by John Wyndham
But the war was not over. Chinese morale, raised to great heights by the prospect of sweeping their enemies back to the sea, suffered a reaction as the Japanese reorganized and dug themselves in. Within a month there was another deadlock. And if the Chinese spirit was better than before, their commanders were uneasily aware that fresh reinforcements were on the way from Nagasaki to stiffen the Japanese line.
George White came again to see his friend Pang Li at Kwei-Chow late in October 1965. He found the Chinese in better spirits than he had expected. For himself he had begun to think that the weary, dragging war would never end. But Pang Li seemed untouched by discouragement. He talked a little about the attack of August the 22nd.
“If they had made their advance then, I think it would have been the end,” he said. “It was the little ‘model aeroplanes’ as you called them which saved the day. The gas cylinders being lighter hit a little ahead, then the high explosives smashed everything to bits. The disorganization absolutely overwhelmed them and our barrage did the rest. It was a rout.”
“All the generators were smashed?” George asked.
“Every one of them by the first H.E. cylinder that the magnetic beam brought in. It was entirely unexpected and they could not switch off in time.”
“They certainly used plenty of power,” George said. “I could even feel the drag of it on my boots. But I don't suppose anyone will be using magnetic beams in the line again. Not this war, at any rate.”
“No,” Li agreed. “I don't think so.”
“Well, what now?” said George, after a pause. “You didn't bring me here for nothing, Li.”
The Chinese scribbled for a moment on a piece of blotting paper before he looked up. Then:
“Our long-distance bombers are ready. One hundred and fifty of them,” he said.
“I thought you told me a hundred.”
“Did I? Now I tell you a hundred and fifty.”
“Well?”
“They plan a raid on many Japanese cities on the night of November the 14th.”
“Indeed. What's the idea?” — “That of most raids. To drop bombs.”
“No, I mean, why should you tell me this? You mean me to pass it on?”
“Certainly.”
“But — I don't see. Do you seriously mean to raid?”
“Why not?”
“Why not! My God, didn't I tell you that they've put up great magnetic beam generators all over the place? They'll not use them in the front line again, but that doesn't mean that they've given them up altogether, far from it. You may have pulled their legs good and proper with the ordinary generators but you gave them the perfect defence against aircraft. I tell you with a system such as they've got it's millions to one against a single plane getting through. And you can't play the same trick again. The swinging beam defeats that. It just wrenches them apart in mid-air and the pieces drop. They can't go straight along the beam, like the cylinders.”
Pang Li smiled.
“It is kind of you, George, to tell me this. But I assure you it is perfectly well known to me already. And in spite of your warnings it will be done.”
“It's sheer murder to send men on such a job.”
“All war is murder, George.”
“But, look here, you really want me to tell them this?”
“I do. The night is November the 14th. You do not know what time. But you understand that the intention of the fleet is to fly in several parts. Some will concentrate on Nagasaki and the other cities of Kyushu, others on Hikoku, but the main part will attack the big cities of Honshu. You have not, unfortunately, been able to discover the tactical dispositions and courses of the raiders. You know, in fact, very few details, but you have confirmed the report from two independent reliable sources and from another less reliable.”
Pang Li paused. He regarded the other steadily. “We are relying on you, George. They must have this information. It is of the greatest importance. And the date must be right. Confirm that.”
“I will,” George assured him. “The 14th of November. That is a Sunday.”
“It is. And if you are wise you will choose on that particular Sunday to be anywhere but in Japan?”
The devastation which overwhelmed Japan on the night of November 14th, 1965, is now history, and nowhere else in written history is there a catastrophe to compare with it. The sun of the 14th set upon a proud, confident, ambitious country: the sun of the 15th rose upon a land of ashes, desolation and despair. Beside that cataclysm, the havoc of even the worst earthquakes with their terrible death roll was as nothing.
It was some days before the rest of the world learned the reason for the sudden stoppage of all communication with Japan, and longer still before rumour was confirmed by knowledge that her power and almost her whole civilization had been swept away in a single night.
Almost the first result of the definite news was that the Japanese armies in the field wilted and wavered. With their sources of supply cut off, it became impossible even within a few days for them to hold their positions. A retreat was called, but the armies were getting out of hand; it became a rout. Supplies, guns and machinery were abandoned. The intensely-trained army degenerated into a rabble pouring back across the country, each man for himself in a flight which only the sea could stop. The Chinese armies swept forward to recapture their land almost without resistance, jubilant and savage in their pursuit, pushing far ahead of their command, scarcely more disciplined than the fleeing Japanese ahead of them.
In the confusion and constantly changing positions of various headquarters which strove to keep in some kind of touch with their commands, it was difficult to trace any units. It took George White more than a week of chaotic travel by any means of transport which happened to be available to catch up with his friend Pang Li. He found him at last in a village on the border of the Che-Kiang whence he was directing the attack on Hangchow, where a Japanese remnant was making a last desperate stand with its back to the sea. George found himself a welcome visitor. Pang Li beamed upon it.
“It's all over, bar the shouting, as your phrase puts it,” he said.
“There's no doubt about that,” George agreed. “But, in Heaven's name, what did it? It's beyond believing that one raid, however big, can have laid Japan flat on her back.”
“Raid?” said Pang Li. “Oh, yes, the raid.” He smiled.
“What do you mean?” said George suspiciously. “That was the night you planned to raid.”
The Chinese made a deprecating motion.
“I must confess, George, to misleading you! We did not raid, we could not have done so at that distance if we had wanted to.”
“But your new long-distance bombers—?”
“I am afraid they were a myth.”
George put his hand to his forehead.
“But — but — for goodness sake, what did you do then, Li?”
The Chinese smiled more broadly at his bewilderment.
“It was necessary to do very little. Our Trojan Horse kicked again and did the rest.”
“The magnetic beam?”
“Yes, the beam.”
“But I don't see — Won't you explain, Li?”
Pang Li nodded. “I think you deserve it,” he said. “I will tell you.”
“Soon after dark on the 14th many seaplanes went up from ships which we managed to get into the North Pacific and some even in the Sea of Japan. The planes were specially adapted. They carried no bombs. Instead, they were fitted with powerful amplifiers and loudspeakers. By the use of the amplifiers it was possible for two or three planes to sound like a whole fleet. Also, it was very difficult for anyone listening to gauge their distance. In pairs and trios, these planes approached the Japanese coasts at various points.”
“The garrisons, thanks to your information, were on the alert and picked them up on their sound-locators. They got their beam generators going and began t
o wave them about the sky. Our planes kept low for safety and manipulated their amplifiers to give confusing effects of approaching and departing while doing their best to mislead the directional sound-detectors. How far they succeeded in misleading the men on the ground, we cannot tell, of course, but they succeeded in their object of bringing the beams into use. I imagine that all the anti-aircraft magnetic beams in Japan were swinging back and forth at full power that night. Unfortunately, some of our planes ventured too close and were brought down by them.”
He paused.
“Well?” George encouraged him.
Pang Li said, unexpectedly: “Do you know anything about meteorites, George?”
“Not much.”
“Well, there are three kinds, and that kind known as side-rites are alloys of iron and nickel. When a meteorite hits, it hits remarkably hard. When a big one fell in Siberia in 1908 it knocked the trees flat over an area half as big as your Yorkshire. That's a pretty good concussion. They also liberate some heat. A gram of dynamite lets off 1,000 calories, but a good large meteorite lets off 450,000 calories for every gram of its weight. So you see the kind of thing one might possibly collect by raking round the heavens with an intensely powerful magnetic beam.”
George blinked.
“Might,” he said. “Might! Why I should say it's millions to one against your happening to touch one.”
Pang Li shook his head.
“On the contrary, it would be much more remarkable if you did not pick up several thousands. But it is also true that most of them would be burned away long before they could reach the ground.”
“So what?” inquired George. “It doesn't seem to help much.”
“True. The same thought occurred to the venerable Wu Chin-tan. He had to consider, therefore, where the best meteors were to be found, for it was his contention that if there were a really considerable magnetic disturbance many meteorites which would normally swing clear of the Earth might be brought down, and possibly there would be some large ones among them.”
“Now there is a famous swarm of meteor-ites known as the Leonids which gives one of the most brilliant and densest showers of ‘shooting stars’. They are probably the remains of a disintegrated comet, and their path intersects with that of the Earth every thirty-three years. They came in 1932 and they were due to come again on the nights of November the 13th, 14th and 15th, 1965. It was on this meteor swarm that Wu Chin-tan put his hopes. And we worked to create the biggest magnetic disturbance ever known, at the time when Earth should be in the densest part of the swarm.”
“Frankly, the results surprised us. Even Wu Chin-tan himself did not expect a celestial bombardment on such a scale. The poor old man is rather worried now for fear of what he has let loose. It is, of course, utterly impossible to compute the amount of meteorites which fell on and around Japan that night, but large and small together there must have been many millions. And the impact of some seems to have started volcanic activity. How much of the damage is really due to the resulting earthquakes and eruptions we can't yet tell. It is there that luck was with us, for we had not foreseen that part of the catastrophe.”
George was silent for a time.
Pictures rose before him.
Beautiful countrysides, where happy and industrious people made use of every foot of ground, living on in their own cultural tradition, still almost untouched by the century of frenzied Westernization in the cities. They had had nothing to do with this war, it was the imported machinery and the big business houses which demanded markets.
This was the year 1965 for the West and for the cities of Japan, but in the country places they kept to the old ways, for them it was the year 2625 of their own culture. He saw Japan in the spring, smothered in cherry-blossom: he saw it now, blasted and blackened, towns and villages flattened out by concussion, cities burning unchecked.
“It is the people who have suffered more than the leaders,” he said.
“In war,” said Pang Li, “it is always the people who suffer — never the leaders. And Japan's leaders have been no more than monkeys, imitating you Western barbarians. In the old days when the Japanese fought they fought for life or honour; now they fight for cash-registers and businessmen. In analysis, it is you who have destroyed Japan, not we. You have been doing it for a hundred years.”
But George scarcely followed him, his mind was still on the final disaster.
“It must have been like a biblical judgement. They called down fire from heaven upon themselves,” he said.
“Others will do the same,” Pang Li said. “But not China. Did I not tell you that the stars in their courses fight for China?”
BOOK INFORMATION
THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM
SPHERE BOOKS LIMITED
30/32 Gray's Inn Road, London WCIX 8JL
First published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Ltd 1973
Copyright © The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973
Anthology copyright © Sphere Books Ltd 1973
Introduction copyright © Leslie Flood 1973
Bibliography copyright © Gerald Bishop 1973
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Lost Machine: Amazing Stories, 1932
The Man from Beyond: Wonder Stories, 1934
Perfect Creature: Tales of Wonder, 1937
The Trojan Beam: Fantasy, 1939
Vengeance by Proxy: Strange Stories, 1940
Adaptation: Astounding Science Fiction, 1949
Pawley's Peepholes: Science Fantasy, 1951
The Red Stuff: Marvel Science Stories, 1951
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Startling Stories, 1951
Dumb Martian: Galaxy Science Fiction, 1952
Close Behind Him: Fantastic, 1953
The Emptiness of Space: New Worlds, 1960
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Set in Linotype Times
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk.
ISBN 0 7221 9369 6