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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Amazing Stories, March 1932, with "The Cities Of Ardathia"
"HOPE springs eternal in the human breast" has been spoken many times as a light and logical proverb, but it also has depth. In these troublous times of economic stress and increasing mechanical supremacy, with no visible way of escape, the number of people who submissively hold on to mere shreds of life is legion—all because of the thinnest thread of hope, the hope which rises perpetually within them—the hope that the morrow will bring improvement. Perhaps this accounts, in part, for the reason that conditions are permitted to go from bad to worse for the vast majority. How much worse they can become is clearly set forth—scientifically deduced and plausibly shown—in this new gem by a favorite author of science fiction.
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Preface Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII |
Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV |
ARDATHIA is not a myth. The illusion of time and the exigencies of authorship may place it in the past or in the future, but in reality its civilization parallels that of our own day and age. In the world's dim dawn, or in the world's dim future, however you may wish to phrase it, men built a great industrial machine, and that industrial machine posed a problem, and how that problem was solved—or not solved—is the subject of this story.
DIESEL, president of the Council of Ten which ran the government of Ardathia, was being entertained at the palace of one of his colleagues. This palace, in the midst of a magnificent estate, lay outside the eternal pall of smoke and soot which hung over the city of Ironia. Yet straddling, as it did, a high ridge of land, and commanding from its wide verandas a superb view of the Industrial City, it was possible for the Titan of Steel to overlook the mills and forges from which flowed some of the colossal wealth that gave him his tyrannical power. The name of this Steel Titan was Rocca. He was stout, red-faced, bewhiskered, with a false air of benevolence, an air of good will and fellowship, belied by the sharp, predatory gleam which came and went in his little red-rimmed eyes. Diesel, on the contrary, was tall, with a certain formal distinction of manner. Younger than his fellow ruler, he was none the less well past middle age, clean shaven, save for a brief moustache, with greying hair and pale blue eyes of seeming honesty and candor. But it was the mouth of the man that gave a true index to his character. In repose it was a thin slit of cruelty not good to see, but it was seldom in repose, being slightly parted with an habitual smile which disguised its mean and ruthless quality. Both men were clad in the evening uniforms of their class, flowing togas covering under-dresses of exclusive purple. It was a warm evening in July and the windows giving on the verandas and sloping terraced grounds were wide open. Servants in the black and gold liveries of their service went to and fro bearing cooling drinks, skilfully blended in tall frosted glasses. Rocca had eaten heartily, and now he drank in the same fashion; but Diesel, abstemious in his diet, had partaken of food sparingly and did not drink. One of the ladies present, slim, middle-aged, blond, wearing a frock whose simplicity accentuated the fabulous price it brought in a Fashion City half a world distant, puffed daintily at a scented nargila and remarked that she had no sympathy for the Unlings.
"Those Unlings down there," she waved a slim, henna-tipped hand towards the mills, "are so disgustingly dirty. I declare it makes me shudder to inspect an Industrial City—which I do as little as possible."
"Perhaps," said the man she addressed, a priest of Theo by his garb: "Perhaps," he said a little sadly, "the dust and grime soaking into everything make strict cleanliness impossible."
"I'm sure," said a younger woman flippantly, (Rocca's motherless daughter just back from Ithuria), "that soap and water are cheap. If I were an Unling, my face and hands and clothes would be kept spotless no matter how poor I was."
The priest slightly shrugged his shoulders but made no audible reply, only his eyes cynically took in the immaculate toilets arrived at with the aid of wealth and tiring-maids. Rocca's daughter was a dream of loveliness in a priceless frock, with a string of creamy pearls at her ivory throat, her red-gold hair braided and wound around her shapely head like a blazing diadem. Ah, those stupid, arrogant rulers, those Purples! What did they know of reality, of life in Ironia on an Unling's pay?
Diesel took Rocca by the arm and drew him through one of the open windows. Out of the eternal cloud of smoke hanging over Ironia flames leapt into the heavens, lighting up the stacks and buildings and trestles and then dying away again. "I hear," said Diesel, "that you're having trouble in the mills."
Rocca chewed viciously at his unlit cheroot. "Yes," he said, "it's those confounded Equalizers. If I could lay my hands on them!" He crushed the cheroot in his fist and flung it over the railing. As if that were a signal, a dark figure stepped out of the nearby shrubbery below and advanced towards the verandah, staring up at the two toga-clad Titans. "Who's that?" demanded Rocca sharply, but his question was almost unnecessary, for the circle of light into which the stranger stepped revealed the tall, burly figure of a man dressed in the dark cotton smock and trousers and heavy leather boots of an Unling. His square face and well-modeled features, from which the grey eyes burned, made a splotch of discernible whiteness. The two rulers stared in amazement. An Unling! And in a Titan's garden! The thing was unbelievable. "There's nothing to be afraid of," said the intruder softly.
"We aren't afraid," retorted Diesel sharply. The man fumbled the heavy head-covering in his hands. "Don't you know," went on Diesel arrogantly, "that you've no business where you are, that it's a punishable crime for you to be outside an Industrial City? How you left your place I do not know, but be off with you, and back to it again before I have you handled!" The man straightened his shoulders with a jerk; broad shoulders, they were, and powerful.
"Listen, Titans, we are your slaves and we know it; but the work down there is so hard," he waved his hand towards the hell of smoke and flame, "and the wherewithal to buy food so little. Now you want to make that little still less. And you introduce the machines that rob us of our bread. How can we compete with mechanicals? So I have come from them—down there—to implore you to have mercy. For already, Titans, we are starving, dying...." his voice wavered away.
Diesel regarded him dispassionately. "Why do you bring this problem to us? We are but two citizens of Ardathia, Unling, like to yourself. The Council decides what wages shall be paid, what food shall be dispensed to the hungry—and the Council reflects the will of the land. Appeal through the proper channels to the Council and not to us."
"But you are the Council," faltered the man; "you have the power...."
"A power we must take care not to abuse," said Diesel smoothly. "And now, Unling, we have listened to you with more patience than your rebelliousness deserves. By approaching us in such a manner, by leaving your city and trespassing on a Titan's estate, you have violated the code. Go now, before we give you over to a just punishment."
But at the Titan's stern words, the man's humility fell from him like a cloak and his hand swung up in a minatory gesture that caused Rocca to recoil with a cry of fear.
"Fools!" cried the man, his voice still low and intense, "to harden your hearts to your own destruction! to think that we will starve in peace! Now by the name of Mola...."
"Silence!" exclaimed Diesel, his mouth a thin slit; "silence, you dog! Do you dare? Ah, but you will suffer for this!"
The man turned and plunged into the shrubbery, down the terraced slopes, even as Rocca, frothing with rage, raised the whistle to his lips. Clear and sharp the thin note cut the heavy atmosphere. From far off came a mournful wailing, and near at hand the shrilling of alarms. The mechanical guards of the Titan's estate were moving with ponderous precision through the dark, the automatic gates closing. Attracted by the clamor, Rocca's daughter and guests poured out of the window. "What is it, father? What is it?" Rocca leaned over the verandah railing straining his eyes. "They'll get him," he prophesied, but his prophecy was wrong. For, running swiftly, the man gained the great gates even as they closed with a heavy crash, even as the mechanical guards hemmed him in on all sides. Pausing, he himself raised a whistle to his lips. "What is that?" cried Diesel. Through the air piped two thin notes. The gates opened, the mechanicals withdrew, and the man ran through and on, for a half mile, until he came to where a small helicopter stood resting in a lonely place. On the verandah Rocca stamped his feet in a towering rage. "Damn it!" he shrieked, "my own private mechanical whistle. Some one will suffer for this. By Theo, this is some of those Equalizers' work!"
Diesel nodded coldly. "Their agent has gotten away; but some day we'll settle with the whole seditious brood for good. As for the Unlings, they are a menace to our rule. If only we could eliminate them entirely! But slowly and surely we are replacing them with automatic devices. Perhaps some day..." he made a fateful gesture with his hand.
Meanwhile, the man who had escaped the mechanicals by possessing the secret means of commanding them, had landed his helicopter at a secret spot in the city of Ironia and was making his way swiftly through the grimy streets. At a dark doorway he paused and gave a peculiar signal. The door swung open and he entered and descended a narrow staircase. To the Unlings admitting him he said not a word. The stairs terminated in a cellar, and in the floor of the cellar was a cunningly-concealed trapdoor, which rose at the pressing of a secret spring. Descending a flight of short steps, he found himself in a well-lighted room where twelve men, clad much as himself, were seated around a large table. The men looked at him questioningly. The one at the head of the table nodded a curt greeting. In any gathering, he would have been an arresting figure. He had a large head with penetrating eyes. "Speak, Jan," he ordered.
"I did as the committee bade."
"And saw the Titans?"
"Yes."
"And they...?"
"Refused to listen to the plea; treated me with contempt. If it had not been for the mechanical whistle..." he shrugged his shoulders.
"You have done well, Jan. We did not expect any different results from your visit; but it was imperative, because of the Unlings, that the attempt to soften the hearts of the Titans be made. Now we can tell them..." he paused and regarded the others. "Everything is understood, Companions of Equality?"
"Everything is understood."
"Then each one of us to his post. You, Ran, to Unida; you, Daca, to San-an; and you, Rama...."
Rapidly he gave his orders, and as each one received them, he saluted with an upraised gesture of the palm and quitted the room by means of the trap-door, until only Jan, and the leader of the Companions of Equality, Elan, were left remaining at the table. Long, they sat, and talked and planned, the youth urging, the chief hesitating; until at length the latter stood up with a gesture of surrender. "Very well. Do as you think best. Perhaps..." Then the two men turned out the lights and themselves quitted the chamber.
ROCCA'S daughter we have already met in her father's palace. Her name was Thora, and she was almost as lovely as her name. Born and bred to the Purple, she had not the least conception of life outside of her own wealthy and privileged class. To her the Unlings were inferior beings, so many cattle who were the producers of their own misery and filth. She was not so cruel as ignorant. The suffering of millions of toiling Unlings moved her not at all; because this suffering was remote, unrealized, a part of the natural order of things.
Spinning through the air at a hundred miles an hour in her combination helicopter and sports plane, far outside the zone of traffic and of air-traffic protectors, she was annoyed when the big automatic glider slid gently alongside and made fast with grapplers.
The day of air robbers and aerial bandits was past for a quarter of a century. The last great gang of skybinders had long ago been incorporated into the traffic protector service, its leaders made members of the Purple; in fact the Titan of Aeronautics had himself been a former sky-binder chieftain. So the daughter of Rocca was more angry than alarmed when she looked into the square face and grey eyes of the pilot of the glider. Despite the correct garb—he was dressed as a Pink—she knew him for an Unling by his big, coarse hands (no Pink ever soiled his hands with manual labor), and by the fact that when he spoke, it was in the Unling patois. "How dare you!" she cried. "What does this mean?"
"It means," said the Unling pleasantly, "that you're being kidnaped."
"Kidnaped! Are you crazy? My father..."
"Is not here," pointed out the Unling imperturbably.
She looked at him with blazing eyes. "Perhaps you don't know who I am?"
"Indeed I do. You are Thora, daughter of Rocca, Titan of Steel, and I...."
"And you?" she queried.
"Am one of your father's Unlings, born of an Unling, Jan by name, Companion of the Equalizers...."
Now Thora was no soft and timid damsel, despite her pampering. Or rather her pampering had not taken the form of sapping her physical strength and self-reliance. She had been taught to swim, box, run, fly; her body was as hard and supple as only a well-trained body can be; and now, faced with an emergency, she suddenly whipped out a small chute and would have gone overboard in the same moment if Jan had not grasped her swiftly with both his huge hands. Despite her struggles—and she struggled like a wildcat—he pinioned her wrists with a length of rope. Then he secured her feet and lifted her bodily from the sports plane to his own glider. All this time the two airships had soared along on even flight, balanced by the automatic gyroscopes. Working with swift deliberation, Jan cut from the girl most of her leather flying jacket, tore the jeweled buckles from her shoes, the gold clasps from her tunic, despoiled the fingers of their two distinctive rings, and laid them in a heap. "Thief!" spat the girl.
Unheeding her epithet, he now opened a bag and took from it—of all gruesome things—a skeleton in several pieces. The cavernous skull, the naked bones, caused the girl involuntarily to shrink. Jan smiled. "You see, Thora," he said softly, "that I place this skeleton, portions of your clothes, the jewelry, aboard your flyer—so—and I throw loose the grapplers—so—and before loosing it, I set fire to your craft—so—" he suited the action to his words and the girl watched wide-eyed as her plane dropped away from them with its grisly freight, trailing smoke.
"What good will that do you?" she demanded. "My father will hunt you down and you will hang..."
Jan busied himself with his controls. "I see," he said, still softly, "that you don't quite understand. In a few minutes that fire will reach the fuel tank and your craft will go hurtling to earth a flaming mass. Then today, or tomorrow, or the next day—it hardly matters when—your father's searchers will find the charred remnants of your flyer, a few of your bones and your jewelry...
"You fiend!" shrieked the girl.
"Ah, you are beginning to comprehend! What is more natural than an accident in the air, death in the wreck? No! Your father will look no further." He shook his head. The glider hurtled on. Terrified at last, deathly afraid of the future, the girl sank back, half swooning.
At last they came to earth on the site of an old flying field. With the coming of the helicopter device, which made direct rising a possibility, such fields had fallen into disuse, been converted to other purposes, or merely abandoned. This was one of the latter, situated in a lonely place.
The increasing use of synthetic compounds for the manufacture of foodstuffs had depopulated the countryside and concentrated more and more of the people into Industrial Cities. Forlornly scattered over the landscape were farmhouses and outbuildings gradually sagging into decay. Inhabitants of a sort there still were, but few and far between. On this abandoned flying field, then, in the midst of such depressing surroundings, the glider landed. Picking up the girl in his arms, Jan carried her into a deserted dwelling. The dwelling had evidently been deserted for a long time. Dust and cobwebs hung everywhere, the floors were thick with dust, and what scanty furniture remained was warped and cracked. Down a dark flight of steps into the cellar of this dreary dwelling went Jan, and the girl in his arms began to scream and to writhe with fear. He shook her forcibly.
"Be quiet," he said. "I'm not going to murder you." Under the pressure of his hand, a seemingly solid section of wall masonry fell away as if on a pivot and he entered a dark tunnel, the ingeniously contrived door closing behind him. His feet rang hollowly on concrete paving until he came to another, this time a wooden door, which he pushed open and so stepped with his captive into a vast underground chamber or crypt, well lighted and ventilated. "One of the secret places of the Equalizers," said Jan. The girl stared around her fearfully. The room was an arsenal of weapons, tools and books. From a map over which he was poring, a man looked up, revealing the striking head and clear, penetrating eyes of Elan, the Equalizer Chieftain. Jan saluted with a half-raised gesture of the palm. "Who is this maiden?" demanded the Chieftain.
"Thora, daughter of the Titan Rocca."
"Then you were successful?"
"Yes."
The Chieftain eyed Thora broodingly and shook his head.
"Jan, Jan, I haven't much faith in this plan you have persuaded me to against my will. And yet," he said musingly, "there is some logic to it."
The girl cried entreatingly: "If you are this man's master, tell him to let me go. I swear my father will richly reward both of you if I am released at once."
Elan made no reply, but pointed towards a door leading to another room. "Have her change," he commanded briefly.
The other room was comparatively small, fitted up as a sleeping chamber. Jan removed the cords from Thora's wrists and ankles and indicated a pile of coarse clothing. "You will remove your own garments—everything, remember!—and don these." The girl stared at him proudly, her whole attitude one of resistance and defiance. He took out his timer and glanced at it. "I shall be gone exactly ten minutes. If you haven't made the change by the time I return—discarding every single garment you are now wearing, remember—I shall make the change for you." He went out, closing the door after him and for a moment the girl stood motionless. Then like a trapped animal, she darted this way and that, examining the walls, seeking a way of escape, but save by the door she had entered, exit there was none. An alcove to the rear of the chamber, and shut away from it by a heavy curtain, proved to be nothing but a bathroom. Slowly, reluctantly, she turned her attention to the coarse clothes, and then, intimidated by Jan's threat, began to strip.
When he returned at the expiration of the ten minutes, she faced him, clad in the cotton garments, her own leather skirt and leggings, and intimate things of priceless silk lying heaped on the floor. "It is well," he said. "Follow me." She walked stiffly, the unaccustomed coarse clothing torturing her sensitive skin, the heavy leather boots dragging at her feet. Despite her pride she wanted to weep, and it was only with an effort she held back the tears from her stormy blue eyes. Elan looked up from poring over his map.
"Thora," he said kindly enough, "from us you need fear no personal violence or outrage, beyond what is absolutely needed to re-establish your status in life. As you doubtless know, we are in a conspiracy to overthrow the rule of the Titans; that is, of your father and the Purples. It is in our minds to send you to toil in an Industrial City, so that in event of our rebellion failing you will know, by actual experience, of the Unlings' trials and sufferings, will use your influence with your father for more merciful conditions, will be merciful yourself should you ever come to power."
"I will use my power," declared the girl passionately, "to have you all hunted down, hanged!"
Elan's face did not change expression. "So you think now, but later.... At any rate, we are sending you to your father's Industrial City of Ferno, where you will toil as one of your father's Unlings, wearing out body and soul for the profit of no one but your father! where——"
"Where I will denounce you to the authorities!" cried the girl.
"Poor child," said the Chief of the Equalizers a little sadly, "she doesn't know where it is she is going!"
"Nor realize the soulless cruelty of a hell of steel and stone," said Jan.
"I will denounce you to the authorities!" babbled the girl wildly. "Nothing will prevent me from denouncing you to the authorities!"
"Nothing will," said Elan gravely; and to Jan, "Take her away."
IN the half darkness something loomed, something that seemed implacable, monstrous. It was oddly like a gigantic human head thrust forward from a squat body. Bulbous it was and cavernous, the head of a sphinx on the body of a beast. From it breathed a visible aura of radiant light. Ventar went to and fro, talking to his monster, crooning to it, serving it with his skillful hands. Far underground was his secret laboratory, in the heart of Ironia it lay, and none of the Equalizers save Elan knew of its existence.
Ventar was an Unling of perhaps forty years of age, skilled as a mechanic (indeed he worked regularly in the mills), small and colorless. With nothing but his burning eyes to mark him apart from thousands of other Unlings—that, and his obsession—he was none the less the possessor of that colossal intellect which enthroned the machine. Force of circumstances swept him into the ranks of the Equalizers. Elan, it was, who recognized in him the great scientist and inventor, who secretly built for him this workshop and encouraged him to experiment and to strive and realize his vision in concrete iron and steel. So for ten long years Ventar worked and wept, in alternate explosions of hope and despair, stealing away from the drudgery of his daily work to become intoxicated with his own genius, caring for nothing else, absorbed, enthralled, until now he turned from putting the final touches to the thing he had created—the thing that pulsed like a sentient head—and faced the small group of men who stared at the looming monster with fascinated eyes. These men represented the executive committee of the Equalizers. Blindfolded, Elan had brought them to the laboratory; somewhere in Ironia, they knew, but that was all. With the rapt enthusiasm of a dreamer, a fanatic, Ventar spoke, his words pouring forth in a tumultuous stream.
"It is finished," he cried, "finished! Look at it and marvel! Nothing like it has ever been made before! You have heard of machines that could answer questions and tell the tides of the sea for twenty years in the future. You have heard of others that could best the minds of men in abstruse calculations. In our Industrial Cities are thousands of such automatic devices. But you have never heard before of a mind for the machine!"
He paused for a pregnant moment. The silence was intense.
"A mind for the machine! Look at it there! I call it," almost whispered Ventar, "the Mechanical Brain."
The Mechanical Brain! Fateful words. None realized how fateful.
"It is an intelligence for the machine. Let me demonstrate my meaning." He approached the monstrous "head" and lifted a metal flap that hung down like a huge ear-lobe. "See! I whisper to it my command. I tell it to make the mechanical behind you advance and circle the room. Behold!" There was the grinding of gears, a harsh clattering of metal, and the unwieldy mechanical marched forward, circled the room and returned to its place. "Nor is that all! Look at this model defense tower I built, with three decks of automatic iron shooters aimed at those toy Pinks. Now!" He whispered again in the ear of the brooding head and the row of toy Pinks went down under a leaden hail. In a hundred ways, to the overwhelming astonishment of the gathered men, Ventar demonstrated his uncanny invention. "The Mechanical Brain can control any mechanical device with which its 'thot,' its 'will' is in attunement. Over automatic machinery it is supreme."
"But of what use is it to us?"
The man who asked this question leaned forward, his long, pointed face white under a thatch of dark hair. It was Elan who stood up and answered. "Companions of Equality, for long years we have plotted the overthrow of the Titans. It is wars that arm the Unlings. But the Titans have grown wise and no longer send the Unlings to war. Moreover, deprived of the right to bear or own arms, the Unlings are defenceless before the tyranny of the Purples. Our rulers have concentrated all the means of destruction in their own hands. The airships that dominate the Industrial Cities from the air, the mechanicals of war, the street towers with their triple decks of iron shooters and gas sprayers—all in their possession, and all operated by the Pinks from central fortresses. Against such concentration of destructive might, what chance have the Equalizers of leading the Unlings in a successful uprising? None at all! That is why I have always cautioned against premature rebellion, have held in restraint those hot-heads who would have dashed us to bloody defeat against the granite rock of Titanism. But at last our hour has struck... the hour for which unknown to you I have planned and waited. There!" cried Elan, rising to his full height and pointing dramatically at the Mechanical Brain, "There is the weapon with which we shall strike! Against the mechanical might of the Titans we shall oppose the 'will' of the machine—our will!" He paused breathless. The Companions rose to their feet in a surge. Only Jan remained calm, unexcited. "We do not understand! What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Elan, once more his cool, collected self, "that by means of the Mechanical Brain we shall control the machines of the Purples, render them useless, turn them against our oppressors."
"But how, how?"
"Let Ventar explain. Speak, Ventar!"
All eyes turned to the hitherto insignificant inventor—insignificant until this night to the most of them—now suddenly endowed with all the awfulness and potentialities of a Jove. He leaned against the base of his incredible creation, the radiant light pulsing out and around him, until he looked like some mythical demon from Hades. "It is simple enough," he said. "Whatever commands are given my Mechanical Brain, those commands will it enforce on the mechanism with which it is in attunement."
"But is your 'brain' in attunement with the automatic machines of the Titans?"
"Not yet. But by means of this little device...." He produced a metal contrivance, scarcely more than an inch in circumference, seemingly a round, flat disk, and passed it to one of the Companions.
"Drop that into the operating cavity of any automatic machine and it will receive the commands of the Mechanical Brain and carry them out. The 'will' of the Mechanical Brain will negative any wireless or electrical control the Pinks may seek to exert."
The men passed the disk from hand to hand and examined it with awe. "But who will place them?" at last questioned one.
Ventar shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "That is up to you. I have made the brain; I furnish you with the disks. My part is done."
"Companions," said Elan, silencing the group with uplifted hand, "the placing of those disks will be the duty of every Equalizer, and of every trusted Unling. Each of you was brought here so that you might realize what possibilities lie in Ventar's invention, understand the urgent need for action, expedition, secrecy. You will go to your separate posts and become centers of distribution for given districts. When the task is done thoroughly, when every mechanical of the Titans is in attunement with our Mechanical Brain; then, then...."
"Then," breathed the man with the pointed face.
"Then will our hour of victory strike!"
ROCCA, Titan of Steel, came to the meeting of the Council of Ten in the beautiful capital city, Cosmola, with a heavy heart.
But twelve hours had elapsed since the burial of the few pitiful bones that had been salvaged from the charred wreck of his daughter's flyer. The supposed remains of Thora, the lovely, had been laid to rest with all the pomp and pageantry attending a funeral of a Titan princess. Iron shooters had thundered; automatic bombing ships had soared in formation, trailing mourning banners of costly silk; regiments of pampered Pinks had paraded, and hundreds of Purples had scattered thousands of gorgeous blooms over the great marble slab that presumably sealed her in her tomb.
But though the Titan's heart was heavy (for Thora was his only and much loved child), and though sorrow had eaten lines into his falsely benevolent face, he responded without hesitation to the emergency summons from the capital. Death might lay low his nearest and dearest, grief might be a canker in his bosom, but none the less the old tyrant would rush eagerly to the exercise of his autocratic power.
From the landing platform on the roof, he hurried by automatic lift to the great council hall where he found Diesel and the other eight members of the governing body assembled. With them was Greco, a tall, dour man, chief of the Pink Secret Service, himself a Purple. Diesel addressed Rocca. "Greco has begged us to foregather in full council as he has something important to communicate to the government."
"Titans," said Greco respectfully, "I have to report the discovery of a serious plot against the peace and safety of Ardathia; a plot so serious and far-reaching that I deemed it better to bring it to your attention at once, than to assume the sole responsibility of dealing with it myself."
Since the redoubtable Secret Service Chief usually considered himself capable of dealing with any situation single-handed, the Titans looked grave. "What is the nature of this plot?"
"With your permission I will introduce the man who discovered it and who can speak of it better than I."
"Very well; let him be brought in."
There entered a man in the garb of the Pinks, a tall, good-looking fellow with a long, pointed face and a thatch of dark hair. He bowed deeply and stood respectfully at attention. "Speak," said Greco; "tell the Titans what you told me."
The man began with trained precision. "My name is Dolna; I have been a Pink special for ten years. As an Unling I have worked in various Industrial Cities, worming my way into the ranks of the Equalizers, until now I am Director of a district." He paused.
"Well?" queried Diesel.
"The other night I attended a meeting of the leaders of the Companions of Equality. Elan was there, and Jan. The meeting was held in a secret laboratory I had never heard of before, somewhere in Ironia, I do not know where. We were taken to it blindfolded, fourteen of us." Again he paused for a moment. "In that secret laboratory an Unling named Ventar, a mechanical genius, had fashioned a great machine, what he called a Mechanical Brain."
"Mechanical Brain!"
"Yes."
"For what purpose?"
"For the overthrow of the government of Ardathia."
Diesel shrugged his shoulders and Rocca and his associates smiled scornfully. "What foolishness is this, Greco?" demanded the former.
"Wait," said Greco softly. "Let Dolna finish."
"Very well—but be brief."
"By having the Mechanical Brain control the armed mechanical forces of the country," said Dolna.
"What!" The Titans stared at him as if they thought he had taken leave of his senses.
"Yes. Ventar gave a marvelous demonstration of his invention. He proved that it could control any automatic mechanism it was commanded to control and with which it was in attunement."
A chorus of exclamations came from the Titans. "Absurd! Impossible! The thing was a trick!"
"No," said Dolna patiently, "not a trick." He went on to explain at length what he had witnessed the Mechanical Brain do. "And if the Equalizers are willing to gamble their lives on the functioning of it," he wound up, "can the government of Ardathia afford not to take it seriously?"
Diesel walked the length of the room and back. "But how can this Mechanical Brain get into attunement with our automatic mechanicals?"
"Through these," Dolna dropped several metal disks into his palm.
"Through these?"
"Yes. One of them placed in the operating cavity of a mechanical makes it amenable to the Mechanical Brain. Oh, I beg of you not to doubt this, for I saw it amply demonstrated! And," went on Dolna less impetuously, seeing that he had riveted attention, "even at this very moment the disks are being broadcast—everywhere."
Now at last he had aroused them to the seriousness of the situation. "By Mola!" roared Rocca. "Greco, what is your Secret Service for? Place this Elan and his criminals under arrest at once!"
Greco smiled wryly. "For twenty years we have been trying to place our hands on Elan, but he comes and goes like a phantom. Besides, as you know, our policy these latter years, has been to ignore the activities of the Equalizers somewhat, to allow their existence as a safety-valve...."
Diesel interrupted him. "Enough, enough! Let the Pinks be mobilized at once," he cried, "all automatic defense mechanicals examined, guarded!"
"If it please the Titans," said Dolna respectfully, "I have a plan to propose."
"Speak! What is it?"
"Do not interfere with the distribution of the disks."
"Are you mad!"
"No, listen. Don't you see that this is the opportunity you have longed for? Confident of victory, the Equalizers will come out into the open, put themselves at the head of the Unlings, reveal who they are and their secret hiding places. That is, they will if they are not alarmed, if they think you suspect nothing. And then," said Dolna deliberately. "You can turn your armed automatics against them, wipe out the Equalizers, crush the Unlings, deplete their numbers...." He paused. "By Theo!" muttered Diesel, "there is something in what you say." The Titans leaned forward with tense faces. "But how, how?"
"By kidnaping Ventar. Listen, Titans, only Ventar knows how to operate the Mechanical Brain. He is jealous of his secret and trusts no one. His ruling passion is to be let alone, to dream, to invent. I am positive that he cares nothing for the Equalizers save that they give him the means to work in a laboratory. Capture him, bribe him with offers of facilities for research and experiment on a vast scale, graft to his body the Pledge of the Secret Service, and then loose him to whisper your commands to the Mechanical Brain instead of the commands of the Equalizers. Your commands," repeated Dolna. "Do you realize what that means? It means...."
Rocca surged to his feet with an oath. "Dolna," he cried, "capture this Ventar, make it possible to carry out this plan successfully, and I swear by the word of a Titan that Ardathia shall not forget this service, that the robe of a Purple is yours!"
Dolna had expected to be rewarded, but not so highly. His cheeks flushed, his eyes sparkled, yet he said hypocritically: "Thanks, mighty Titan, but I have done this not for my own advancement, but for the good of...."
"I know, I know," interrupted Diesel; "but only capture Ventar and you shall receive what Rocca promised."
"To hear," said Dolna bowing, "is to obey. Already Ventar is captured."
"What!"
"He is in this building."
"But how...? when...?"
"You forget that he thought me an Equalizer. It was easy to take him without arousing suspicion. He is held in the Question Room."
"You have done well. Have him brought.... But wait. It is better that he be interrogated in the proper place; let us go to him."
THE Question Room of the Pinks, the interrogation chamber of the Secret Service, was large and gloomy—with deliberate design. Nightmare instruments of torture, devices that crushed, pinched, flayed and racked stood in gruesome rows. Other instruments of a more inscrutable nature occupied one end of the room. In this intimidating place Ventar faced the Council of Ten and its two henchmen. His dark eyes flashed fear and resentment. "Unling," said Greco coldly, "everything is known. You are an Equalizer taken in a red-handed plot against the rule of Titanism and the peace and security of Ardathia. As such you deserve nothing but death—the molten death," he added significantly. Ventar blanched. "But if you make full confession of the plot, perhaps your life will be spared you.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you shall be tortured until you do."
"Very well," said Ventar sullenly.
"Your name is Ventar?"
"Yes."
"An Unling of Ironia?"
"I am."
"And up until now you have been a member of the Equalizers?"
"I have been."
"And for the violent and unlawful purposes of that organization you invented what is called a Mechanical Brain?"
The question caused Ventar to stiffen convulsively, to forget his fear. "Yes," he cried passionately, "a Mechanical Brain! But listen, Titans, what did I care for you or the Equalizers? Nothing—less than nothing! I was your Unling and toiled in your factories and mills, and all I wanted were the tools, the equipment to express my dream, my vision, to create without hindrance! But an Unling must not think, he must not own tools, and in your mills he must do nothing but the tasks given him to do. So I revolted—I joined the Equalizers. Elan made it possible for me to have a laboratory, to build the 'brain'!"
He stopped, breathless; and in the long pause that followed his outbreak, he muttered again: "What do I care for any of you? Nothing—less than nothing!" Diesel studied him thoughtfully, the dark, blazing eyes, the weak, stubborn mouth; then in an aside to Greco: "Take him to the mental-tests department and have a reading made of his character. At once!"
During Ventar's absence, the Titans discussed every phase of the proposed plan. At the expiration of twenty minutes Diesel glanced at the paper handed him and passed it to the others. "It is as we expected. Bring back the Unling." Ventar entered, his roughly made cotton garments in glaring contrast to the rich dress of the rulers.
"Unling," said Diesel sternly, "contrary to the law of Ardathia, which decrees that you should be put to death, we have decided to grant you life." Ventar's face lighted up. "But only if you faithfully repair the mischief you have sought to do us." His face fell again. "Listen, Unling, we are sending you back to Ironia, back among your companions..." (Ventar stared incredulously)... "but in our service."
"What do you mean?"
"That you will mix again with the Equalizers as if nothing had happened, and at the appointed time whisper our commands to your Mechanical Brain instead of the commands of the Equalizers."
Ventar laughed raucously. "Ho, ho! and how do you know I shall keep faith and not-betray you?" Diesel smiled grimly. "Tell him, Greco."
"Because," said Greco blandly, "before you go back you will be pledged to the Secret Service. That means that a small metal capsule containing a minute but very efficient quantity of explosive chemical will be grafted into a certain part of your body. If at any time you seek to tamper with this capsule the fact will register on a control machine in this building, a certain wireless ray be released, and yourself blown up!"
Ventar blinked.
"And more than this," went on Greco inexorably, "if we have reason to expect that you are betraying us, then we shall release the ray anyway and blow up, not only you but everything around you—your precious machine, if you are near it!"
"But, of course," broke in Diesel smoothly, "you will keep faith. For listen, Unling, to what will be your reward if you serve successfully. What Elan furnished you will be nothing to what we shall furnish. All the resources of Ardathia will be placed at your disposal for research work. A hundred thousand dernos will be your personal income a year. The finest laboratory...."
"Enough!" cried Ventar, his eyes blazing. "You can depend on me. Why should I risk this god-like genius of mine being killed? Understand! I care nothing for either you or the Equalizers—you could cut each other's throats for all I cared—but for the things I want to invent, develop—Ah! for these I do care; and for their sake...."
"He is our creature," said Diesel in an aside to Greco. "Pledge him to the Service and send him back."
DAY and night the machines pounded and stamped and wove and spun and melted, and day and night, in twelve-hour shifts, stripped to the waist and grimed with sweat and smoke, the Unlings leaped and ran and heaved and lifted, and red flames licked and scalding steam gushed. From the smoky sky soot fell in persistent showers. The broad, colorless streets ran this way and that, dominated by mechanical towers, the houses leaned one against another in decrepit weariness. Nothing of beauty, nothing of fresh greenness greeted the eye. The few trees that stood fringing the streets were stunted in growth, their leaves listless and gray. But the Unlings hardly noticed. In the course of their drab overworked lives they had known nothing different. The children half-naked and gaunt, playing in vociferous groups, were used to such surroundings. Only to Thora, the Unling, she who had once been Thora the lovely, princess of Titanism, proud member of the Purple, was the Industrial City of Ferno a nightmare of horror. She had come to it, she hardly knew how, in devious ways known but to the Equalizers. Cruel clippers had shorn from her shapely head the golden locks, an acid had washed the henna stain from her finger-tips, had roughened the palms, and as for the rest, a few hours of the grime and dust of the city had darkened the fair skin of face and hands. With loathing she regarded the house to which Jan brought her. Never had she dreamed of living in such a squalid place. It was (to her) like the den of unclean beasts; and yet, if she had noticed, she would have discerned pitiful attempts at cleanliness, attempts daily made, and daily futile in the face of glowering mills and abject poverty. But she did not notice. All she saw the first night was the mean room into which she was introduced, and the gaunt, spiritless-looking woman with the fretful child in her arms. "This," said Jan with a wave of the hand, "is your new home. And this," he said, indicating the woman, "is Freeta." Freeta smiled wanly, but Thora only haughtily stared.
"See," said Jan to Thora conversationally, and laying a light finger on the bony arm of Freeta, "see how well-nourished and fat Freeta is! Look at her firm, rosy cheeks and bright eyes!"
The woman averted her thin face.
"And the child," went on Jan ruthlessly. "You mustn't get the idea it is crying for lack of something to eat. Oh, no! mother and child are well and strong. The mother gets her health from long years of toiling in the mills, from eating the luxurious food of an Unling, and the child from its pleasant surroundings and rich, creamy milk."
Thora stared at him insolently. "I wish," she said, "that you would cease talking to me and go away."
"And this," said Jan imperturbably, speaking to the woman, Freeta, and indicating the daughter of Rocca, "is Thora the Unling who for a brief while was..." he raised his eyebrows significantly.
"What do you mean?" demanded Thora furiously.
"I mean," said Jan, "that a woman of the Unlings, finding favor in the eyes of a ruling Purple, his favorite for a few years and then repudiated and cast off by him, must now forget her airs and graces and return humbly to the class from which she sprang." And in an undertone she alone could hear, "That is what they will think you are (there have been many such), so dismiss any wild ideas you may have of disclosing your identity; you will merely be laughed to scorn, if you do."
He went away then, and left her sitting straight and motionless on a rickety chair; and even his going filled her with terror, seemed to snap the last link connecting her to her own past. She half opened her mouth to scream, to call on his name, to implore him to return and not leave her alone in this desolate place, but pride fought down the impulse. The woman, Freeta, looked at her sorrowfully, spoke in the rough patois half unintelligible to Thora's ears. "It is hard," she said timidly, "after having known better, to return here. Once," she said, "a long time ago, when I was young" (she couldn't have been more than twenty-five, though she looked forty), "before I married, I served as a Spoongirl in the mansion of a Pink in a Flower City." She shook her head sadly. "It was like paradise," she said.
The woman was pitying her! And because she thought her the discarded mistress of a Purple! The indignant color flamed into Thora's cheeks, pride straightened her bowed head. "How dare you!" she cried furiously, "how dare you! Oh, I will have you handled for this! I'll...." And then conscious of the futility of her words, she ceased abruptly and began to weep. The other woman was not offended. Jan had selected her home in which to place Thora because she was kind-hearted and understanding. "Poor thing," murmured Freeta compassionately.
In the little cubbyhole that she learned was her own bedchamber, stretched on the coarse ticking of the narrow bed, Thora continued to weep hysterically. She wept because the stiff, cheap cotton chafed the skin, because the heavy, ungainly boots made her feet ache, because she was homesick and desolate and afraid of the future. And she wept because she was tired and hungry, having started her flight that morning with only a light repast of fruit and bread. Jan had twice offered her food, but she refused to partake of it. Now late at night she was weak and spent. Several times during the night she heard the wailing of the child, but at length, tired out, she must have slept, for suddenly it was morning, and in the outer room sounded the heavy stamping of feet, the hoarse rumble of a man's voice. A little terrified she got up and wearily put on her boots. Unused to sleeping in her clothes, she felt unrested and frowsy, and of toilet facilities in her room there were none. Visions of her own palatial apartments in the luxurious palace overlooking Ironia, of soft-voiced tiring-maids coming at her call, of scented bathing water and salts, overwhelmed her and she sat down with a sob. But after all, Thora had the resilience of youth, some of its divine optimism, and on reflection, it seemed impossible that she could be kept indefinitely a prisoner in her father's own Industrial City. Only the woman and the child were in the bleak living-room. "You can wash there," said the woman, pointing to a rusty sink and faucet. The smell of cheap soap sickened Thora, and she dried her face and hands gingerly on the proffered piece of cloth. "That's your breakfast on the table." Never had Thora seen such food before: a bowl of shredded flakes, a loaf of heavy black bread, and a pot on the stove of some brown liquid steaming hot. But she was undeniably hungry, and after she had declared she couldn't eat it and the woman had answered that there was nothing else, she managed to soak some of the bread in the hot liquid and make a meal. The child, a baby of about eighteen months, wailed drearily, monotonously. "What's the matter with it?" asked Thora kindly enough. Direct suffering aroused her ready sympathies. "He's hungry," said the mother.
"Well, why don't you feed him, then?"
"The coarse food upsets his stomach, and these" (she laid her hand on her withered breasts) "are dried up."
"But why don't you buy him milk?"
"Milk is ten zimes a quart—and we haven't the money very often. My husband," said the woman tonelessly, "only makes ten zimes a day in the mills."
Ten zimes a day! Why a hundred times ten zimes wouldn't pay for one of the meals in her father's palace! Thora turned away silently. No attempt was made to stop her from leaving the house. Once in the crooked streets the idea of freedom flamed up in her bosom. In a vague way she knew how Industrial Cities were governed. A central body of Pinks, relieved at stated intervals, garrisoned the places, and the Scholar Men, a class of officials between the Pinks and the Purples, functioned in the mills as engineers and managers. None of them had their homes in the Industrial Cities. They dwelt in Flower Cities, twenty, sometimes a hundred miles away and planed to work. Save for the private helicopters and plane-flyers of the various persons enumerated above, all freight and supplies entered and left the cities by means of freight-gliders automatically controlled and propelled. They received power for their engines from radial depots strategically located throughout the land, as indeed did the majority of privately used planes and helicopters. This, of course, laid down definite routes of travel for such craft and only a relatively few people of the privileged classes used the old-fashioned oil-driven helicopters and sports-flyers for aerial flight off the beaten paths. Thora thought of all this. Surely, she concluded, she could appeal to either the Pinks or the Scholar Men for protection and succor. For wasn't she on her father's property and these her father's men? But what she failed to realize were the actual conditions within the Industrial City of Ferno. The Pinks seldom or never policed the streets, but every two blocks they were commanded by armed towers from which pointed the muzzles of automatic iron shooters in three decks, and poison gas devices for spraying gas. From the security of what was practically their fortress, a towering building of steel and stone, the Pinks controlled the use of these weapons through three different systems of contact—telephone, wireless, and direct electrical current. Day and night, under the menace of these defense towers, the Unlings came and went, and though they might grumble at the tyranny of the Titans, curse their hideous lot and shake fists of hatred, none the less they dared do no more; for they had risen once—and the memory of that once sufficed to keep them in toiling subjection.
Past the armored towers, past the children in the gutters, the drab women and men lounging on sidewalks and in doorways, she hastened, until she came to the stone wall around the garrison-fortress of the Pink police. But the great gate was barred and the high walls devoid of any sign of life or activity. In vain she shouted and hammered. At last she turned away in despair, and had gone some distance with dragging feet when, rounding a corner, she almost bumped into a swiftly moving figure. The leather cap, the close-fitting black shirt on which gleamed the orange-colored wings of the Pink Police Service, apprised her of the fact that here was not merely a member of the Pinks, but an officer of rank. She did not realize with what rarity one was to be met with in such fashion. But Bolan, commanding officer of the guard, big and burly, with sunny blue eyes and a cruel, sensuous mouth, had his own private reasons for being where he was. Even in the Industrial City of Ferno, where youth and beauty so early withered, some of the maids of the Unlings were fair to look upon, and to many of them his attentions were the condescensions of a god, a superior being, and his gifts the only taste of luxury they ever had. So he caught the eager girl by both arms, as she almost flung herself into his embrace. "Help, Lootna," she panted, calling him by his title. "Help, help!"
"Gladly, little one."
"My name is Thora."
"A pretty name!"
"I am the daughter of the Titan Rocca."
"Say rather, his mistress!"
"Sir!" cried Thora, tearing herself from his grip.
"Now by Mola," exclaimed the Pink ardently, "but here is a wench to fire the blood of any man!" His hot eyes swept the loveliness of face and figure that neither grime nor coarse-fitting cotton could wholly disguise, his ears noted the cultured accent of Thora's speech, and his mind leaped to the natural conclusion.
"Listen, baggage; forget this lover who has the poor taste to discard you and let me be your protector. I swear...."
But with a sob of terror the girl eluded his outstretched arms and ran blindly down the street. Bolan looked after her with lustful eyes. "Now curse the duty that forbids my pursuing! A pretty bird; I shall have to find out where it nests!"
WITHIN two days Thora realized the futility of attempting to escape from the trap in which she was caught. Now she understood the pitying smile of Elan, the words of Jan. There were no adequate authorities to whom an Unling could appeal, and the few individuals she sought to approach—two Scholar Men and a priest of Theo—only sought to take advantage of her distress. Nor could she flee from the city. The walls were high and the automatic mechanicals vigilant. Footsore from walking in unaccustomed footgear, and crushed in spirits, she finally took refuge in the only place she knew and watched the woman, Freeta, scrubbing floors, cooking meals, washing clothes, watched the terrible, unending struggle of poverty against filth and grime, and against hunger. She watched the husband Jal reel home from grueling hours in the mill, and she watched his vain attempts at washing up, watched as he wolfed his coarse food, watched his coming and going, a hulk of a man, brutalized by the life he was forced to live. Sometimes, before he reeled soddenly to bed, he would sit with the child on his lap and let it clutch at one of his calloused fingers.
Hunger drove Thora to eating the coarse food of the Unlings—the black loaf for breakfast, the black loaf and a slice of cheap synthetic meat for dinner. Or perhaps there would be a mess of boiled synthetic vegetables of poor grade. And through all the days it was the child that broke Thora's heart. His gaunt little body, his pinched feverish face and sunken eye seemed a terrible indictment of every luxury she had ever known. "Let me take him," she said once to the woman, and after that she held him for hours, trying to soothe his fretful cries. Tears came easily to her eyes now (she who had seldom wept in her life), as she rocked back and forth with the child, thinking, thinking.
Once she glanced up and there was Jan standing in the doorway. Her heart leaped, almost with joy. She had been thinking of him as she rocked; more than she would admit, even to herself. "Perhaps you would like to know," he said deliberately, "that two days ago they buried the remains of Thora the lovely." She stared at him dumbly. "Yes," he said, "they found all that was left of her in her wrecked sports flyer. It was a great funeral," he said, "full of pomp and pageantry. Her father, the Titan...."
"Please," she said bitterly, "what pleasure do you get out of telling all this to me? Why do you like to torture me so?"
"Because it might be well for Thora the Unling to know that the princess of Titanism is dead—and that her father went from her grave to a meeting of the Council of Ten."
"My father would have to attend to his duties irrespective of any grief," said Thora bravely.
"Duties!" jeered Jan. "What duties? To plot how to sweat more gain from the toil of the Unlings? to doubtless devise plans for the undoing of the Equalizers?"
"Who deserve punishment!" exclaimed Thora.
"For what? For seeking to do away with the horror of this?" He laid a hand upon the emaciated child. She remained silent.
"Look at me, Thora the Unling; why are your clothes grimy—and your face and your hands? Surely if Thora the lovely, Thora who dwelt in marble halls with tiring-maids to wait upon her, who had scented waters in which to bathe and priceless linens and silks in which to go clad; surely this Thora would keep herself spotless no matter where she lived—even in the den of an Unling!"
She stared at him, her eyes burning.
"Yes," he said. "I stood outside your palace windows that night and heard the flippant words you uttered. It was then I decided to..." he stopped with a jerk. "Ah!" he said presently, "isn't all this misery enough to touch your heart? That babe in your arms—don't you know it is dying?"
"No! no!"
"Yes," he said inexorably, "it is dying... and for lack of food. Dying because your father refuses its father the price of milk."
She buried her face against the baby to hide the hot tears in her eyes and when she presently looked up he was gone.
It was the next morning that Jal the Unling said to her: "What do you think—that we can afford to feed you too? You will have to earn your own bread." He went heavily to his sleep and Thora stared miserably at his wife. "He doesn't mean to be unkind," said Freeta, "but his wages have been cut."
"What am I to do?"
"The mills want girls. I used to work in them once, but they won't take me any more, I'm too old. But you, you are young, strong."
So Thora went to the mills, to the synthetic foods department where the by-products of iron and steel and other ores were turned into cheap nourishment for the Unlings. It was hard work, ten hours a day, feeding material to a roller machine. The room where she labored was stifling hot, and her back and head ached from the unaccustomed labor. Now and then she saw Scholar Men passing, but to announce her identity would be but to invite ridicule and scorn, if not worse.
For six days she labored, receiving in return thirty-five zimes, an amount she would have been ashamed in former days to toss to a tiring-woman.... Now she eagerly seized the miserable stipend and hurried to the commissary with but one end in view, the purchase of a bottle of milk. The baby, she decided, was going to be fed, even if she subsisted on black bread herself.
Suddenly one day in the mills—it was the beginning of her second week of servitude—a rumor ran from mouth to mouth that the place was going to be inspected. Into her own department entered a number of guards, lithe, watchful-eyed, and after them, in the midst of a group of personal attendants and Scholar Men, no one less than Rocca, the Titan of Steel himself, clad in the purple robes of his class. Thora stared, wide-eyed. Her father was making one of his annual tours of Industrial Cities. How many times had she accompanied him on such visits herself. Then she had been magnificently dressed, the center of all eyes, haughty, aloof, disdainful of the toiling Unlings who were now her fellow-laborers. With a loud cry that focussed every eye on herself, she flashed forward and sought to reach the Titan's side. "Father!" she cried, "father!" But the Titan recoiled with an exclamation of fear. It was the one great dread of his life that on some such visit an Unling might assassinate him. All he saw was a cotton-clad maiden of the Unlings trying to throw herself upon him. Thora's face and hair were grimed with sweat and soot, her voice hoarsened with emotion. Nothing about her suggested to him his dainty and beautiful daughter. Besides, his daughter was dead.
"Keep her away!" he chattered, "keep her away!"
Heavy hands laid hold of Thora, a fist struck her in the face, one of the Scholar Men brought a metal rod viciously across her shoulders, and sick with pain, she reeled and went strengthless.
"By Mola!" she heard her father's voice roaring, "is this the way I'm protected in my own factory? The wench tried to kill me—don't say she didn't—" The bellowing voice receded as she was dragged away and out into the mill-yard by two guards. "I didn't mean any harm," she faltered wildly. "I only wanted to speak to my father.. my father the Titan Rocca. Please, please...." The men looked at one another significantly. "Demented," said one; and to the girl with a rough shake but half kindly: "Begone, now, before you are seized and handled. Quick! and never come back here again or the Scholar Men will have you flayed."
With a sob she staggered into the street. Her father, her own father, had failed to recognize her, had allowed her to be abused, beaten. But to him she had only been an Unling. Ah, that was it; an Unling was something to abuse, whip. Bruised and aching, she crept into the only home she knew—and then paused, galvanized into a forgetfulness of self; for the woman, Freeta, sat rocking monotonously back and forth, and the Unling Jal walked the floor like a crazy man.
"What is the matter?" she whispered.
He caught her by a shrinking shoulder. "Matter," he cried hoarsely. "Look! That is what's the matter!" Dragged to the cradle, she stared down at the still little body. "Yes, he's dead! Starved, murdered! Oh," cried the Unling Jal, raising his knotted fists to heaven, "May Mola burn me in Hades forever and Theo blast me where I stand, if I fail to be revenged! Listen! I swear to join the Equalizers; I swear never to rest until the Titans..."
But she heard no more of his raving. The baby was dead. The knowledge blotted out everything else. Silent and stiff, he lay, like a wizened old man, his pinched, waxen features staring up at her without recognition. Dumbly, she crouched beside the cradle; for hours it seemed. The grey day deepened into darkness and at last she stumbled to her feet and walked out into the drab night. She did not know where she was going. The world was a place of horror. On, she wandered, on, heedless where she went, until beneath a dim street light a sudden hand reached from the shadows and swung her about, while at the same moment a voice boomed: "So here you are at last, after all my searching, you little wench, you!" and crushed against the breast of a man, she was staring up into the face of Bolan the Pink!
IT was the last meeting of the Directors of Activity of the Companions of Equality. For days trusted agents of the Equalizers had circulated among the Unlings of the Industrial Cities, in the homes and in the mills (where they themselves mostly labored for bread), preparing the Unlings for revolt, distributing the metal disks. Now at last the leaders were gathered for a final review of their plans. Dolna was present, his pale pointed face carefully veiling the laughter and cynicism he inwardly felt. Elan addressed the Directors.
"Companions! everything is in readiness for the uprising. As you know, regiments of Unlings in the various cities have been secretly armed with iron shooters and more primitive weapons. The government depends almost wholly on the use of automatic devices for the crushing of any revolt. The operation of these devices varies with almost every city. In some the automatic principle resided in the devices themselves, and here it was easy to introduce our metal disks; but in several of the more modern equipped cities, the controlling machines are in the fortress-garrisons of the Pinks, and not so easily accessible. Yet even here we made successful contacts. Only two centers remain unapproached as yet—and these will be attended to tonight. Companions!" cried Elan, "without the use of their defense mechanicals the Titans, the Ruling Purples will be helpless, unable to make any real resistance. The majority of defense mechanicals will be under our control, and some of them we shall be able to use. Besides, the Unlings vastly outnumber the rulers and their guards and we will overwhelm the Pinks and capture or destroy them. Ventar has his orders. Already he has whispered to the Mechanical Brain. Tomorrow is the day, twelve o'clock noon the hour. To your posts, Companions, and be ready to strike at the appointed time. By Theo's grace, victory will be ours!"
"Victory! Victory!" shouted the leaders enthusiastically. One by one they left as they had come, until Jan and the Chief alone remained in the underground chamber. These two changed rapidly, one into the garb of a Pink, the other into the exclusive dress of a Purple. Then they passed out into the cold deserted countryside where under the shelter of a sagging shed two small helicopters were parked. For a moment they stood in conversation, gazing up at the clear, diamond-studded sky. "What we go to do tonight is as important as anything that has gone before. Be careful, Jan."
Jan looked at the magnificent head and penetrating eyes of his Chief. "And you, sir."
They shook hands silently, and a moment later wheeled out the helicopters. Both machines rose at the same time, up, up, into the cold thin altitudes, higher than traffic protectors would normally rise, snug and warm in insulated cabins, and then levelled out in different directions of flight.
Diesel stared with a hint of nervousness into the cold level eyes that met his own. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"
The stranger smiled briefly. "I came through yonder window, by way of the balcony, and as for who I am—" he paused. "My name," he said quietly, "is Elan. Elan the Equalizer."
With an oath of surprise the Titan surged to his feet.
"Careful," warned the other softly, pushing back his silk-lined cloak and displaying a weapon. "I have you covered with a silent shooter, and the least attempt to press a button or to call for assistance means... Ah; I see that you understand." The Titan bit his lips with fear and rage. "What do you want?"
"Your company, my dear Diesel, while I inspect the central building of government in Cosmola. By myself I could not hope to go far without molestation, but with you...." He linked his arm in that of the other, the muzzle of the shooter against Diesel's side. "And remember, wear a pleasant face, and don't forget that I am your friend. Such unfortunate forgetfulness would lose you your life and not result in my death or capture, since I assure you I could very readily escape."
They passed through a room where Scholar Men were busy over clerical routine, seemingly in intimate conversation, traversed a long corridor, and so by way of the lift, to the floor devoted exclusively to the Secret Service of the Pinks and the housing of the various automatic controls of national magnitude. Greco, whose nature it was that he could always be found at the post of duty, glanced swiftly up as the two men entered his office. He wondered who the imposing stranger on such familiar terms with the Titan could be, but waited respectfully for Diesel to speak. "My friend here," began the latter....
"Would like to inspect the automatic-control defense-mechanisms under your charge," finished Elan smoothly. "The Titan Diesel is uneasy about their proper functioning. He requested my service from half a world away. I was in Unamba," he said conversationally, "when he summoned me."
So that was the explanation. The surprise of not recognizing the stranger's face (Greco knew the features of every important Purple in Ardathia) subsided. "I am at your service," he said, bowing deeply, and led the way to the vast room where the mechanicals, some of them weirdly human-like, stood in menacing rows. At an observation board two Pink operatives sat in watchful silence. Strange lights flickered and danced on the observation board and little color flights flashed in and out. Beyond a swift glance at their chief, the two operators paid them no attention. Dragging the inwardly furious Titan with him, Elan went from mechanism to mechanism, and under pretense of close examination dropped his little metal disks into their operation cavities. So cleverly did he do this, that if the Titan had not known of the Equalizers' plot, he would have suspected nothing. But as it was, for all his chagrin, he smiled grimly to himself. "Drop away, Chieftain of Equality; this time tomorrow...." (For already the day and hour set for the uprising had been wirelessed by Dolna).
At last Elan came to where a large machine, with an upper body divided into numerous segments, stood. Each segment had its own operating cavity, and since but a single disk was left, he dropped it into the nearest one and turned away. "That," said Greco innocently, "is not an ordinary defense mechanical; it is our spy-control mechanism."
(Three hundred miles distant, dreaming of tomorrow's triumph, visualizing the reward that was to be his, the Purple Robe, the delights and fascinations of a Fashion City on forty thousand dernos a year, no good angel of Dolna whispered to him of the dropping of that disk.)
"Well," thought Elan coldly, "when the Mechanical Brain speaks tomorrow, that is apt to be the end of one of your spies!"
Back they went to Diesel's office, arms still linked, shooter muzzle boring into the Titan's side. With the door shut on those outside, Elan led the Titan to the open window and pointed to where on the narrow balcony, four hundred feet above the ground, his small helicopter lay like a giant bug with elevated wings. "So I came," he said, "and so I will depart; but first...." He bound the President of the Council of Ten securely to one of the upright pillars of the balcony. "Now you can watch my departure, and there is no danger of the alarm being given too soon." Diesel stared impotently, biting at his gag, as the lifting devices whirled with but the faintest purr, and the helicopter rose, cleaving the air... but his humiliation and fury were somewhat appeased by one thought. Soon he would be released... and after that would come tomorrow. An ugly look distorted his face as his thin lips straightened into a cruel line, as he stared vengefully at the stars.
THE City of Ferno was one of the model Industrial Cities of Ardathia, its defense system the highly centralized. In other centers of industry it was possible (for the most part) for the Unlings affiliated with the Companions of Equality to approach the operating mechanicals, but not so here. Therefore it was that the task of tampering with the control mechanisms of the garrison-fortress in Ferno fell upon Jan.
Over the eternal pall of smoke and soot covering Ferno like a blanket of gloom, Jan's helicopter hovered, motionless for a moment between the stars and the grey murk below. Then, having marked the position of the aerial flare burning redly on the highest point of the fortress tower, he dropped like a plummet until within a few yards of the flat landing roof. Here he hung with noiselessly whirring disks, scanning the landing closely, masked by the factory-made fog, but save for a dark row of helicopters and plane-flyers the place was empty. Technically, a guard was kept on the roof, but in the company of Pinks now garrisoning the fortress, discipline was lax, its Lootna being notorious for having other things on his mind, as Jan knew. Landing behind the row of dark ships, but leaving his silent motor running for a quick getaway, he loosened the shooter in its holster and stole towards the steel staircase leading to the depths below. All was still, only a dim light shining. On catlike feet he went down the steps and along the wide corridor at its foot. A sound of laughter and oaths drew him towards a doorway where, stealthily peering past a door ajar, he perceived half a dozen Pinks (members of the negligent roof-guard) playing far-lo and drinking sakla. Conscious of nothing to fear from their commander, and secure in the belief that no Unling could reach them in their stronghold, the guards would spend the time where they were until relieved. At least, this was their habit, and Jan counted upon a full hour in which to accomplish his task and leave. In the shadow of the far wall, he went swiftly by the door, and came to another flight of wide steps. Cautiously bold, he went down these, reached the bottom, and in the very moment of doing so a man came from a side passage and met him face to face. The dimness of the lights saved Jan for the nonce. The man could see the familiar Pink uniform but not his features. Yet something about Jan's figure must have appeared strange, for he asked sharply: "Who is this?"
"I," said Jan softly, making as if to brush past, but at the same moment with the swiftness of thought whirling up his shooter and bringing the butt down with terrific force on the unsuspecting head. With a stifled cry the man sagged floorward and he caught him before he fell and dragged the body to a dark corner. The blow had been heavy enough to lay any man out for hours, if indeed not forever, but nonetheless Jan secured the hands and feet and improvised a gag for the lolling mouth. He listened intently to learn if the brief colloquy and scuffle had alarmed any one else, but could hear nothing. A quick study of a miniature map convinced him that the side-passage from which the man had emerged was the one leading to the place where he wished to go; so he followed it, shooter in hand, and found that it did debouch into the control-room of the fortress. The room was of ordinary size and one great mechanical nearly filled it: a mechanical divided into sections and sub-automatic parts, each with its own operating cavity. Every part bore a white number and a symbol, and above the mechanical hung a huge map of the City of Ferno, picked out in relief, with the street towers duly specified and numbered. Apparently the room was empty, and Jan worked with swift thoroughness, dropping metal disks into every cavity, making those towers of destruction on the streets of Ferno amenable to the Mechanical Brain. Then he straightened, his task done, and made as if to retire; but at that moment, electrifying him with its suddenness, and seemingly coming from the depths of a dark passage leading away from the rear of the control-room, came a confused noise, a frantic pounding, and the sound of a woman's voice, shrill and somehow familiar, calling imploringly his name: "Jan! Jan!"
STARING up into the face of Bolan the Pink, Thora sought wildly to escape his embrace. "Leave me go!" she panted, but the Lootna's grip only tightened. "By Mola," he swore, "this is luck!"
"Help! help!"
"Quiet, you wench!" said Bolan with an oath. The door in the house behind him opened, evidently one of his city rendezvous, for to the shambling Unling appearing in the doorway, he shouted, "Here, you! Help me with this she-devil before she rouses the neighborhood!" Between them they dragged the terrified girl into the house and barred shut the door. But just in time. Outside could be heard the sound of running feet, the hoarse call of voices. Bolan shook his clenched fist. "Damned scum!" he muttered. "They'd welcome an excuse to murder a Pink!" The evil-faced Unling held her in a vise-like grip, while Bolan stifled her screams with his broad palm.
Behind them, coming from an inner chamber, appeared two Unling women in disarray.
"Who is this?" demanded one of them jealously.
"No concern of yours," answered Bolan roughly. "Out of the way, wenches; and if they break in the door, see to it that you say one of you did the screaming, or it will be the worse for you!" And to the Unling: "Help me with the baggage."
Half fainting Thora was carried up a flight of steps; then by means of a short ladder, to the roof. Here her hands and feet were secured and she was thrust into the cabin of a plane-flyer which instantly took to the air as the Lootna spun the propeller. "There is nothing to be afraid of," he said, smoothing her hair. She shrank from the caress.
"Where are you taking me?"
"To where you will rule a queen over your humble slave."
She tried to control the shuddering of her limbs. "Lootna," she said, "you are making a terrible mistake."
He purred amorously.
"Listen," she cried feverishly; "I am the daughter of the Titan Rocca!"
"Ho, ho!"
"But I swear that it is true!"
"I might believe you," he said with a grin, "if I had not paraded at her funeral myself. Perhaps you are not aware that the daughter of Rocca is dead."
"But that was not me they buried...."
"Palpably not!"
"Only some old bones found in my wrecked flyer. I was captured by the Equalizers and...."
"Come, come," said Bolan tolerantly, "tell another story."
She cried desperately: "Take me to the Titan Rocca and let him say if I am lying! Think—if I am telling the truth your fortune is made!"
"And if you should be telling a lie, I would not only lose you but be punished and disrated in the bargain. Ho, ho, you're a clever girl! Come, cry surrender and give me a kiss."
She squirmed her head away from his advancing one, beat at him with bound hands. "Well, well," he said evilly, "everything in its place. The sweets can wait until later. Until later," he said significantly.
Thora shrank into her seat. She involuntarily thought of Jan. He had kidnaped her, too, but never to treat like this. Oh, if he were only here now! The flyer swooped to the fortress landing.
She did not resist as Bolan lifted her in his arms and carried her down the steel steps into the interior of the building. Every ounce of strength must be conserved for the struggle ahead when her bonds were loosened, and in some fashion she must cozen her captor into loosening them.
Bolan paused and stared into the room where his tipsy roof guards were gambling and drinking. "Keep it up, my lads," he cried gayly; "I've better sport ahead of me!" and the girl in his arms shuddered. The men answered him with broad jests.
On he went, to the floor below. He did not see the bound and unconscious figure huddled in the dark corner, nor suspect that an enemy had but recently passed that way. But unlike the latter, he kept to the broad corridor and so came to his own private quarters where he laid the girl on a couch and looked down at her with avid eyes. She steeled herself to smile back.
"Ha!" he cried, throwing off his tunic; "so you're thinking better of it, eh?" He knelt and took her into his arms, oblivious of the sick loathing that shook her slender body.
"By Mola, but you're a beautiful wench!" His grasp tightened. "Listen, I swear that I'll treat you right! I swear that you won't regret it if you.... Look at me; I am not a man who cares to use violence. Be my mistress willingly and I'll put you in a Flower City—do you hear?—away from the hell of Ferno. And sometimes there will be Fashion Cities to boot! I know you've been the favorite of some Purple. I can tell that by your manners and speech, but, you see, if I treat you as well as he... before he tired...."
She said faintly, "The cords; they hurt my wrists and ankles." With an oath of contrition, he undid the bonds. "There, there; how is that?"
"I'm so thirsty," she murmured.
"Wait," he said; "I'll get you a glass of water," and entered an inner room. Immediately she was on her feet and at the door. The latch gave under her hand—Bolan had not secured it—and she flung wide the door and darted down the corridor, in her confusion and fright taking the wrong turn; for she had thought to reach the roof and escape in a plane-flyer, or failing in that.... Behind her she heard a thunderous oath of rage, the sound of pursuing feet.
Oh, if she could only reach a window, a balcony, she would hurl herself to death before submitting to recapture! But the windows were all set high in the walls and tightly closed. Down a side hall she ran, and twisted and turned in a maze of passages, but the sound of her flying feet clad in the clumsy leather shoes of an Unling, was sufficient to apprise Bolan of the direction taken. She could hear him running, hear the breathless curses he uttered, and went sick with horror at the knowledge that he was gaining. Oh, if she had a weapon—some sort of a weapon!
The winding passage debouched into a large chamber with no exit but a far door—and this door was bolted! Madly she beat at it with both hands. Through the heavy glass square set in its upper length, she could see beyond a brief dark corridor into a dimly lit room, a room where a monstrous creation of iron and steel lowered, where a tall figure stood, half turned her way, in an arrested attitude. She could not see this figure's face, but something about the tilt of the head, the forward thrust of the broad shoulders was unmistakable.
Oh, it couldn't be—not this place—she was crazed with fear—yet none the less, she shrieked wildly, hopefully, "Jan! Jan!" and miraculously, almost with the utterance of his name, Jan was there.
The door splintered as if under the impact of a cyclone; through it hurtled a man in the garb of a Pink. Brought to a sudden pause in mid-stride by what, at first, he deemed the intrusion of one of his command, Bolan let out a thunderous oath. "Begone!" he cried. Then almost instantly he saw his mistake and reached for a weapon; but in laying aside his tunic he had disarmed himself.
"Jan! Jan!" babbled the girl, half delirious with fear and relief. There could be no mistaking the situation. Jan saw the crouching maiden, the disordered dress of Thora the lovely, and filled with deadly, ungovernable rage, forgetting his shooter, hurled himself upon the Pink commander with murderous hands.
Down went Bolan under that impetuous rush, but he was no novice at the art of rough and tumble. Twisting his body as he fell, he escaped the full impact of Jan's descending weight, and rolling clear was almost instantly on his feet, but no quicker than was the Equalizer himself. Coming together with a crash, they recoiled, and then toe to toe slugged with knotted fists. A blow took Jan in the mouth, splitting his lip; another caught him over the heart and his body sagged. But at almost the same moment his right fist smashed Bolan's nose into a bloody pulp and his left buried itself in the solar-plexus, knocking the wind from his lungs.
Both clenched, unable for the moment to follow up their respective advantages, and in that second was heard the approach of someone in the passage through which the girl and the Pink commander had come. Instantly Bolan twisted himself free of Jan's grasp and let out a gasping roar. "This way!" he bellowed, "this way!"
The crisis brought Jan to his senses; his head cleared. Quite methodically he stood back, pulled out his silent shooter, and shot Bolan through the body. Not waiting to see his antagonist fall, he leaped to the girl's side and swung her to her feet. "Quick!" he cried tensely: "this is no time to faint. Follow me."
Hand in hand they dashed through the splintered doorway, through the short passageway and into the control-room beyond. Behind him sounded a shout of alarm.
"He'll waste a moment over the body," said Jan grimly. "Perhaps we can win the stairway to the roof before..." he did not finish the sentence. Swiftly they raced across the control-room and along the passage to the broad corridor. "Where were the rest of the Pinks?" he wondered—and even as he wondered, one flashed into view. He shot, and the fellow went down. Up the stairs, they went, he carrying the girl so that her heavy shoes would not clatter on the steps. His own were light, with rubber soles sheathed with felt. Past the room where the unsuspecting roof-guard still gambled and drank, they stole, but just in time, for behind shrilled a piercing whistle, the siren of alarm. Across the roof sprang Jan to his waiting helicopter. Into the cabin he thrust the half-fainting girl, leaped in himself, threw the clutch, and even as the first of the Pinks emerged on the roof, his craft surged upward, cleaving the air like an arrow shot at the sky. Once aloft, beyond range of the iron shooters, he was not afraid of pursuit. In the grey fog he could easily elude another plane; besides those of the Pinks were centrally controlled and his own independent and powerful oil-engine would soon carry him beyond their scope.
Under the enormous stars, at a far height above the earth, he straightened out his flight and gave some thought to the girl at his side. It was impossible, of course, to take her back to Ferno. For that matter it had never been his intention to leave her there during the morrow's uprising. In any case she would have been taking this aerial journey with him tonight; but he had not expected to pick her up at the Pink Fortress, and his heart sickened at the thought of the fate he had saved her from. By this time she had doubtless learned her lesson, and if she hadn't....
He glanced at her sideways. How beautiful she was despite her cropped hair and unlovely garb. More than he cared to admit, her face had disturbed his dreams; and not alone when he dreamed. He shook himself a little impatiently. "All right?" he asked gruffly. Her hand went out and touched his arm.
So they clove the night, a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles an hour, until after an endless interval (brief for the girl, for she had slept), the helicopter dropped into the same abandoned flying field Jan had brought her to on the morning of the kidnaping; but Thora was not afraid; indeed her whole being was full of a sweet content. She could have asked nothing better than to have flown on with him forever. But opening the door, he put out his hand and said simply, "Come." Yes, she would come.
Confidingly she slipped her slim fingers into his. She thought, with a little rush of tenderness, that she would go anywhere he wanted her to, and gladly. How different were her emotions from that other time. Then she had been bound, afraid, but now clinging to his hand, she followed him into the deserted house, down the rickety steps, through the secret door into the tunnel, and so to the underground chambers beyond. Elan sat at his desk, poring over a map, as if he had never stirred since her last interview with him; but now he was garbed in the gorgeous dress of a Purple; and in fact had arrived but a few minutes before she had. He bowed gravely, showing no surprise, since (though she did not know this) her coming was an expected thing. "Conduct her to her chamber, Jan; let her change and rest. In the morning we shall talk."
Still clinging to his hand, she followed where Jan led. At the door of the remembered chamber, he paused and said: "Inside you will find every facility for your comfort. Do not be afraid to sleep. In the morning, dress in the garments of your class which you will find laid out for you." He turned away irresolutely, and then said half whimsically: "This is farewell to Thora the Unling." The place where they stood was in semi-darkness. Impulsively she caught his hand and raised it to her lips; then with a little sob darted through the doorway and swung shut the door.
IT was heavenly to put off the coarse clothes of an Unling, to bathe in scented water, to anoint her bruises with healing ointments. It was luxurious to lay her weary body between cool, grimeless sheets. Almost instantly she fell into dreamless slumber, and it seemed but seconds later that a rap sounded at her door and a muffled voice bade her get up, as it was morning. Somewhat stiff and sore, she arose and bathed, and dressed herself in the rich garments at hand. The feel of smooth silk on her skin was like a healing benediction. "Yes," she thought, viewing herself in the tall mirror, "I am beautiful," and the thought gave her exquisite satisfaction—not out of idle vanity, but because it was comforting to think such fairness must surely win approval in the eyes of one beloved. True, her hair was cropped short; and brought up in the fashion of wearing it braided and piled high on the head like a coronet, she thought this was disfiguring (unaware that it gave a boyish loveliness to her shapely head far more appealing than the coronet of which she had been so proud). Yes, she was lovely; and conscious of her loveliness; and made more lovely still by a sweet confusion at the thought of again meeting Jan. But only one person was in the outer room, Elan, standing by the desk, clad this time in the cotton smock of an Unling. She looked around hopefully. Elan gave her an understanding glance. "He is not here; he is gone."
"Gone!" Her heart sank. She could not hide the disappointment on her face. "Without a word to me!"
The Chief of the Equalizers seated her in a chair by the desk and brought to her attention a tray on which lay a glass of milk, a loaf of white bread, and synthetic butter of the purest quality. "Jan had work to do," he said quietly. "Eat now." But though she drank the milk gratefully, she was unable to relish the food. Elan eyed her, not without sympathy. "For almost a month, Thora, you have lived and labored as an Unling. I will not disguise from you the fact that Ferno is the worst of the Industrial Cities, and the hardest to escape from, and that it was for that reason we sent you there; but the others are not much better. Now you know—not by rumor but through personal experience—what insults and almost unbelievable hardships and miseries an Unling must stand. You know—and perhaps the knowledge has touched your heart. But whether it has or not, this morning you return to your father's palace. Outside a sports' flyer is at your disposal to take you there. You should," he said, glancing at his timer, "arrive home by eleven at the latest—at noon we strike!"
"Strike?"
"Yes. It is immaterial whether you know it now or not, but today, under our leadership, the Unlings rise in rebellion and bid for power. All preparations are made and I have reason to expect a glorious victory. But if for some unforeseen cause we should fail.... Then," he said, "remember your own Unling experience and exert your influence for the merciful treatment of my unhappy people. But," he cried "we shall not fail; we are going to succeed!"
"And if you succeed," she asked at length, "will you kill my father?"
"Poor child," answered Elan, "your father's life is in little danger. It is true he would slay us if he could—and ruthlessly; but we Companions of Equality are not lovers of bloodshed, nor are we actuated by motives of revenge. Sufficient for us, if we hold the Industrial Cities, to starve your father and his kind into submission. But enough," he said in a quieter tone; "time flies, and there are still tasks to complete. Follow me."
Up into the sunlight of a clear, crisp day she went to where the sports flyer waited. Elan helped her aboard, and as the craft soared aloft she looked down and for a brief space saw him standing, a tiny, remote figure; then the abandoned field dwindled, the flyer raced ahead, and she was alone in the blue void with a heavy, desolate feeling tugging at her heart.
ON the aerial landing platform of his palace overlooking Ironia, Rocca the Titan stood talking to the pointed-face Secret Service agent, Dolna.
At the eleventh hour Dolna had deserted his post as Director of Activities for the Equalizers and planed to the Titan's side. Beside them stood Rocca's red and gold helicopter with the uniformed pilot at the controls. It was the Titan's intention to fly to Ironia and from the security of the garrison-fortress view the checking of the uprising in that city. Diesel, befitting his position as president of the Council of Ten, was stationed at Cosmola, and the other members of the Council were scattered throughout the principal Industrial Cities of the country. Already Diesel had broadcast a description of Elan, and the Pink Police forces were agog, for the reward read that, dead or alive, he who brought in the notorious Chief of the Equalizers would receive a cash reward of seventy thousand dernos.
Dolna reported a last interview he had had with Ventar, and Rocca dictated a wireless report of the interview to Diesel and was about to climb into his helicopter when a small sports flyer dropped down from the heavens to the landing place. Wondering who could be paying him a visit at such a time, he took a curious step towards the strange craft, and then from the cabin of the craft leaped an impetuous figure, two arms caught him around the neck, and a vibrant voice with a half-sob in its depths cried joyously, "Father! Father!"
The Titan staggered back with incredulous eyes. "Am I mad, dreaming?"
"No, no!"
"But it can't be Thora...."
"Yes, it is I; feel how solid I am."
"But Thora is dead...
"No, dear, alive."
Folded in his arms, she told him of her kidnaping, of the hoax that had been played on everyone by the planting of bones and jewelry in her wrecked flyer. His rage was terrible. And she told him of being stripped of her fine clothes and sent to toil as an Unling in the City of Ferno.
"But why didn't you appeal to the Scholar Men, the Pinks?"
Thora shook her head sadly. "I see, father, that you know little of how an Industrial City like Ferno is run. The Pinks seldom enter the city, and the Lootna I appealed to laughed at and insulted me."
"He will rue the day!"
"While as for the Scholar Men," she shrugged her shoulders. "Do you remember the Unling maiden who tried to appeal to you one day?" The Titan started. "That was I, father."
"Great Theo!"
"I called you, but you were afraid; and the guards held me, and the Scholar Men beat...."
The Titan groaned with anguish. "But I didn't know.... I didn't recognize.... Besides I thought you dead and wasn't expecting...."
"Yes," she said, "I understand, and don't grieve about it, dear; but can't you see how terrible it all is for the Unlings who suffered worse than I? For nearly a month I toiled with them, and oh, father, their condition is horrible!"
"But how did you escape?"
"A young Unling helped me, and the Equalizer sent me back."
Still dazed by the miracle of her resurrection (for he had sincerely grieved her as dead), and holding her hungrily in his arms as if he must continuously assure himself of the reality of her presence, Rocca lost count of time, and only the voice of Dolna brought him back to the issues at hand. "Titan!"
"Yes, yes. This is my daughter... do you understand?... little Thora risen from the grave..."
The Secret Service agent who had heard every word uttered and understood the situation, bowed respectfully. "That is wonderful, sir; the whole country will rejoice; but—it is twenty to twelve."
Rocca started. "By Mola, I had forgotten. We must go at once. Come, Thora, I cannot risk you out of my sight." He helped her aboard the helicopter. "The Equalizers are inciting the Unlings to revolt today," he said grimly, "but—we're ready for them!" He was rapidly regaining his wonted manner.
Then her father knew—the Council of Ten was aware of the plot against the government. She had hesitated to speak of it, tortured by conflicting emotions. Sympathy for the Unlings, hatred of suffering, tyranny newly born in her bosom—all these warred against the interests of her father and her caste. And above everything was her concern for the safety of Jan. If the uprising failed, Jan might die; and if it succeeded....
In a few minutes the helicopter dove through the fog of smoke over Ironia and landed on the roof of the garrison-fortress. Five minutes to twelve. Looking down from that immense height it was possible to see that something untoward was happening on the streets of Ironia. Out of the noisome houses, out of the black mills breathing smoke and flame the Unlings were pouring like swarms of ants. From a hundred thousand throats, like the beating of heavy surf on a rocky coast, rose a menacing roar... up, up! and rising in concerted volume, chanted in unison until every thunderous word was distinctly audible, came soaring aloft the slogan of rebellion. "Down! Down with Titanism!"
Rocca's face hardened into an ugly glare. Away from Thora's side he rushed to the edge of the parapet, Dolna following. "Shout, damn you!" he cried, shaking his fist, "Shout! but at twelve o'clock...."
Twelve o'clock! Deep in his secret laboratory, Ventar the Unling, Ventar the Renegade, threw a switch; the Mechanical Brain throbbed and glowed, pulsed like a thing alive; and in every operating cavity of every mechanical throughout Ardathia, the metal disks glowed and throbbed in unison with the Metal Intelligence. And in a certain segment of a spy-control mechanical in Cosmola one glowed and throbbed, and the delicate mechanism controlling the hair-spring valve which, opening, would release a devastating ray, trembled, and hung in the balance, hung perhaps for the fraction of a second, effected, not by the will of the Mechanical Brain to destroy, but by the gentle throbbing of the disk that established its control. And then....
High on the roof of the Fortress Building in Ironia, dreaming of today's triumph and tomorrow's reward, Dolna of the Pink Secret Service, Dolna the spy, clutched at his breast and staggered; and even as he staggered there was a flash of light, a stunning noise, and then literally blown to pieces, all his glorious dreams and anticipations went out in one fleeting burst of agony.
Thrown to the floor by the violence of the explosion, and yet practically uninjured, Thora regained her feet and cried out in terror, "Father! Father!" She rushed frantically to his side; guards came running from everywhere. Within a dozen feet of Dolna when the capsule exploded, the force of the explosion had thrown the Titan prostrate at the base of the parapet. His clothes and flesh were torn and burnt, spattered with blood—and the flesh of the secret agent; and the searing heat of the expanding blast had singed his hair, his eyes.
"Thora," he babbled, half unconscious, "Thora." She gathered him into her arms. No longer was he the mighty Titan of Steel, but a pitiful old man, broken, groping. "Where are you, Thora?"
"Here, father, here," she cried rushing toward him. "Something hit me. Why is everything so dark? I can't see."
And then in a wail of agony that broke thinly against the terrible crescendo of cries rising from the streets:
"I am blind! Blind!"
RUIN, ruin! In the face of what had seemed almost certain victory, bloody disaster!
Yet the orders had been explicit. In constant communication by wireless with Ventar and other leaders, Elan had ordered the Mechanical Brain to take control at sharp noon and the Unlings to rise. The automatic mechanical weapons were to remain silent—or to function only when directed to do so, and then in those sections or parts where most needed. The great gas-planes and bombers, for instance, automatically controlled, and which with their downpour of gas and explosive shells could have liquidated an uprising in ten minutes were thus to pass under the control of the Equalizers and be rendered inactive or utilized to intimidate and break the resistance of the Titans. The paralyzing of the automatic weapons of the government, the overwhelming of the ruling class and its henchmen by masses of Unlings—these were the major tactics to be employed, the complete plan of action.
Confident of success, flushed already with the wine of victory, everywhere the numbers of the Equalizers flung themselves into the last minute task of inspiring the Unlings. This work had gone on quietly for weeks; but now the leaders threw off their masks and boldly called for revolution. "The mechanicals will not fight against you," they cried; "we have won control of all automatic defense devices. The gas- and air-bombers are ours; the towers won't work; we have silenced them. Now! now is the hour to strike! Forward, Companion Unlings! The night of oppression ends, the day of freedom dawns—forward to power!"
And the Unlings responded.
In the factories they seized the Scholar Men and made prisoners of them. Some were badly beaten. In Ferno several were killed resisting arrest, and at least one murdered by an Unling he had unjustly whipped but a short time before. Then a few minutes before the hour of noon the Unlings surged into the streets—all over the country, in every Industrial City of the nation, they surged into the streets—and shouts of insurrectionary phrases, hitherto whispered under bated breaths, rose seditiously on the air. "Death to the Purples—death! Down with Titanism!" and as if by magic over their heads materialized the gold-red banners of Equality. So they marched, hundreds of them, thousands of them, millions, shouting their seditious cries, singing their seditious songs, and then—
Pacing his cell like a caged lion, oblivious of the wounds in his head and thigh, hair matted and caked with blood, Elan the Equalizer Chieftain visualized again the horrors of that awful moment when the towers spoke. Yes, the towers spoke, the automatic mechanicals, and iron shooters and gas ejectors vomited death. In Ferno the street towers mowed down Unlings as a scythe mows down grain.
Men, women and children withered in the face of that awful reaper. First one deck, then another, and then a third, sweeping the streets with automatic precision, turning them into ghastly shambles, into infernos of destruction. Elan shuddered. He had led in Ferno and Jan had led in Ironia, but after that first, withering blast (alike in all Industrial Cities) there had been nothing any leader could do—nothing. Practically unarmed in the face of erupting towers, the Unlings had been helpless, like sheep before the butcher. Ah, that was the thought that tortured—like sheep before the butcher—and he had led them there! And the irony of it was that of all the thousands who had been slaughtered, he, who would have welcomed death to cover up the blunder of defeat, to blot from his consciousness the ghastly sights his eyes had witnessed, had failed to die. Miraculously he had survived, where countless others had perished. And Jan, too, had survived. Picked unconscious out of the shambles—conspicuous as Companions of Equality by their gold-red shirts—they had been thrown into prison, identified as the two badly wanted arch-traitors, taken to Cosmola, confined in the cell-house of the Pinks, and left to await whatever fate the Titans might mete out to them. Elan looked at Jan with a bleak face. "Ventar betrayed us." Jan nodded; and after a moment, stretching out his great hands: "If I had these on his throat!"
The other shook his head. "Of what avail are such thoughts now? Besides do not blame the weak, ambitious tool, but the power of Titanism that corrupts and debases everything it contacts. Or blame him for trusting him so blindly. I knew that he was weak but overwhelmingly ambitious. I thought to harness that ambition to our cause, making its realization dependent on our success. Evidently I failed." He bowed his head. "It is I who should be punished—I."
Before Jan could answer, a key grated in the lock. Both men glanced at the door. Perhaps the time had at last come to be taken forth, questioned, perhaps tortured, and then.... Jan shrugged his shoulders. Men who devote their lives to desperate causes are seldom afraid of the penalties meted out for such devotion.
The iron door creaked, swung slowly open. Elan straightened, Jan leapt to his feet with an exclamation of surprise, for beside the stolid prison guard stood one other, one of whom he had thought almost constantly but had never expected to see again. "Thora!" Almost she flung herself into his arms. "O my dear, you are hurt!"
"It is nothing, nothing; only a trifle."
The guard stared with fallen jaw. "What was this?" He fingered the shooter in his hands nervously.
"Leave us alone," commanded Thora.
The man did not stir. "By your leave, Titaness, the orders of the Chief Greco...."
She stamped her foot. "It is I who give you orders here. Do you dare question them? Begone! before I have you handled!" Reluctantly the man withdrew and she swung shut the door after him.
From a bag she took rolls of cloth, a jar of ointment, one of water, and a bottle of sakla. "See; I thought you would be wounded and brought these."
Elan smiled gravely. "I am afraid it is a waste of time to dress our wounds; but if you must...."
Gently she bathed his head and thigh, bandaged them as best she could, forced on him a drink of the wine; then she turned to Jan.
"To what do we owe the charity of this visit?" He spoke lightly, but his eyes were serious.
She looked at him bravely. "Do you think that you could be in danger and I not care? Do you forget that you rescued...."
"And do you forget," he interrupted, "that if it had not been for me, you would not have been kidnaped, forced to toil in Ferno, exposed to the danger I saved you from?"
"Anyway," she cried passionately, "I cannot forget that you did save me, and I am grateful. I plead with my father for your lives. I told him of the fate you saved me from. My father is blind, helpless...."
"Blind!"
"An explosion destroyed his sight," she brushed a tear from her eye; "and when I told him I loved...." She stopped appalled.
"Nay, child," said Elan softly, "do not be ashamed. You love Jan, and he loves you. That is as it should be. And your father...."
"Has made the Council promise me his freedom and full pardon."
Love and life! The quick blood surged into Jan's cheeks and then ebbed again. He gripped his Chief's arm. "Not without you!"
"Oh," cried the girl despairingly, "I plead for him also, but...."
"Hush," said Elan quietly. "Do you think that they will ever let me escape alive? Once I was of their class—before either of you were born—and they will never forgive my desertion. But as for you, Jan...."
"I told them that he freed me to warn them of the rebellion," said the girl; "that he...."
Jan let out an exclamation of anger. "How did you dare!"
"Because I love you."
"Do you think I will ever accept life as a traitor?"
"Yes," said Elan deliberately, "yes, you will; because it is your duty to live. Don't you understand? Why did we kidnap the daughter of Rocca? So she might learn by actual experience what the Unlings had to suffer, that her sympathies be aroused, her conscience touched."
"Oh, they have been," cried Thora in a passionate whisper, "they have been!"
"Yes," said Elan sternly, "but time might again harden your heart, make you forget. Therefore I command Jan to leave this cell alive, to join his life to yours, to become the son-in-law of the Titan of Steel; in time, through you, a Titan himself. Not out of desire for love and life, not out of ignoble ambition, but to do what he can to ease the lot of the Unlings in the days to come. As for me...."
"You must escape," whispered the girl tensely. "Here is a weapon I brought you. Take it, take it."
"What for? To slay my guard with? But there has been enough blood shed already. Oh," cried Elan, "do you think if I desired life I would not seek to escape from this cell? Do you think if I thought for one moment that the standard of revolt could ever be raised again in the Industrial Cities, I would not try to live and raise it? But no," he said mournfully, his voice dropping, "never again can the Unlings hope to rebel against the power of the Titans. The mechanical forces arrayed against them are too great, too overwhelming. Our one hope lay in Ventar—and the Mechanical Brain. But Ventar betrayed us, and his genius is now allied with the might of the Purples. You two must live and use your influence for mercy in the Council of the rulers. As for me, I have nothing further for which to exist; all my hopes are dust; and I am sickened to death by slaughter. Do not seek to deny me the boon of dying as my Companions have died."
His voice died away. Thora was sobbing bitterly. "Nay, do not weep. But when you sit in the place of the mighty, forget not my unhappy people."
IT is summer in the palace of the Titan Rocca. Fountains are splashing, birds are flitting through the terraced gardens. Bees, heavy with honey, fly from flower to flower and humming birds hover over scarlet blossoms.
Two years of blindness have aged the Titan. His manner has become childish and gentle. Sitting on the verandah, he is wholly engrossed in the child in his lap. The child has become his life. It crows lustily and tugs at his white whiskers with dimpled fists and the old man gurgles back, absorbed in the play. No longer does he give thought to the government of the country, to his business affairs. More and more has he delegated his place and power to his daughter and his son-in-law, Jan. The latter is now actually Titan, sitting as his representative on the Council of Ten. "Yes, yes," he agrees, "let something be done for the Unlings; industry is too hard on them." Tears come to his sightless eyes when he hears Thora tell of the sufferings of the people of Ferno. He weeps very readily and wonders why men are so cruel to one another. Jan has learned to love him. No one could hate the broken old man.
Some distance from the two childish playmates, one in the morning of life and the other in the evening, Jan and his wife stand talking softly together. Thora is lovelier than ever, and in his rich dress of a Purple Jan is a powerful and commanding figure. Their eyes stray to where the eternal cloud of smoke and soot hangs like a pall over Ironia. "There is so little we can do," says Jan moodily; "and sometimes I feel that I am a traitor to the trust he put in me." She does not have to ask who "he" is; she knows he is speaking of Elan. "They are nine to my one on the Council, and Diesel..."
Thora nodded understanding. Diesel was the stumbling block. Unlike Rocca, he had not aged; he was just as hard and as ruthless as he had ever been, seemingly just as vigorous; and his position as president of the Council gave him almost dictatorial powers.
"In our cities we have been able to make some alterations for the better, but not many. Diesel fights any drastic reforms on the stand that it would weaken governmental defense. He hasn't forgotten that I was once an Equalizer, and neither have the other Titans. Of course I have wrung some concessions from the government: the right of the unemployed to go outside the cities and farm as in the old days; but even here there are restrictions. The government gives no aid (I have to do so myself in the face of bitter opposition), and the Unlings must not settle near a city but go to the waste spots of the country. And then they are not safe. I have reason to fear..." and he told Thora of a meeting where Ventar the genius, now wearing the robe of a Purple, had addressed the Council in burning words it thrilled them to hear.
"Already," Ventar said, "My Mechanical Brain runs the automatic machinery of the country—and that is but the first step. Listen, Titans, why should you have Unlings to do the work when machinery can do it better? They groan and complain and are a menace to your rule. Drive them out of the cities into the countryside, and if they become dangerous, hunt them down!" He paused and scorched the Councillors with his burning eyes.
"But we need some of them to repair the automatic machinery," protested Diesel.
"For the present, yes. But what if after a while I created thousands of machines whose function it is to repair their worn-out or broken-down fellow-mechanicals? Once I have automatic machinery toiling at production, repair machines busy at repairing, and a vast brain dominating all with the command to keep the wheels of industry turning, what further need would there be for human labor?"
The stupendousness of the idea dazed the Titans; they stared fascinated. Only Jan surged to his feet. "Fools!" he cried, "what would you do with the things the machine produces? In what market would you dispose of them, if you destroy the Unlings? From whence would flow the prosperity and wealth you now enjoy?"
But Ventar silenced him with uplifted hand.
"Have you forgotten the dream of the Equalizers? Was it not to destroy the rule of the Titans, liquidate the Purples as a class, run the machine for service and not profit? Aye, the old order passes, but it is the Titans themselves who bring about the change, destroying the Unlings, the unfit, the weak. As for prosperity, of what does wealth consist? Will not the machine build palaces in which to live, weave fine clothes to wear, produce viands of the richest and rarest? Will not the machine give leisure and luxuries, make of the cities storehouses of plenty? Tell me, what will the Titans, the Purples, lack if they destroy the Unlings, their present 'Market,' and produce for use—for themselves....?" He paused, breathless.
"Oh," he cried, "give me the power and in ten years, fifteen..." he waved his hand. "And more than this I see," his voice rising prophetically. "I see the marvelous automatic cities of the future, roofed against the elements, running by the will of the machine, in which your children shall dwell like gods! Oh, I see," he cried, his voice running on with the wild fervor of the genius, the madman, while the Titans listened enthralled and spellbound, by the force of his personality, themselves dreaming dreams.
Now standing with his wife in the garden, four thousand miles away and a day distant in time from that scene, recounting the above to her, Jan glanced at the child on the knee of the old man and murmured: "To drive out and destroy the Unlings, the creative mass, that will lead to destruction, to ultimate ruin. But perhaps it can be prevented. There is little Jan. We shall train him to carry on the work after us; and he will train his children; and in the end," he put his arm around his wife's waist, "and in the end," he said, "our purpose will be achieved and Elan will not have trusted us in vain."
So he spoke, seeking to comfort himself, but his eyes could not pierce five hundred years into the future, read the incredible things that were yet to be, nor see that distant descendant of his (also named Jan) come out of the desert.
HE came out of the desert leading a burro, for strange as it might seem to the dwellers of cities, there were still burros and other things living in the remote waste lands, in the canyons and foothills of the mountains. Over his head great airships hurtled, and once he saw a flaming meteor fall from the sky into what seemed a golden bowl—an interplanetary flyer from outer space. He stared at their blurring bulks, having almost forgotten the marvel and wonder of the machine in his ten years of absence.
What did the inhabitants of distant Mars, and of other planets, think of those cylindrical monsters which came from Earth bearing the products of the Machine for barter, with not a human soul aboard? Did they believe the automatic mechanicals which traded with them so cannily, the grotesque mechanisms which did the will of the lesser "brains" in the space-flyers, as they in turn had impressed on them the commands of the great brooding Master Brain—did they believe them to be living beings?
Strange, strange, to realize that for year after year, century after century, those shuttles of iron and steel had swung back and forth through space without the aid of man; nay more, that the dwellers in cities had forgotten their very existence! He shook his head. But now the machine was all around him, reaching up into the sky tall towers of stone and steel, digging into the earth with ponderous fingers. Flaming lights burned and blistered the sands, eating great holes into the bowels of the desert. Mechanisms ran this way and that, mending, building, carrying, lifting, and, save for himself, there was not a human being in sight, nor aside from the burro, a living creature.
Now the burro was afraid of the roar and clangor, afraid of the monsters congested in this place; so the man loosed him and watched him scamper back into the barren wilderness; then he approached the scene of the Machine's mining activities.
He walked this way and that among the plunging mechanisms, his life the price of carelessness or mischance, and came last to the great radial tower rising into the heavens. Lifts were going up and down in monotonous procession, bearing burdens of precious ores, and watching his opportunity he leaped aboard and was wafted to the broad roof of the tower, eight hundred feet above the desert.
Miles of desolation lay unfolded, and distant mountains, and with his eye he could retrace the toilsome way he had come on foot.
Where he stood was an eyrie of the Machine, and it was awesome to think that for hundreds of years no human being save himself had gazed from this height.
Here was the domain of blind, mechanical force doing its inscrutable work without the supervision of man.
Even as the thought came to him an airship pointed toward the rising sun (it was early morning) dropped with fluted body on the platform grooves and opened wide, receiving vents, into which loading chutes automatically fell. It was an inter-city freight ship—no other kind visited freight radial towers—and strange to the man, and for the moment he hesitated, half afraid. But if he were to seek re-entrance to the Cities, there seemed no other path to travel; so nerving himself he sprang aboard, and as he did so the chutes lifted, a brazen siren blared, and the vents noiselessly closed, smothering him with darkness and dust. Then with but the slightest vibration of its hull, he felt the airship rise and at increasing speed hurl itself eastward towards its destination.
The man rested; one hour, two; then the siren blared, the vents opened, and atop a moving surge of ore and sand he was shot forth from dust and darkness into an inferno of flame and smoke. Somehow he managed to keep his feet, to escape burial under tons of debris, and when the dust settled and his eyes accustomed themselves to the lurid gloom, he perceived that he was in one of those mysterious places—a huge smelter, though he did not know it was that—where the Machine roared and hissed and held secret communion with itself. Often in the past he had gazed at such spots with superstitious awe, had knelt with other worshipers in religious supplication, but never had he dared approach too closely, for that was taboo and certain death. Even now, though he no longer worshiped, he was afraid; for withering blasts of heat hissed out from the fiery mouth of furnaces, and he was dazed and well-nigh deafened by the clangor and the clamor of automatic machinery.
It was a terrifying situation. How he made his way to safety he never knew. Desperately he dodged and twisted, and by what seemed almost a miracle won to the escalator, which picked him up with other loads and bore him away; so carrying him, at length, into territory he recognized.
But though familiar, this was not the territory of his clan. No one dared to live so near the sacred spots. He reached the aerial tube without encountering a soul. A voice (you knew it was no human voice, the timbre of it being too metallic) called out again and again a phrase too slurred to be intelligible.
Cigar-shaped craft with fluted sides to fit the landing grooves slid in and slid out with silent rapidity. One of these the man took. Before getting aboard he had glimpsed, in other compartments, people who stared at him wide-eyed, but his own compartment was empty. Being hungry and thirsty he pressed the necessary buttons and refreshed himself with food and drink, round cakes and condiments of various colors, and liquids both hot and cold. Scarcely had he finished, than the metallic voice called out another slurred phrase, the door swung open and he stepped from his compartment. Now there were several people who stared at him with eyes in which fear and suspicion predominated, and no wonder, for he was different from them, (not because of his nakedness; most of the people were partially naked also), but because his breechclout was of a strange, hairy material, and his skin swarthy, burned brown with sun and weather, and grimed with smoke and dirt. Now the skins of the other people were colored, too, but with a greenish pallor, the hue of those who live in houses and cities, under domes of protecting rays, and their loin-cloths and carelessly worn cloaks were of many colors, blue and red and green, or a combination of a myriad hues. So they stared at the man; and one of them, a truculent fellow in a yellow drape, whose dark brown-band proclaimed him an assistant to an Elder, cried hoarsely: "Now by the Machine, what is this we have here? Speak, fellow; of whose clan are you?" his fingers gripped the stranger's shoulder.
"Of the clan Rokka," answered the man, "and now if you please...."
But his inquisitor's hold only tightened. "Nay, since when have the clan Rokkans gone clad like this? And your skin.... You are no Rokkan but an impostor."
The man wasted no time in debate. To be taken prisoner might be disastrous. He must reach those who (despite the changes of ten years) would recognize him. With a sudden surge he broke the grip on his shoulder and with a heave of both hands against his detainer's chest sent him staggering backward. At the same instant he turned and fled.
"Seize him!" cried his would-be captor, "seize him!"
But the people pursued him only half-heartedly; despite the boldness of their leader, somewhat timid and afraid. Besides, the man ran swiftly and soon distanced them. From the landing groove could be seen immense buildings, the cables and spires of a great city. Up to his ears, fifteen hundred feet, came a subdued hum of traffic, the ceaseless voice of the Machine. Into a figure he rushed. "Halt!" shouted a man. But a vicious short-arm jab sent it reeling. With a tremendous leap he boarded a lift. Earthward the elevator plunged with a sickening swoop, a moving sidewalk bore him along, mechanisms ran this way and that, ceaselessly engaged in repairing, cleaning, carrying. They came ponderously or swiftly, and people avoided them as best they could. Sometimes a person slipped and was injured or killed. Then there came a device and bore him away. Perhaps some day the man or woman would return; perhaps they would not return at all; that was as the Machine willed.
"It is true," thought the man; "not our will, but the will of the Machine is done here. Man lives in the cities as his ancestors lived in the jungles. Instead of trees and rocks and forests he is surrounded by buildings of stone and steel, by whirling disks and wheels and driving pistons of which he knows nothing. The wild beasts of this mechanical jungle are the mechanisms that feed and clothe him, and at times devour him. Andro told me those things, and I perceive that they are correct."
Thinking these thoughts, he came stealthily to a deserted bathhouse, where he bathed and shaved and changed into new raiment supplied by tireless mechanicals. Wonderfully refreshed, he leaped aboard a low car that ran on a single cable, lurching, swaying, and so came at last to the home he had not seen for ten years. This home was on the third floor of a cavernous building. The building was really the dwelling place of all his clan, a structure of immense size and height, housing perhaps a thousand souls. Not all such buildings were inhabited, of course, and one traveled miles on the aerial tubes before finding another center of population to equal it. The rooms were large and bare. No windows gave illumination, but night and day they were lighted with a mellow glow and ventilated in a manner he had never understood. In passageways that honeycombed the walls and tunneled the streets, building and repair and service devices came and went, silent and rarely seen.
A woman was sitting in what was his particular private apartment, gazing into a mirror. She was young and lovely to look at, though past forty years of age. Her hair she wore shingled and its ruddy glow shimmered and changed color as she moved. She wore a garment of blue silk, and a drape of orange hue which gracefully trailed from her shoulders and was negligently clasped across the chest with a single strand of red silk. Despite her age, her figure was slim and boyish. Judging by appearances, her ancestors of a previous era would have called her a young girl. On her feet were gay little sandals ornamented with bright stones.
Now, at sight of the man, she leapt to her feet with a startled exclamation. She saw in front of her a man clad much as other men she knew, but with a strange swarthy skin, startlingly white of chin and cheeks. He was, perhaps, fifty years of age. His ancestors would have thought him extremely young for his years, but the woman thought him old. From the square, tanned face the grey eyes looked out searchingly.
"Alva," he said softly. "Don't you know me, Alva?"
The woman only stared, fear and amazement in her look.
"Is it possible," he said a little sadly, "that ten years has made such a difference?"
"Ten years," murmured the woman unsteadily; and then with a little rush: "Oh, Jan, is it possible? But it can't be you! Jan is dead."
"Yes, Alva, it is I. The aerial tube was wrecked and all in it killed save myself. I was badly hurt. Look." he showed her certain jagged scars on his dark skin. "The people who lived near where I fell came to my succor."
"People," said the woman in surprise. "But if there were people, the Machine must have been there, too. Why did it not bring you back?"
"No," said Jan, "the Machine was not there—not in the sense you mean."
"But it is impossible for people to live beyond the Machine."
"That is what we have always been taught to believe, but it is not true. Oh, Alva, I have learned so much during those ten years, and now I have returned to...."
He was interrupted by the entrance of a tall handsome man from an inner chamber, clad in the customary gay clothes but without the drape, his skin gleaming greenly. The woman looked from one to the other in an embarrassed fashion, "Jan," she said, "this is Ton. When you failed to return...."
Sometimes jealous males fought. Her grandmother had had a dozen lovers who lived in harmony; her own mother, too; but customs were changing. Now as a rule men and women had but one lover, though there were exceptions and marital arrangements varied in the different clans. The High Elder of all the clans had declared monogamy to be the will of the Machine, and he ought to know, communing, as he did, with the Brain of the Deity. But Jan showed no anger. He extended his hand in the customary friendly salute, palm up, and with a smile said, "Greetings, Ton."
"Greetings," returned the other, though not cordially.
"I have not returned," said Jan, "to claim Alva from any lover who may have gained her affections. It was but natural she should think me dead and mate again. But my child...."
"Is not yet born," replied Alva: "nor will be for five years to come. The Machine took him the week after you left. Sometimes I go to peek at him in his crystal cell. He is growing finely."
Jan shook his head. "I had forgotten," he said. "From the egg to the fifteen-year old child! It is marvelous."
The woman stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"That the Machine should bear the child."
"But what other way should he be born?"
Jan did not answer directly. "In the desert," he said slowly, "I have seen women and animals...."
"Animals," interrupted Ton; "what are they?"
"Creatures that go on four legs."
Alva shook her head doubtingly. "Now you are jesting. Never has the Machine shown...
"The Machine shows but this and other cities. There are no animals in the cities."
Alva looked shocked. "The whole world is a city. The Machine shows the whole world."
"Then why did the Machine fail to show me? You know the custom. Did you not seek for my face in the Hall of Pictures?"
"Yes," she replied, "but one day it vanished."
"Then I was dead and returned to the Machine. But I am not dead; I am here. Then where was I?"
Ton looked at Jan with a strange look. "Ah, where were you? Tell us that."
Alva drew close to Ton with something of superstitious fear in her eyes. While the three talked, other people had crowded into the room. Some of them had known Jan intimately in the old days. Each whispered to his neighbor that this mysterious stranger resembled Jan, but that his skin was strangely changed, never had they seen a skin of such hue, and his manner... ah, his manner.... Though he called several by name, they hung aloof, and several of them echoed Ton's query, "Aih, where were you?"
"In the outer world."
"The outer world?"
"The world outside of the cities."
A murmur of incredulity ran through the crowd. "What blasphemy is this? The man is mad!"
"No," cried Jan, "I am not mad; this is no blasphemy; you do not understand. You think the whole world is one vast city. You think that one city merges into another by means of the cylinders, the aerial tubes. That is because the cylinders are in the cities when you enter them, and in the cities when you leave them, and you cannot see. I too once thought as you think, but the cylinder in which I was traveling fell—it fell into the desert...."
"The desert?"
"A barren stretch of land near a mighty mountain range...
"Ho, ho!"
"And the people who lived there...."
But now they drowned his voice with shouts of derision, of execration. "What foolishness is this? Does he think us children to believe..." and one of them exclaimed: "With what clan have you been hiding and why do you return with painted face?"
"My face is not painted, except by the sun."
"The sun?"
"You do not understand. You have never seen the sun. Nor snow, nor rain, nor stars by night. You do not know what I mean by night. The cities are shut away from the sky with their great domes of protecting rays. In the cities it is always day: and when you go from city to city you are encased inside of cylinders and never suspect that they are airships hurtling thousands of miles of mountains and deserts. O my people...."
But now they surged in on him with a roar. Their taloned fingers caught at his cloak, tearing it away.
"Silence, blasphemer! Silence! He denies the Machine! Down with him, down!"
Jan lashed out with his fists. One of the screaming mob was felled to the floor. Another reeled back with a nose gushing blood. But like a pack of wolves the remainder closed in and it would have gone hard with him if help had not come from an unexpected quarter. Ton, who had stood quietly by with absorbed face during all the above, now hurled himself forward with a shout. His flailing blows took the attackers in the rear; right and left he flung them.
"Ho!" he cried, "back, back!" and with a bellow: "Is it for you to judge and punish? Nay, that is the right of the Elder. Now by the Machine...."
They recoiled with sullen faces, breathing heavily. Jan lowered his arms. A ragged scratch showed on one brown shoulder, another on his cheek.
"Do you forget," said Ton sternly, "that I am an assistant," he touched the dark band on his brow, "and claim this man as my prisoner. You harm him at your peril. Begone!"
They went, but with lowering brows and muttered curses. "To the Elder," they cried, "the Elder!"
"Aye," muttered Ton, "to the Elder."
Alva looked at both men with frightened eyes.
"Thanks for your aid," said Jan.
The other shook his head forebodingly. "Do you still persist in this story of yours?"
"Yes."
"That there is a world outside of the Machine... beyond...?"
"The Machine," said Jan steadily, "is built on the surface of a far larger world than the cities... a planet called Earth...."
Alva gasped. "Ton, Ton, do not listen to him, he is mad, raving...." She caught at him with imploring hands. "Believe nothing he says."
Ton put her gently aside. "I have often wondered," he said musingly, "what might lie beyond our roof, our walls...."
"There is a world," cried Jan; "as real as the world of the cities, but oh, so different!"
"I wonder," murmured Ton doubtfully. "As you know, our tellers of fantastic stories..." he paused. "But come; it is my duty to conduct you to the Elder."
They left the room and walked along a wide, bare corridor. From every side curious people fell in behind them. A buzz of excited voices filled the air. Wild rumors ran from mouth to mouth. Most of the exclamations were of an inimical nature. "Back," cried Ton constantly, "back! In the name of the Machine!"
But Jan walked the familiar way to the great council chamber with buoyant tread. He was not afraid. He remembered the Elder, a kindly man who had ever been his friend in the past. He was wise and intelligent, not like these foolish ones, and when he told him his story.... So he mused in his ignorance. But when he reached the immense council chamber and saw the sea of hostile faces, his heart misgave him. The disgruntled ones driven from Ton's presence had been before him and whipped up a dangerous public sentiment. Yet he strode boldly up the long room and it was only when he confronted the Elder that for the first time a chill of fear ran through his body.
The Elder was a lean old man in a scarlet drape, with small fanatical eyes. He was the same man that Jan had known ten years before and yet utterly different. Jan was bewildered at the change. He overlooked the fact that ten years had passed, that he was now seeing the Elder with the eyes of one who had lived in the outer world. The stony gaze of the old man met his own without a vestige of recognition or of good will in them. The impulse to throw himself into his arms withered at the roots.
"Your name," demanded the old man in a metallic voice.
"Jan, of the Clan Rokka."
"In the name of the Machine," he said, making the sign of the wheel, "speak—the Machine hears."
"An aerial in which I was traveling fell... it fell in the desert...."
The voice of the crowd rose.
"Silence!" cried Ton.
"Those traveling with me were killed—but I survived. The people who lived in a nearby valley and who saw the aerial tube fall, came and bore me to their homes."
"Who were these people?" asked the Elder.
"Human beings such as ourselves. Long ago they had lived in the cities, before the ancient Titans drove them forth...."
The icy glance of the old man quelled the clamor. "Speak," he said softly, "the Machine hears."
"For the first time I saw the world outside the cities and I was afraid and thought I had died. But the strange people bore me to their village. How can I explain things to you? At first their speech was strange, but soon I discovered a certain similarity between it and mine. A young girl taught me their language. Her name was Greta. I married her later." He paused. "And her grandfather also instructed me. His name was Andro. 'Who are you?' I asked him. 'What is this strange world into which I have fallen? By the will of what Machine do you live?'
"'We are descendants of the Unlings', he replied, 'who were driven from the cities five hundred years ago when the Titans had no more need of them. As for this village, it is in the outside world that holds even the cities from which you have come.' And then he proceeded to tell me how the cities had been built by man, and the Machine. 'The Machine did not make man,' he said; 'man made the Machine,' and he showed me in a book...."
But Jan got no further; for the bent figure of the old Elder straightened, the small fanatical eyes suddenly flashed with lurid flame.
"Enough!" he thundered in a high shrill voice: "The man blasphemes! Seize him! Seize him!"
Jan started back with clenched fists.
"Wait," he cried; "Listen!" but his voice was drowned by howls of execration. "Liar! Blasphemer!"
The crowd swirled forward. He heard Ton's voice screaming: "Back, back!" but whether in an attempt to aid him, he did not know. Then the mob was upon him. Ton was swept away. He never saw him again.
It was hopeless to fight and yet he fought. The very numbers of his attackers aided him for a moment. Right, left, right, left. His fists smashed into mouthing faces. Men went down under his blows. Through them he plowed, for a few yards. If he could only reach the door.... But hands clutched at his ankles. Stumbling, he went down, and a mass of cursing, sweating humanity went down on him and crushed him into submission. A few minutes more and, arms bound, he stood again before the Elder who eyed him with cold malignancy.
"You have spoken," said the lean old man, "and the Machine has heard."
"The Machine has heard," chorused the people.
"As for the wild things of which you have told, sure they are the ravings of one dead. Long ago the Machine took you to itself, and that land of which you speak is the place beyond death. But by the powers of evil, the Not machine, you have been returned to curse and blaspheme. The mark of Nothing is on your brow, the hue of Nothing on your skin."
"Ahram! Ahram!"
"Ahram! Ahram!" shrieked the people. The words of the Elder swept them into an ecstasy of fear and hatred.
"This is nothing that lives," shrilled the Elder. "It is dead, dead!" And then with an uplifted and skinny hand that compelled silence, he hissed:
"Away with him! Away with him! He had escaped from the Machine; let him be returned to the Machine!"
Returned to the Machine! The blood chilled in Jan's veins. He knew what that phrase meant. But powerless to resist, he was swept from the room by the tumultuous mob, and so to the street. Moving sidewalks hurried them forward, cable-cars swung them along, and at last they came to the gloomy spot beneath a spider-web of girders where the Machine bared its vitals to the gaze of man and a great black piston went up and down. Here was the burial spot of the clan, the place where the dead were brought to be "returned to the Machine." Jan struggled for utterance, made one last effort to avert his fate.
"Fools!" he cried, "fools! I returned to enlighten and uplift you with the truth. I thought to tear from your eyes the veils of superstition and ignorance, to lead you out of darkness into the light of day! Listen..."
But they howled him down.
"Too late," he muttered, with bowed head. "Nothing can save them: I see that now. As savages they will perish in a mechanical world; but after them the seed of the Unlings will pour into the deserted cities, the strong, enlightened ones from the outer world, some of them with my blood in their veins; and the marvel of the Machine will come under their dominion, and the age of man as gods on earth truly begin."
So he thought; and then with a surge of sadness, "But I shall never see it."
His body swung forward; he saw his surroundings in one last blur of consciousness—O for the blue sky under which to die!—and then the piston fell.
"Ahram! Ahram!" shrieked the frenzied crowd. After a while, one by one, they wandered away; and the great piston went monotonously up and down; but now its black smoothness was flecked with blood.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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