CHAPTER XI - THE GODDESS OF THE
TEMPLE
The man in blue with the machine badge on his
shoulder, who was waiting for me at the entrance, surveyed me with a smile of
tolerant amusement.
“You are now at the heart of civilization,” he
began. “Let me act as your guide, for I see that you are a stranger. Is it not
wonderful to contemplate that here, upon a space of a few hektares, man has
erected a monument that shall endure forever! This wing,” he added, “is Doctor
Sanson’s domain, while Boss Lembken exercises his priestly function from the
People’s House, under the dome.”
He led me within the portico and through a swing
door on the north side of the building. I found myself within a circular
chamber like a hospital theater, with marble seats rising almost to the roof
around a small central platform, on which were a crystal table, a large silver
tank, and a cabinet with glass doors, through which I could see surgical
appliances.
“This is the Animal Vivisection Bureau,” said my
guide. “It is not open to the public while demonstrations are being given. The
Council does not permit the laity to acquire medical knowledge. We have several
hundred dogs constantly kenneled beneath, in the sound-proof rooms; they are
born there and, in general, die here.”
“You use only dogs?” I asked.
“At present, yes. Their trustfulness and docility
make them the best subjects, for we are demonstrating to our classes the nature
and symptoms of pain. Now here—”
I followed him through another swing door into a
similar room, but at least twice the size.
“This is the Vivisection Bureau,” he continued,
taking his stand beside a table of reddish marble mottled with blue veins, with
a cup-like depression at the head. “The people call it, jocularly, of course,
the Rest Cure Home. You can guess why. Criminals and other suitable subjects
are never lacking for experimentation. Doctor Sanson is said to be making
investigations which will prove of a revolutionary nature. Then, the supply of
moron children appears to be inexhaustible. Again, of course, there is the
annual Surgeons’ Day, when we round up the populace. The date being movable,
the ignorant are kept in a state of wholesome apprehension. But let us follow that
throng.”
Through the glass of the swing door I perceived a
large crowd pouring into another part of the building, following in the wake of
an old man, perhaps eighty years of age, who was being conducted by two of the
blue-coated guards. Behind him trailed a little rat-faced man in blue, who
glanced furtively about him with a smile of bravado. We went with the mob into
a third chamber.
It was about the size of the second, and in the
center was a large structure of steel, with a swing door. The brass rail which
surrounded it kept back the spectators, who lined it, heaving and staring, and
uttering loud exclamations of interest and delight. The room was filled with
the nauseating stench of an anaesthetic.
One of the guards raised a drop-bar in the rail, and
the old man passed through and walked with firm steps toward the steel
structure. His white beard drifted over his breast, his blue eyes were fixed
hard, and he had the poise of complete resignation. At the door he turned and
addressed the spectators.
“It’s a bad world, and I am glad to go out of it,”
he said. “I remember when the world was Christian. It was a better world then.”
He passed through, and the anaesthetic fumes
suddenly became intensified. I heard the creak as of a chair inside the structure,
a sigh, and the soft dabbing of a wet sponge. That was all, and the mob, struck
silent, began to shuffle, and then to murmur. I saw the rat-faced man slinking
away.
“This,” said my guide, “is popularly called the
Comfortable Bedroom. The old man can no longer produce his hektone and a
quarter monthly, and his grandson, who has the right to take over the burden,
has just been mated. Most of our old qualify for life in senility, but no doubt
he dissipated his credit margin in youth. Again, many prefer to go this way.
Now if he had been a woman he would have been accredited thirty hektones for
each child supplied to the State. That is Doctor Sanson’s method of assuring
productivity.”
But I broke from the man in horror, forcing my
passage through the crowd, which was dispersing already. I ran on through hall
after hall, approaching the central part of the building, until I was again
blocked by a crowd, this time of young men and women in blue, who were reading
a lengthy list of letters and figures, suspended high in the center of this
chamber. Most of these young people were in pairs, and, as they read, they
nudged each other and exchanged facetious phrases.
But one pair I saw who, with clasped hands, turned
wretchedly away and passed back slowly toward the entrance.
“This is more cheerful than the Comfortable
Bedroom,” murmured a voice at my side.
The new speaker was a dapper young fellow with a
small, pert mustache and an air of insinuating familiarity. He placed his hand
upon my arm to detain me as I started to move away.
“The kindly Council, which relieves old age of the
burden of life, also provides that the life to come shall be as efficient for
productivity as possible,” he said. “I see you are a stranger and may not know
that these young people are here to learn the names of their mates.”
“Do you mean that the Council decides whom each
man or woman is to marry?” I asked.
“To mate? Yap, in ordinary cases. There is no
mating for one-fourth of the population—that is to say, those of the morons
whose germ-plasm contains impure dominants, and who are yet capable of
sufficient productivity to be permitted to reach maturity. Grade 2, the
ordinary defectives, who number another fourth of the people, are at present
mated, though Doctor Sanson will soon abolish this practice. The sexes of this
class are united in accordance with their Sanson rating, with a view to
eliminating the dominants.”
“And these are defectives of what you call Grade
2?” I asked.
“No, these are all Grade 1 defectives,” he
answered, regarding me with amusement. “Defectives such as us. We number
forty-five per cent of the population and form the average type. They are free
to choose within limits. The Council prepares periodically lists of young men
and young women in whom the deficiencies are recessive, and those on one side
of the list may mate with any of those upon the other side. Monogamy is,
however, frowned upon. I suppose you, in your country, never heard of this plan?”
“Yes, it used to be called the totem, or group
marriage, and was confined to the most degraded savages on earth, the
Aborigines of Australia,” I answered. But the little man, who had evidently not
heard of Australia, only looked at me blankly. A rush of people toward the next
hall carried us apart, and, not loath to lose my companion, I followed the
crowd, to find myself in the immense central auditorium, within which orators
were addressing the people from various platforms.
Upon that nearest me a lecturer was holding forth
with the enthusiasm of some Dominican of old.
“Produce! Produce!” he yelled, with wild
gesticulations. “Out with the unproductive who cannot create a hektone and a
quarter monthly! Out with the moron! Out with the defective! Out with the
unadaptable! Out with the weak! Out with him who denies the consubstantiality
of Force and Matter! No compromise! Sterilize, sterilize, as Doctor Sanson
demands of you! There are defectives in the shops today, spreading the moron
doctrines of Christianity. There are asymmetries and variations from the Sanson
norm, cunningly concealed, legacies of malformations from degenerate ancestors,
impure germ-plasm that menaces the future of the human race. Let us support
Sanson, citizens! Go through the city with sickle and pruning-hook for the
perfect race of the future, in the name of democracy! Praise the great Boss!”
“Hurrah!” shrieked the mob enthusiastically.
“Will you not go up and see the Temple goddess?”
whispered a voice in my ear.
I started, but I could not discern the speaker. I
looked up. On either side of the auditorium a high staircase of gleaming marble
led to a gallery which surrounded it. Doors were set in the wall of this in
many places, and above were more stairs and more galleries, tier above tier. At
the head of each stairway one of the guards was posted. He stood there like a
statue, picturesque in his blue uniform, which made a splotch of color against
the white marble wall.
“Go up and ask no questions,” whispered somebody
on my other side; and again I turned quickly, but none of those near me seemed
to have spoken.
I went up the stairway, passing the guard, who did
not stop or question me. As I stopped in the gallery, high above the
auditorium, a door opened, and there came out a man of extreme age, dressed in
white, with a gold ant badge on either shoulder. He propped himself upon a
staff, and stood blinking and leering at me, and wagging his head like a
grotesque idol.
“A stranger!” he exclaimed. “So you have come to
see the goddess of the Ant Temple! Would you like to stand upon the altar
platform and see her face to face? It only costs one hektone, but it is
customary to offer a gratuity to the assistant priest.”
I thrust the money into the shaking hand that he
stretched out to me. At that moment I did not know whether I was still free, or
whether this was that peremptory summons to the Council of which David had
warned me. I realized that the spies who had dogged my path were all links in
some subtle scheme.
The old man preceded me into a large room on the
south side of the auditorium, beyond which I saw another door. This seemed to
be a robing-room for the priests, for white garments with the gold ant badge
hung from the walls, which were covered with mirrors, from each of which the
horrible old face grimaced at me.
“You are to go through that door,” said the old
man, pointing to the far end of the room. “It is a great privilege to look upon
the face of the goddess. Not everyone may do so, but you are not an ordinary
man, are you?”
He shot a penetrating glance at me.
“Thus the Messiah will look upon her when he
comes,” he continued. “At least, so runs the prophecy, and remember, you may be
he, for it is foretold that he will come unknowing his mission. But wait!”—for
I was hastening toward the door—“you must put on a priest’s robes. It is not
proper for a layman to look upon the goddess.”
He indicated a white robe with the ant badge that
hung on a table beside me.
“Don’t be in a hurry,” he mumbled. “It is a great
pleasure to me to talk with strangers from remote countries. Where do you come
from? You look like a man of the last century, come back to life. How the
barbarians of that period would stare if they could see our civilization!”
“What is this Temple?” I inquired. “Do men worship
an ant, and are you its priest?”
He chuckled and leered at me. “Oh, no, I am a very
humble old man,” he answered. “I am only an assistant priest. Boss Lembken is
the Chief Priest. And you ask about the Ant? The people worship it, but it is
not known whether they see it as the symbol of labor, or whether they think it
is a god. The religious ideas of the people were always a confused and chaotic
jumble, even in the old days of Christianity. But the Ant is only the
transition stage from God to Matter. We know there is no God, nothing but
Matter, and man is born of Matter and destined to be resolved into it. But the
people are still ignorant, and it keeps them calm, to have an ant to pray to.
Besides, if there were not the Ant they would turn to Christianity again and
set back the clock of progress.
“I remember Christianity well. In my young days it
used to be a power. I used to go to church,” he cackled. “Not that I believed
in God, any more than the rest. Only the aristocrats and the intellectuals did
that. I didn’t believe in the Devil either, but I do now. Do you know the
Devil’s name? It is human nature.”
I remained speechless beneath the spell that the
wretch cast over me.
“Yes, the Devil is human nature,” he resumed. “For
it would thwart progress forever, groveling before its idol of a soul. But
already, when I was a young man, only the intellectuals believed in
Christianity. Once it had been the masses. But Science proved that there was
nothing but Matter, and the momentum of the materialistic impulse was too
strong for the reviving faith. The aristocrats should have guarded their faith
instead of letting the people rise to control. But they were fools. They set up
in little rival bodies when Christ prayed for them to be one. They permitted
divorce when He said no. They tried to compromise with Him, all except Rome and
barbarous Russia, and that is why St. Peter’s still stands as a Cathedral while
St. Paul’s is the Ant Temple. I remember it all.
“Christ knew. He knew they would go under if they
tried to sail with the wind. When Science said there were no miracles they cut
out the miracles. And when the visionary Myers made his generation think there
might be miracles after all, they put some of them back again, but very cautiously.
They didn’t know that the people weren’t going to follow them into rationalism
and then out again. Nobody was going to believe when the leaders themselves
didn’t believe.
“When He taught them how to heal the sick they
preferred to mix His prescription with drugs. They couldn’t believe in one
thing and they couldn’t believe in the other. He told them to leave Caesar’s
things to Caesar, and they went into politics. They tried to bargain with
Socialism when it became strong, but it wouldn’t have anything to do with them.
Then they preached housing reform and a good living, when He praised poverty
and told them to preach resignation. They couldn’t obey in anything; they
thought they knew better; they tried to follow the times after they split into
pieces; of course they went under.”
“Is there no Christianity anywhere?” I asked.
“In your native Russia,” he jeered. “In St.
Peter’s, because the Italian Province segregates the evil to keep it under
observation. In Cologne, because the bishop learned the secret of the Ray. And
in the defectives’ shops. They say they have the Scriptures hidden in there,
but the Council has put dozens to the torture and has never found them. It is
hard to clear the human mind of its inherited rubbish. After the Revolution,
Christianity continued to be taught among other myths. But it aroused
anti-social instincts. Christians were the enemies of human progress. They used
to go into the Rest Cure Home and ask to be vivisected in place of the wretched
morons there. You can’t build up a progressive civilization out of people like
that. So the teaching was made a capital offense. That was after we burned the
bishops.”
“What!” I cried.
“Death by burning came to us from the great
trans-Atlantic democracy, you know,” he said, leering at me. “Europe had
forgotten it. But we set up the stakes again. I saw Archbishop Tremont, of
York, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster burned side by side in
the ruins of Westminster Hall. Then there was Bonham, of London, and Bethany,
of Manchester, and Dean Cross, of Chichester; we put them in plaster of paris
and unslaked lime first. The morons could have fled to Skandogermania, which
was not free then. But they went, all three, into the Council Hall, and
preached to the Council. That was in Boss Rose’s time. So they had to go. And
they blessed us while their bones were crackling. You can’t make a progressive
nation out of people like that.”
I hurried toward the door. I pushed it open, and
it swung back noiselessly behind me.
Within the vastness of the Temple I heard a murmur
rise, a wail of misery that made the ensuing silence more dreadful still. For
here I encountered only thick gloom and emptiness, and soundless space, as
though some veil of awful silence had been drawn before the tabernacle of an
evil god. My knees shook as I advanced, clutching the rail beside my hand.
I found myself upon a slender bridge that seemed
to span the vault. It widened in the center to a small, square, stone-paved
enclosure, like a flat altar-top, surrounded by a close-wrought grille that
gleamed like gold. I halted here, and, looking down, saw, far beneath, a throng
whose white faces stared upward like masks. Again that chant arose, and now I
heard its burden:
“We are immortal in the germ-plasm; make us immortal
in the body before we die.”
Then something beneath me began to assume shape as
my eyes grew used to the obscurity. It was a great ant of gold, five hundred
tons of it, perhaps, erected on a great pedestal of stone; where should have
been the altar of the Savior of the world, there the abominable insect crawled,
with its articulated, smooth body, and one antenna upraised.
The symbol was graven clear. This was the
aspiration of mankind, and to this we had come, through Science that would not
look within, through a feminism that had sought new, and the progressive aims
of ethical doctrinaires that had discarded the old safeguards; Christ’s light
yoke of well-tried moral laws, sufficient to centuries; through all the fanatic
votaries of a mechanistic creed; polygamy and mutilation, and all the shameful
things from which the race had struggled through suffering upward. All the old
evils which we had thought exorcised forever had crept in on us again, out of
the shadows where they had lain concealed.
I stood there, sick with horror, clinging to the
rail.
How far from gentle St. Francis and St. Catherine,
and all the gracious spirits of the dead and derided ages, progress had moved!
Were those things false and forgotten, those saintly ideals which had shone
like lamps of faith through the night of the world? Was this the truth and were
those nothing?
I heard a sobbing in the shadows beneath. I looked
down and perceived, immediately before the Ant, an aged man prostrate. He
muttered; and, though I heard no words that I could understand, I realized
that, in his blind, helpless way, he was groping toward the godhead.
Then I looked up and saw something that sent the
blood throbbing through my head and drew my voice from me in gasping breaths.
At the edge of the platform on which I stood, out
of the gloom, loomed the round body of the second cylinder. And inside, through
the face of unbroken glass, I saw the sleeping face of Esther, my love of a
century ago.
The cap of the cylinder was half unscrewed.
CHAPTER XII - THE LORDS OF
MISRULE
I saw her eyelids quiver and half unclose an
instant, and, though there was no other sign of awakening upon the mask-like
face of sleep, I knew she lived. The indicators upon the dials showed that five
days remained before the opening of the cylinder. And, as I stared through the
glass plate, so horror-struck and shaken, some power seemed to take possession
of me and make me very calm. An immense elation succeeded fear and rendered it
impotent. Esther was restored to me. We had not slept through that whole
century not to meet at last.
How many years we two had lain side by side within
our cylinders, down in the vault, I could not know. Yet there had been a
sweetness behind those misty memories of my awakening as if our spirits had
been in contact during those hundred years of helpless swoon.
The eyelids quivered again. But for the emaciation
and the dreadful pallor I might have thought she was only lightly sleeping, and
would awaken at my call. The love in my heart surged up triumphantly. For her
sake I meant to play the man before the Council.
I meant to go there now. I think my instinct must
have been the courage born of hopelessness, such as that which had carried the
bishops to their death. For only a desperate stroke could win me Esther; and
such a stroke must be made, should be made. With steady steps I returned to the
priests’ room.
The dotard was waiting for me, and he came
forward, smiling and blinking into my face, searing my soul with eyes as hard
as agates.
“I am going to the Council,” I said quietly.
He looked at me in terror. He seized me by the
arm.
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “You are to go to your
friends. The Council is not in session.”
“It is in session. I have been held for it.”
“You don’t understand. That is the Provincial
Council. This is a matter for the Federal Council, and Sanson is not your
friend. Don’t you understand now? Sanson is working on the problem of
immortality and doesn’t suspect. Boss Lembken is your friend. Don’t you know he
is your friend?”
“No,” I answered contemptuously.
The old man clutched me in extreme agitation.
“If you are headstrong you will go to ruin,” he
cried. “Boss Lembken is your friend. He sent for you. Not Sanson. Boss Lembken
discovered who you were while Sanson was dreaming over his victims. If Sanson
knew he would get you into his power and overthrow the priesthood. He means to
destroy the Ant and have no god. He is going to mate the goddess when she
awakens—”
He saw me start and clench my fists, and a
deep-drawn “Ah!” of relief came from his lips. For I had betrayed my identity
beyond all doubt; and it was to make sure of this that I had been sent into the
Temple. I could see it all now.
“Now listen to me,” he said, coming near and
thrusting his repulsive old face into mine. “Boss Lembken wants you. He wants
to help you and give you power. But he was not sure of you; and so he had to
use craft and caution. When the Messiah comes Lembken will overthrow Sanson and
make the world free again. It was Lembken who sent for you.”
He was becoming incoherent with fright at my
obduracy.
“The People’s House is above the Temple,” he
continued. “Boss Lembken lives there. He has a beautiful palace. You will be
happy there. And Sanson has no palace and no delights. He wants nothing except
to vivisect the morons. So you will not want to go to Sanson. He can offer you
nothing. We must be cautious, and if he is in the Council Hall we must wait
till he has gone, for he controls the Guard, and if he saw you he would have
you seized. That is why I gave you a priest’s robes—because Sanson dares not
stop the priests, who are under Lembken. Come with me, then.”
I accompanied him out into the gallery above the
auditorium, in which the orators were still declaiming to a lessening crowd. Sanson
or Lembken, it mattered little to me. I felt enmeshed in some plot whose
meaning was incomprehensible. But I meant to win Esther. I walked like a
somnambulist, feeling that the dream might dissolve at any moment. A shaft from
the western sun struck blood-red on a window. A pigeon that had perched among
the columns fluttered to the ground. Above me I saw tier upon tier of
galleries.
We ascended the marble stairway, the guards making
no attempt to stop us, nor were we challenged. I noticed that they were armed
with Ray rods, similar to those that I had seen in the cellar; and they raised
them in salutation as we passed.
We ascended flight after flight, and always the
guards posted at the top of each saluted us and stepped aside. We passed across
a little covered bridge and presently entered a small rotunda, in which a dozen
guards were seated, sipping coffee and chatting in low tones. Behind them was
an immensely high door marked in large letters
COUNCIL HALL
To the right and left of it were smaller doors.
We entered the door on the right, and the priest,
stopping, whispered to me:
“You must make no sound. If Sanson is in Council
he must not discover us.”
I found myself in a small room, with the
inevitable door at the farther end. Upon one side were two apertures in the
wall, disclosed by sliding panels that moved noiselessly—spy-holes, each as
large as the bottom of a teacup. The priest stooped before one and I looked
through the other.
The immense Council Hall was dim, and it took a
few moments for my eyes to grow accustomed to the obscurity. Then I saw at the
distant end a raised platform, on which stood two high chairs, like thrones.
There were three men upon this platform, one
occupying each chair, and the third standing.
One was unmistakably Lembken, the obese old boss
of the Federation. He wore a trailing gown of white, with a short mull cape
about his shoulders, and there were golden ants—as I discovered
afterward—stamped all over the fabric. He was lying rather than standing, and
his feet rested upon a stool. He was smiling in evil fashion, and he was stout
to the verge of disease. I could not see his face distinctly.
Upon the second throne sat a man with a fanatic’s
face and a square beard of black that swept his breast. He had a large ant
badge on either shoulder of his white gown, and on one finger was an immensely
heavy ring of gold that projected beyond the knuckles. This was the Deputy
Chief Priest.
Standing between the two in the shadows, lolling
back half-insolently against Boss Lembken’s chair, to whisper in his ear, and
again turning to the priest, was Sanson. I could not mistake the whitening hair
brushed back, the gestures of intense pride and power, though I could hardly
see the face. He wore a tight tunic of white, without a badge, and he bore
himself with a complete absence of self-consciousness. There was not a trace of
pose in the completeness of that manifested personality, with its alert poise,
cat-like and tense, as if each nerve and sinew had been disciplined to serve the
master-soul within.
As I watched I heard a strident, metallic voice
call in loud tones:
“Wait till the Goddess awakens and the Messiah
comes! He’ll make an end of Sanson and his cruelties, and give us freedom
again!”
Now I perceived that behind Sanson and between the
two thrones stood a telephone funnel, attached to some mechanism. It was from
this that the voice had issued. It was followed by the clacking sound of a
riband of paper being run off a reel. Sanson stepped back, picked up the
riband, and ran it through his fingers, glancing at it indifferently.
“The speaker lives in District 9, Block 47, but we
do not yet know his name. A trapper is watching,” said the voice in the funnel.
A bell rang, the door on the left of the Council
Hall was opened by a guard, and a girl of about eighteen entered. She was robed
in white and on her shoulder was the sign of a palm tree. She stood before Boss
Lembken’s throne with downcast face and clasped hands, trembling violently.
“They sent for me,” she said in a low voice.
I saw the smile deepen on Lembken’s face. He sat
leering at her; then he shifted each foot down from the stool and gathered
himself, puffing, upon his feet. He put his hand under her chin and raised it,
looking into her face. The girl twisted herself away, screamed and began
running toward the door.
“Let me go home! Please—please!” she cried.
The guard at the door placed one hand over her
mouth and dragged her, struggling, through a small door behind the funnel,
which I had not seen.
I clenched my fists; only the thought of Esther
held me where I was.
“Ascribe the heretics,” said Lembken to the deputy
priest, and puffed out behind the guard.
Sanson stepped backward and touched the funnel
mechanism, which instantly began to scream.
“Heresy in the paper shops!” it howled. “Examine
District 5. They say there is a God. Weed out the morons there!”
The writing mechanism began to clack again. I saw
the paper riband coil like a snake along the floor between the thrones. Sanson
stopped the machine, which was beginning to screech once more. He moved to the
vacant throne and sat down.
Again the bell tinkled, and there came in a man of
about thirty years, in blue, leading a little boy by the hand. He looked about
him in bewilderment, and then, seeing the priest, flung himself on his knees
and pressed his lips to the hem of his robe.
“It is not true that I am a heretic, as they say,”
he babbled. “I believe in Science Supreme, and Force and Matter, coexistent and
consubstantial, according to the Vienna Creed, and in the Boss, the Keeper of
Knowledge. That man dies as the beast dies. And that we are immortal in the
germ-plasm, through our descendants. I believe in Darwin, Hæckel, and Wells, who
brought us to enlightenment—”
“That boy is a moron!” screamed Sanson,
interrupting the man’s parrot-rote by leaping from his chair.
He dragged the child from the father, switched on
the solar light, and set him down, peering into his face. He took the child’s
head between his hands and scanned it. His expression was transformed; he
looked like a madman. And then I realized that the man was really mad; a madman
ruled the world, as in the time of Caligula.
The father crept humbly toward Sanson; he was shaking
pitiably.
“He is a Grade 2 defective,” he whispered. “You
don’t take Grade 2 from the parents. He is Grade 2—the doctors said so—” He
repeated this over and over, standing with hands clasped and staring eyes.
“I say he is a moron!” Sanson shouted. “The
doctors are fools. He is a brach. Look at that index and that angle! Look at
the cranium, asymmetrical here—and here! The fingers flex too far apart, a
proof of deficiency. The ears project at different angles, my eighth stigma of
degeneracy. He is a moron of the third grade, and must go to the Vivi—”
With an unhuman scream the father leaped at Sanson
and flung him to the ground, snatched up the boy in his arms and began running
toward the door. From his throne the priest looked on impassively; it was no
business of his. The guard appeared.
But before the man reached the guard at the door
Sanson had leaped to his feet and pulled a Ray rod from his tunic. He pointed
it. I heard the catch click. A stream of blinding, purple-white light flashed
forth. I heard the carpet rip as if a sword had slashed it. A chip of wood flew
high into the air. On the floor lay two charred, unrecognizable bodies.
I confess my only impulse then was of fear. How
could I confront that devil, or Lembken, in his hell, when for Esther’s sake I
must be cautious and wise? I plunged toward the farther door. The priest caught
at me, but I shook him off and flung him, stunned, to the floor. I opened the
door and rushed through.
I was amazed to find myself upon a long, slender
bridge that spanned the central court of the vast structure. I stopped,
bewildered, not knowing where to turn, and the whole scene burned itself upon
my brain in an instant.
The immense mass was divided into four separate
buildings. The Council Hall, from which I had emerged, was on the southern
side, and, looking beyond it, I saw the Thames, winding like a silver riband
into the distance. Facing me was the north wing, by which I had entered,
containing the Vivisection Bureau and other halls of nameless horrors, with
Sanson’s quarters. On my left hand the Temple towered high over me. Above my
head I saw the outlines of the noble dome, and the palm trees behind their
crystal walls. A blood-red creeper trailed down through a chink in the wall.
Upon my right was a massive fortress that I had
not hitherto perceived, floating above which was a whole fleet of airships,
evidently the same that I had seen when I flew into London. There must have
been more than a hundred of them, ranging from tiny scoutplanes to huge monsters
with glow shields about them, projecting conical machines like those that
studded the top of the enclosing wall, but smaller. On their prows were great
jaws of steel, in some cases closed, in others distended, fifteen feet of
projecting jaw and mandible, capable, as it looked, of crushing steel plate
like eggshells.
The bridge on which I stood ran from the Council
Hall to the wing where Sanson dwelled. A bridge from the Temple building ran
straight to the fortress of the airships at right angles to this, the two thus
crossing, forming a little enclosed space in the center. At various spots,
bridges from the enclosing fortress crossed the court and entered the pile of
buildings. And the whole concept was so beautiful that even then I stopped to
gaze.
But I did not know whither to turn. In front of
me, where the bridge entered Sanson’s wing, a guard stood watching me. As I
approached the central place where the two bridges met he raised his Ray rod
with a threatening gesture.
I turned to the right. Here, where the bridge from
the Temple entered the fort of the airships, I saw an airscout in blue, with
the white swan on his breast, watching me. Again I stopped. My mind was awhirl
with the horrors that I had seen; I could not think! I did not know what to do.
All exit seemed barred to me except that whereby I had come.
Beneath me lay the court, a broad expanse of
white, inlaid with geometrical figures of green grass. On it crawled tiny
figures in blue. I was halfway between the court below and the Temple dome
above; yet everything was so still that the voices below came up to me.
A group had gathered, chattering excitedly, about
something that lay hard by the Temple entrance. As they moved this way and that
I saw that it had been a woman. She had been young; her garments had been
white; there was a gold palm on a torn-off fragment that a gust of wind drove
up toward me. I caught at it, but it went sailing past and fluttered down in
the central court between the buildings.
I saw the spectators look up toward the aerial
gardens. The blood-red creeping vine now swung from an open crystal door. That
paradise of tropic beauty, those flame-colored flowers were such as blossom in
hell.
The crystal door above me clashed to and reopened
as the wind caught it. It seemed to clang rhythmically, like a clear tocsin,
high up beneath the dome, a bell of doom to warn the blood-stained city. Again
it sounded like a workman’s hammer; and the silence that covered everything
made the sounds more ominous and dread, as if Fate were hammering out the
minutes remaining before she slashed her thread.
An old man pushed his way through the gathering
crowd. He peered into the white face, and wrung his hands, and wept, and his
voice rose in a high, penetrating wail.
“It’ll all be ended,” I heard him cry. “I can’t
work now. I can’t make up my time. I’ve spent my credit margin. I’m old and
outed and done with. I’ll have to go to the Comfortable Bedroom.”
It was the old man whom I had seen earlier that
day. The crowd jeered and pressed forward, those who were behind craning their
necks and rising on their toes to see the joint spectacle of death and grief.
The old man shook his gnarled fist at his dead daughter.
“You’ve killed me,” he sobbed in rage. “Why
couldn’t you have stayed up there till Sanson has made us all immortal? I’m
going to the Comfortable Bedroom now, and my body will die like a beast’s, and
I’ll be ended.”
And he broke into atrocious curses, while the
crowd screamed with delight and mocked his passion.
The little gate on the inner side of the fort
opened, and a troop of the Guard emerged, carrying a stretcher. At the sight of
them the mob scuttled away. The guards picked up the body and carried it within
the gate. One began scattering sand.
Out of the crowd leaped an old man with flowing
hair and beard. He stood out in the court and shook his fist toward the Temple
dome.
“Woe to you, accursed city!” he screamed. “Woe to
you in the day of judgment! Woe to your whites and harlots when the judgment
comes!”
The crystal door banged and clashed open. A woman
in white put out her hand and closed it. A latch-click pricked the air. The sun
gilded the dome and turned it to a ball of fire. Down in the court the madman
cried unceasingly.
“Woe to you, accursed city!” he screamed. “Woe to
you in the day of judgment! Woe to your whites and harlots when the judgment
comes!”
