esther?”
“Arnold,” she whispered, “I have been with you all the time. I dreamed
... Herman had sent you ... a hundred years away.”
She became unconscious the next moment. I knew the mighty grip of that
first sleep. It was in truth twin brother to death, for, with my head
against her breast, I could discern hardly the slightest stirring. But
she lived; all was well. And now the need of saving her came over me. I
caught her into my arms—she weighed no more than a small child—and
hurried across the bridge. I believed that the outer door upon this
lower level communicated with the bridge over the interior court that
led to the Airscouts’ Fortress.
I traversed the little room and pushed the swing door open. Before me
was an elevator shaft, evidently that up which I had made my first
journey to Lembken’s palace. But as I emerged into the corridor I saw,
not ten paces away, their backs toward me, two of the Guard.
I was too late. The Guard had occupied the posts vacated by the
airscouts. The Temple and all the approaches to Lembken’s palace were in
Sanson’s hands.
They had not seen or heard me, and in a moment I had withdrawn within
the little room. There still remained one chance. By crossing the bridge
again and passing through the priests’ robing-room on the other side of
the Temple, I could reach all parts of the buildings. Perhaps there were
no sentries in the gallery above the auditorium. I knew how vain the
hope was, but there was none other.
I carried Esther upon the bridge again. As I was about to set foot upon
the altar-stone, which still rocked slightly, I fancied that the bridges
themselves were moving. I leaped on the stone, stumbling against the
grille. One moment I hesitated, to assure myself that Esther still
breathed. A piece of her brown dress had come away and broke like burned
paper in my hand. I raised her higher in my arms, so that her head
rested against my shoulder, and opened the grille gate to step upon the
farther span.
That moment of delay had ended all my hopes. There was no second span.
For swiftly, noiselessly, the span was swinging away from me, pivoting
upon its further end. It was already too far away for me to make the
leap, encumbered as I was with Esther. I glanced backward in horror. The
span that I had crossed was moving also, acting in unison. They vanished
in the gloom at the sides of the Temple.
I stood with Esther in my arms upon the altar-slab, poised on that
unsteady resting place high in the Temple void. There was no refuge
anywhere. Over me was the vault; far underneath the Ant with its
gleaming, upraised tentacle.
As I stood there the little solar light went out.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE
The Temple was profoundly dark. Crouched on the swinging stone, helpless
in Sanson’s power, I was not conscious of fear. Rather, a melancholy
regret possessed me that this was the end, as it inevitably must be. A
hundred years of separation, the knowledge of each other’s love—no more;
and all had gone for nothing. Yet, there was cause for happiness that
this much had been granted me, to die with Esther; and the loss of all
hope brought calmness to my spirit and acceptance of the inevitable.
It may have been two hours later when I heard the cries of the mob once
more. I heard the tramp of feet upon stone; and then, through every
swinging door below, invisible forms came trooping in until they covered
the whole of the vast floor. They shouted against the Christians in an
unceasing pandemonium, and the walls and hollow roof re-echoed that
infernal din until another spirit that underlay the mob fury, something
of awed expectancy, swept over the concourse, and the last shout died
down, and a new and dreadful silence arose.
It lasted minutes, perhaps, broken only by the stir of feet on the
floor, the rustle of robes, the sighs that whispered through the
darkness; then, out of that silence a low chant began. It was that
dreadful chant that I had heard before, crooned first by a few and then
by many, tossed back and forth from side to side of the Temple floor,
until all caught it up and made the walls echo with it:
“We are immortal in the germ-plasm; make us immortal in the body before
we die.”
There was a dreadful melody, one of those tunes that seem to rise
spontaneously to a people’s lips as the outpouring of its aspirations.
Again and again that dreadful, hopeless chant rose from below, swelled
into a din, and died.
Then shouts broke out again as the mob spirit seized upon some who had
assembled there:
“Make us immortal in these bodies of ours!”
“Make us immortal, Sanson!”
“Give me eternal life!” raved the cracked voice of an aged man; and that
blasphemy against Nature seemed to shock the mob into silence, until
once more the low chant swelled and echoed and died away in wailing
overtones of helplessness.
Suddenly a single solar light flashed at one side of the Temple, and,
high above the multitude, where the end of the bridge span rested
against the curve of the wall, I perceived Sanson. He was standing alone
upon the drawn-back span, which, shadowy and vague, gave him the aspect
of a figure poised in the air.
He was a master of stage-craft. It even awed me, that calculated effect
of the dark Temple and the crowd, invisible each to his neighbor; and
the hypnotic _mise en scène_ of the solitary figure aloft beneath the
single light. I, too, felt the contagion of the universal expectation.
Sanson uttered no word, but stretched one arm out and pointed across the
Temple. Then I heard the tramp of men coming from the direction of the
elevator shafts; and suddenly a second light burned across the vast void
of the dark.
Upon the second span, now dimly visible, drawn back against the wall
opposite Sanson, I saw the prisoners from the vaults, marshaled under
the charge of the Guard. There, at the extreme edge, Elizabeth stood, a
slender, virginal figure, her hands clasped over her bosom; at her side
David, behind them the patriarchal figure of Bishop Alfred. Behind him
were ranged the other victims of Sanson’s rage. They, too, under that
single light, seemed to be poised in air.
At the sight of them, hysteria swept the minds of the mob into frenzy.
“The Christians!” they screamed. “Kill them! Kill them! Out with the
dogs who hold their bodies cheap! To the Rest Cure! Ah—h!”
The groaning end was drawn out as the vibration of a G-string. The air
was heavy and foul with hate; I felt it as something ponderable.
A woman’s voice rang shrill through the Temple, and the devil that
goaded her had raised his head now after two thousand years of stupor.
He returned into a world that had forgotten him since the first shapings
of Europe’s peoples began, out of the deepest place in hell.
“Sacrifice them!” she shrieked. “A human sacrifice upon the
altar-stone!”
The whistling, strident voices of the mob answered her: “Sacrifice them!
A human sacrifice!”
Surely Sanson’s stage-craft was working well. He stood there, facing his
victims across the void. He raised his hand, and every voice was
stilled.
“I have called you together, citizens, upon this day,” he said,
“because, as you once chose freedom in place of bondage, so, now, the
time has come to choose again. I have given you liberty, I have given
you peace, I have enlightened you and raised you to man’s true dignity.
The Christians used to say that man was half ape and half that mythical
vertebrate known as the angel. I have driven the ape out of you and made
you all angel. That is to say, all man, standing on his own feet, not
leaning against imaginary gods to prop him. It has been a difficult
battle, for all the vested evils in the world have fought against me.
But I have won: your God, your Christ, the superstitious, stubborn heart
of man have yielded. Now the old order is ripe to perish everlastingly.
There remains one more enemy—”
“Death!” screamed the shrill woman’s voice. “Make us immortal in our
beautiful bodies, Sanson! Give us life, everlasting life!”
“The Ant,” pursued the speaker patiently.
It was an unexpected anticlimax. The crowd groaned in disappointment,
and the silence that followed was of unutterable grief. That Sanson
would bestow his boon upon them, all had believed. Nor had they
anticipated Sanson’s declaration. For the idolatrous symbol, which was
all they knew of worship, had possessed itself of their imaginations,
their aspirations had cleaved to it, and, as must be, what had begun as
a symbol had ended as a god.
Sanson was too shrewd not to see immediately that he had struck the
wrong note. He swung himself about, facing the captives on the opposite
span, and his voice reverberated through the Temple.
“You have demanded sacrifices, human sacrifices,” he cried, “and you
shall have them, but not in honor of the Ant. There is no Ant, no God.
But there is Freedom, hidden within the cylinder where she has lain
since the beginnings of time, waiting for this day to dawn, now ready to
emerge into a world set free. To her we sacrifice!”
He stood there, a dramatic figure, the incarnation of rebellious pride,
Lucifer defying God, or some old Titan in revolt against Olympus. But,
as he paused, the cracked voice of the old bishop piped through the
Temple.
“But I can give you eternal life, my people,” he cried clearly. “I have
the Word that alone can set you free. It is the same that Bonham spoke
to you in Westminster Hall while he was burning. You heard him and went
home, and some were afraid, some wondered, and some forgot; but that
Word never dies, and it will be told soon in a million homes, because,
by God’s mercy, the Russians are at hand to set you free.”
The deep-breathed “Ah!” that followed was not of hate but of fear.
Something was stirring in the hearts of the multitude, molding them
against knowledge and will. I felt it, too: a mighty spiritual power, a
Light that clove the darkness. I saw the old bishop stand out at the end
of the span and shake his clenched hand at Sanson, silent, opposite.
“You cannot raise one finger save by the will of Him whom you deny,
Sanson!” he said. “You are not going to make any sacrifices. You, who
have raised your will against heaven, this night your soul will be
required of you!”
The sense of something imminent and mighty shook my limbs. I stood up,
clinging against the grille. There was no sound in all the Temple.
Protagonists in the eternal drama, the bishop and Sanson faced each
other.
Suddenly I perceived that the solar light above the bishop had moved. It
had moved outward; and now it was approaching me. And the light above
Sanson was moving, too. I understood what was happening. Sanson had
quietly given the command for the bridges to be swung together.
An instant later the little lights that crossed the gloom were
dissipated as ten thousand more flashed out, illumining the vast
interior of the Temple. I saw the packed multitudes below, thousands on
thousands, their faces upturned, each with the same stamp of fear on it,
as if the same workman had carved the features. I saw the groins and
arches, the gallery above me, filled with the Guard; Sanson upon one
nearing bridge, his Guard about him, too; upon the other, David,
Elizabeth of the slender figure and the clasped hands, and Bishop Alfred
and the rest of the prisoners. I waited, my arms about Esther.
Once more I heard a single sigh float upward. Then the woman’s voice
that had shrieked before cried piercingly:
“The Messiah has come, who is to make us free!”
I saw Sanson stiffen and catch at the rail of the nearing bridge. I saw
David, now only an arm’s length from me, staring incredulous; Elizabeth
with wide-open eyes, the bishop’s calm face, the Guard like carven
effigies.
Then, as if the power that held the populace in unison were suddenly
dissolved, they broke from their places. They sprang with frantic,
exultant cries toward the Ant; they formed a dozen human chains that
reared themselves above the pedestal, dissolved, and poured over the
golden idol. Among them I saw clusters of men—our men—with Ray rods in
their hands. They poured out into the rooms that lined the passages.
They swarmed up pillars and reached out hands to the captives. They
howled at Sanson, whose bodyguard, closing about him, formed an
impenetrable defense. The conspiracy had not miscarried.
But all were shouting at me, and the fanatic spirit of hate that Sanson
had evoked seemed to have recoiled and turned on him to his destruction.
Suddenly the approaching spans stood still. They remained motionless,
each end some three feet from me. Then, slowly, they began to recede.
“Jump, Arnold!” I heard David scream above the uproar.
I saw the plan to isolate me there, where none could reach me, helpless
in the mid-Temple. I gathered Esther high in my arms, stepped back, and
sprang; I felt myself falling. Still clutching Esther with one hand, I
groped in blindness with the other. I struck the edge of the span. Hands
held me; hands pulled Esther free; I stood among our friends, and behind
us already the Guard was beaten backward.
I saw the tattered outlaws’ figures everywhere. Only around Sanson were
the Guard still potent. He saw the situation; he knew his power was
crumbling as Lembken’s had crumbled; and, pushing his bodyguard aside,
strode forward and held up his hand for silence. Even then—so great was
his power—at the gesture, all motion in the Temple ceased; I saw
arrested Ray rods, not yet discharged, held stiffly, limbs halted in
air, necks craned toward the speaker and immobile.
“Choose, then!” Sanson called in words that rang like a trumpet’s blast.
“It is your supreme moment. Will you have your Messiah or will you have
my gift—immortality?”
“Give us God!” screamed the woman’s voice; and then a thousand and ten
thousand answered him:
“Give us God!”
“The God of Bonham!”
“Our fathers’ God, Whom we denied.”
The people had answered truly in the supreme moment, as they must
always, that the world may not cease. For, in the words of Renan, “the
heart of the common people is the great reservoir of the self-devotion
and resignation by which alone the world can be saved.”
CHAPTER XXIV
LEMBKEN
The maneuvers of our party had been so skilfully planned and carried out
so surely that the Temple fell into our hands almost immediately.
Entering upon that side which faced the Airscouts’ Fortress, our men had
surprised and overpowered the guards posted about the elevators, and
driven them in flight toward the Science Wing, into which Sanson
withdrew to rally them about him.
The Council Hall and offices beneath it were occupied as quickly.
Including the Airscouts’ Fortress, we had thus three-fourths of the
quadrilateral in our possession; but the Guard held the Science Wing in
strength, and, of course, the surrounding wall, armed with the Ray
artillery and commanding everything within it.
The change of fortune was so swift that I could hardly grasp its
significance immediately. Carrying Esther, and surrounded by a frenzied
mob, I was dragged from the bridge to the corridor of the elevators,
between Elizabeth and David, pent up among five hundred men, some
carrying Ray rods and trying to force their way through the Temple in
the direction of the Science Wing, others returning, realizing the
impossibility of pushing through the crowds, and others, merely
spectators, unarmed, who had gone mad with delirious joy. The confusion
was indescribable, and, to make it worse, these people seemed to look to
me for leadership, while I was caught in the throng and helpless.
Precious moments were passing.
Into the mob burst a man heading a little group of revolutionists.
“Follow me!” he shouted. “To the Science Wing! Capture the bridges!
Follow me!”
As he spoke the Temple lights went out. I was not yet clear of the
bridge. Inch by inch I struggled onward, but in the darkness the
confusion was still more undisciplined; and while the oncoming party
still fought for a foothold I heard a rending, straining sound behind
me, a crash of wood, and a mighty fall that set the whole building
echoing. Shouts, oaths, and groans came from below; the span on which we
stood shook from the concussion.
There was no need to ask what had occurred. Sanson had cut down the
farther half of the bridge, securing himself against attack from the
upper floor of the Temple.
Then a voice, bellowing with rage and ferocity, arose:
“Follow me! Seize the elevators! To Lembken! To the People’s House!”
The mob broke and dissolved, carrying me with it into the corridor. I
saw the leader with the Assyrian beard heading the rush for the elevator
shafts. He carried all with him. But the shafts were empty; the
elevators had been drawn up. There followed howls of fury.
“Lembken!” shrieked the mob. “Out with him! Out with the defective!”
It was queer, that word; but one impulse animated all. They plunged
after their leader, scrambling up the ironwork of the interior, and
clinging there like flies as they worked their way upward. The little
band of disciplined men alone stood still, and their chief turned to me
with a wry look.
“We are too late,” he said. “Sanson has got his men together. We shall
have to storm the Wing from below. Half our men have joined in that mad
attack on Lembken, who is helpless, whereas Sanson—”
He shrugged his shoulders in despair. Then David turned to me.
“You must bring them back, Arnold,” he said. “They will obey and follow
you. Leave Esther—”
He saw the look on my face, and began to plead with me. “It is your
duty, Arnold,” he cried. “All will be lost unless you can draw off our
men from the Palace. I will protect her with my life.” He bent down and
looked into Esther’s face, and an expression of amazement came upon his
own. It occurred to me afterward that he had never believed that Esther
really lived. But at the time only the thought of this flickered through
my brain, and it yielded to more urgent ones.
“They will follow you!” cried David.
I hesitated no longer. I placed Esther’s unconscious body in Elizabeth’s
arms, and, without stopping to glance at her, lest it sap my resolution,
I plunged into the shaft and began to scramble upward.
Somehow I reached the summit. I fell upon my hands within the Palace.
The mob was swarming everywhere, in every room, it seemed, and through
the gardens. I ran out under the dome. The winter sun shone through a
gray fog, a blood-red ball of fire.
The yelling mob swept through the groves. Its fury was unleashed, and
the remembered wrongs of years impelled it to universal destruction. I
saw at the first glance that these men were beyond the power of
argument. With their bare hands they tore up palms and tossed them down
into the courts through jagged holes in the transparent walls. They tore
the panes out of their settings, twisting the thin, un-splintering glass
until it writhed everywhere, coiled, crystal snakes among the uprooted
flowers. They spared nothing. The yellow orange spheres gleamed in the
rank grass. The scent of orange flowers was choking.
I ran among them, calling on them to follow me back, for the sake of our
cause, to join their comrades, hard pressed by Sanson. Most of them did
not seem to hear me; some raised their heads from their work, stared at
me for a moment, and resumed their wild task of ruin. It came to me then
that I was unknown to them. Not one in a hundred of these men had seen
my face more than a moment or two upon the altar platform.
I turned and ran through the Palace rooms, still calling, and still
unheeded. The mob was sweeping onward like an avalanche. They had torn
the costly hangings from the walls. From the blue rooms, mull rooms, red
rooms, purple rooms, all the baroque, fantastic, and depraved trappings
of Lembken’s gleaning were heaped into great rolls at which the furious
army hacked and tore. In one place it was venting its rage upon a heap
of masquerade clothing. Pieces were flung from man to man, and some,
tearing great rents in garments, thrust their heads through them and
continued in the pursuit, with skirts about their shoulders and leopard
skins about their bodies. A tun of wine had overturned and spilled, and
the contents crept like a rivulet along the floor, seeping from room to
room. The conduit that fed the artificial brooks, being slashed, poured
out a muddy stream that dogged our heels, befouling the slashed rugs and
tattered coverlets. And ever the cries became more furious.
The mob was yelling with one universal voice. Palm trees were hurled
from man to man, clods of earth clung to walls, mud spattered
everything. I followed, breathless, imploring, pleading in vain. No one
paid me the least attention. Some, indeed, scowled at me, but the spirit
of destruction, seizing them before the words were framed on their lips,
hurled them along. They swept me with them. At the head was the giant,
bellowing in frantic wrath. The mob followed him, hypnotized; and he,
armed with a spiked stanchion which he must have wrenched from some
portion of the wall supports, dashed the weapon in furious assault
against each door, and shattered it, leading the chase down every
corridor of the bewildering place, returning, hot on the scent,
dog-like, and the great arms thrashing the club from side to side.
The Palace was enormous. We had not covered half of it, and we had seen
no one. But, as we ran, shouts came from another party behind us, roars
mingled with shrieks, and, keening above all clamor, I heard that
bloodhound cry that breaks from human throats when the death hunt draws
near to its finale.
With an answering roar our mob turned and sprang toward its victims,
smashing down doors and wrenching weapons from legs of tables and
woodwork of the walls. The quarry was found. Like bolting hares they
turned and scuttled into the small, hidden room, where they cowered,
women and negro eunuchs, still dressed in the masquerade of the revels
that Lembken had held that night even while his empire was breaking from
his hand. Horned women, women in dominoes, in striped and spotted hides,
Elizabethans wearing hooped skirts and huge, starched neck frills,
Victorian girls with parasols and corseted bodies, a motley, cowering
crew, less abject only than the cringing blacks, eyed their pursuers
with terror-stricken looks that sought their eyes for pity and found
only hatred.
The giant leaped out before his followers and whirled his spiked club.
“Where is Lembken?” he roared. “Where are his men?” All the while his
eyes searched the women’s faces; but he did not find her whom he sought.
“There are no men,” a frightened woman gasped. “There were never any but
Lembken. We have never seen any others in our lives.”
He had lied to me, then, when he spoke of his friends. How long would he
have endured me there before the poisoned cup came to me? I felt my own
hate and wrath become implacable as that of the mob.
[Illustration:
The giant leaped out before his followers. “Where is Lembken?” he
roared. “Where are the men?”
]
The giant clutched at a cringing negro boy and pulled him from his
knees. “Where is he?” he shouted.
The boy was tongue-tied with fear. But a girl stepped forth bravely.
“That way!” she said, pointing toward a door.
The mob whirled through in a torrent, following the Assyrian-bearded
giant. I heard their shouts grow fainter. The women bolted, scattering
through the dismantled rooms, seeking some other refuge. But one of them
stopped and then came toward me quickly.
“She lied! He is there,” she whispered, pointing toward a wall. “Kill
him, but whisper my name in his ear before he dies.”
I looked at the girl and recognized Coral, the maid who had supplanted
Amaranth. I turned quickly toward the wall, and my eyes discovered the
hidden door, flush with the wall. I burst it open and ran through.
I raced along a winding passage, hearing the mob’s cries far away as
they ran on the false scent they had taken up. I emerged suddenly upon a
little platform fronting a part of the crystal wall that was still
standing in the rear of the Palace. The mob had not yet found the
approaches to this secret refuge.
A glass gateway within the wall stood open, and outside, at rest in the
air, I saw the dark airplane, with Hancock at the wheel. And at the
gate, hesitating to set his feet upon the narrow plank that led to
safety, was Lembken. His arms were filled with bundles, and on his
shoulder a monkey perched, mouthing and gibbering. At his side kneeled a
young girl, with hands clasped, urging Lembken to flight.
The old man heard me and turned around. I saw Hancock start forward,
raise a Ray rod, and aim it at me. But Lembken stood in the way, and he
could not fire.
The girl leaped at me, clutching me by the arms with surprising
strength, and crying to Lembken to fly. But the obese old man only
stared into my face. Fear seemed to have paralyzed him. He did not
remember me, but my presence seemed to awaken some association in his
mind, and, as I watched, I saw it flash into consciousness.
“Jacquette!” he screamed in a tremulous falsetto. “I have forgotten her.
I must go back for her.”
He scrambled past me, and the girl, releasing me, ran after him. I
followed. On we ran, till Lembken turned into a tiny room, once meant to
be a hiding place, no doubt, but now doorless and bare. Again I heard
the shouting. The mob was drawing near.
On a perch beside the entrance sat the gaudy macaw, head on one side,
preening her plumage.
“The people’s friend!” she cackled. “The people’s friend!
Friend—friend—friend—friend—frien—”
With a cry of delight Lembken snatched at her. She fluttered to his
shoulder. He turned, and, with monkey and bird against his sagging
cheeks, he began to make his way along the passage. As he ran I saw
another corridor at right angles to this, and, at the end, daylight and
the waste of uprooted palms. The mob was sweeping past. They saw him;
they howled and dashed to cut off his flight.
Lembken saw them, doubled back, dashing in panic from room to room. The
mob was everywhere about him, searching for him, blocking all exits;
their howls were a continuous sound.
They were upon him. Lembken fell on his knees and pulled a Ray rod from
his robes. With shaking, nerveless fingers he forced up the guard. He
held it to his breast; but it fell from his hand.
“Kill me!” he muttered to the girl.
She flung her arms about him; and thus the mob found them.
The giant leaped at them. His bellowings shook the walls. He sprang for
Lembken, caught him by the throat, and forced his head upward. I saw the
loose spike in his hand. The monkey chattered, the parrot stretched out
her neck and snapped, shrieking her phrases. Between the men the frail
girl wrestled, dashing her weak fists into the giant’s face.
The roaring mob choked the narrow corridor on either side. “Death to
him!” they shrieked. “Death! Death!”
The old man caught the words upon his tongue and screamed.
“Not death!” he yelped. “I’m Lembken. I can’t die. I never thought of
death—dying—going nowhere—nowhere—nothing—I want to live—”
He cowered behind the girl, thrusting her between himself and his enemy.
So furious were her struggles that she forced the giant away. She dashed
her fists into his eyes again and again, until he turned on her and
gripped her by the wrists, twisting her backward. He looked into her
face for the first time.
“Let him go!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt him. He is old—he is old—he has
done no harm—he is the people’s friend—he has told me so—I love him—”
The giant dropped her wrists and staggered back. His horror-painted face
became a tragic mask. He moaned, and his hands groped impotently in the
air for something that he failed to find. It was not the blood in his
eyes that blinded him. For this was she whom he had sought, torn from
his home, the last to share Lembken’s favor, the child whom I had seen
dragged from the Council Hall, her innocent child’s heart loyal in his
last hour to the only lover she knew.
It wrung my heart, the pity of it: this blossom of love that sprang from
that festering, rank soil of human baseness.
The next instant the mob swept over us. They seized their prey and
stamped out the life beneath their feet. I saw the quivering body tossed
high in the air and dashed from wall to wall, trampled on, hacked, and
torn. I saw it poised against the crystal walls, saw the dark airplane
swoop to safety amid a hail of Ray fire; and then the air was filled
with zig-zag flashes of blinding light.
CHAPTER XXV
THE COMING OF THE CROSS
I stood with a small group of our men beneath the dome, where Lembken’s
gardens had been. The havoc that had been wrought is almost
indescribable. The beauty molded by the most cunning hands in Europe had
been obliterated in one short hour. The gardens were a waste of uprooted
trees and trampled earth, while from the broken conduit a dozen muddy
streams were pouring like high waterfalls upon the courts below. The
Palace was a mass of wreckage, in which the mob still moved, shouting
for fire to finish the work of destruction.
I had been recognized at last, and we were searching for our men among
the rabble, gathering the nucleus of a force to render aid to our party,
hard-pressed, below. I had managed to achieve something at last: I had
detailed a dozen men with Ray rods to guard the women. That was all I
could accomplish.
The ground about the Temple was already strewn with blackened, twisted
figures. From the conical Ray guns on the enclosing walls swept sheets
of blinding flame, a soundless cannonade that pecked at the interstices
in the walls of the Temple and of the Airscouts’ Fortress, seeking for
some unpainted spot between the blocks of stone, some small, abraded
surface where the cold Rays might find lodgment. I heard the crumbling
of disintegrating mortar and saw fragments of stone flying from cornice
and pediment. Soon gaps would open and the whole splendid pile tumble
into a heap of shapeless ruins.
The Rays flashed to and fro like brilliant lightning. I was half
blinded; all I could discern was that Sanson still held the Science
Wing, from whose windows the Guard were picking off our men beneath
them. I surmised from the shouting that we were attacking the Wing from
the ground floor of the Temple.
We had gathered most of our men together, and we plunged for the
elevator shafts and scrambled down. My pulses hammered with fear as I
entered the corridor below. But there stood David, and Elizabeth kneeled
beside him, with Esther’s head in her lap. She looked at me and smiled
with so brave an effort that I realized her own anxiety. Somewhere in
the deadly tumult Paul was fighting, unless, indeed, he lay among those
shapeless masses that strewed the courts.
Our men swept by me and poured along the corridor toward the bridge.
“I have fulfilled my promise, Arnold,” said David. “Now I must take
Elizabeth within the shelter of the Airscouts’ Fortress, and you will
follow with Esther. Then each of us must do his best to rally parties to
the assault. All is not going well, Arnold. Our Ray rods are emptying
fast, and the storage batteries within the Airscouts’ Fortress have been
destroyed, so that we cannot recharge them; the attack upon the lower
level of the Wing has failed. Sanson has placed a Ray gun there. All
hangs upon the battleplanes, and they have not returned.”
He put his arm about his daughter and hurried her toward the bridge,
while I picked up Esther, still plunged in that first sleep, and
followed him. I saw him lead Elizabeth to safety, but as I was about to
follow, a sheet of purple light swept past me, tearing a stanchion from
the bridge and knocking down a part of the brick house on the wall
above, where Lembken had taken me that night of our first meeting.
A gun was playing on the bridge. It was impossible to cross at present.
I drew back, waiting.
Then a babel of cries broke out on the opposite side, so fierce and wild
that, grasping Esther more tightly, I rushed to a window at the further
end of the corridor, commanding a view of the exterior courts. The long
bridges were packed with our men, making a mad sortie to scale the
enclosing walls. Streaks of light, pitiably thin, flashed from their Ray
rods, and, with exultant shouts, the Guard sprang forward to meet them.
They were dragging lighter Ray guns behind them. For an instant it
seemed as if the revolutionists would scale the walls before the heavy
Ray artillery could be reaimed at them. The foremost files of the
opposing forces clashed and surged and swayed in a rain of meteor
flashes. The blackened corpses heaped the bridges, hung, toppled over,
and went to swell the heaps below. Then, with a renewed outburst of
shouting, the Guard drove back the attack and placed their guns.
The blinding flashes swept the bridges, playing like ribands of silvery
blue along the course of their discharge. Everywhere along the bridges
swarmed the stampede of flight, checked where the Rays caught the
fugitives and twisted them into charred lumps, sweeping away the
superstructure also, and the bridge rails. I saw one bridge go down, as
a deflected Ray wrenched it from its piers. It spewed its burden upon
the stones below, and from among the dead, little figures leaped up and
began to run for refuge toward the Council Wing; and there a blast from
a Ray gun found them, and the heavy doors crumbled upon them, and wood
and men were ground into the same pulpy blackness. The Ray had found the
weak spots of the great buildings, and from the Temple top huge stones
came crashing down, rebounding along the courts and splintering into
fragments. Clouds of dust rose up like smoke from conflagrations.
The flowing tide of the Guard’s victory rolled on unchecked. Their
shouts were frightful. They held the courts, now piled with debris from
the buildings above them. I ran with Esther back toward the bridge,
crossed it, and gained the shelter of the Airscouts’ Fortress. Before me
was a flight of stone steps; I ran up, shouting. Nobody answered me. I
gained the summit and found myself alone there.
Looking down from the roof I saw that the Guard were swarming in the
Temple. They had regained that; they had driven our men from the
Airscouts’ Fortress, on which I stood, trapped, since it was impossible
to cross the courts. Where were our forces? I saw the locust cloud of
attack break against the doors of the offices beneath the Council Hall.
That was our last stronghold. The Ray flashes played on the walls, but
they held fast.
Then out of the south a flock of giant birds came wheeling. They swooped
toward us and resolved themselves into the airplane fleet. They dipped
their luminous wings and circled around us, and a mazy pattern of light
shot downward upon the ranks of the Guard.
The battleplanes had settled their differences, and three-fourths of
them had returned to fight for us.
I saw the Guard race back for their sheltering walls. The Ray artillery
shot upward to meet the challenge of the battleplanes. To and fro
overhead wheeled the great shining birds in soundless duel. The conflict
appeared the more frightful because of this silence. Only those at the
guns knew what was happening.
But presently, as the flock wheeled, I saw one tower like a shot
pheasant and then tumble. It plunged into the court and lay, a shapeless
mass, upon the stones. The Ray gun had found its defenseless parts as it
maneuvered. A second battleplane came hurtling down. It struck the
Temple wall, seemed to cling there like a bat, and, fluttering like a
dying thing, plunged to the stones beside its shattered mate.
The Guard was winning. The enclosing walls stood fast. Our last hope
seemed to be gone. The sun was dipping into the west.
I dared not carry Esther through that fire-swept zone. It was my plan,
should Sanson’s men reoccupy the Airscouts’ Fortress, to seek refuge
within the little, half-secret room where Jones had hidden us. Meanwhile
I waited on the roof, behind the glow-painted shield of a single empty
airplane that was resting there. Twilight fell, and the soundless fight
went on. The battleplanes were circling higher, and their fire was
utterly ineffective. I judged, from its growing infrequency, that their
solar batteries were becoming emptied. Meanwhile our men, pent in the
council offices, waited for the finale.
Hourly our situation grew more desperate. Another battleplane went down.
The game was in Sanson’s hands after all. Our only chance had been in
the surprise, and the mad rush to the People’s House and the confusion
in the Temple had spoiled all plans and allowed our enemy to concentrate
his men. Where was he, I wondered.
Suddenly shouts broke out again from the walls, and were caught up and
echoed back from the Council Hall. Southward, high in the sky,
pin-points of light appeared, like vagrant stars, which became larger,
wheeled, extended.
The Guard cheered frantically. I heard the cry “America!”
If this was the Mormon fleet, come to aid Lembken, there was no doubt
with which side it would join. Perhaps the Guard knew already that
Sanson had outwitted Lembken and outbid him for its support.
The airfleet shot upward, drew together, and a single light, detaching
itself, flew like a rocket upward, moving in the direction of the
oncoming battleplanes, which seemed to hang poised above, like a new
group of Pleiades. The rocket’s apparent speed dwindled, until it seemed
to move as slowly as any star. I saw a second light shoot downward,
detaching itself from those clustered orbs, to meet it. I held my
breath, as all must have done, for not a Ray was fired, nor was there
any sound as the fate of the world hung upon those nearing points. They
circled about each other, a binary star; they moved together; and
suddenly they plunged downward, the whole oncoming fleet following them,
and the roar of a thousand throats rang from the Council Hall:
“The Russians! The Russians! The Tsar! The Tsar!”
The lights grew larger and resolved themselves into the glow
parallelograms again, and the great fleet of battleplanes descended
toward the wall. Again the pattern of light interplayed with the
answering fire from the Ray artillery of the Guard.
The new squadron was armed with Rays almost as strong, taken in
Stockholm, and worked by Swedish gunners. Searchlights and glow rays
blended in heliotrope and pink and blue, playing about the walls,
carrying the most murderous death that man had ever devised. And it
appeared incredible that death lay hidden within that warp and woof of
color that intercrossed through space, blending and twisting, and
forming a thousand patterns upon the night. Once a battleplane, caught
as she wheeled, came crashing down; but the next moment the persistent
Ray found an unprotected place in the walls at last, and hammered at it,
dislodging mortar and stones, till, with a mighty roar, a tower fell
toppling into the court, leaving a great breach in the Guard’s fortress.
Instantly two battleplanes lit like great birds, and behind their
shields a score of men swarmed out, carrying swords and Ray shields,
interlocked. The line swept onward, to encounter the Ray rods of the
defense. I saw it crumple and twist. But other battleplanes had alighted
along the breach, and everywhere small groups were forming between the
Ray guns, which could not be aimed before they were attacked, the
gunners sabered, and the great conical machines made useless. The valor
which had overthrown the Federation’s troops before Tula was not
helpless here.
But from each wing a blast of fire caught the downward swooping
battleplanes and crumpled them. No attack could live before that
devastating crossfire. I saw the groups of swordsmen wither, fall back,
until the bodies heaped before them, on which they planted their glow
shields, formed an impregnable rampart. But the artillery was retaken,
the battleplanes, surprised and broken in the ebb-tide of defeat, were
piled in indistinguishable heaps within the courts. The Guard turned the
artillery upon the stubborn line that mounted the breach. Once more the
fortune of the day was turning.
[Illustration:
Upon the walls the Guard were swarming toward the defenders. Out of
their midst the Ray artillery belched
]
I saw the ragged figures of our men run from the Council Hall across the
courts. Then the Guard about Sanson in the Science Wing streamed forth
to meet them. The Ray rods flashed, and the ghastly murder began once
more.
Upon the walls the Guard were swarming toward the defenders. Out of
their midst the Ray artillery belched. It found the chinks among the
shields, and a sheet of white flame swept through the Russians’ ranks.
Their wall of interlocked shields had carried them into death’s jaws,
but now the jaws were closing. I closed my eyes in anguish.
I opened them in darkness.
There was no flash from the conical guns, which glittered in impotence
upon the walls. For an instant I did not understand. The next I knew.
Jones had cut the supply cables in the Vosges Mountains. He had kept his
promise, and in the moment of defeat.
The same mad exultation seized all. I heard the new note of victory as
our men from the Council Hall bore back the defeated remnants of
Sanson’s army. I saw the Russians leap from behind their shields and
swarm into the fortress; saw the flash of their swords against the
spurting fire of the Ray rods; saw the defeated Guard fly through the
courts, to meet death there.
Then I stood face to face with Sanson.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE ADMIRAL OF THE AIR
I saw defeat written upon his face, but there was no sign of fear. He
stood alone, unarmed, confronting me, and if he had fled when he saw
that his cause was lost I do him the justice to believe it was his
undaunted will which drove him to flight, that he might plan new havoc
for the world.
No chance remained for him. By the glare of the searchlights I saw the
last vestige of rout end at the Temple doors. Trapped and surrounded,
the Guard begged for quarter. This was accorded them; but instantly the
prisoners were lost to sight in the presence of the enormous multitudes
that came from London, swarming into the courts.
Sanson’s gaze shifted from my face to Esther’s, and, as if she felt the
man’s presence, she stirred, and her eyelids unclosed.
“Arnold!” she whispered.
“Yes, dear,” I answered, bending over her.
“I dreamed that—they had run up the annex thirty stories, Arnold, and
painted it shining white.”
“You must sleep and dream no more,” I told her. She murmured and her
eyelids closed. Again the kindly unconsciousness of sleep held her.
I placed her against the anchored airplane and turned to Sanson. He was
facing me with that strange and half-quizzical look that I remembered so
well. It had in it more of humanity than the expression of any other of
his moods.
“Arnold,” he said softly, “if I were an ignorant man I might be tempted
to believe that there is a God, sometimes.”
And that was his way also, to speak of other things in moments of
imminent alarm.
“Why?” I inquired.
“Because He is so merciful to His defectives, Arnold. To think that you,
with your missing five centimeters, should have defeated me!
“Come,” he continued, clapping his hand on my shoulder. “A truce for a
few minutes. A truce, for the sake of our old friendship. You are not to
blame for your share in this night’s ruin of civilization. You were the
victim of circumstances. And then—you are a defective and could not
understand. Arnold, I have never had any friend but you. And sometimes I
feel the need of one. Even the gods felt that, and I am far from a god,
though, later, perhaps....”
He broke off and resumed, after a short pause:
“Join me. Here is my frank proposal: join me, and, since indeed I would
not hold any woman against her will, if Esther chooses you she shall be
yours. This night has undone the labor of many years, but those that are
past are but as a drop of water in an ocean to those which are to come.
I have the secret of immortal life at last—not ghostly life in some
gold-decorated heaven, but life in the flesh. I will bestow the gift on
you—”
“Let it die with you,” I answered passionately.
He laughed.
“This night’s work, which seems so wonderful to you, is but an episode,”
he said. “Come with me to America, Arnold. In six months I can build up
my world anew. I shall be less scrupulous and humane in the future with
this miserable mob. No moron shall live, no defective go free. I have
resolved that. Man can rise only by crushing out weakness and setting
himself upon the necks of those who were born to serve. In six months
America will be mine; in twelve, the world. From this time onward it is
a battle to the death against all that retards the human race.”
His features flushed with the energy of his voice. I looked at him,
almost in admiration. I was dumfounded at the audacity of his designs.
Trapped here, a prisoner upon the fortress roof, his life already gone
when he was found, this man of sixty years planned his universal empire.
He was mad, beyond doubt, mad enough to dream impossible things and make
them his in his brain’s fertile kingdom; and it was such madness as
moves mountains.
“Sanson, I will do this much for you,” I said. “I will hide you from the
mob’s fury in a little room near this roof, so that you may not be torn
in pieces. I will assure you a fair trial at the hands of the new
government. That is all I can promise.”
Would this dream vanish in the realization of fact? I saw his face fall,
as if he had come to understand his position at last.
“Where is it?” he said presently. He spoke slowly, and in a bewildered
manner, as if he were still struggling with his dreams.
I took him by the arm and led him to the elevator entrance. “It is a
little room under the roof,” I said. “The elevator passes it, but it is
hardly more than a hole in the wall. One would not look for you there.”
I pressed the button, but of course the elevator did not ascend, since
the solar power was cut off.
Sanson withdrew his arm from mine. I saw him assume a listening
attitude. “Arnold!” he cried weakly, “they are coming! Listen!”
As I relaxed my guard, he dealt me a buffet that sent me flying down the
empty shaft.
I had a confused consciousness of falling through space, of clutching at
the shaft walls; and then I was upon my knees, bruised and staring up at
the light overhead.
Fortunately the elevator had stopped a few feet from the top. Still
dazed, I sprang to my feet and began scrambling up the ironwork. At last
I staggered out upon the roof once more. I saw a dozen Sansons, each of
whom carried Esther in his arms.
I tried to force reality into these visions, to snatch the living Sanson
from among that crowd of ghosts. But they had sprung into the dozen
airplanes that lay upon the swaying roof top. A touch of the starting
lever, a half turn of the wheel, and as my power of vision came back to
me I saw Sanson rise with Esther into the air. He held her on the seat
against him, the arm that encircled her controlling the wheel, and he
was gone into the heart of the giant moon that was just rising in the
east, blood-red behind her veil of clouds.
I stared after him. The airplane was rapidly diminishing in size. He had
outwitted me at the last, by one of those clumsy tricks he loved, such
as a schoolboy plays.
I staggered toward the edge. I was minded to fling myself down on the
stones below. One more victim of the day’s work would mean nothing, and
doubtless David and Elizabeth believed that I had died long ago. I
tottered upon the brink; but then a shadow glided toward me, and a small
airplane stopped at my side. It was unshielded, and at the prow was a
pair of the elongated jaws. Air-Admiral Hancock leaned out of it toward
me.
“Where is Sanson?” he asked quietly. “He was here. He was seen here.”
I pointed into the west, where the parallelogram of light was
diminishing to an irregular star. I leaped into the plane beside him.
“Take me with you!” I cried. “He has stolen Esther—the goddess of the
cylinder.”
Hancock said nothing but touched the lever. Instantly we shot upward and
raced like a swallow across the void, skimming and dipping as the wind
caught us and the heavy prow plunged through the unequal air-banks.
The buildings drew together beneath us. The shouts of the multitude grew
faint and died. The luminous point in the west grew larger, and against
the sky, now whitened by the rising moon, I saw the dark body between
the glow lines, as one sees a ship at sea from a mountain top. Sanson
was heading southward, perhaps with the intent of reaching France and
rallying the forces of the Federation there. We mounted higher. The
forests stretched beneath us. Always we mounted. I cast a glance at
Hancock’s face. There was a look on it that boded ill for Sanson. I was
trying to remember something that Jones had told me about him, but my
own anxious thoughts beat down the elusive memory. I, too, felt that
there would be no mercy for Sanson when the accounts were squared.
Would anyone have mercy? I saw the answer to that question swiftly, for,
looking back, I saw two lanes of airships, strung out behind, like
flying geese, converging toward our leadership. Battleplanes,
scoutplanes, dark against the brightening heaven, came hot on the chase.
They were in pursuit of the common enemy of the human race, and there
was none among them, no man in London but had some outrage to avenge.
We mounted higher through the bitter cold. My hands were numb, but
Hancock kept his wheel, seated there, a grim, immovable, resolute
figure. Now we burst into the heart of a fierce, rocking snowstorm,
which blotted out the fugitive; but by some instinct Hancock seemed to
know his course, and he held it surely till we rose above the storm and
saw the glow parallelogram nearer.
Sanson rose too. He must have sighted us and resolved to test his
endurance against ours. We were in air so rarefied that I was choking
for breath. The moon rode high; dawn was not far away. We were rushing
toward the sea, which lay, a blur of inky blackness, underneath, edged
by the white line of the chalk cliffs of the south shore. We were
gaining steadily.
[Illustration:
The giant jaws upon our aircraft gaped. I saw steel teeth within them
]
But Sanson did not mean to cross the Channel. I do not know what new
scheme he had conceived; perhaps he meant to turn and seek some English
city where he could defy the new order and reorganize the old. He
wheeled; and the long line of the pursuing planes, struggling upward,
wheeled together, trying to cut off his flight. He mounted still and
struck out eastward. But, with a furious downward swoop Hancock drove in
toward him. I could see Sanson sitting at the wheel, his arm still
clasping Esther. He stopped in the air and waited for our approach.
“What do you want?” he shouted.
The tone of Hancock’s voice was implacable. “My son, Sanson,” he
answered.
He wheeled away, and, as he turned placed his hand on a lever. The giant
jaws upon our aircraft gaped. I saw steel teeth within them. We dashed
for Sanson with terrific force. I shouted in horror, laying my fingers
upon Hancock’s sleeve and pointing to Esther. But Hancock did not seem
to hear or feel me, perhaps he had never known that I was there; all his
mind seemed intent on the accomplishment of his deadly purpose. He drove
home before his enemy could evade his course, and like a hawk we
plunged, struck Sanson’s vessel amidships, and smashed through steel and
glow shield.
One instant, in the dead interval of the stopped momentum, we rested
motionless together, the gaping jaws choked with their meal and fast
within the heart of Sanson’s plane. I flung myself across the side,
grasped Esther, held her in my arms, and dragged her across our bows.
Then Hancock leaped at Sanson’s throat.
Our airplane tipped, righted herself, and drifted away. I did not know
how to steer or guide, but Hancock must automatically have locked the
mechanism to the halt, for we drifted idly, balancing upon the wind.
Watching, I saw the two struggling in Sanson’s plane.
She shuddered as she hung poised there, mortally gashed, yet fighting
still for her dominion of the air. She quivered from prow to stern, and
then, of her own accord, shot upward. Up she went till she was but a
dark blot in the sky. Then from above something came falling toward the
earth, plunged like a projectile, and disappeared.
I saw a tiny figure standing on the doomed airplane alone, and,
infinitely small though it appeared, I knew that it was Sanson. I
fancied I could see the man’s proud bearing; I thought his arms were
folded across his breast. The moonlight gilded him, and others have told
me that he seemed to ride through the air resplendent, as if
transfigured by some demoniac power.
He stood like Lucifer, high above all the world, over his wrecked
dominion. I picture his disdain, and the contempt for man with which he
shrouded himself in that last moment. The world had broken him in the
end, but his colossal spirit could never be quenched.
Then the air vessel plunged into the moon’s heart and vanished.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE NEW ORDER
Three months have passed. It is Easter Day, and we have only begun to
struggle with the difficulties before us.
But we are working with a faith that will overcome all obstacles. All
the world is at work, for the same impulse was felt simultaneously in
every land. The Mormon airplanes never arrived, because, practically at
the same hour, America rose in revolt against her masters. And the
Sanson régime has been swept away forever.
We were rescued from our airplane by the airscouts who had followed us,
and brought back to London. Our friends, who had thought us dead, were
overjoyed at our return. It was a wonderful reunion, with not a shadow
to mar it, for Paul had passed uninjured through the fighting and was
there to welcome us. And gradually, when she awoke, we broke the news of
everything to Esther.
The amazing thing about it was that she was much more calm in learning
the truth than we were in telling it. She accepted our statements almost
as commonplaces of history.
I call to mind the second huge public gathering on the day after the
Revolution, when the dread of massacre had proved unfounded. The
populace had been taught to believe that the Russians were blood-thirsty
savages, instead of which we discovered child-like enthusiasts. It was a
shock to most of us to discover that they considered themselves
Crusaders, upon a mission to restore Christ to the world. I recall
vividly the great red crosses on the breasts of their white uniforms,
the icon banners that are still flapping everywhere; then the people’s
wonder and terror at the horses; lastly the young Tsar’s entrance into
the capital, to attend the reconsecration of the Temple, and the amazing
influence of kingship upon a crowd that had never known reverence or
loyalty, except through fear.
Then the universal joy at the release of all the inmates of the
defectives and moron shops, the tears and shouts that accompanied the
restoration to their families, of those who had been believed lost
forever; husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters,
friends and friends. No one was afraid to be glad. It was as if a dark
cloud had rolled away and disclosed the sun.
And the astonishment and enthusiasm as the people listened to the
teachings of Christianity. After three months there are still crowds at
all the street corners, hearing the doctrines and the story of Christ
from priests and missionaries.
And Bishop Alfred: at the consecration, when, stepping forward to
declare himself, he found, to his surprise and dismay, that the secret
of his surname, which he had vowed never to reveal until that day, had
passed forever from his own memory. And how proudly he redeemed himself
with his ancient title, Alfred London.
There is so much to do, and only a tithe of it has been begun. Indeed,
it would have been impossible, but for the agreement that the old
national boundaries should be restored, and each State work out its
problems independently. Then there was the question as to the
composition of the new government, and it was resolved that the
committee should avail themselves to the utmost of the established
order, eliminating all cruelties. Thus, for the present, because no
better scheme can come forth, ready-made, from human brains, the
socialized State will continue. It would be impossible to go back to the
old days of competition, and we shall never return to those days of
squalor, poverty, and destitution, recognizing that, if ever revolution
was justified, our fathers’ was against the commercial greed of a
materialistic world.
The hardest part of this problem will be to steer a course between the
corruption of Social Democracy and the tyranny of Social Autocracy. But
we have an ideal in the separation of wealth from power, the latter to
be the attribute of the few who are born and fit to rule, the former the
possession of the bulk of the nation. Whatever our judges, their office
will be for life, and they will be appointed and not elected.
In time custom will crystallize into laws again; but, since the existing
laws were too cruel to survive, and the old are too arbitrary and
antiquated to be renewed, we choose to exist law-free rather than live
by paper schemes.
But if we are tolerant and lax, so that we resemble more a benevolent
anarchy than an organized State, we have set our faces like flint
against two things. First of these comes divorce. It will be recognized
under no circumstances whatever; and so far is this from being
considered tyrannous that the vast bulk of the people never desired it.
In the old days it was the shameful privilege of a small caste
alone—that same caste that, by abandoning its duties and
responsibilities and cutting free from the Catholic conception of
civilization, brought down the old order. We are convinced that the
permanence of the marriage bond is the foundation of every society of
free people.
The second is eugenics. Looking back, we see how this madness over-ran
the world until, within a century from the time of its inception, it had
enslaved humanity. The theory of Galton, that because the
university-trained son of a distinguished man became distinguished,
while the illiterate son of a burglar died unknown, ability is
inherited, may have appealed powerfully to our ancestors, but to us it
is symptomatic of that inability to reason which we think characterized
the twentieth century. Eugenics was the natural product of a time which,
steeped in materialism, laughed at the belief in a human soul, or its
concomitant, that each soul needed to work out its earthly pilgrimage in
a body adapted to its abilities. But even from the material viewpoint we
see that the movement was fallacious. We know that the proportion of
those afflicted with inherited maladaptations has remained constant
through history; moreover, since there was no human norm, the demands of
the eugenists increased continually, till they had bound nine-tenths of
the world to their hideous Juggernaut car.
So the first act after our victory was to burn the Bureaux of Prints and
Indexes and Pedigrees and Relationships. That was our only vandalism.
But more than everything we hold to Christianity as the foundation of
our State. We see now that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were
the worst since pagan times. Our ancestors read, without qualms, of
negroes burned at the stake, of equatorial nations massacred, not in
excess of misplaced zeal, as heretics, but only for—rubber! We know that
without Christian ethics human nature is back in the days of Rome,
Bagdad, and Carthage. We hope that there will be established, as in the
olden days, Christian orders of young men, who shall serve three years
in them before they come of age, bound by the triple vow, to fight these
renascent wrongs wherever they can be found.
Having found truth once more, we are not greatly troubled by doctrines.
The critical investigation which destroyed the Protestant theory of the
Bible’s literal inspiration has only strengthened the older claim of the
universal Church to be herself the repository of truth. Not rejecting
the claims of criticism, we feel the living truth of Christianity so far
to transcend its theological garb that, if the formula has been
misstated, many would revise it. The consensus of opinion is, however,
that the minds which drew up the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds arrived as
nearly as possible at a correct formula.
But the Visible Church is humble in her hour of success. She feels no
triumph. Reverently, penitently, at the huge consecration meeting in the
Temple her leaders asked for guidance and inspiration. At present
sectarianism inspires in us the same horror that schism inspired
centuries ago. The first act was to reunite the ancient Greek and
English churches by omitting from the Creed that clause beginning
“proceeding from,” which had, it was felt, no significance that was
essential. The next will be to negotiate with the Vatican for union. But
the stupendous difficulties of this reconciliation are acknowledged.
The Age of Faith is coming back to the world, and, as in that splendid
twelfth century, when it was in its zenith, there is a sense of youth in
us. We feel that we are upon the threshold of a new epoch, uniting the
triumphs of every preceding age. It is an age of joy, and will be
vitalized by that art which, since the Reformation, has been sundered
from human life. Its first achievement will be the magnificent cathedral
that is to rise upon the site of the old Ant Temple. It will be a new
world indeed. We know each age has its own cruelties and wrongs: the
Inquisition of the sixteenth century; religious massacres in the
seventeenth; in the nineteenth factory slavery and the prisons with
their silent cells. We do not hope greatly to lessen this sum of
suffering. There will be injustice always, new wrongs will arise, new
evils that must be fought; but we believe the Christian norm will always
remain with us as a corrective.
Tomorrow bands of axemen are to leave London to settle Kent and Surrey.
Paul and Elizabeth are to go, and later Esther and I intend to follow
them. David will join us when he can be spared from his work in the
government.
It is Easter Day, and in the consecrated Temple I hear the anthem rise:
“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the
feast:
“Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness:
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
“Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death hath no more
dominion over him.”
The crowds in the great courts are kneeling. I kneel with Esther among
them. We know that the sacrifice has leavened the world with truth that
shall never pass away.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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