The women had moved in another pace, with hands that clenched and unclenched at their sides.
‘Good! Good enough!’ the men cried. ‘We’re content. Only take them away quickly.’
‘Come along up!’ said De Forest to the captives. ‘Breakfast is quite ready.’
It appeared, however, that they did not wish to go. They intended to remain in Chicago and make crowds. They pointed out that De Forest’s proposal was gross invasion of privacy.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Pirolo to the most voluble of the leaders, ‘you hurry, or your crowd that can’t be wrong will kill you!’
‘But that would be murder,’ answered the believer in crowds; and there was a roar of laughter from all sides that seemed to show the crisis had broken.
A woman stepped forward from the line of women, laughing, I protest, as merrily as any of the company. One hand, of course, shaded her eyes, the other was at her throat.
‘Oh, they needn’t be afraid of being killed!’ she called.
‘Not in the least,’ said De Forest. ‘But don’t you think thatnow the Board’s in charge you might go home while we get these people away?’
‘I shall be home long before that. It – it has been rather a trying day.’
She stood up to her full height, dwarfing even De Forest’s six-foot-eight, and smiled, with eyes closed against the fierce light.
‘Yes, rather,’ said De Forest. ‘I’m afraid you feel the glare a little. We’ll have the ship down.’
He motioned to the Pirolo to drop between us and the sun, and at the same time to loop-circuit the prisoners, who were a trifle unsteady. We saw them stiffen to the current where they stood. The woman’s voice went on, sweet and deep and unshaken:
‘I don’t suppose you men realise how much this – this sort of thing means to a woman. I’ve borne three. We women don’t want our children given to Crowds. It must be an inherited instinct. Crowds make trouble. They bring back the Old Days. Hate, fear, blackmail, publicity, “The People.”That! That! That!’She pointed to the Statue, and the crowd growled once more.
‘Yes, if they are allowed to go on,’ said De Forest. ‘But this little affair—’
‘It means so much to us women that this little affair should never happen again. Of course, never’s a long word, but one feels so strongly that it is important to stop crowds at the very beginning. Those creatures’ – she pointed with her left hand at the prisoners swaying like seaweed in a tideway as the circuit pulled them – ‘those people have friends and wives and children in the city and elsewhere. One doesn’t want anything done to them, you know. It’s terrible to force a human being out of fifty or sixty years of good life. I’m only forty myself. I know. But, at the same time, one feels no price is too heavy to pay if – if these people and all that they imply can be put an end to. Do you quite understand, or would you be kind enough to tell your men to take the casing off the Statue? It’s worth looking at.’
‘I understand perfectly. But I don’t think anyone here wantsto see the Statue on an empty stomach. Excuse me one moment.’ De Forest called up to the ship. ‘A flying loop ready on the port side, if you please.’ Then to the woman he said with some stiffness: ‘You might leave us a little discretion in the matter.’
‘Oh, of course. Thank you for being so patient. I know my arguments are silly, but—’ She half turned away, and went on in a changed voice: ‘Perhaps this will help you to decide.’
She threw out her right arm, with a knife in it. Before the blade could be returned to her throat or bosom it was twitched from her grip, sparked as it flew out of the shadow of the ship above, and fell flashing in the sunshine at the foot of the Statue, fifty yards away. The outflung arm was arrested, rigid as a bar for an instant, till the releasing circuit permitted her to bring it slowly to her side. The other women shrank back silent among the men.
Pirolo rubbed his hands, and Takahira nodded.
‘That was clever of you, De Forest,’ said he.
‘What a glorious pose!’ Dragomiroff murmured, for the frightened woman was on the edge of tears.
‘Why did you stop me? I would have done it!’ she cried.
‘I have no doubt you would,’ said De Forest. ‘But we can’t waste a life like yours on these people. I hope the arrest didn’t sprain your wrist; it’s so hard to regulate a flying loop. But I think you are quite right about those persons’ women and children. We’ll take them all away with us if you promise not to do anything stupid to yourself.’
‘I promised – I promise.’ She controlled herself with an effort. ‘But it is so important to us women. We know what it means; and I thought if you saw I was in earnest—’
‘I saw you were, and you’ve gained your point. I shall take all your Serviles away with me at once. The Mayor will make lists of their friends and families in the city and the District, and he’ll ship them after us this afternoon.’
‘Sure,’ said the Mayor, rising to his feet. ‘Keefe, if you can see, hadn’t you better finish levelling off the Old Market? It don’t look sightly the way it is now, and we sha’n’t use it for crowds any more.’
‘I think you had better wipe out that Statue as well, Mr Mayor,’ said De Forest. ‘I don’t question its merits as a work of art, but I believe it’s a shade morbid.’
‘Certainly, sir. Oh, Keefe! Slag the Nigger before you go on to fuse the market. I’ll get to the Communicators and tell the District that the Board is in charge. Are you making any special appointments, sir?’
‘None. We haven’t men to waste on these backwoods. Carry on as before, but under the Board. Arnott, run your Serviles aboard, please. Ground ship and pass them, through the bilge doors. We’ll wait till we’ve finished with this work of art.’
The prisoners trailed past him, talking fluently, but unable to gesticulate in the drag of the current. Then the surfacers rolled up, two on each side of the Statue. With one accord the spectators looked elsewhere, but there was no need. Keefe turned on full power and the thing simply melted within its case. All I saw was a surge of white-hot metal pouring over the plinth, a glimpse of Salati’s inscription, ‘To the Eternal Memory of the Justice of the People,’ ere the stone base itself cracked and powdered into finest lime. The crowd cheered.
‘Thank you,’ said De Forest, ‘but we want our breakfasts, and I expect you do too. Goodbye, Mr Mayor! Delighted to see you at any time, but I hope I sha’n’t have to officially for the next thirty years. Goodbye, madam. Yes. We’re all given to nerves, nowadays. I suffer from them myself. Goodbye, gentlemen all! You’re under the tyrannous heel of the Board from this moment, but if ever you feel like breaking your fetters you’ve only to let us know. This is no treat to us. Good luck!’
We embarked amid shouts, and did not check our lift till they had dwindled into whispers. Then De Forest flung himself on the chartroom divan and mopped his forehead.
‘I don’t mind men,’ he panted, ‘but women are the devil!’
‘Still the devil,’ said Pirolo cheerfully. ‘That one would have suicided.’
‘I know it. That was why I signalled for the flying loop to be clapped on her. I owe you an apology for that, Arnott. I hadn’t time to catch your eye, and you were busy with our caitiffs. Bythe way, who actually answered my signal? It was a smart piece of work.’
‘Ilroy,’ said Arnott. ‘But he overloaded the wave. It may be pretty gallery-work to knock a knife out of a lady’s hand, but – didn’t you notice how she rubbed ’em? – he scorched her fingers. Slovenly, I call it.’
‘Far be it from me to interfere with Fleet discipline, but don’t be too hard on the boy. If that woman had killed herself, they would have killed every Servile and everything related to a Servile throughout the District by nightfall.’
‘That was what she was playing for,’ Takahira said, ‘And with our Fleet gone we could have done nothing to hold them.’
‘I may be ass enough to walk into a ground-circuit,’ said Arnott, ‘but I don’t dismiss m
y fleet till I’m reasonably sure that trouble is over. They’re in position still, and I intend to keep ’em there till the Serviles are shipped out of the district. That last little crowd meant murder, my friends.’
‘Nerves! All nerves!’ said Pirolo. ‘You cannot argue with agoraphobia.’
‘And it is not as if they had seen much dead – or is it?’ said Takahira.
‘In all my ninety years I have never seen death.’ Dragomiroff spoke as one who would excuse himself. ‘Perhaps that was why – last night.’
Then it came out, as we sat over breakfast, that, with the exception of Arnott and Pirolo, none of us had ever seen a corpse; or knew in what manner the spirit passes.
‘We’re a nice lot to flap about governing the Planet,’ De Forest laughed. ‘I confess, now it’s all over, that my main fear was I mightn’t be able to pull it off without losing a life.’
‘I thought of that, too,’ said Arnott. ‘But there’s no death reported, and I’ve inquired everywhere. What are we supposed to do with our passengers? I’ve fed ’em.’
‘We’re between two switches,’ De Forest drawled. ‘If we drop them in any place that isn’t under the Board, the natives will make their presence an excuse for cutting out, same as Illinois did, and forcing the Board to take over. If we dropthem in any place under the Board’s control they’ll be killed as soon as our backs are turned.’
‘If you say so,’ said Pirolo thoughtfully, ‘I can guarantee that they will become extinct in process of time, quite happily. What is their birth-rate now?’
‘Go down and ask ’em,’ said De Forest.
‘I think they might become nervous and tear me to bits,’ the philosopher of Foggia replied.
‘Not really? Well?’
‘Open the bilge-doors,’ said Tahakira with a downward jerk of the thumb.
‘Scarcely – after all the trouble we’ve taken to save ’em,’ said De Forest.
‘Try London,’ Arnott suggested. ‘You could turn Satan himself loose there, and they’d only ask him to dinner.’
‘Good man! You’ve given me an idea. Vincent! Oh, Vincent!’ He threw the General Communicator open so that we could all hear, and in a few minutes the chartroom filled with the rich, fruity voice of Leopold Vincent, who has purveyed all London her choicest amusements for the last thirty years. We answered with expectant grins, as though we were actually in the stalls of, say, the Combination on a first night.
‘We’ve picked up something in your line,’ De Forest began.
‘That’s good, dear man. If it’s old enough. There’s nothing to beat the old things for business purposes. Have you seen London, Chatham and Dover at Earl’s Court? No? I thought I missed you there. Immense! I’ve had the real steam locomotive engines built from the old designs and the iron rails cast specially by hand. Cloth cushions in the carriages, too! Immense! And paper railway-tickets. And Polly Milton.’
‘Polly Milton back again!’ said Arnott rapturously. ‘Book me two stalls for tomorrow night. What’s she singing now, bless her?’
‘The old songs. Nothing comes up to the old touch. Listen to this, dear men.’ Vincent carolled with flourishes:
‘Oh, cruel lamps of London
If tears your light could drown,
Your victims’ eyes would weep them,
Oh, lights of London Town!
‘Then they weep.’
‘You see?’ Pirolo waved his hands. ‘The old world always weeped when it saw crowds together. It did not know why, but it weeped. We know why, but we do not weep, except when we pay to be made to by fat, wicked old Vincent.’
‘Old, yourself!’ Vincent laughed. ‘I’m a public benefactor. I keep the world soft and united.’
‘And I’m De Forest, of the Board,’ said De Forest acidly. ‘Trying to get a little business done. As I was saying, I’ve picked up a few people in Chicago.’
‘I cut out. Chicago is—’
‘Do listen! They’re perfectly unique.’
‘Do they build houses of baked mud-blocks while you wait – eh? That’s an old contact.’
‘They’re an untouched, primitive community, with all the old ideas.’
‘Sewing-machines and maypole dances? Cooking on coal-gas stoves, lighting pipes with matches and driving horses? Gerolstein tried that last year. An absolute blowout!’
De Forest plugged him off wrathfully, and poured out the story of our doings for the last twenty-four hours on the top-note.
‘And they do it all in public,’ he concluded. ‘You can’t stop ’em. The more public, the better they are pleased. They’ll talk for hours – like you! Now you can come in again.’
‘Do you really mean they know how to vote?’ said Vincent. ‘Can they act it?’
‘Act? It’s their life to ’em! And you never saw such faces! Scarred like volcanoes. Envy, hatred and malice in plain sight. Wonderfully flexible voices. They weep, too.’
‘Aloud? In public?’
‘I guarantee. Not a spark of shame or reticence in the entire installation. It’s the chance of your career.’
‘D’you say you’ve brought their voting props along – those papers and ballot-boxes things?’
‘No, confound you! I’m not a luggage-lifter. Apply direct to the Mayor of Chicago. He’ll forward you everything. Well?’
‘Wait a minute. Did Chicago want to kill ’em? That ’ud look well on the Communicators.’
‘Yes! They were only rescued with difficulty from a howling mob – if you know what that is.’
‘But I don’t,’ answered the Great Vincent simply.
‘Well, then, they’ll tell you themselves. They can make speeches hours long.’
‘How many are there?’
‘By the time we ship ’em all over they’ll be perhaps a hundred, counting children. An old world in miniature. Can’t you see it?’
‘M-yes; but I’ve got to pay for it if it’s a blowout, dear man.’
‘They can sing the old war-songs in the streets. They can get word-drunk, and make crowds and invade privacy in the genuine old-fashioned way; and they’ll do the voting act as often as you ask ’em a question.’
‘Too good!’ said Vincent.
‘You unbelieving Jew! I’ve got a dozen head aboard here. I’ll put you through direct. Sample ’em yourself.’
He lifted the switch, and we listened. Our passengers on the lower deck at once, but not less than five at a time, explained themselves to Vincent. They had been taken from the bosom of their families; stripped of their possessions; given food without finger-bowls, and cast into captivity in a noisome dungeon.
‘But look here,’ said Arnott, aghast. ‘They’re saying what isn’t true. My lower deck isn’t noisome, and I saw to the finger-bowls myself.’
‘My people talk like that sometimes in Little Russia,’ said Dragomiroff. ‘We reason with them. We never kill. No!’
‘But it’s not true,’Arnott insisted. ‘What can you do with people who don’t tell facts? They’re mad!’
‘Hsh!’ said Pirolo, his hand to his ear. ‘It is such a little time since all the Planet told lies.’
We heard Vincent, silkily sympathetic. Would they, he asked, repeat their assertions in public – before a vast public? Only let Vincent give them a chance, and the Planet, they vowed, should ring with their wrongs. Their aim in life – two women and a man explained it together – was to reform the world. Oddly enough, this also had been Vincent’s life-dream. He offered them an arena in which to explain, and by their living example to raise the Planet to loftier levels. He was eloquent on the moral uplift of a simple, old-world life presented in its entirety to a deboshed civilisation.
Could they – would they – for three months certain, devote themselves under his auspices, as missionaries, to the elevation of mankind at a place called Earl’s Court, which he said, with some truth, was one of the intellectual centres of the Planet? They thanked him, and demanded (we could hear his chuckle of delight) time to discuss and
to vote on the matter. The vote, solemnly managed by counting heads – one head, one vote – was favourable. His offer, therefore, was accepted, and they moved a vote of thanks to him in two speeches – one by what they called the ‘proposer,’ and the other by the ‘seconder.’
Vincent threw over to us, his voice shaking with gratitude:
‘I’ve got ’em! Did you hear those speeches? That’s Nature, dear men. Art can’t teach that. And they voted as easily as lying. I’ve never had a troupe of natural liars before. Bless you, dear men! Remember, you’re on my free lists for ever – anywhere – all of you. Oh, Gerolstein will be sick – sick!’
‘Then you think they’ll do?’ said De Forest.
‘Do? The Little Village’ll go crazy! I’ll knock up a series of old-world plays for ’em. Their voices alone will make you laugh and cry. My God, dear men, where do you suppose they picked up all their misery from, on this sweet earth? I’ll have a pageant of the world’s beginning, and Mosenthal shall do the music. I’ll—’
‘Go and knock up a village for ’em by tonight. We’ll meet you at No. 15, West Landing Tower,’ said De Forest. ‘Remember, the rest will be coming along tomorrow.’
‘Let ’em all come!’ said Vincent. ‘You don’t know how hard it is nowadays, even for me, tofind something that really gets under the public’s damned iridium-plated hide. But I’ve got it at last. Goodbye!’
‘Well,’ said De Forest, when we had finished laughing, ‘if anyone understood corruption in London I might have played off Vincent against Gerolstein, and sold my captives at enormous prices. As it is, I shall have to be their legal adviser tonight when the contracts are signed. And they won’t exactly press any commission on me, either.’
‘Meantime,’ said Takahira, ‘we cannot, of course, confine members of Leopold Vincent’s last-engaged company. Chairs for the ladies, please, Arnott.’
‘Then I go to bed,’ said De Forest. ‘I can’t face any more women!’And he vanished.
When our passengers were released and given another meal (finger-bowls came first this time), they told us what they thought of us and the Board; and, like Vincent, we all marvelled how they had contrived to extract and secrete so much bitter poison and unrest out of the good life God gives us. They raged, they stormed, they palpitated, flushed and exhausted their poor, torn nerves, panted themselves into silence, and renewed the senseless, shameless attacks.
The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales Page 66