The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 02

by Anthology

  90. In spite of the anarchic and unspeakable conditions on the Continent, I could not refrain from making one last tour of inspection. The thought of flooded mines, pillaged factories and gutted mills was more than I could bear. The stocks of oil in England were running short, but I commanded enough to fill my great transportplane. We flew low over roads crawling with humanity as a sick animal crawls with vermin. Some cities were empty, obscenely bereft of population; others choked with wanderers.

  The Ruhr was a valley filled with the dead, with men tearing each other's throats in a frenzy of hunger, with the unburied and the soon to be buried sleeping sidebyside through restless nights. Not a building was still whole; what had not been torn down in pointless rage had been razed by reasonless arson. Not one brick of the great openhearths had been left in place, not one girder of the great sheds remained erect.

  The Saar was in little better case and the mines of Alsace were useless for the next quartercentury. The industrial district around Paris had been leveled to the ground by the mobs and Belgium looked as it had after the worst devastation of war. I had expected to find a shambles, but my utmost anticipations were exceeded. I could bring myself to look upon no more and my pilot informing me that our gas was low, I ordered him to return.

  We were in sight of the Channel, not far from Calais, when both starboard engines developed trouble simultaneously and my pilot headed for a landingfield below. "What are you about, you fool?" I shouted at him.

  "Gasline fouled. I think I can fix it in a few minutes, Mr Weener."

  "Not down among those savages. We wouldnt have a chance."

  "We wouldnt have a chance over the Channel, sir. I'd rather risk my neck among fellow humans than in the water."

  "Maybe you would, but I wouldnt. Straighten out the plane and go on."

  "Sorry, Mr Weener; I'm going to have to land here."

  And in spite of my protests he did so. I was instantly proved right, for before we came to a stop we were surrounded by an assortment of filthy and emaciated men and women bearing scythes and pitchforks, shouting, yelling and gesticulating, making in fact, such an uproar that no comprehension was possible. However, there was no misunderstanding their brusque motions ordering us away from the plane or the threatening noises which reinforced the command. No sooner had we reluctantly complied than they proceeded methodically to puncture the tires and smash the propellers.

  My horror at this marooning among the degenerates was not lessened by their ugly and illdisposed looks and I feared they would not be content with smashing the plane, but would take out their animus against those who had not sunk into their own bestial state by destroying us as well. Since I do not speak much French, I could only say to the man nearest me, a sinister fellow in a blue smock with a brown stockingcap on his head, "C'est un disgrace, ça; je demandez le pourquoi."

  He looked at me for a baffled moment before calling, "Jean, Jean!"

  Jean was even more illfavored, having a scar across his mouth which gave him an artificial harelip. However, he spoke English of a kind. "Your airship has been confiscated, citizen."

  "What the devil do you mean? That plane is my personal property."

  "There is no personal property in the Republic One and Indivisible," replied Jean. "Be thankful your life is spared, Citizen Englishman, and go without further argumentations."

  I suppose it was reasonable to take this advice, but I could not resist informing him, "I am not an Englishman, but an American. We also had a Republic one and indivisible."

  He shook his head. "On your ways, citizen. The Republic does not make distinctions between one bourgeois and another."

  I looked around for the pilot, but he had vanished. Alone, furious at the act of robbery and not a little apprehensive, I began walking toward the coast; but I was not steeled against isolation among the barbarians of the Continent, nor dressed for such an excursion. Between anxiety lest I run into a less pompous and more bloodthirsty group of representatives of the Republic One and Indivisible--when it had come into being, how far its authority extended or how long it lasted I never learned--and the burning and blistering of my feet in their thinsoled shoes, I doubt if I was more than a few miles from the airfield and therefore many from the coast when darkness fell. I kept on, tired, anxious, hungry, in no better plight than thousands of other wretches who at the same moment were heading the same way under identical conditions.

  The only advantage of traveling by night was the removal of my fear of the intentions of men, but nature made up for this by putting her own obstacles in my way. The hedgerows which had been allowed to grow wild, the unrepaired roadways, sunken and marked by deep holes and ruts and a hundred other pitfalls made my progress agonizingly slow.

  As the moon rose I had a sudden feeling of being near water, and coming out from a thicket I was confirmed in this by seeing the light break into ripples on an uneven surface. But tragically, it was not the Channel I had come upon, merely a river, too wide to cross, which though it undoubtedly led to my goal, would increase the length of my journey by many miles. I'm afraid I gave way to a quite unmanly weakness as I threw myself upon the hard ground and thought of my miserable fate.

  I may have lain there for ten minutes, or twenty. The moon went behind a cloud, the air grew chilly. I was nerving myself to get up and resume my journey--though to what purpose I could not conceive for I would be little better off on a Norman beach than inland--when a timid hand was put upon my shoulder and someone said questioningly, "Angleterre?"

  I sprang up. "England. Oh, yes, England. Can you help me get there?"

  The moon stayed covered and I could not see his face in the dark. "England," he said. "Yes, I'll take you."

  I followed him to a little backwater, where was beached a rowboat. Even by feel, in the blackness, it seemed to me a very small and frail craft to chance the voyage across the choppy sea, but I had no choice. I seated myself in the stern while he took the oars, cast off and rowed us down the river toward the estuary.

  I decided he must be one of that company of smugglers who were ferrying refugees into Britain despite the strictest watch. No doubt he thinks to make a pretty penny for tonight's work, I thought, but no coastguard would turn back Albert Weener. I would pay him well for his help, but he could not blackmail me for fabulous ransom.

  Still the moon did not come out. My eyes, accustoming themselves to the dark, vaguely discerned the shape opposite me and I saw he was a short man, but beyond this I could not distinguish his features. The river broadened, the air became salty, the wind rose and soon the little boat was bobbing up and down in a manner to give discomfort to my stomach. The water, building terraces and battlements, reflected enough light to impress me with the diminutiveness of the boat, set in the vastness on which it floated.

  Behind us the French coast was a looming mass, then a thick blob, finally a thin blur hardly perceptible to strained eyes. I was thoroughly seasick, retching and vomiting over the narrow freeboard. Steadily and rhythmically the man rowed with tireless arms, apparently unaffected by the boat's leaping and dropping in response to the impulse of the waves and in my intervals of relief from nausea I reflected that he must have gained plenty of practice, that he was an old hand in making this trip. It was a peculiar way to gain wealth, I thought, caught in another spasm of sickness, enriching oneself on the misery of others.

  I vomited and dozed, dozed and vomited. The night was endless, the wind was bitter. What riches, I wondered, could compensate a man for such hardships? By the time the wanderers got to the Channel they could not very well have much left and unless my smuggler were gifted with secondsight he could not know, judging by the way he had accosted me, whether he was carrying a man who could pay £10, £100 or £500 for the accommodation. Well, I philosophized, it takes all kinds to make a world, and who am I to say this illicit trafficker isnt doing as much good in his way as I in mine?

  I don't know when my nausea finally left me, unless it was after nothing whatever rema
ined in my stomach. I sat limp and cold, conscious only of the erratic bobbing of the little vessel and the ceaseless rhythm of the oars. At last, unbelievably, the sky turned from black to gray. I could not believe it anything but an optical illusion in the endless night and I strained to dissipate whatever biliousness was affecting my vision. But it was dawn, sure enough, and soon it revealed the pettish, wallowing Channel and the fragile outline of our boat, even tinier than I had conceived. I shuddered with more than cold--had I known what a cockleshell it was I might have paused before trusting my life so readily to it.

  Line by line the increasing light drew the countenance of my guide. At first he was nothing but a shape, well muffled, with some kind of flat cap upon his head. A little more light revealed a glittering eye, more, a great, hooked nose with wide nostrils. He was a man of uncertain age, bordering upon the elderly, with a black skullcap under which curled outward two silverygray horns of hair. The lower part of his face was covered with a grizzled beard.

  He must have been studying me as intently, for he now broke the silence which had prevailed all night. "You are not a poor man," he announced accusingly. "How is it you have waited so long?"

  "I'm afraid youve made a mistake in me, my friend," I told him jovially, "we shan't be making an illegal entry. I am resident in England and can come home at any time."

  He was silent; from disappointment, I concluded. "Never mind, I'll pay you as much as a refugee--within reason."

  "You are a follower of reason, sir?"

  I tried hard to make out more of his still obscured face for there was a note of irony in his voice. "I believe we'd all be better off if everyone were to accept things philosophically. Responsible people will find a way to end our troubles eventually and in the meantime madness and violence--" I waved my hand to the French coast behind--"don't help at all."

  "Ah," he said without pausing in his rowing, "men alone, then, will solve Man's problem."

  "Who else?"

  "Who Else, indeed?"

  The smuggler's answer or confirmation or whatever the equivocal echo was irritated me. "You think our problems can be solved from the outside?"

  He managed to shrug his shoulders without breaking the rhythm of his arms. "Perhaps my English is unequal to understanding what you mean by outside. All the forces I know are represented within."

  I was baffled and switched the subject to more immediate themes. "Are we about halfway, do you think?"

  The light now exposed him fully. His hands were small and I doubted if the arms extending from them were muscular, but he radiated an air of great vitality. His face was lined, his eyes fierce under outthrust eyebrows, his lips--where the crisp waves of his beard permitted them to show--stern, but his whole demeanor was not unkindly.

  "It is easy to measure how far we have come, but who can say how far we have to go?"

  This metaphysical doubletalk annoyed me. "I don't know what is happening to people," I said. "Either they act like those over there," I gestured toward the Republic One and Indivisible, "or else they become mystics."

  "You find questions without immediate answers mystical, sir?"

  "I like my questions to be susceptible to an answer of some kind."

  "You are a man of thought."

  It amused me to speak intimately to this stranger. "I have lived inside myself a great many years. Naturally my mind has not been idle all the while."

  "You have not married?"

  "I never had the time."

  "Ah." He rowed quietly for some moments. "'Never had the time,'" he repeated thoughtfully.

  "You think marriage is important?"

  "A man without children disowns his parents."

  "Sounds like a proverb."

  "It is not. Just an observation. I suppose since you have not had the time to marry you have devoted your life to good works."

  "I have given employment to many, and help to the pauperized."

  "It is commanded to be charitable."

  "I have given millions of dollars--hundreds of thousands of pounds to philanthropies."

  "Anonymously, of course. You must be a godly man, sir."

  "I am an agnostic. I do not know if there is such a thing."

  He shook his head. "Beneath us there are fish who do not know it is the sea in which they swim; above us there are birds unaware of the reaches of the sky. The fish have no conception of sky; the birds know nothing of the deep. They are agnostics also."

  "Well, it doesnt seem to do them any harm. Fishes continue to spawn and birds to nest without the benefits of esoteric knowledge."

  "Exactly. Fish remain fish in happy ignorance; doubt does not cause a bird to falter in its flight."

  The sun was pushed into the air from the waters as a ball is pushed by the thumb and forefinger. The chalkcliffs were outlined ahead of me and I calculated we had little more than an hour to go. "You have chosen a strange way of earning a living, my friend," I ventured at last.

  "Upon some is laid the yoke of the Law, others depend upon the sun for light," he said. "Perhaps, like yourself, I have committed some great sin and am expiating it in this manner."

  "I don't know what you mean. I am conscious of no sin--if I understand the meaning of the theological term."

  "'We have trespassed,'" he murmured dreamily, "'we have been faithless, we have robbed, we have spoken basely, we have committed iniquity, we have wrought unrighteousness----'"

  "Since the rational world discarded the superstitions of religion halfacentury ago," I said, "we have learned that good and evil are relative terms; without meaning, actually."

  For the first time he suspended his oars and the boat wallowed crazily. "Excuse me," he resumed his exertions. "Good is evil sometimes and evil is good upon occasion?"

  "It depends on circumstances and the point of view. What is beneficial at one time and place may be detrimental under other circumstances."

  "Ah. Green is green today, but it was yellow yesterday and will be blue tomorrow."

  "Even such an exaggeration could be defended; however, that was not my meaning."

  "'We have wrought unrighteousness, we have been presumptuous, we have done violence, we have forged lies, we have counseled evil, we have lied, we have scoffed, we have revolted, we have blasphemed, we have been rebellious, we have acted perversely, we have transgressed, we have persecuted----'"

  "Perhaps you have," I interrupted with some asperity, "but I don't belong in that category. Far from persecuting, I have always believed in tolerance. Live and let live, I always say. People can't help the color of their skins or the race they were born into."

  "And if they could they would naturally choose to be white northEuropean gentiles."

  "Why should anyone voluntarily embrace a status of inconvenience?"

  "Why, indeed? 'We have persecuted, we have been stiffnecked, we have done wickedly, we have corrupted ourselves, we have committed abominations, we have gone astray and we have led astray....'"

  We both fell silent after this catalogue, quite inapplicable to the situation, and it was with heartfelt thanks I distinguished each fault and seam in the Dover Cliffs as well as the breaking line of surf below.

  I presumed because of what I'd said about legal entry he was not avoiding the coastguard, but with a practiced oar he suddenly veered and drove us onto a minute sandy beach at the foot of the cliffs, obviously unfrequented and probably unknown to officialdom. A narrow yet clearly defined path led upward; this was evidently his customary haven. Were I an emotional man I would have kissed the little strip of shingle, as it was I contented myself with a deep sigh of thanksgiving.

  My guide stood on the sand, smoothing the long, shapeless garment he wore against his spare body. He had taken a small book from his pocket and was mumbling some unintelligible words aloud. I was struck again by the nervous vigor of the man which had given him the strength to row all night against a harsh sea--and presumably would generate the energy necessary for the return trip.

  I pu
lled out my wallet and extracted two £100 banknotes. No one could say Albert Weener didnt reward service handsomely. "Here you are, my friend," I said, "and thank you."

  "I accept your thanks." He bowed slightly, putting his hands behind him and moving toward his boat.

  Perversely, since he seemed bent on rejecting my reward, I became anxious to press it upon him. "Don't be foolish," I argued. "This is a perilous game, this running in of refugees. You can't do it for pleasure."

  "It is a work of charity."

  I don't know how this shabby fellow conceived charity, but I had never understood that virtue to conflict with the law. "You mean you ferry all these strays for nothing?"

  "My payment is predetermined and exact."

  "You are foolish. Anyone using your boat for illegal entry would be glad to give everything he possessed for the trip."

  "There are many penniless ones."

  "Need that be your concern--to the extent of risking your life and devoting all your time?"

  "I can speak for no one but myself. It need be my concern."

  "One man can't do much. Oh, don't think I don't sympathize with your attitude. I too pity these poor people deeply; I have given thousands of pounds to relieve them."

  "Their plight touches your heart?"

  "Indeed it does. Never in all history have so many been so wretched through no fault of their own."

  "Ah," he agreed thoughtfully. "For you it is something strange and pathetic."

  "Tragic would be a better word."

  "But for us it is an old story."

  He pushed his boat into the water. "An old story," he repeated.

  "Wait, wait--the money!"

  He jumped in and began rowing. I waved the banknotes ridiculously in the air. His body bent backward and forward, urging the boat away from me with each pull. "Your money!" I yelled.

  He moved steadily toward the French shore. I watched him recede into the Channel mists and thought, another madman. I turned away at last and began to ascend the path up the cliff.

  91. When I finally got back to Hampshire, worn out by my ordeal and feeling as though I'd aged ten years, there was a message from Miss Francis on my desk. Even her bumptious rudeness could not conceal the jubilation with which she'd penned it.