by H. F. Heard
Well, as the Irishman said, “It’s so late now that it’s not too early.” You really must stay on for a few moments and let me get you some breakfast. Yes, my master died some time back, and cancer took his poor housekeeper not long after. Perhaps she pined for him and her pining, which maybe was not true resignation, poisoned an already embittered nature. I saw her off. As she went she began to see more clearly. She was puzzled and sorry. And she often thought he was in the room with her—perhaps he was—and used to argue with him, saying over and over that he just lived in a dream and didn’t know people really, and then, and this surely was a sign of grace, she’d stop and listen as though she were being spoken to and once, when so listening, she died.
So I’m alone in the house and look after myself, but you won’t find me a bad chef. I myself don’t breakfast till the afternoon; in that one fact I resemble the highest level of the peerage, of which we have spoken so much off and on this night—you remember the old nursery rhyme about getting up, which culminates with the line, “While the Duke of Buccleuch, Needn’t get up till Two!” I do get up before that, but I share with that Peer of Grace—if tradition is true in this respect, and I fear it is not—the fact that we neither of us break our fast till the early afternoon. Come along, the kitchen is through this door, the entrance on the right. Wait a moment, though. You’re leaving something behind. You don’t want it? I can have it, if it won’t be an embarrassing present? No, strange to say it won’t, though I suppose it might be thought so. You know those old shrines in out-of-the-way places where you find the wonder-working Object hung round with the crutches of the cripples that have come hobbling to it and gone away whole? Well, this will be one of those votive offerings at this shrine. Of course, I can’t hang it up blatantly on the dossal for all to see, because it wouldn’t help their faith. Too strong a proof doesn’t awaken belief. It only tends to hammer harder the native incredulity, and today that coating on man’s heart is like iron. The more there is proof, the more the mind of modern man seems to harden, steel hard as this thing you’ve just given me, as the crust broken off your mind and heart. The more facts accumulate, the more the sceptical cry “Fraud.”
But just come here a moment. You see how apposite your gift is? There, look, just under the small, carved stand on which the cup rests; you see there’s this small shallow drawer. You’re surprised at what you see in it? After what I’ve told you? Surely not. Really, after that you can’t help seeing how curiously closely alike our stories have been. Perhaps the cup tends to draw birds of a feather. Perhaps you’ll be shot down by it as I was—God knows. But you’re right in guessing what that is, lying in the shadow of this shallow drawer, and it certainly was mine. I expect it still has fingermarks on it that a “’tec” could still recover and frame me with, clearer proof than my brushwork would ever yield to a picture expert that it was I who clandestinely copied the Duke’s Tiepolo. As I’ve told you, I got rid of the Tiepolo, or, rather, it was got rid for me providentially. But Providence sent no one for this—not even you, for not only would you not want a second, you are now unloading yourself of your own. And, anyhow, I could hardly offer you this present, even if you were going to be married and live in a dower house; or even if you were going, as I’d wager you’re not, to go on with the old, dull, dismal, hell-ending game. That object that lies in there will now have a bedfellow. I used to call it, in the old-fashioned crooks’ parlance of my day—I wonder has that argot changed?—I used to call it my “rod.” Well, I laid down that false rod when I found another, which, as the old song says, is my Shepherd’s. And, as the verse truly goes on to comment, “It comforts me” in a way that that neat piece of death-dealing mechanism never could, though I wasn’t a bad shot in my time.
There, come along now. Yes, you go on to the door beyond the kitchen. That’s the bathroom. Have a warm shower, and, by the time you’re finished, I’ll have your coffee and toast ready, and an omelet just right for eating.
THE THAW PLAN
I. THE SEA SYMPTOM
“I’m puzzled by some of my readings,” Skelton volunteered.
None of the men in the clubroom were sufficiently interested to raise their eyes from the illustrated papers they were leafing over. Skelton was the tidal expert. The other specialists of this team at the newest marine laboratory agreed about few things, but Skelton’s job was one of them, and Skelton was another. “After all,” they used to remark, “he’s really only a sort of lab. boy to us. The meteorologist has really more of value to give. Skelton’s nothing but a timekeeper.”
But Skelton was evidently puzzled enough not to take a snub. He cleared his throat with a certain defiance: “I’ve mentioned the possibility earlier on to one or two of you. But now there’s no doubt of it and, what’s more, no possible reason for it.” Still no one reacted.
“It’ll really matter to all of you, to all of you first and foremost, if it’s true.” A note of urgency made his voice strain. The tone more than the words irritated Bolder, one of the chemists. To stop the sound, which he found made reading difficult, he looked over the edge of Life and asked:
“What are they showing?”
“Well, it’s slight of course, but it’s unmistakable now, and there’s no doubt it is growing. The high-tides for each corresponding month have each of them been gaining on the last. There’s no doubt there’s an increase in the maxima, and there’s no reason for it.”
That made Exon intervene. He was the large marine biologist. Some one said that he had taken to his subject because molluscs were of all creation the hardest of animals to pick quarrels with.
“You’ll be saying next the moon’s out of step or the sun’s got a swelled head.”
“Laws of Nature don’t change.” This was from Stimson. He was the geneticist, one who had never quite recovered from the violent controversies with which the birth of his subject had been attended. He was an old man now and had been only a boy then. But his father—biology ran in the family—had been involved in the bitterness between the elder Darwinians and the Mendelians, as they were then called. Stimson reacted into the strictest orthodoxy. He repeated his maxims like a mantra whenever anyone introduced findings which might be radical. “Your instruments are wrong, young man, that’s what it is.”
Of course such a remark is a reflection. But it was clear that Stimson had the room with him. Skelton could not command a single ear. He was upset, quite upset. Of course it was clear that, if this was the reception given by such men as his colleagues, he could hope for nothing better from anyone outside—at least in the professional world. And how could he expect the lay world to attend if the experts disregarded?
He left the clubroom but before going to his apartment went back again to his division of the laboratories. He checked his tables over again with worried care. He plotted his graph over again. The result stood. Of course it was slight, but science had no right to disregard facts because they first emerged as small divergencies. Of course it might well be—no, not the instruments or faulty observation—but some more or less local peculiarity, some current shift, surface wind pressure even, or perhaps, actually, an oceanic floor change of levels. His instruments were the best in the world—this new set-up had been equipped with plant better than any other marine lab. had ever had. And, though the rest might look down on his job as mere routine and himself as a “routineer,” yet he knew he had been picked as a first-class observer. No one else in the tidal world had as yet reported any evidence of possible shift of maxima. But then, why should they? These instruments were incomparable. Besides, the change, whatever it was, might have become evident here on this shore line first. Well, then he would be right in one thing—it would be peculiarly awkward for all those colleagues of his.
II. THE LIQUIDATION OF THE POLES
That was a Midsummer Day, 1975. The world had been going on its increasingly odd way for thirty years since, in ’45, W.W.2.A. (World War Second Armistice) had begun. Tension for thirty years makes crisis tu
rn into a kind of stasis. “Bomb! Bomb!” had gone the degenerative way of “Wolf! Wolf!” People had to go on living. Besides, there had been changes—large political changes. All the old lot were gone. Of course the world was still stuck in that balance of power which was commonly called The Two Powers and The Hyphen. There were the U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. When someone asked once in Congress why The Hyphen was still called the United Kingdom, a wise-cracker shot in that U.K. was really a contraction for “the Un-O.K.” There was no doubt of it—the world had shrunk to two big balances with a diminishing rider-on-the-beam.
But there was a bigger and less foreseen change than that. The great Moscow ascendancy passed very quickly after Stalin’s death. The Greek Orthodox Church canonized him as St. Joseph of Moscow, and Moscow followed the fate of all Holy Cities. Actual administration had found it increasingly necessary to move East. Just as had happened to the earlier world empire—when Rome had had to make a New Rome and then abdicate to it—so now the administrative center had shifted away, back to the site of Genghis’ world-capital of Karakorum. Once the assimilation of China took place, then the center of population, industry, and business lay there. China, as usual, had swallowed those who rashly tried to get her into their clutches. Finally that astute Commissar, Yang Chin, ruled that Moscow had become a place of too sacred memories to be defiled by business and that the Russians were too mystically gifted a race to be involved in politics. Just as England used to get rid of individual politicians who were in the way by “kicking them upstairs”—making them peers—so, as became the new order that thought no longer in terms of individuals but of classes, the new Commissar of Commissars, as he chose to be entitled, elevated all the Russians to Ritual Rank—the highest rank, which performed all the ceremonies. The rank below, naturally, did all the hard work—the actual running of the machine. The Commissar was said to have remarked that besides Laudanum and Religion there is a third opium with which you can kill a whole class, and its name is Prestige.
It seems that these internal shifts were going to keep the huge land-mass empire outwardly quiet. Most people wanted good auguries, and so they claimed that this change was one. “A Chinaman,” they told each other, “never likes war. We’ll have peace for a long while now, you mark my words.” And their words appeared to have been accurate.
But Washington—or rather the tip of it—was not really easy. On that tip now sat President Place. He had many points that recommended him. First, his name. It had given him his first three terms largely through the great success of the three slogans: “Place the Irreplaceable,” “Place him again,” and that fine starter, “Make Place for the People, Give Place to the People.” Second, there was his size. He was a mammoth of a man. His hands were bigger even than George Washington’s he was taller than Lincoln, he weighed more than Taft. “The biggest President ever.” That told, too. Third, behind the bulk and the bellow—for he could shout down anyone—behind those rolls of rhetoric and fat, that seemed so obvious that nothing more could be in that balloon of bluffness, there was a curiously observant mind. He certainly was not nearly so simple as he looked. His sudden assaults of frank man-to-man openness, which proved often so disconcerting to the clever, were uncommonly well-timed. After a time it was noted that he never let anyone else put over that kind of thing on him. It was always he who brought down that great sirloin of a hand and wrist on the shoulder of the other disputant, patted him almost to his knees, and, bellowing that they really agreed, pushed him out of the room.
One of his chief advantages was that he certainly didn’t look a vigilant man. That, no doubt, was the reason why he had so seldom been caught napping. Naturally, then, his opposite number right round on the other side of the globe was seldom out of his mind.
Some three months after Skelton’s failure to interest his marine colleagues, Place the Irreplaceable was waiting in his White House room for the Chief of Staff, who had been away on a courtesy mission which covered inevitably a secret inquiry. The mission was to carry congratulations to the Commissar of Commissars on his unanimous election to preside for another Five Years of Plan. The inquiry was to find if there could be any truth in one of those maddeningly ambiguous reports that secret-service agents of the highest standing delight in sending to their superiors. Such reports are like the oracles of the Pythian Sybil—they may be just to fill the time and show you are worth your fee, they may be ways of tying up a message so that only your own nous can see the point. If Place and the C. of S. were right, this message was the latter. But if so it was quite unusually urgent and confirmation must be had. The only way—and it seemed providential—was for the C. of S., since he must go with the congratulations, to go himself as a secret-service agent.
The C. of S. was late. It was no use trying to find what a plane was doing once it was over the territories of the U.S.S.R., an empire that now stretched from Bangkok to the Rhine Basin. While Place waited, his secretary came in.
“There’s no news of the plane yet.” She paused. “You have a few minutes?”
“What do you want me to do?” he questioned, as he spun his huge bulk slowly in its specially constructed revolving chair. He was in his shirt-sleeves—it was damp-hot—and he looked, as he swelled out from his pants, like a giant egg neatly fitted into its egg-cup.
“Well, he’s a relation of my sister, and he’s worried me, and I’ve looked him up for he’s managed to meet me several times at my sister’s house. And he evidently is a good man at his job. Seems to me that it’s just because he may have found out something a little too startling that maybe his colleagues won’t listen to him. And he’s quite certain now that nobody but you would, and that you’d understand if he only could see you for five minutes, and that now—for he is getting obviously more alarmed—you alone should know.”
Irreplaceable Place had replaced quite enough experts and specialists by others that proved to be just as good so that he had no particular respect for the breed. Just for the moment there was nothing to do. He had to wait, and he hated waiting. His secretary wanted it. Pity women can always be worried by men that worry. Besides, in his flair-fancying mind somehow this request and that queer report of the secret-service agent seemed to have some possible link.
“You said he’s a tidal expert?”
“Yes, he’s from that biggest, newest set-up on the Atlantic Coast.”
“All right, but five minutes to the tick. If he can’t interest me by then, out he goes. After all, I was made Place for the People—direct access and all that.”
As he entered, Skelton was met with, “You’ve only got three hundred seconds. Can you make it?”
“I’ve got it in three charts.” Skelton had been a teacher before he took up pure research. He knew how to catch attention, if he was given a chance. On the table in front of the President he dealt his papers like a card-dealer, saying, as he spread the sequence: “The tables of co-ordinate tidal records”; “The sequences of maxima”; “The graph curve plotted to show the angle of acceleration.”
Place was used to “gutting” documents. He grunted at One, said “Um” to Two. At Three he began to tap his lower teeth with his thumbnail—a sign that he was interested.
“Why haven’t we all heard of this, if it’s true?”
Skelton was ready for that. “I was puzzled, too. Sure, the effect is showing most down at our place and we have better instruments. But before trying to see you I did visit a number of other marine labs. The effect can be traced in the tables—not so clearly, but it’s already appearing. But, since there’s no explanation, no one wants to take too much notice of it till they can say what causes it.”
Place threw himself back in his chair. “I could, of course, hand you over to another expert who’d discredit you and save me further trouble. But what you show here may fit in with something else. There—the three hundredth second’s gone! Off you go—no, not out that way—into that small room over there. Shut the door and wait. Maybe I’ll be wanting you after
all.” As the door closed behind Skelton, Place heard the handle of the room’s principal door turn. Quickly, for a man of his size, he turned the charts over on their faces and turned his own face to that door as his secretary entered.
“He’s in,” she said, “and will be over in a few minutes. What have you done with Dr. Skelton?”
“I’ve told him to wait. Now give me all those papers I’ll want for Chase.”
They went through them together, and he spread them over the top of the charts.
“I’ll go and be bringing him up now,” she said, when that was settled. Five minutes later she ushered in a tall man with the appearance of a rather kindly attorney. He took the chair beside Place’s desk.
“Was there anything in it?”
“I’ve had the microphotos developed and enlarged already.”
“You got some shots? But do they show anything?”
For answer the Chief of Staff took from his wallet-pocket an envelope and picked from it some strips of aerial photos. The President took them from him.
“Yes, you certainly have got something there. That’s pretty big building. But surely it wasn’t building that you were snooping for. The U.S.S.R.’s always building. Mongolian megalomania, I call it—Big Wall and all that nonsense.”
“Well, we used to be fond of a bit of big building once,” Chase smiled.
“Adolescent ambition! Now we want not big dumps but big men.” Chase smiled again, and so did the President, who then went on: “How did you get them, and why did you choose just these?”
“The first answer’ll tell you the second. Everything went according to plan. There was the planned breakdown of the stratoplane. Even the pilot didn’t know we’d arranged that. There was the planned providentialism that a small little old low-down 350-an-hour plane was, as it happened, waiting about after some repairs at Cologne. I cabled I could just make it if I came along to Karakorum, where His Mongolian Majesty was about to be inaugurated, in that little old plane. Of course at the Rhine I was met by the high-up spy whom Yang had specially sent me for my outward honor and my inner inspection. He came, as his rank required, with his two attendants. So he had me and my two aides under constant surveillance. We went straight ahead, and nothing was done to distract our attention from the outlook—scenery’s very pleasant from seven thousand feet; we hardly ever see it now. But when we were approaching the Urals I noticed my host was getting ready for something. He and his aides were not only unpacking some light refreshments but were also laying out some kind of little show for us. He then came over to my seat and asked if I and my aides wouldn’t like to look at the actual models of the big inaugural pageant, which he had brought with him to beguile the tedium of the ride. He told us that no one had seen them outside his office save, of course, the Supreme Commissar. He got out a folding table from his baggage, gathered us round, and he and his two set up the models—pretty little things, they certainly have a gift for that sort of thing—and made this miniature marionette show go through all its dance steps. He explained that lighting would play a great part and fussed about to get it right, finally saying that the daylight spoiled the effect. So he pulled down the shades on the plane windows and rigged up a miniature floodlight set. Oh, he took a lot of trouble to please us, so much that of course the moment he called us into that little huddle I knew he wanted us away from the windows. So, as I welcomed his offer to his ingenious little preview, I hung up my fountain pen, with which I had been writing till that moment, on the little sling that in that pattern plane is next to each window for one’s book, papers, or what-have-you. Of course these photos come from that pen. It’s a neat little gadget; it was quite easy to hang it so that it could go on taking microfilm every five minutes all the time our obliging usher was keeping us away from the windows. The pen hung very neatly so it could squint the landscape through the fine line between the shade and the window-jamb.”