Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories

by Stephen Brennan

  5

  The day I resumed my normal wearing apparel I was shown into a large lounging room for convalescents. I seated myself a short distance apart from a group of officers and sat eyeing another group of large, hulking fellows at the far end of the room. These I concluded to be common soldiers, for I heard the officers in my ward grumbling at the fact that they were quartered in the same hospital with men of the ranks.

  Presently an officer came over and took a seat beside me. “It is very rarely that you men in the professional service are gassed,” he said. “You must have a dull life, I do not see how you can stand it.”

  “But certainly,” I replied, “it is not so dangerous.”

  “And for that reason it must be stupid—I, for one, think that even in the fighting forces there is no longer sufficient danger to keep up the military morale. Danger makes men courageous—without danger courage declines—and without courage what advantage would there be in the military life?”

  “Suppose,” I suggested, “the war should come to an end?”

  “But how can it?” he asked incredulously. “How can there be an end to the war? We cannot prevent the enemy from fighting.”

  “But what,” I ventured, “if the enemy should decide to quit fighting?”

  “They have almost quit now,” he remarked with apparent disgust; “they are losing the fighting spirit—but no wonder—they say that the World State population is so great that only two per cent of its men are in the fighting forces. What I cannot see is how a people so peaceful can keep from utter degeneration. And they say that the World State soldiers are not even bred for soldiering but are picked from all classes. If they should decide to quit fighting, as you suggest, we also would have to quit—it would intolerable—it is bad enough now.”

  “But could you not return to industrial life and do something productive?”

  “Productive!” sneered the fighter. “I knew that you professional men had no courage—it is not to be expected—but I never before heard even one of your class suggest a thing like that—a military man do something productive! Why don’t you suggest that we be changed to women?” And with that my fellow patient rose and, turning sharply on his metal heel, walked away.

  The officer’s attitude towards his profession set me thinking, and I found myself wondering how far it was shared by the common soldiers. The next day when I came out into the convalescent corridor I walked past the group of officers and went down among the men whose garments bore no medals or insignia. They were unusually large men, evidently from some specially selected regiment. Picking out the most intelligent looking one of the group I sat down beside him.

  “Is this the first time you have been gassed?” I inquired.

  “Third time,” replied the soldier.

  “I should think you would have been discharged.”

  “Discharged,” said the soldier, in a perplexed tone, “why I am only forty-four years old, why should I be discharged unless I get in an explosion and lose a leg or something?”

  “But you have been gassed three times,” I said, “I should think they ought to let you return to civil life and your family.”

  The soldier looked hard at the insignia of my rank as captain. “You professional officers don’t know much, do you? A soldier quit and do common labor, now that’s a fine idea. And a family! Do you think I’m a Hohenzollern?” At the thought the soldier chuckled. “Me with a family,” he muttered to himself, “now that’s a fine idea.”

  I saw that I was getting on dangerous ground but curiosity prompted a further question: “Then, I suppose, you have nothing to hope for until you reach the age of retirement, unless war should come to an end?”

  Again the soldier eyed me carefully. “Now you do have some queer ideas. There was a man in our company who used to talk like that when no officers were around. This fellow, his name was Mannteufel, said he could read books, that he was a forbidden love-child and his father was an officer. I guess he was forbidden all right, for he certainly wasn’t right in his head. He said that we would go out on the top of the ground and march over the enemy country and be shot at by the flying planes, like the roof guards, if the officers had heard him they would surely have sent him to the crazy ward—why he said that the war would be over after that, and we would all go to the enemy country and go about as we liked, and own houses and women and flying planes and animals. As if the Royal House would ever let a soldier do things like that.”

  “Well,” I said, “and why not, if the war were over?”

  “Now there you go again—how do you mean the war was over, what would all us soldiers do if there was no fighting?”

  “You could work,” I said, “in the shops.”

  “But if we worked in the shops, what would the workmen do?”

  “They would work too,” I suggested.

  The soldier was silent for a time. “I think I get your idea,” he said. “The Eugenic Staff would cut down the birth rates so that there would only be enough soldiers and workers to fill the working jobs.”

  “They might do that,” I remarked, wishing to lead him on.

  “Well,” said the soldier, returning to the former thought, “I hope they won’t do that until I am dead. I don’t care to go up on the ground to get shot at by the fighting planes. At least now we have something over our heads and if we are going to get gassed or blown up we can’t see it coming. At least—”

  Just then the officer with whom I had talked the day before came up. He stopped before us and scowled at the soldier who saluted in hasty confusion.

  “I wish, Captain,” said the officer addressing me, “that you would not take advantage of these absurd hospital conditions to disrupt discipline by fraternizing with a private.”

  At this the soldier looked up and saluted again.

  “Well?” said the officer.

  “He’s not to blame, sir,” said the soldier, “he’s off his head.”

  CHAPTER III: IN A BLACK UTOPIA THE BLOND BROOD BREEDS AND SWARMS

  1

  It was with a strange mixture of eagerness and fear that I received the head physician’s decision that I would henceforth recover my faculties more rapidly in the familiar environment of my own home.

  A wooden-faced male nurse accompanied me in a closed vehicle that ran noiselessly through the vaulted interior streets of the completely roofed-in city. Once our vehicle entered an elevator and was let down a brief distance. We finally alighted in a street very like the one on which the hospital was located, and filed down a narrow passageway. My companion asked for my keys, which I found in my clothing. I stood by with a palpitating heart as he turned the lock and opened the door.

  The place we entered was a comfortably furnished bachelor’s apartment. Books and papers were littered about giving evidence of no disturbance since the sudden leaving of the occupant. Immensely relieved I sat down in an upholstered chair while the nurse scurried about and put the place in order.

  “You feel quite at home?” he asked as he finished his task.

  “Quite,” I replied, “things are coming back to me now.”

  “You should have been sent home sooner,” he said. “I wished to tell the chief as much, but I am only a second year interne and it is forbidden me to express an original opinion to him.”

  “I am sure I will be all right now,” I replied.

  He turned to go and then paused. “I think,” he said, “that you should have some notice on you that when you do go out, if you become confused and make mistakes, the guards will understand. I will speak to Lieut. Forrester, the Third Assistant, and ask that such a card be sent you.” With that he took his departure.

  When he had gone I breathed joyfully and freely. The rigid face and staring eye that I had cultivated relaxed into a natural smile and then I broke into a laugh. Here I was in the heart of Berlin, unsuspected of being other than a loyal German and free, for the time at least, from problems of personal relations.

  I now made an e
laborate inspection of my surroundings. I found a wardrobe full of men’s clothing, all of a single shade of mauve like the suit I wore. Some suits I guessed to be work clothes from their cheaper texture and some, much finer, were evidently dress apparel.

  Having reassured myself that Armstadt had been the only occupant of the apartment, I turned to a pile of papers that the hospital attendant had picked up from the floor where they had dropped from a mail chute. Most of these proved to be the accumulated copies of a daily chemical news bulletin. Others were technical chemical journals. Among the letters I found an invitation to a meeting of a chemical society, and a note from my tailor asking me to call; the third letter was written on a typewriter, an instrument the like of which I had already discovered in my study. This sheet bore a neatly engraved head reading “Katrina, Permit 843 LX, Apartment 57, K Street, Level of the Free Women.” The letter ran:

  “Dear Karl: For three weeks now you have failed to keep your appointments and sent no explanation. You surely know that I will not tolerate such rude neglect. I have reported to the Supervisor that you are dropped from my list.”

  So this was Katrina! Here at last was the end of the fears that had haunted me.

  2

  As I was scanning the chemical journal I heard a bell ring and turning about I saw that a metal box had slid forth upon a side board from an opening in the wall. In this box I found my dinner which I proceeded to enjoy in solitude. The food was more varied than in the hospital. Some was liquid and some gelatinous, and some firm like bread or biscuit. But of natural food products there was nothing save a dish of mushrooms and a single sprig of green no longer than my finger, and which, like a feather in a boy’s cap, was inserted conspicuously in the top of a synthetic pudding. There was one food that puzzled me, for it was sausage-like in form and sausage-like in flavour, and I was sure contained some real substance of animal origin. Presuming, as I did at that moment, that no animal life existed in Berlin, I ate this sausage with doubts and misgivings.

  The dinner finished, I looked for a way to dispose of the dishes. Packing them back in the container I fumbled about and found a switch which set something going in the wall, and my dishes departed to the public dishwasher.

  Having cleared the desk I next turned to Armstadt’s book shelves. My attention was caught by a ponderous volume. It proved to be an atlas and directory of Berlin. In the front of this was a most revealing diagram which showed Berlin to be a city of sixty levels. The five lowest levels were underground and all were labelled “Mineral Industries.” Above these were eight levels of Food, Clothing and Miscellaneous industries. Then came the seven workmen’s residence levels, divided by trade groups. Above this were the four “Intellectual Levels,” on one of which I, as a chemist had my abode. Directly above these was the “Level of Free Women,” and above that the residence level for military officers. The next was the “Royal Level,” double in height of the other levels of the city. Then came the “Administrative Level,” followed by eight maternity levels, then four levels of female schools and nine levels of male schools. Then, for six levels, and reaching to within five levels of the roof of the city, were soldiers’ barracks. Three of the remaining floors were labelled “Swine Levels” and one “Green Gardens.” Just beneath the roof was the defence level and above that the open roof itself.

  It was a city of some three hundred metres in height with mineral industries at the bottom and the swine levels—I recalled the sausage—at the top. Midway between, remote from possible attack through mines or from the roof, Royalty was sheltered, while the other privileged groups of society were stratified above and below it.

  Following the diagram of levels was a most informing chart arranged like a huge multiplication table. It gave after each level the words “permitted,” “forbidden,” and “permitted as announced,” arranged in columns for each of the other levels. From this I traced out that as a chemist I was permitted on all the industrial, workmen’s and intellectual levels, and on the Level of Free Women. I was permitted, as announced, on the Administrative and Royal Levels; but forbidden on the levels of military officers and soldiers’ barracks, maternity and male and female schools.

  I found that as a chemist I was particularly fortunate for many other groups were given even less liberty. As for common workmen and soldiers, they were permitted on no levels except their own.

  The most perplexing thing about this system was the apparent segregation of such large groups of men from women. Family life in Germany was evidently wonderfully altered and seemingly greatly restricted, a condition inconsistent with the belief that I had always held—that the German race was rapidly increasing.

  Turning to my atlas index I looked up the population statistics of the city, and found that by the last census it was near three hundred million. And except for the few millions in the mines this huge mass of humanity was quartered beneath a single roof. I was greatly surprised, for this population figure was more than double the usual estimates current in the outside world. Coming from a world in which the ancient tendency to congest in cities had long since been overcome, I was staggered by the fact that nearly as many people were living in this one city as existed in the whole of North America.

  Yet, when I figured the floor area of the city, which was roughly oval in shape, being eight kilometres in breadth and eleven in length, I found that the population on a given floor area was no greater than it had been in the Island of Manhattan before the reform land laws were put into effect in the latter part of the Twentieth Century. There was, therefore, nothing incredible in these figures of total population, but what I next discovered was a severe strain on credence. It was the German population by sexes; the figures showed that there were nearly two and a half males for every female! According to the usual estimate of war losses the figure should have been at a ratio of six women living to about five men, and here I found them recorded as only two women to five men. Inspection of the birth rate showed an even higher proportion of males. I consulted further tables that gave births by sexes and groups. These varied somewhat but there was this great preponderance of males in every class but one. Only among the seventeen thousand members of Royalty did the proportion of the sexes approach the normal.

  Apparently I had found an explanation of the careful segregation of German women—there were not enough to go around!

  Turning the further pages of my atlas I came upon an elaborately illustrated directory of the uniforms and insignia of the various military and civil ranks and classes. As I had already anticipated, I found that any citizen in Berlin could immediately be placed in his proper group and rank by his clothing, which was prescribed with military exactness.

  Various fabrics and shades indicated the occupational grouping while trimmings and insignia distinguished the ranks within the groups. In all there were many hundreds of distinct uniforms. Two groups alone proved exceptions to this iron clad rule; Royalty and free women were permitted to dress as they chose and were restricted only in that they were forbidden to imitate the particular uniforms of other groups.

  I next investigated the contents of Armstadt’s desk. My most interesting find was a checkbook, with receipts and expenditures carefully recorded on the stubs. From this I learned that, as Armstadt, I was in receipt of an income of five thousand marks, paid by the Government. I did not know how much purchasing value that would amount to, but from the account book I saw that the expenses had not equalled a third of it, which explained why there was a bank balance of some twenty thousand marks.

  Clearly I would need to master the signature of Karl Armstadt so I searched among the papers until I found a bundle of returned decks. Many of the larger checks had been made out to “Katrina,” others to the “Master of Games,”—evidently to cover gambling losses. The smaller checks, I found by reference to the stubs, were for ornaments or entertainment that might please a woman. The lack of the more ordinary items of expenditure was presently made clear by the discovery of a number of punch m
arked cards. For intermittent though necessary expenses, such as tonsorial service, clothing and books. For the more constant necessities of life, such as rent, food, laundry and transportation, there was no record whatever; and I correctly assumed that these were supplied without compensation and were therefore not a matter of personal choice or permissible variation. Of money in its ancient form of metal coins and paper, I found no evidence.

  3

  In my mail the next morning I found a card signed by Lieut. Forrester of the hospital staff. It read:

  “The bearer, Karl Armstadt, has recently suffered from gas poisoning while defending the mines beneath enemy territory. This has affected his memory. If he is therefore found disobeying any ruling or straying beyond his permitted bounds, return him to his apartment and call the Hospital for Complex Gas Cases.”

  It was evidently a very kindly effort to protect a man whose loss of memory might lead him into infractions of the numerous rulings of German life. With this help I became ambitious to try the streets of Berlin alone. The notice from the tailor afforded an excuse.

  Consulting my atlas to get my bearings I now ventured forth. The streets were tunnel-like passageways closed over with a beamed ceiling of whitish grey concrete studded with glowing light globes. In the residence districts the smooth side walls were broken only by high ventilating gratings and the narrow passage halls from which led the doors of the apartments.

  The uncanny quiet of the streets of this city with its three hundred million inhabitants awed and oppressed me. Hurriedly I walked along occasionally passing men dressed like myself. They were pale men, with blanched or sallow faces. But nowhere were there faces of ruddy tan as one sees in a world of sun. The men in the hospital had been pale, but that had seemed less striking for one is used to pale faces in a hospital. It came to me with a sense of something lost that my own countenance blanched in the mine and hospital would so remain colourless like the faces of the men who now stole by me in their felted footwear with a cat-like tread.