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Title: The Adventure of Wyndham Smith
Author: Wright, S. Fowler [Sydney Fowler] (1874-1965)
Date of first publication: 1938
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Famous Fantastic Mysteries, June 1950
   [Kokomo (Indiana) and New York: All-Fiction Field, Inc.]
Date first posted: 30 September 2017
Date last updated: 30 September 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1470

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






  THE ADVENTURE OF
  WYNDHAM SMITH

  By S. Fowler Wright


  _Hunted by a man-made monster, they fled into an
  empty world, two last survivors who dared to
  gamble for the dawn of a new forbidden day...._




CHAPTER I

Wyndham Smith was at Guy's Hospital at the time he had his experience,
a medical student in his second year.

He looked round a room floored and walled and furnished in the same
substance, which was strange to him--"ebonied glass" came to his
mind--and across at a man who was strangely dressed--Oriental?---no,
not exactly that--and with an aspect of age in the grave dignity of his
face, and of youth in the smooth freshness of his skin, who was saying
in a distant and yet not unfriendly way:

"I suppose you are puzzled as to where you have come?"

"Once before," he replied, "I had a dream something like this.  I mean
I knew I was dreaming the while I dreamed.  I remember hoping I should
not wake till the end came; but this is the most vivid dream that I
ever had."

The man's lips moved to a slight smile.  "You need have no fear about
that."

"No?  I feel as though I were awake now."

"So you are."

Wyndham Smith looked around.  He considered the polished shadows of the
walls, and the brighter opaqueness of a ceiling which gave a diffused
light to the room.  He was not convinced.

"Then, perhaps," he said, "you will explain how I got here."

It was a reasonable request, though he saw that a dream might invent an
answer of no reliable value.

"That," the protagonist of his dream replied, "is what I proposed to
do.  It is a courtesy which I might have extended freely to a young man
of your profession, but it is necessary apart from that.  It is
important here from the early part of the twentieth century.  You are
now--by an extension of your system of reckoning--in the later part of
the forty-fifth."

"You can't expect me to swallow that."

"No?  I wonder why.  Has the idea of such transmigration, either
voluntary or enforced, never entered your mind?  Even so, you have had
some years of training which should make you receptive to new ideas.  I
thought that yours was a time when the implications of relativity began
to be understood."

"I am afraid," Wyndham Smith said honestly, "that I am one of those to
whom the implications of relativity are not clear.  I am willing to
believe that time is the fourth dimension, which has a plausible sound.
But I don't go far beyond that....  As to people being able to jump
about in time, from one age to another, even if it were shown in theory
that they could--which would be hard to believe--observation tells us
definitely that it doesn't occur."

"May I ask how you have been able to observe that?"

"If it did, people would appear suddenly among us from nowhere, and
others would disappear in the same way.  You couldn't even take a
census."

"You are half right and half wrong.  Your year was nineteen
thirty-seven, was it not, in the reckoning of your day?"

"Yes, that's what it is now."

"Ye-es.  No man has gone back to that period, or is likely to do so.
Having known it, you can't be surprised....  But they have been fetched
away in large numbers, English people in your century being a favourite
selection for many purposes....  I learned your language from one of
them."

"I know that isn't true.  If it were, we should notice they had
disappeared."

The older man was unmoved by the bluntness of this contradiction.  "If
you think," he said, with a quiet certainty, "you will know that it
is....  Did you never hear of the number of people who disappeared in
England at that time--even in London alone--every month?  What do you
suppose had become of them?"

"I suppose that they had changed their names, or wandered away.".

"Do you know the proportion of them that were never found?"

"Not exactly.  I know it was a large number."

Wyndham Smith remembered reading a newspaper account of such
disappearances a few days before.  (Was it that which had given him
this most vivid dream?)  He could not recall the figures, but he knew
that the number who were never traced had been described as very
large--"inexplicably large" had been the expression used.  He was frank
about that, both to himself and the stranger to whom he spoke.  He
added, "But, at most, that doesn't prove that they disappeared into
futurity: it only fails to disprove that anyone did."

"Yes.  But, at least, it proves that you were wrong in the reason you
gave for discrediting such a possibility."

"I must admit that," he answered with the same frankness as before, and
with a growing disposition not to contest the possibility further.
After all, why not let a dream have its way?



The stranger seemed to perceive without further words that it was
accepted as a hypothesis on which the conversation could be continued.
He went on:

"It is necessary that you should be informed as to where you are, owing
to the experience which is before you, the nature of which will
naturally be grasped more readily by one who has had some training in
medical science, however elementary, than it would be by most others of
the period from which you come.

"It was partially understood in your own time, though the idea itself
was less clearly perceived than were its implications and consequences,
that the individual man is of dual personality.  The seat of the
ego--the man himself, as distinguished from the physical body which had
been formed from ancestral cells--was vaguely located in the hinder
part of the brain, and that location has since been more exactly
fixed....

"With the advance of surgery, the grafting or exchange of the major
organs of the body naturally led to the consideration of the
possibility that the ego itself might be transferred.  But that which
was simple in theory was found to be difficult in practice, owing to
the fact that the cell--if that word be allowed--of which the ego
consists was found to be so small that its minuteness is beyond human
comprehension, if not measurement, and that, for the operation to be
successfully performed, it must be transferred without the remotest
trace of surrounding matter."

"I remember," Wyndham remarked, accepting the initial improbability to
which he had been introduced in his interest in this explanation,
"in--in my own time that an American scientist calculated that if the
germs from which every Englishman had originated since the Norman
conquest were heaped together, they would never cover a needle's point."

"That," the stranger answered, after a moment's pause, "must have been,
by an extremely large margin, within the truth; but the germ-cells of
which you speak are themselves as much larger than the essential ego as
the space occupied by our planetary system exceeds the size of its
central sun."

"But you say that these difficulties have been overcome?" Wyndham asked.

Since he had decided to abandon himself without resistance to the
course of this vivid dream, the quiet authority and assurance of the
stranger's words were bringing conviction to a mind which had been
trained to learn and accept surprising facts from the lecturers of his
own profession.  He had a vague but pleasing vision of himself as being
sent back to his own time by this courteous and able stranger after
learning such things as would place him in the forefront of the
scientists of his time.

Was it--his mind wandered to ask--by this method that the great
"discoveries" of past generations had been communicated to those who
had given them to the world, without revealing a source of knowledge
which would have discounted their own eminence, if it had not been
received with derision, or introduced them to a sorcerer's stake?  Was
it such an experience that had come to the friend of Paul when, in his
own words; "he was caught up to the third heaven, and heard unspeakable
things"?

"They have been overcome," the stranger replied, "but not easily.  The
operation requires elaborate preparations, and can only be performed at
long intervals, and upon not more than four individuals--that is two
exchanges--at once."

"May I ask what is the result of the operation, if every trace of
surrounding matter should not be successfully separated?"

"Insanity--at the least.  Insanity both to the ego transferred with
adhesions which will be foreign to the brain with which new relations
must be established, and to that which is introduced to a depleted
environment."

"And if it be successful?  I suppose that the knowledge--the memories--"

"You suppose rightly.  I see that you perceive some of the limitations
of the results of this operation, and the possibilities that remain."

"I should have thought--"

"Yes.  You would have guessed correctly, so far as guessing would be
likely to go; and beyond that you would have seen that only experiment
could resolve the enigmas your mind would raise....  But the time for
guessing is past.

"If you will listen carefully, on a matter which is likely to be of the
utmost interest to yourself, it is what I propose to explain."

Wyndham did not like that expression "of the utmost interest to
yourself."  He did not like the way it was said.  His heart missed a
beat.  Was he to be the subject of one of these interesting experiments?

The thought was one from which he shrank in a most unscientific spirit.
The beauties of vivisection--even its moral altitudes--are matters
which the vivisected may fail to see.  He was glad to recall--which he
had been so near to forget--that you cannot die, nor suffer hurt, in a
dream.  He made no answer; and the stranger, after a moment of keen
though quiet scrutiny, as though reading his mind very easily,
commenced the explanation he had promised to give.



"I should tell you first that it has been practicable, for a very long
period, to transfer all parts of the principal organs of the body, so
that the anomaly was no longer possible (for instance) by which a
scientist might be frustrated in his work by a defective gall bladder
or a sluggish liver, while a common lunatic would be going about with
these organs robustly alive.  Grafting or substitution would quickly
restore the physical harmony which the quality of his work required.

"You will not suppose that such results were achieved without some
unexpected difficulties, some unforeseen complications, some inevitable
catastrophies.  But the practice is now firmly established, and it
might be difficult to find a man of more than eighty or a hundred
years, one or more of whose vital organs have not been substantially or
radically repaired.

"You will see that this custom had beneficient consequences in
ameliorating the conditions of the poor, for no child could be born who
was not potentially valuable, if not in itself, yet to prolong the
existence of others; and to the meanest of mankind there was opened the
high, unselfish destiny that his lungs might expand with a monarch's
breath, or his heart beat in a statesman's breast.

"For those wretched females who were allowed to marry, before the era
of the present orderly methods, there was the hope that, if they could
produce offspring of more than average quality, and with the requisite
regularity, their lives might be indefinitely prolonged by a grateful
country, and there were some whose bodies were so successfully repaired
or renewed that they lived for more than two hundred years.

"Nor must you suppose that the direct benefits of this advance in
surgical science were confined to those who were eminent in the state,
or required for the continuance of its population.  Purchases and
exchanges became frequent among all classes, of the community, and no
cause of litigation was more common than that arising from this
description of bartering.  A man complaining, for instance, that he had
been led by fraudulent misrepresentation to surrender a sound stomach
for a heart with a defective valve.  And as you will easily see that at
least three persons, and probably more, must have been directly
involved in each of these transactions--for a few men would desire to
make a direct exchange of the same organ only, and none would wish to
be left with two of the same kind--the equitable adjustment of these
disputes might be far from simple, and the cancellation of the contract
by the return to a man of his own property might be unfair to an
innocent party, not directly concerned in the dispute."

"It is an idea," Wyndham took advantage of a moment's pause to remark,
forgetting his previous fear in the interest of the subject, "of many
fascinating possibilities, but I should suppose that, in such cases as
the women you mentioned, whose ages must have been over two hundred,
there could be so little of the originals left that the question of
identity would arise.  Would they not have ceased to be the persons
that they first were, and become compilations of other and younger
women?"

"It is a question which naturally and necessarily arose at a
comparatively early time, when major operations of this kind were first
recognized as being of a beneficent and practicable character.  It was
a line of defence in an ancient and famous trial, when a wealthy
criminal distributed his vital organs so freely among his associates
(even including some portions of the brain itself) that there arose a
serious issue of how far the human form in the dock could be held
responsible for the deeds with which it was charged, or how otherwise
the criminal could be brought to justice.

"The case actually resulted in an acquittal, it being decided that the
man had escaped beyond the possibility of arrest, and it was this trial
which led the government of that day to set aside a large fund for the
determination of the location of personality in the human body ... with
an ultimate consequence which has brought you here."

The last remark was a sharp reminder to Wyndham Smith that his interest
in the instruction he was receiving might not prove to be of a merely
academic kind.  And feeling, like the man about to be hanged, that he
could bear anything but suspense, he put the question directly, "And do
you mind telling me what that is?"

"It is to that that I was about to come.  But, before giving you such
information, I wish you to have a clear mind as to the nature and
consequence of the transfer of the human ego from one body to another.

"In the first place, our experiments have demonstrated that the ego has
an identity absolutely separate from the body which it inhabits, and
over which it has a limited muscular control.  It follows, as you may
have anticipated, that when an ego is transferred, it leaves behind all
the memories, all the knowledge, which were stored in the brain which
it had previously governed, and acquires the knowledge and memories of
the one which it commences to occupy.

"It might be supposed that the practical result would be as though
there had been no transfer at all.  But this is not so.  The ego which
enters the body of another inherits the knowledge which that brain has
acquired, and the physical dexterities to which it has trained its
members, but does not necessarily sympathize with the proclivities
which have caused that knowledge to be accumulated, or those physical
abilities to develop: it may commence at once to train its acquired
brain to other uses, its body to different sports.

"Having explained this, you will understand that if (for instance) your
own ego should be removed from your present body, and another
introduced, the fresh tenant would acquire memory of this conversation,
and would therefore readily understand what had occurred on an
explanation being supplied.  And, in the same way, if you should be
transferred to another body, you would be equally so informed, if the
knowledge had been previously so imparted to the brain of which you
would obtain control."

"You mean," Wyndham replied, endeavouring to maintain an impersonal
attitude towards the subject, and suppressing the cold fear of a more
immediate interest, "that if (for instance) my ego were so transferred,
I should lose the memories that I now have, with all the knowledge of
the time from which you say that I am already so widely removed, and
should be dependent upon you to inform me even of the fact of my
present identity?"

"That is what the position would be, but, in place of all from which
you would have parted, you would have acquired the use of the stores of
another brain, and its natural abilities, which might be more, perhaps
much more, than those you had left behind, and of which also--it is an
equal chance--you might make more energetic and successful use than had
the ego by which they were previously controlled."



"That is quite clear," Wyndham admitted; "and I can recognize it as
logical probability, though it is less easy to accept as a possible
eventuality; but may I ask"--and he could not entirely control his
voice, as he said this, to the casual tone which he desired to
use--"why you should be giving me this information?  May I, perhaps, be
privileged to watch such an experiment, so that I may describe it when
I--"  He was near to saying "When I wake up," but substituted "When I
return to my own time," as being more courteous to his auditor.  For
the denizens of a dream cannot desire to be made conscious of their own
unsubstantiality, of which even the dreamer may not be aware while the
dream endures.  But was it really a dream?--if he could only be a
little surer of that!

If--it was the next moment's thought--if he could only awake!  For the
answer to which he was listening confirmed the worst of his secret
dread:

"You have--as I can see that you are sufficiently intelligent to
anticipate--the exceptional honour of having been chosen, from among
millions of your time and race, to be the subject of such an
experiment."

Wyndham Smith did not respond with an aspect of gratitude to this
complimentary assurance.  He strove to convince himself that the danger
which appeared to threaten him was too remote from reality--too
fantastic to fear.  Yet if--indeed--

"May I ask whether, if I should submit to so strange an experience, I
may ultimately be restored to my own identity?"

"I regret that I cannot reply to that question, for the answer, even if
I know it, which you need not assume, will give information to the ego
which will shortly control your body, which it might not be convenient
for it to have....  For the moment, I must leave you, there being no
more to say."

As he spoke, the stranger rose from his seat and passed out through the
solid-seeming wall, which gave way before him as having no substance
whatever.

Wyndham Smith was left alone to consider the fate to which he was
incredibly destined.  It was a suggestion of fantastic horror, and
yet--  He remembered a remark which had been made by Professor
Kortright at the lecture last Tuesday night.  He had explained, as a
surprising fact, that a man has no regard for the welfare of the
corpuscles, even for the nerves of his own body, so long as he does not
share their danger, or while they are powerless to hurt him with any
message of their own pain.

He had said that the benefits which had resulted, in certain classes of
operations, from the use of local, in addition to general anesthetics,
demonstrated that the general one does not prevent the torture of the
isolated nerves, but only frustrates their efforts to awaken those of
the brain itself to a kindred anguish.

Yet how many, he asked, would pay an extra fifty pounds, or even ten,
to save the nerves of his own limb from such an experience, if assured
that he himself would be unable to feel the pain?  They would be roused
to readier sympathy by some tale of the abuse of a dog in a distant
town!

"I myself"--those had been the professor's words, and in saying them
had he not implied all the distinction between the ego and the
inhabited body which had been the theme of their discourse of the
previous half-hour?

With this thought, there came also the supposition that that lecture
might have supplied the idea from which this dream was born.  Surely
that must be so, and--unutterable relief! it was no more than a dream
indeed--a dream therefore from which it must be possible to wake, and
that waking Wyndham resolved that he would no longer delay.  Not but
that it might have been of interest to penetrate somewhat farther into
the fantasy that the dream proposed--if only, while he did so, he could
be sure that it were no more.

But the uncertainty was too great to be longer endured.  He was
resolved to wake from a nightmare which was become too real....  And
then he found that it was something he could not do....  Surely you
could wake from a dream?  Surely, surely, when you strove to wake with
your utmost will, with the whole mind concentrated on what must be the
waking vision--the window opposite, which must be visible in the
moonlit night (Wyndham remembered that there was a moon that was near
the full)--the bed-rail--the familiar walls....

But the familiar walls did not return.  He saw only the ebonised,
glassy surface through which the stranger had so absurdly, so
impossibly, passed away....  He would resolve for himself if it were
substance or shadow that held him now.  He rose, and walked to the wall.

He felt a substance that was neither cold nor warm, being of the same
temperature as the hand that he pressed against it.  But otherwise it
was polished granite to feel.  Granite-hard: granite-smooth.  He paused
at the place where his late companion had vanished, feeling it with
patience and care.  But it was all equally smooth, equally hard....
Very surely it was a dream.  But it was a dream that he could not break.



And now Wyndham Smith--if it were he--if he can be properly identified
in that lithe, exotic figure in the single garment of purple, so
different from the appearance of the medical student that he had been a
few hours (or was it something more than two millenniums?)
before--stretched himself on a bed.  The hour must have been near to
noon, for the sun shone downward into the roofless chamber, from a blue
cloud-flecked sky, but he was conscious of nothing strange in being
stretched supine at the highest hour of the day.

He lay busy enough, for he was occupied with his own thoughts, and it
was the only occupation that most men had in the only world that he now
knew.  For he knew nothing now of the experiences of the body which he
had once controlled, to which its parents had given the title of
Wyndham Smith.

Colpeck-4XP lay on the bed, remembering that he had agreed only
yesterday that his ego should be transferred to that of a primitive of
the commencement of the machine age, whose ego should have control of
his own body for--it had not been clear for how long.  Then he could
not be Colpeck-4XP?  He must, in reality, be Wyndham Smith.  It was no
use to resent that, as he oddly did.  He was himself, and should be
satisfied with his conscious life, and the control of so perfect and
important a physical personality.  If it were true that he had once
inhabited the body of a primitive, half-witted savage of the early
machine age, how unbelievably fortunate he now was!

Yet, queerly, all the force of a powerful intellect found itself in
difficulty when it strove to persuade him thus.  All the bodily
consciousness which was not his own ego, but which had subserved
another for many years, rose up in impatient protest against the alien
control that it now felt, and, because his own consciousness worked
through it, its resentment was not easy to thrust away.

Yet it must be done....  He was aware, for it was a remembered
conversation of yesterday, that the ego which would waken to-day in the
body of Colpeck-4XP was to be that of the primitive, Wyndham Smith, and
that the intention had been to discover how one of that early age would
react to the traditions and environment that he would inherit with his
new body--and to the world crisis which was to culminate before the end
of the present day....  A foolish, futile thing, for the event was
agreed, and he had given his own ready assent.  It was worth while, if
only because it was an adventure, of a kind, after the possibilities of
adventure had long been lost to the hopes or fears of an ordered world.

He had agreed only yesterday about that, though perhaps with somewhat
less alacrity than some others, for life was not entirely unpleasant,
even in these terrible days, but he had agreed....  At least--he?  Was
it he, or another, who had assented then?  He remembered the promise he
had made yesterday afternoon that when he waked to-day he would review
the whole question with a firm resolution to put aside all previous
bias or decision, and face the sombre prospect anew.  Well, he would do
that fairly enough, useless as he knew it to be.  For he would weigh
that which was no less than a settled and certain thing....  How far
back should he now begin?

Perhaps it would be best to go back even to the very beginning of
civilization, to the utter barbarism of the period from which he
supposed that he himself had come.  The time which had half-emerged
from the primitive custom of manual labor, and had self-styled itself
the Machine Age, having no imagination of the end of that far road on
which it had taken the first blind, blundering steps.

Then they had made their crude machines with their own hardened,
discolored hands.  They had not even realized, in a denseness difficult
to comprehend that the stored energies of the earth could be so
utilized and controlled that they would do the work of men without help
beyond that of the human brain--that machines would make each other far
better than they had first been erected by human hands.  With a comic
futility they had sat in the machines they made, moving, to no useful
end, about the surface of the earth, while their machines collided
continually, killing both those who were seated therein, and those who
walked in the same ways--killing and maiming to a total that rose into
millions of ended or damaged lives and still they who remained would
climb into their machines, and start them, whirling about to increase
the tale of the dead....

A wild, incredible age.  An age of nations and wars....  Perhaps it was
hardly necessary to go back so far....  There were so many things that
existed then which had ceased to be.  So many conditions of life that
were now no more than an evil, alluring dream....  After that, there
had been the abolition of war.  The abolition of nationality.  The
abolition of social inequalities.  The abolition of the barbarisms of
competition.  The control or abolition of every form of animal or
insect life.  The control of climate, with the consequent abolition of
extremes of temperature, or discomforts of tempest.  The almost
absolute abolition of disease.  Finally, the abolition of pain,
complete and final, as evidenced by the fact that he felt no smallest
discomfort from the operation which must have been performed upon him.

So mankind had risen and proved its strength, coming to a serene
supremacy over the follies and failures of earlier millenniums, and
over the physical forces to which they had once succumbed.  And so, at
last, for five hundred years, they had endured a life which was without
difference or result: without hope or fear, except the fear of its
individual end, which would now approach, at a steady pace, to a
settled date.  Until now, to break the monotony of eventless years, a
new idea had been born.  It had originated in the mind of Pilwin-C6P,
and was no less than that the incompetence of the Creator should be
challenged and demonstrated by the universal suicide of mankind.

Languidly, indifferently with most, but with an occasional individual
eagerness or enthusiasm, it had been endorsed by the huge majority of
the five million adults who were now the total population of an ordered
world.  It had been agreed unanimously, from hundred to hundred, rising
in the intellectual scale (which was now immeasurable with an exact
accuracy, and had become the sole basis of political organization)
until it required no more than the assent of the final hundred--of
which he was one--to be operated immediately.

The mind from which the suggestion had come was one from which a new
idea would be likely to emanate, if any originality of purpose should
still be possible to the human brain.  It was not merely that he had
himself the eminence of being in the first hundred.  The Pilwins, for
nearly two thousand years, had been intellectually distinguished, and
over sixty percent of the seven hundred who now bore that name were
among the first million in the mental ranking of mankind--a percentage
with which even the Colpecks could not compare.



Besides that, the name had a conspicuous record for individual
initiatives in earlier centuries.  It was a Pilwin who had removed the
ice-caps of the poles.  It was another Pilwin who had conceived the
bold, successful project (already partly accomplished) of destroying
all forms of alien life, in one comprehensive motion, by spreading a
concrete-like substance over the major portions of the earth's surface,
reserving only such limited areas as might still be required for the
production of human food.  Not that this was an invention of any Pilwin
brain.  Even in barbarous times many small portions of the earth's
surface had been spread with concrete, so that all possibilities of
life had ceased, both beneath or above it.  But that had been done
without deliberate intention: a mere careless gesture of blasphemy
against the Creator of life.  It was a Pilwin who had first conceived
it as a means of sterilizing the earth in a widespread way.

It was the same Pilwin who had proposed a chemical process which would
have sterilized the oceans also, though that had been obstructed by
fear of sinister incidental consequences which only the experiment
could have resolved; and it was another who had formulated the orderly
and convenient method by which the generations were kept twenty-five
years apart.

Considering the brilliant achievements of the Pilwin intellect, Wyndham
Smith (as we may still conveniently call him, though with a somewhat
dubious accuracy, as he reviews a Colpeck's memories in a Colpeck's
brain) observed that it was this custom of the quarter-century
intervals that rendered the proposal of Pilwin-C6P so particularly
opportune, since it meant that there were no children to be consulted,
or consigned to a possibly reluctant end: for a child might still exist
for a space of years before the love of life would be wholly gone.

Wyndham Smith, reviewing the various arguments in favor of this
procedure which his brain had evolved or heard during the last two
months, and pleasantly conscious of intellectual freedom and audacity
such as his ego had not previously experienced, was obliged, though
with some amount of irrational reluctance, to make frank acknowledgment
of their weight and quality.

The work of mankind might have been worth the doing, or it might not.
But, be that as it might, it was at least clear that that work was
done.  Man had come to complete supremacy over the earth, and--with
greater difficulty--over himself also.  Contending forms of life had
been eliminated, or suppressed.  The major physical forces of the
planet, which had made him their early sport, were now in harness.  The
discords and confusions which had set nation against nation, class
against class, were no more than traditions of muddled incompetence,
becoming increasingly difficult to realize, if not to believe.

Every form of struggle or competition, every variety of hardship,
disease or pain, had been eliminated--and was it possible to regret
that?  If there be competition, there must be those who will fall
behind.  Victory must involve defeat, which is a barbarously unpleasant
experience.  If, as the result, they had merely discovered that, if
there be none behind, there can be none in front, that pleasure ends
with the cessation of pain, was it a responsibility which could be laid
at any other than the Creator's door?

Now, with nothing left either to hope or fear, the generations would
come and go.  Every twenty-five years a quantity of selected children
would be added to the population of the world.  In the same period, the
same number of people would pass into painless death.  A generation
would be born, and another die.  But what use was there in that?  A
futile, aimless, endless monotony, which--wonderful, single remaining
power--it yet lay in their hands to bring to a seemly close....
Yes--the arguments were not easy to overset.

And this evening, at the eighteenth hour, the First Hundred were to
meet to adopt or discard the proposal which had first come from
themselves, and had since been agreed with unanimity by the whole
remaining population of the world....  And it was understood that it
would be agreed to-night with the same unanimity--probably without
discussion--unless he only were to resist.

It was only because the First Hundred would exhaust every possibility
of preventing error on so momentous an issue, even when there was no
doubt or division among themselves, that they had introduced him, an
alien ego, to one of their own best brains, to observe how he would
react to its accumulated knowledge, its recollected experiences, its
instinctive emotions.

He--and he only--would be liable to resist the decision of a united
world, and though he was still resolved to consider the problem in
every aspect as the sun declined through the long hours of the
afternoon, it was a resistance that he had little inclination to offer.
Should not the curtain make its orderly fall at the close of an ended
play?




CHAPTER II

Wyndham Smith looked around the spacious, low-ceilinged room which he
knew so well.  In its midst was a table, long and large, around which
were a hundred seats.  His acquaintance of the previous night sat at
the head, and his own seat was third away on the left.

He looked at that which he scarcely saw, for his mind was occupied with
the question which brought him there, and his eyes encountered familiar
things.  Had he still occupied the body in which he came, he would have
been intrigued and puzzled by many strange and some inexplicable
experiences which had been his since he had left his own room less than
an hour before, but which he had not regarded at all; as he would have
been baffled by the sounds of a strange tongue.  For the language which
he now heard was not that in which Wyndham Smith had been first
addressed which had been that of his own tongue, and his own time.

He would have been puzzled even by such details as that he was not
aware of any freshness or staleness of air, which was alike in an
unroofed space, or in the crowd of that shallow room, but, as it was,
his mind could work oblivious of surrounding sights, and only
negatively aware of the familiar faces around him now....  Faces that
had differences of type and colour, and yet would have seemed
strangely, bafflingly, even terribly, alike to the wonder of his
previous eyes.

They were faces of some difference, in that they showed faint traces of
various races, but they were alike in an impression of intellectual
power of a passive sort, and still more so in a lack of animation, of
physical character, which left them passionless and serene as death.
It was, indeed, to the serenity of the newly dead, before corruption
has seized its prey, that they may be most accurately compared,
although it was clear enough that they possessed a vigour of physical
life which was too constant for their regard.

Wyndham was aware--it was a routine fact, which did not need to be
said--that, though they sat without visible audience, all that was
spoken there would be heard by the five million population of the whole
world, and would be decisive and final, if--as there could be little
reason to doubt--it should approve the plan which had already received
the support of all the lesser intellects of the human race.

The chairman, three seats away, commenced without rising, and without
preamble or any form of address.  His visible audience turned faces
towards him which were gravely, unemotionally, attentive, and
controlled even a faint tremor of excitement, not at the near prospect
of their own extinction, but of the intellect only, at the thought of
an event unprecedented, when it had seemed that all novelty must have
left the world.

"We have met," he said, "to record our votes upon a resolution which
has been adopted unanimously by those of lower intelligence, and which
may have been discussed sufficiently by themselves, of which
discussions we are all more or less completely aware.  The resolution
is that we shall release ourselves from the aimless burden of life by a
general euthanasia which is to be arranged for the seventh noon after
to-day.  It is a course which, if it be adopted, must be unanimous, for
if there be exceptions, however few, its central purpose will be upset,
which is to rebuke the Creative Power by the complete self-ending of
human life.

"Expressing no opinion myself, from which my position requires me to
abstain until yours be known, I will ask each of you in turn whether
the resolution has your support, that our verdict may be known to all
those who hear."

Having said this, he addressed those who sat round the table, one by
one, calling them by their distinctive numerals, and by the names of
their houses, "Do you agree or dissent?"  And the replies came in a
steady, toneless monotony, "I agree...."  "I agree...."--only the
voices of the women, who were about equally numerous, being slightly
softer than those of the men.

It was indeed by their voices that an alien onlooker would most readily
have decided which were the women, for the dresses of all--a single
garment of purple--were alike, and the hair of all was trimmed in the
same way.

As the chairman commenced on his right, it followed that ninety-six of
the hundred names had been called before it came to Wyndham's turn to
reply.  He sat listening to that monotonous chorus of assents, and he
was unsure, even then, what he would say when his time should come.
His reason told him that the human race had served whatever purpose it
had, and that there was an absurdity in continuing it perpetually
through succeeding generations with the endless iteration of a
recurring decimal.

This perception was not complicated by any theory of there being a
permanent value in the individual life, or a survival from death, for
such beliefs had long left the world.  They had no place in the brain
which he now controlled, and, even in that which his ego had ruled
before, they had been regarded as too unsubstantial to affect the
actual conduct of life.  They had been rejected finally by implication
fifteen hundred years later, when it had been resolved to limit the
human race to five million selected lives.

In that resolution, which had sought no more than to limit births to a
number which could realize (it had been supposed) the maximum comforts
and pleasures of human existence, there had been the seed of that which
was put forward to-day....

But though the new brain of Wyndham Smith might be fecund of arguments
in support of the resolution, which it seemed, as the names were
called, that all others approved, his ego, fresh from the strifes and
discords of a different world, was still half unwilling to own their
weight--would indeed have been resolved to reject them, but for a
dreadful doubt which had arisen to confuse feeling and tend to enlist
it in reason's cause....  If he should dissent from the resolution, and
it should thus founder for lack of the unanimity which it required,
would he be allowed to continue in this life, which, with all its
futile negation, was the only one that he now knew?  Or would he be
sent back to the unimaginable horrors and barbarisms from which he had
been made aware, however feeling might revolt, that his ego came?

And then, diversely, against this instinctive revulsion that was
clamorous in the pain-free body, his new-found intellect asked, If that
life to those who lived it was less endurable than is yours to-day, why
was not self-destruction then a more general thing?  But yet--cold,
misery, pain (his body had once felt pain, in his early days, and it
was an experience he would not forget), perhaps hunger and thirst,
perhaps even compulsory uncongenial toil--would they not change the
present dreariness of existence to more active hell? ... And it would
soon be his turn to speak, for the voices of those who answered were
near him now.



He became aware that all eyes were upon him, with a stir of interest,
of expectation, which had not been evident as the question had been
asked and answered till now; and he understood that they must all be
aware that though they looked at a familiar form, and knew that it was
controlled by a Colpeck brain, they knew also that its ego was of a
distant age.  He was the last insurance against mistake, which the
chairman had thought it prudent to introduce....  And it was to him
that the chairman was speaking now--"Do you agree or dissent?"

He heard his voice, and seemed to learn from it for the first time,
what his answer would be.  "I dissent."

The stir of interest, of expectation, was more pronounced.  His memory
told him that the assembly had not been equally moved--slight as its
emotion might now be--by any previous event that it had considered
within his time.  But the chairman showed no emotion, no surprise, at
this reply which might deny the will of almost the whole of the human
race.  He asked quietly, "Do you dissent from a settled mind, or do you
desire that the question be more discussed?"

"I would have it further discussed."

"Then it is so it shall be."

The chairman went on with the formal questions, taking the replies of
the remaining two, and when it had been heard that they also agreed, so
that Wyndham Smith was the sole dissenting voice in the world of men,
he turned his attention to him again, with a question which was the
routine of such a position.

"By what argument do you dissent?"

Wyndham did not find it easy to answer that.  He might have said that
he felt an instinctive antipathy to self-destruction: that his was a
fighting ego which was not willing to own defeat; but he knew that his
feelings had not been asked.  It was reason he was invited to give.

There was a pause of silence before he said, "It is that which should
be done completely, if it be attempted at all.  From most evil
conditions man has struggled free at the last, and has found--as you
are agreed--that there is nothing better beyond: that he has come by a
hard road to a house where no treasure lies.  If we are so certain of
that, should we not end all life, and not only ourselves?  Should we
not sterilize the land and sea so that life, which, there is sound
reason to think, is a peculiarity of this planet alone, will come to
its final end?  For else, may not life assert itself in a new form
which will be akin to that which we have destroyed, and our protest be
a Creator's jest?"

It was not what he intended to urge.  It was merely the first criticism
which could be supplied by a brain which did not respond to the feeling
which called upon it.  In the long minutes of silence that
followed--which were no more than the customary courtesy which all
speakers received at that assembly, where haste was a forgotten word,
and it would have been thought unmannerly to answer without a pause of
consideration--he had a better thought, which he also spoke:

"Also, if it be allowed that we have come by a bad road to no better
end, there is yet a choice which we might prefer to take rather than
that which is so nearly agreed.  We can go back by the way we came, to
find, perhaps, a somewhat different advance to a fairer goal."

His words fell into the same silence, which they prolonged.  He was not
surprised at that, his brain being familiar with the ways of his
fellow-men.  He became aware that this silence was shared by five
millions beyond those walls, who had supposed, a few moments before,
that their own voices had sealed their doom.

Pilwin-C6P was the first to speak.  He said, "It could be done.  It
might be the better way.  Nor need it long defer that on which we are
already resolved."

He thought only of the first proposal that Wyndham made.  Being the one
who had originated the idea of the cessation of human life, he would
have been likely to support the resolution with more than average
decision, but Wyndham's argument recalled the proposal his ancestor had
made for the sterilization of the oceans, which had been rejected at
that time for reasons which would have lost their force if it should be
preceded by the extinction of human life.  He saw his ancestor
justified at the last; and though any feeling of pride or satisfaction
in the prestige or achievements of his clan, or of an individual
ancestor, would have been esteemed a barbaric indecency, such as he
would not have admitted, even to himself, that he could be degraded to
feel, yet the atavistic instinct stirred faintly beneath his mind,
rendering him more tolerant of Wyndham's argument than he would
otherwise have become.

It was a point on which he spoke with authority, and the chairman,
after a pause of a few minutes to give opportunity for any further
comment, and seeing that all were silent in acceptance of the statement
that Pilwin-C6P had made, gave his ruling thereon.

"The first amendment," he said, "which has been proposed, is no more
than a point of detail, such as may be resolved here without the delay
which a general reference would require.  On the assurance which we
have received that the elimination of life in non-human forms could be
completed without complicating the major proposition, I am prepared to
rule that we may authorize that such steps be taken immediately that
the resolution itself be accepted with the unanimity which it requires."

He addressed Wyndham directly as he concluded, "If you can accept the
resolution on that condition being agreed, your second argument will
not arise."

But Wyndham had also had time for thought.  He was clear now as to his
own will, and his arguments were gaining order and strength in a mind
that must respond to a new control.  "But," he replied, "it is the
second which I prefer."

The chairman regarded him with a gravity which approached rebuke.  If
the removal of the first objection would leave him unsatisfied, what
point had there been in considering it at all?  But he saw that, by a
fine distinction of logic, this objection might be repulsed.  For
Wyndham had allowed that he was open to argument on the main proposal,
and it might be that, if he should be persuaded that his second
proposition was of an impossible quality, he might then accept the
resolution with the newly accepted condition attached thereto, which he
would otherwise have declined.

He asked, "You propose that men should go back to the barbarism from
which they came?"

"I propose that men might revert to conditions of less settled
security."



Had Wyndham Smith been, in his previous body, in control of the brain
it held, he would doubtless have surprised the assembly by following
this statement with a speech in its support, which might have
lengthened into thousands of randomly chosen words; but he knew that
the custom here was of a more orderly kind.

The debate which went on for the next two hours was a matter of grave
and silent consideration, frequently punctuated by brief, pregnant,
carefully worded remarks, many of which were of such a nature as to
give no indication of the side to which the speaker's mind was disposed
to lean.  The members of the assembly appeared to be too absolute in
self-control, or too deficient in emotional vitality, to be stirred to
any mental excitement, or emphasis of expression, by the momentous
nature of the question with which they dealt.  Only the ego of Wyndham
Smith, accustomed to the urgencies of more strenuous days, was
restrained with effort to the same outward placidity by the traditions
of the brain of which he had so recently gained control.

But from this pregnant silence, these occasional observations, an
opinion gradually emerged that there would be a probably insuperable
difficulty in obtaining any general measure of agreement as to the
extent or nature of the retrogression to be undertaken; an almost
invincible reluctance to face once more the pains and dangers from
which mankind had escaped by so bitter and long a way.  The unanimity
which had accepted its own defeat, which had agreed upon the
fulfilment, if not the frustration, of human destiny, could not be
anticipated even for the abstract principle of an alternative which
must be repulsive to the finer instincts of every sensitive and
civilized mind, and still less would there be any probability of
agreement upon the details of retreat to the savageries of competition,
the horrors of death and pain.

It was Pilwin-C6P, seeing the imminent prospect that the plan for which
he felt a parent's affection would go down before the opposition of a
single man (and he, as they all knew, being no more than the ego of a
distant, barbarous age), who proposed the solution which would be
sufficient to save it.

"Why," he asked, "should it not be resolved that each man be free to
follow the preference of his own heart?  Let it be decreed that he who
declines the high gesture of human suicide, by which mankind will
reject the life which it has not asked, and has found to be no more
than the gift of a jesting god, may revert to such barbarisms as a
baser nature may still prefer."

There was so near an approach, as he said this, to outdated passion in
words and tone, and the proposition itself was so amazing--for it had
been the fundamental principle of the proposed event that it should
extinguish human life with an entire finality--that it would have
produced a clamor of bewildered protest in an assembly of a more
volatile kind.  As it was, it was followed by a universal silence, in
which the first stupefaction of surprise gave way to understanding and
then consent.

For, even though this Colpeck of alien ego should elect (fantastic
thought!) to remain in solitary discord when the whole procession of
his fellow-men should have passed through the gates of death, it would
still appear a fantasy beyond serious consideration that he should find
a companion of kindred mood.  Solitary as he would be--with no
possibility of procreation remaining--he might plumb such depths of
barbarism as his soul desired, might prolong his absurdity of existence
to its latest hour, and he would be no more than a final mockery in his
Creator's eyes, an optheosis of the futility of the race He made....
The proposition would have been agreed without further words, but that
it was desirable that the five millions of inferior listening
intellects should understand the decision, and the conclusion from
which it came.

The resolution, as first proposed, was adopted with one dissentient,
and on the chairman's ruling that this was sufficient to fulfil the
condition of unanimity on which the proposition was based, Wyndham
understood, from the knowledge of their procedure his brain supplied,
that it was an assumption beyond the necessity of words that all must
accept the fate for which their own votes had been freely cast.  The
authority of the assembly would be forthwith used for the prompt and
painless end of themselves and their fellow-men.  It was that for which
they had not the will and sanction alone, but the ample power; and from
which only such as he would have further freedom of choice, from the
moment the resolution had been proclaimed.



When Wyndham Smith, ranking fourth among the intellects of the world by
the right of his Colpeck brain, had listened to the monotonous assents
of the ninety-six voices that had preceded his own, his eyes had
followed the repeated question down the farther side of the table,
looking without curiosity at faces he knew before, of men and women
whose lives were as empty, their characters as colourless, as was his
own in this alien personality that he had so strangely acquired.

It was not likely that he should regard with particularity a girl of no
more than twenty-three years, at the far end of the table, who was
placed as ranking fifty-seventh among this intellectual aristocracy to
which she belonged.

Yet his eyes had lingered a moment, his emotion stirred to admiration
at a hint of vivacity, a difference of animation which lit the cold,
sad beauty of her face, and subtly separated it from the equally
regular profiles of other women who sat above or below her.  The moment
of interest, of admiration--it was no longer than that--was of the ego
of Wyndham Smith, and, was countered by the protest of the Colpeck
brain, which had been taught to view her with a faint disfavour, being
the strongest emotion it was accustomed to experience, and which also
knew the vague suspicion, and the definite taboo, which divided her
from the expected destiny of the women of her generation.

The Colpeck brain, had it concentrated upon her sufficiently, hearing
the toneless assent she gave to the verdict of common death, might have
thought that there were few among the five millions of mankind--to be
exact, no more than forty-four others--who would be so certain to cast
their votes in the same scale.

For at the time of her birth the settled peace of the world had been
stirred and shocked by the discovery of a monstrous crime.  A woman who
could not have been very far from her fiftieth year, and who had borne
in her youth the three children allowed by law, had actually
contributed three further children to the nurseries of the race.

It was a monstrosity against which no precautions were taken, since at
this period any initiative of criminality had long left the world.  It
was discovered only by unlikely accident, shortly after the birth of
the third--being, actually, the woman's sixth--child.  It stirred the
emotions of men, at once to horror and fear, as it would have seemed
unlikely that they would ever be moved again, like the last ripple of a
tide that was settling to eternal quiet.  The woman's death was quickly
agreed, as a warning, however needless, to other lawless impulses which
might linger among mankind.

The deaths of three children were decreed with a more urgent necessity,
for ancient wisdom had taught that it is among the later children whom
a woman bears that there will be found the fire-bands who scorch their
kind.  Indeed, it was only after the establishment of the custom of
limiting children that the world could be observed to approach steadily
to the placid harbour in which it was anchored now.

But here a difficulty arose.  The fourth and fifth children, having
been registered and branded in the usual routine of the common nursery,
were identified and eliminated without difficulty.  But the mother had
unfortunately had some hours of warning before the discovery of her
criminality had been finally demonstrated, during which she had
contrived to change her just-born child with some other, so that, after
the most exhaustive investigation, there had still remained forty-five
girl-children of whom it was impossible to say with certainty that any
one might not be the sixth offspring of the woman's most lawless blood.

Faced with this position, the wisdom of the race, putting passion
aside, had preferred the lesser evil, and had offered her pardon if she
would identify the issue of her iniquity.  But this, with an
unrepentant obstinacy, she had declined to do; and when every resort of
ingenuity had been exhausted in the endeavour to discover the secret
which she concealed (or which, indeed, it is a more probable
supposition was no longer hers, owing to the method she had employed
for mixing the children), she was reluctantly executed.

After the first sound and natural impulse to destroy the forty-five
infants among whom the one unfit for life had been inextricably mingled
had been debated, it was weakly resolved, and may be regarded as
indicative of the decadence of a failing world, to let them live, under
some disabilities of education and other experiences, with the
condition that they should not be allowed, on reaching the age of
maturity, to contribute to the usual quota of babies, so that the
disturbing element might not take evil root in the generation to come.

But, in spite--unless it were because?--of the disabilities they had
experienced, when, on the commencement of their twentieth year, they
had been intellectually graded by the usual perfect and impartial
method, it was found that they were of a most unusual average
intelligence, so that though the one already mentioned was actually
ranked among the first hundred of the five millions of mankind, the
suspicion which this circumstance must have fixed upon her was
mitigated by the fact that several others, all of whom could not be of
abnormal ancestry, were almost equally eminent....



To the first proposal of universal euthanasia there were few who had
responded with a more, ready affirmative than had Vinetta (a name
which, individual and with no following numerals, proclaimed her, in
spite of the recognition of her intellectual status, as outcast among
her kind), which is not surprising in consideration of the life of
watchful repression which had been hers since, as a child of three, she
had overheard the remark of a female keeper: "That's the one, if you
ask me; the little misborn girl."

From that hour she had moved and spoken in cautious dread lest some
development of character, even some trick of gesture, might betray her,
as having been that of the mother whom, with a growing confidence, she
believed to have been her own!  For who could say that the doom which
had been suspended before might not still fall upon her, if her
development should appear to supply sufficient evidence of the parent
from whom she came?  Her own destruction, and the release of her
companions from disabilities which were not justly theirs, might have
been considered measures of an equal and obvious equity.

So she had moved, watchful, imitative, among the tepid emotions of
aimless, emulationless, dreadless surrounding lives, till the hints of
her unwary childhood were forgotten or negatived by the restraints and
repressions of later years.

Saved from sourness or malignity of temper by a nature which would have
been buoyant, joyous, adventurous, in more normal circumstances, her
thoughts were yet darkened by the bitter knowledge of her mother's
murder, and by a mental aloofness, half hatred and half contempt,
towards the civilization which she had entered through no legal door.

Of all the millions who were united in passive recognition of the fact
that their uncoloured lives had drifted into a calm that was worse than
wreck, she may have been the only woman whose heart beat hard at times
with a rebellion she dared not show.  She assented at once to the
Colpeck project, not as thinking it a gesture by which the Creator must
take rebuke, but rather as one which He would accept with the same
willingness as herself, and with entire approval of the self-judgment
by which the human race had saved Him the trouble of staging their
appropriate end.

When Wyndham Smith had proposed his second objection to the resolution,
her heart had leaped to a sudden hope, which might, in a different
environment, have given birth to incautious words.  But she was saved
from that by the custom which discouraged unpondered speech, and by the
repressions of two decades.

The quick hope had died as she had silently recognized the absence of
response among those around her, and then--at last--had leaped again to
the flame of wild audacity of which she saw that she must not give the
faintest sign.  Inwardly she congratulated herself on the wisdom of her
earlier silence, for it was clear that the resolution would only have
been accepted in the form in which it was finally passed with the
certain confidence that one man alone would elect to live--even if he
would do so after considering the solitude which; would be before him,
with the discomforts which his isolation would inevitably involve.

She did not dare to look up the table to Wyndham Smith lest their eyes
should meet, and her glance betray to others the emotions she must not
show.  She sat passive, with downcast eyes, striving to isolate herself
in her own thoughts, and as she reflected thus there came a doubt, and
a quietening fear.

Welcome as the proposal had been, gladly as she would have accepted the
adventure of living in the old dangerous, doubtful ways, she did not
like the direction from which it came.  She had a special aversion, not
to this Colpeck alone, but to the whole Colpeck clan.  It was a Colpeck
who had been active in the investigation which had exposed her mother's
escapade: another Colpeck who had proposed the verdict by which she
died.  It was peculiarly the Colpeck policies, the Colpeck attitude,
which had brought her race to this point from which it sought escape by
the road of death.  Passion towards an individual, either of hate or
love, she had been taught to regard as a vulgar criminality such as had
long ceased to degrade her kind.  But she knew herself to have many
criminal impulses which she dared not show.  Her existence was an
impropriety in itself.  She had the lawless mind, the unnatural
emotions of a sixth child: she had the blood of one who had played the
outlaw among her kind.

Now she thought to make secret approach to the one man who refused the
wisdom of all his race, and, in doing this, to flout their will, even
as her mother had done before, and as he had no purpose to do.  What he
did--whether he should stand out, or cease to oppose that which he
could not stay--would be done with the permission of all.  What she
would propose to him would be to make derision of the gesture of
refusal which they had planned to make in the face of God, so that it
might rouse no more than derisive laughter in the Heaven which they
defied.

Like her mother, she would declare lonely war upon the will and wisdom
of all her kind, but now in a larger way, by which she might defeat the
settled purpose of all.  Was it to this great end that she was born,
and that her mother had sinned?  But--what would a Colpeck say?  Might
he not decline the offer with horror or contempt?  She felt that this
was what the Colpeck who was fourth in the intellectual order--the
Colpeck of yesterday--would be likely to do.  He was not one to condone
anything of a lawless kind.  And she felt that he disliked and
distrusted her in his tepid way, as she disliked him with the pulse of
a freer blood....  She wished it had been almost any but he.

But--the Colpeck of yesterday?  He had seemed somewhat different in the
last hour....  And then she remembered--and it was then that she was
aware of a sharp fear--where the difference lay.  She knew that the
hours of sleep of the coming night were to see the reversal of the
operation of the night before.  The ego of the primitive man which now
ruled over the Colpeck brain would be restored to the savage from whom
it came, and he would be returned to his own time, with no more than
the vexation of a dream that he could not clearly recall.  The restored
Colpeck ego would be able to review the memory of what he had thought
and said today, but would he approve and adopt?  It was doubtful--or it
might be said that it was less likely than that.  It was an improbable
thing.

Vinetta went to her own room with sombre and thoughtful eyes.



Wyndham Smith--or let us say the body that had been his when he walked
in another world--paced with a restless impotence the limits of that
confining room, which it seemed that those who would visit him could
enter or leave at will, but which met him at every point with smooth,
impenetrable walls, through which he could find no breach.

He knew--for he had been told, and he half believed--that he was no
more than the one-day occupant of a body that was not his; that this
strange-seeming environment was his familiar home, and the memories,
that seemed so natural and so near, were no more than those of an alien
ego, which himself had never experienced, and which tomorrow would be
outside his knowledge or recollection, when he should have resumed
control of his native body and brain.

He half believed--indeed, more than half--for his memory revealed that
which had been spoken in this same room on the previous night, when it
had been Wyndham Smith himself who had listened and made response.
And, beyond that, he was conscious of some discords of feeling and
judgment, some reluctances of his own ego to accept the explosive
standards of life and conduct which were approved by the brain which he
now controlled.  Without knowledge or memory of the life of the world
which was round him now, he felt, though he was debarred from its
actual contact or sight, that he would control the body of Wyndham
Smith to somewhat different purposes than those which had produced the
accumulated experiences of which he was conscious now....  He was
roused from these thoughts by a woman's voice.

"I suppose," it said, "you do not know who I am?"

He turned to see a girl's form, with a face the beauty of which was
saddened by a shadow of self-restraint, even of self-repression, but
was yet serene, as being assured of its own efficiency to meet the
challenge of life in whatever form.  The shadow was not one that would
have been seen except by one who looked with the eyes of another world.

"No," he said, with a slow deliberation, "I do not know you at all."

"So," she said, speaking as slowly as he had done, though from a
different cause, for she was using language which was strange to her,
and she saw that the error of but one word might be fatal to all she
hoped--"so I supposed it would be....  Yet you know enough to guess
that you may have seen me with other eyes."

"Yes, I can guess that."

"Yet," she went on, "it is as strangers that we must meet now....  Do
you think me one who would be likely to lie?"

He weighed the slow gravity of her speech with such wits as he had, and
in the light of the experiences of Wyndham Smith in another world.  He
looked into eyes of a very clear grey, under darker brows, which it
would be easier to love than to disbelieve.  "No," he said, "I do not
think you would lie."

"Then I can say that which would give life to me, and, it may be, also
to you....  Do you wish to die, either in your own body, or in that
which you now wear?"

"No," he said, "I would rather live."  In the body of Wyndham Smith
there could be no doubt about that.

"Then if you will listen to me, you may both live, as may I....  I
should warn you first that you must not mention that I have been here,
from whatever cause.  It would be fatal to me, and to that body to
which you may return at your next sleep, nor could I say what result it
would have to that in which you are now....  But I tell you that which
must be known by the brain which you now rule, for its use at a later
time."

She went on in clear, careful, unemotional words, and with an
economical brevity of explanation that allowed no obtrusive detail to
obscure the outline of that which she had to say.  She told of the
conditions of life in her own world, and the despair which had risen at
last into a common resolve to end the appalling quiet of its stormless
seas.  She told of how the ego which had belonged to the body of
Wyndham Smith had inspired that into which it had been transferred to a
rejection of what would else have been no less than the universal will.
She told of other things which it is needless to detail here.

She said at last, "What I must ask you is this, and you must know that
the choice is yours, for I will have nothing done by a trick, or
against your will.  Would you retain the body you now have, or resume
that which was yours till the last hour, of which I have told you all
that I can in a little space?  And before you answer that, I would show
you my own fear that if you should return to the brain and body you had
before, you may lack the resolution to take the hard path of continuing
life, which it is my purpose to share."

"I do not think you need fear that."

"Yet I do; and, if you feel that you love life you may fear it for
yourself.  For you must consider that you had no will to make stand
against the common resolve, when you had that body before."

The Colpeck ego that was in the body of Wyndham Smith considered this.
He could not think that he would embrace death in a needless way; yet
the argument had a force that he could not deny, and he would be fool
indeed if he should ask his return to a body that lacked courage to
guard the existence he valued now.  And he thought that, whether this
were a real danger or not, it was a transfer of very doubtful advantage
to him.  Now that he had the knowledge and memories that were Wyndham
Smith's, he knew that he had a good life; and one to be guarded with
care, even though it might have its pains, its perils, its frustrations
and toils.  The alternative of a time which had become so barren of
pain and grief that men had come to an end of joy would have had little
allure, even without the further knowledge that this life was, at the
best, to be cast aside for an experimental solitary reversion to more
primitive things.

"I am content," he said, "to be where I am, and to go thus to the
backward days, if you can bring it to that."

Vinetta was glad to hear him say that, for it took her forward a short
way on her chosen road, but she was not greatly surprised, and she knew
that the part that was still ahead was of a more dangerous kind, and
might be far harder to win.

"I can promise nothing," she said, "for it must be arranged, if at all,
so that he will also agree, to whom I must go now.  I must talk to him
in a straight way, as I have done here, and what I offer he may refuse,
and perhaps denounce.  But I shall not be easy to thwart, for I try for
a stake which is great to me, being a better life than I thought ever
to have, besides that it will bring that which my mother did to a great
end, such as she would have been glad to foresee.

"As for you, if I fall, you will know well enough, when those who have
charge will come to put you to sleep as they did before, but, if I
succeed, I suppose that you may go to sleep when you next will; and,
beyond that, you will know nothing at all."

Having said that, she went, with no further words nor regard for him
whom she left behind, with whom she had no concern, whether for evil or
good.  Except that she had a bitter thought: "He is Colpeck still, in
whatever body he be, it is all one; and he had no liking for me, for
the dream that we two might have been as one in a world alone, though
it stirred (in a faint way) the body which another ego had ruled, left
him cold of soul, as he ever was.

"Am I the only one of my race who has living blood?  And will the new
ego that is in the Colpeck body today be of strength to rouse it to
better ends, or will its own cowardice prevail, when he considers what
may be the toils of a lonely life?  Will he be glad of the offer I
make, as giving comradeship, and a further hope than could be his, if
they should leave him alone?  Or will his brain still work in the
Colpeck way, so that he will see outrage in the lawless course by which
I think to mock the will of the race, and make Heaven's jest of that
which they seek to do?

"Well, it will be soon known, and if I fall we must all go to the
common doom; for there has been enough of the life we live.  They are
right in that, having weighed themselves, as I think, in a true scale."

With these thoughts she went.  As for Wyndham Smith, he waked in his
bed, being aware that he had slept too long, for broad daylight was in
the room.

"I have had," he said, "a most silly dream."

And, if, after that day, he was somewhat different from what he had
been before, and ordered his life to more futile ends, it was no more
than may often be seen, that men will change as the years go by; and
there may be many reasons for that, and among them one that we do not
guess.




CHAPTER III

Vinetta knew that what she did next must be at some risk to herself,
but it was the path to the sole hope that she had.  Nor may the risk at
this stage have been very great.  She had the advantage of being under
no suspicion at all.  Her lawless birth (which was no more than a doubt
against which the odds were forty-four to one) had long ceased to be
questioned, in view of the discretions of recent years.  And her own
vote had been given in the popular, expected, direction.  Nor did
suspicion readily stir among those who, however intellectually eminent
they might be in comparison with their contemporaries, had long ceased
to be alert to the possibilities of rebellion in a world where lawless
impulses had become as rare as noxious weeds in their glasshouses of
husbandry.

Her dread was less that she might be observed to seek conference with
Colpeck-4XP than that she might fail to persuade him to what she would.

She knew that the operation which would restore the twentieth-century
ego to its barbarous body would be timed for eight a.m., and would
involve preparations by which its subjects would be isolated for a
previous hour.  It was shortly after nine when she returned to her own
apartment, after visiting the body of Wyndham Smith.  She had chosen a
time at which she had known that the routines of her own companions,
which were of an absolute regularity, would secure her from observation.

Now she would wait until ten, at which hour the ninety-nine other
members of her hundred (and therefore the co-occupants of a single
residence) would be engaged at their solitary meals.  She was of a
disposition to outrage convention, and test the quality of this alien
ego, by visiting Colpeck-4XP at a time which would certainly be
unobserved, but which would be considered fundamentally indecent by any
human being now living, except perhaps herself--she was less than sure
of that--and, even more doubtfully, him.

But she would try.  And if he should refuse to talk under such
conditions, or to be observed during the taking of food, he might, at
least, understand that there must be urgent cause for such an
intrusion, and consent to meet her at a later hour, for which there
would still be time.

And that decision gave her a clear period of leisure in which to
arrange her own thoughts; to face boldly her lawless desires, and the
criminalities by which she contemplated their realization; and to order
the arguments by which she must endeavour to win this alluringly
barbarous stranger who had come into possession of Colpeck body and
Colpeck brain to cooperate with her.

And as she thought during the next hour, her mind busy with many
arguments and doubts, many speculations and fears, she would have said
that she was oppressed by the greatest trouble her life had known,
which would be hard to deny, she being faced by the twilight of all her
race, and with no more than precarious hope of avoiding the common
death.  Yet the fact was that she had been waked to a more vivid mood
than she had known in the years behind.  Life roused itself at the
nearness of death, as, in those who deserve its boon, it will ever do.
If she had more fear than her life had known till that hour, she had
also more active hope.  Fear and hope fed from the same dish, on which
they equally thrived.  She had more fear than when she had voted for
her own end, for resignation was gone.

There came a time when her evening meal slid on to the table, as it
would ever do at the same hour, by which she knew that the time for
which she waited had come.

She must not stay to eat, though the routines of life had become so
absolute that she had a puzzled wonder as to what the consequences of
such abstention might prove to be.  She rose at once from the pneumatic
couch on which she had reclined in the relaxation of thought, and made
a way to the apartment of Colpeck-4XP which no bolts obstructed, and
which was independent of opening doors.

The solidity of matter, which had been an accepted faith of the
nineteenth century, had become, in the twentieth, more or less
theoretically denied or experimentally refuted, without being
recognized for the utter delusion which it was subsequently
demonstrated to be.

It was recognized as a mathematical possibility that, as an atom
consists of molecules as far apart from one another, and relatively as
small, as the planets of the solar system, if each of these molecules
should be themselves of no greater density, nor composed of more solid
particles, then, if the universe were compressed to an absolute
solidity, it might--even on the assumption that the material has
objective reality--be compressed into less space than is now occupied
by a pin's head: but this knowledge was incomplete and unapplied.

Vinetta (avoiding the sliding rails by which the food-machines and
other services did their silent, punctual work) walked through walls
that were opaque to sight, and contained sound, but were no hindrance
to her, or to the purple garment she wore.  The privacies of the world
which Vinetta knew were not secured by bolt or lock, but by an iron
rule of routine, which had become stronger than any law.

Now she made a circuitous way through rooms which would be vacant at
such an hour, and walked at last, with a quiet face, but a fast-beating
heart, into the one she sought.

"Do you mind," she asked, "if I talk to you now?  It is important--to
me."

Colpeck-4XP had been sucking mixed fruit-juices through a tube, in
small quantities, at the regulation intervals.  A plate of some pink
substance, which, apart from its colour, had the appearance of grated
cheese stood before him to be eaten later.  He looked up astonished,
perhaps repelled, by this invasion, unprecedented not merely in his
individual experiences but in the records of eccentricity or crime
during several previous centuries.

"I shouldn't have come without cause," she said uncertainly,
controlling with difficulty the desire to withdraw from the sight of
another human being absorbing drink.

"No," he agreed dubiously.  "I suppose not."  He had ceased to drink.
He laid down the glass tubes.  Her sense of having outraged both his
modesty and her own diminished somewhat with this cessation, though, as
his eyes met hers, she could not control a blush such as may not have
been observed for three hundred years on a woman's face.

"I haven't come to Colpeck-4XP," she went on, bravely ignoring her
burning cheeks, "but to Wyndham Smith."

That was what she had resolved to say, and it seemed to have some
effect.

"Yes," he said, though still in that dubious puzzled voice.  "There is
that.  But why have you come?"

"I went to see Colpeck-4XP," she answered, "an hour ago."

"You--  Yes, I see.  But why?"

"He will be willing to remain in his present body, if you concur."



The information was of a nature to cause Wyndham Smith, now that the
first shock of traditional unseemliness was over, to forget the
circumstances in which they met.

He had been thinking rather sombrely, during the last hour, of the
alternatives that lay before him--either to return to a barbarous,
bloody world of which he had no recollection now, and of which he could
only form a vaguely terrible picture, or to face the utter loneliness
of a deserted earth, with no better prospect than solitary death at
last, which would end his species with himself--one of these, or else
to join the general euthanasia which was the deliberately selected doom
of his fellow-men.

But the actual choice he had supposed to be even less than that.  The
accepted rule was that a transferred identity must be adjusted within
two days unless _both_ the egos concerned should prefer to continue in
their exchanged tenements, and such an occurrence had never been.  Was
it likely now?

The information she brought gave him a choice which he might not have
had, and which might not be easy to make.  It was welcome news.  But it
explained nothing.  Before he discussed, he must understand.  "Why," he
asked, "did you get him to tell you that?"

"Because it was essential for me to know whether, if I should agree on
something with you tonight, I should have to deal with someone else
tomorrow."

Yes.  He saw that.  That was sense.  But what bargain could she wish to
make?  "To what," he asked, "do you want me to agree?"

"Before I say that, will you tell me whether you mean to go back to the
other life?"

"It sounds the most natural thing to do."

"History tells us that it was very horrible.  Pain.  Heat.  Cold.
Quarrels.  Bad food.  Diseases.  All sorts of muddle and dirt.  Even
insects under your clothes."

"We haven't decided that this life is any good."

"But that must have been worse in ever so many ways."

"And yet people wished to live."

"But you are going to live.  You've arranged that."

"Not in a very attractive manner."

"Then it is just to oblige Colpeck-4XP to come back to that, if he
thinks even the twentieth century wouldn't be so bad?  It's you who've
done that for him, and then you won't face it yourself."

"That's foolish.  He can end his life here, if he will.  He'll be no
worse off than he was before.  In fact, better.  I've given him a
chance that he wouldn't have had the initiative to get for himself."

This was a disconcerting reply.  She had hoped something from this
argument of justice, knowing that the brain which Wyndham Smith now
controlled was of a particular scrupulosity on points of honour.  But
his reply was difficult to rebut.  She had a better hope when he added,
"But I haven't said yet that I won't let him have his way."

She said, "There won't be much pleasure in being the only creature
alive, even though the machines go on working, as I suppose they will,
more or less."

"I doubt that....  No.  I don't see that there will."

Their eyes met.  Prompted by the insurgent ego of twentieth-century
barbarism which now controlled it, the brain of Colpeck-4XP became
alive, to the implication of this amazing interview.

"Suppose," she said, refusing to withdraw the gaze which he met so
disconcertingly, "that you were not quite alone?"

He did not affect to misunderstand.  He answered directly, "You could
not do that, even if I would agree--if you would dare.  You have voted
for your own death."

"But I was the rebel child."

It was an audacious assertion, even though it might be a true guess.
Yet what penalty could it now bear, even though it were believed, even
though it should be broadcast to the 4,999,998, who would be shocked by
its shameless boast?  There can be little for fear or hope, for
resentment or retribution, among those who have united to end their
race.

After this, there were some minutes of silence.  The ego of Wyndham
Smith warred with the brain, the acquired character, the traditions of
Colpeck-4XP, and the conflict was confused beyond speedy determination
or assurance of victory for either side.

Vinetta understood something of this.  She judged correctly that to ask
too much at this moment might be to get nothing at all, which she must
not risk.

But these new sharp emotions of hope and doubt had a fighting quality
which would not be still.  She asked, "You will not go back?"

He considered this.  "No," he said, with deliberation.  "I will stay
here.  I will see it out.  That is, if he agree."

"He will agree," she said confidently.  Her voice had a note of
victory, of exaltation, such as had not been heard for centuries from a
human throat.

With cautious boldness, she pushed forward her lines of attack, asking
more, though much less than all.  "You will not expose me that I have
come here?"

"No," he answered, with the same reluctant-seeming deliberation as
before, as though being forced along a path that he feared to tread, "I
will not do that."

"I wish," she said, "you would eat.  Why should you stay for me?  It is
I, not you, who transgress.  The time is short now.  You will miss your
meal."

"So," he answered, "will you."  He added, "I cannot eat while you are
here.  It is not done."

She saw, as he said this, that he waged a fight which she must help him
to win.  She must not forget that he was handicapped with a Colpeck
brain, or rather with one that had been trained to value the Colpeck
traditions, cautions and inhibitions.

She said, "There was a time when men ate in each other's presence."

"There was a time," he replied, "as you have reminded me, when insects
might crawl upon human flesh."  His hand made a spasmodic shrinking
movement as he said this.  It was a vile thought for one before whose
birth most insects had left the world.

"There was a later time when it became a marriage custom to eat
together, though all other men, except young children, would feed
apart."

"But," he replied, "that custom is long since dead in more decent
times.  It is left behind."

She asked, "Where will our customs be in a week's time?  We do well to
boast!  But there will be one custom that is ended now."

She reached over.  She took his spoon.  She ate a mouthful of food.
After that, she went with averted eyes.  Neither did he look at her.
They were both ashamed at what she had done.  But she had raised a
chaos within his heart that he could not still.



"I am not Colpeck-4XP.  I am Wyndham Smith."  So he told himself a
score of times as he paced his room during the night, sometimes in
explanation, sometimes in self-excuse, sometimes in the endeavour to
mould desire to the point of settled resolve.

Yet it was hard to realize, if not to believe.  Its truth was evident
in the fact alone that he was awake and disturbed with conflicting
thoughts.  Every memory, every tradition of conduct, every argument
with which his mind was stored was on the side of the race to which he
was otherwise so remote, yet which, by one irrevocable word, had become
his in its hour of death.

He saw that he had three questions to vex his mind, of which he must
dispose in an orderly rotation.

(1) Did he really intend to survive the general race-suicide which he
had been solitary to oppose?

(2) If so, did he wish Vinetta to be his wife in the future days?

(3) If he did, was there any possible method by which she could escape
the common fate, after she had consented thereto?

He saw that, if he should answer the first question in the negative,
the other two did not arise, and that it should therefore have prior
consideration.  Similarly, if the second should be negatived, the third
need not be asked, and that was further evidence that he had numbered
them rightly.

Yet their precedence was less simple than that, for, had the first
stood alone, he would have had a week for its leisured consideration,
whereas an affirmative answer to the second might entail prompt action
in various ways, so that, for its sake, the prior question must be
promptly resolved.

Again, the reply to the second might be influenced by those which could
be given to the other two, so that, at the last, he saw that he must
reverse their order.

As he debated these questions, he saw, more clearly than he had done
before, the fundamental upheaval of all the habits and experiences of
life, as he had hitherto lived it, which a lonely survival would mean;
which, in most ways, would be little different if the survivors were
two.

Vaguely, he saw that the machines must go--that fertility must be
released, to recapture an earth from which it had been driven as an
insanitary, obscene, insubordinate force, too barbarous for modern man
to endure.  The results of such changes must be beyond the forecasting
of human wit.  A new balance of nature must be established.  It might
not occur without much wastage, amidst which his own life, or that of
his children, might be overwhelmed.  He had thought that, whether there
should be one or two that survived, there would be no more than minor
resulting differences.  And so, in many ways, it must be.

But with the thought of children, he observed one enormous variation.
If he were to survive alone, it could but defer for a few more years
the final passing of the race of men from the earth which they had
lacked wisdom, to make a tolerable home.  But if there were two--that
would be, indeed, to mock the whole purpose of this gesture by which
man was to reject the gift of life, casting it back with contempt at
the feet of God.  Suppose the two who lived should found, to better
purpose, a better race?  Those who died might be judging themselves
rather than their Creator, and their verdict might not be wrong.

As he thought this, the brain, of Colpeck-4XP, driven by the ego of
Wyndham Smith, stirred itself to a passionate hope, to hard resolve.
It roused itself to a great game, which must be played for the greatest
stake that a man could have.  And the mere thought of taking on such
conflict against fate, and against his kind, brought a sense of
bewildering freedom, of escape from the smooth, soft, eventless
servitude which had gained no more than the absence of all the adverse
impacts which had pained or thwarted those heroic ancestors who had
endured under different skies.  He saw that, in a blind folly, man had
sought to change the nature and purpose of human life, saying that it
was evil only of which they would make an end, and, arm-in-arm, good
and evil together had left the world....

From many conflicting thoughts he was aware of one resolution finally
formed.  He would live, if he could--with her.

Would he live alone?  He was less sure.  He was less inclined to that
than before.  After this new dream, it had a barren, abortive aspect,
which he would be tardy to choose.

Could he contrive that not only his life, but hers should endure?  It
was hard to see how that could be done.  Yet a way there must surely
be....  But first he would communicate with him who now had the body of
Wyndham Smith--which it was not easy to think that any ego would wish
to hold and agree that they should continue as they now were.

From the high dream he had had, he came to a sharp fear that this
agreement would not be made; but he found that Vinetta had been right
about that, for the ego of Colpeck-4XP was content to flee from a dying
world to one which was more familiar to the brain that now served its
will.



Wyndham Smith--as it may be preferable to call him, if it be allowed
that the ego is more than the body in which it dwells--did not sleep
till late, and waked some minutes after the universal hour.  It was a
fault of routine which it would have been his normal duty to report to
the physician of his hundred, who would have examined him, and either
rebuked whatever deviation of conduct might have caused this
eccentricity, or recommended either immediate operation, or an early
visit to the nearest euthanasia furnace if he had observed any
indication of failing health, for it had long been an axiom of worldly
wisdom that, however absolute the control of pain might have become,
the beginning of a disease is the better end of it at which to die.

But even the most docile member of the community might have felt it
needless to take such precaution when it was understood that the
thousand of such refuges which the world contained were to be visited
by the whole of its inhabitants in a week's time.  To Wyndham Smith it
came as no more than a moment's recollection of the precepts that
childhood learned, to be rejected in the instant that followed.  The
illegality which he had in mind was more serious in itself, and less to
be condoned by the resolution that the last night's council had taken.
He waited until the hour of the morning meal arrived, drank and ate
with a brevity which would leave him a clear forty minutes free from
fear of interruption in what he did, and went to Vinetta's room.

Having reached it, he knew that he had come to a place where no one
would intrude unasked, if the present order should continue for many
years; nor could those who were within be seen or overheard.  These
personal rooms, with their opaque though-penetrable walls, were the
only real privacies that the earth contained at a time when any sound,
near or far, excepting themselves, could be picked up by a million
receivers, if they should chance to be directed upon the area from
which it came.

His caution must be that he should not exceed his time, and that
Vinetta should neither be observed to be in consultation with him, nor
to neglect the normal occupations that passed the tedium of her waking
hours.

She looked up as he entered with sudden joy, and her eyes shone with
something of the buoyant courage of youth, meeting in his own an
excitement, if not an elation, that equalled hers, for she guessed at
once what his coming meant, and that the first battle was almost won.

She said, "I was sure you would.  I have not let myself doubt.  Not
even when I was most afraid in the night."

He answered gravely, but with the same bouyancy in his voice and the
thought he spoke, "Yesterday it was five millions to one.  We have
halved it now!  But we must not think that it will be easy to do."

Her bowl of food was half-emptied.  She pushed it towards him with its
single spoon.  She said, "You must eat with me.  You reckon well.  But
you must not call us two.  We are one from now."

He took up the spoon, but not as readily as she would have liked, so
that she added, "It is no more than your custom was."

"Yes," he agreed, with a puzzled look, as of one who strives to recall
a forgotten dream, "I suppose it was."  He put the spoon to his mouth.

But having taken this in a ritual way, he pushed the bowl back.  "I had
some," he said, "before I came here.  I need not rob you of food.  I
have come to talk."

"So we must," she agreed.  "And they will not guess....  It would be
useless to propose that they leave me alive.  They would never consent
to that."

"No.  They would destroy you at once, if they had the least suspicion
of what we plan.  They would tell the machines.  After the vote you
gave, they would have all men's support."

She knew that to be true.  The order of the First Hundred would be
obeyed by those who attended on the machines, and the automata had a
terrible power.  It would be useless to evade or resist.  They both
knew that; too surely for the wasting of words.

She asked, thinking of the machines, "Will they order them to destroy
themselves, or will they let them go on?"

"I have wondered that.  But we shall hear.  As I am to remain alive,
they may be willing to consult my preference in what they do."

"I suppose that, as orders are issued by our Hundred alone, they may
decide that we who belong thereto shall be the last to remain alive."

"So we must hope that they will.  But I cannot urge it.  It is not my
concern.  And it might be unwise that it should be proposed by you."

"We must hope that its wisdom will be seen by others."

"But even so--"

"Yes.  They are sure to require the whole of us to enter together.  But
we have time to devise a plan."

"So we must....  It was a foolish thing that I proposed--that
sterilizing of the sea.  I did not foresee that the discussion would
develop the way it did."

"Yes.  But there is one thing sure.  It cannot be done in a week.  I
wonder how Pilwin-C6P will get over that?"

"He may propose that the machines be so directed that they will
continue whatever he may require them to do.  There would be no
difficulty there."

She looked at him with startled eyes, guessing his thought.  "And you
might stop them when all but ourselves were dead?  _You would interfere
with the machines?_"

Her voice shook now with a fear with which she had been hypnotized from
her childhood's days.  It was such as the twentieth century could only
partially understand.  A child who attempted to embrace a dynamo's
armature would certainly have been pulled away: it would not have been
encouraged to put its head under a steam-hammer, or to fondle a
chaff-cutter, and there were some factory laws for the fencing off of
machines of particularly bad reputation, as savage animals at a zoo
might be barred from the public reach.  But the machines of that day
were primitive in character, most of them capable of nothing more than
one operation monotonously repeated, and generally even that would
require the constant watchfulness of a human colleague.  They were
unable to feed each other.  Some of them were even unable to oil
themselves.



Naturally, with the passing centuries, changes came.  The machines of
this day had become automatic, large and small, capable of many
complicated operations, and though without any originating
intelligence, yet able to act upon intelligent directions in sustained,
discriminating ways.

It was nearly seven hundred years since the genius of the Japanese
designer, Hirato, had utilized the sense of smell for the extermination
of the Asian tiger.  He devised small, crawling, automatic machines
with strong steel-toothed jaws, which would follow any strong scent to
which they were introduced, and let them loose on the tiger's tracks.
A second machine, set on the same track as the first, with an hour's
interval, might lead a long way or short, but would be likely to come
at last to a place where a tiger had struck impotently at a cold, hard,
crawling beast that nuzzled maddeningly into his side, and the
relentless jaws, roused by the blows, had snapped back with a grip they
would not loose until that into which they bit had left them quiet for
a long hour, which no living, tortured tiger could be expected to do.

That had been a novelty then.  There was even an old painting extant
which showed the last tigers collected on a little tableland to which
the machines could not climb, and about forty of these implacable,
single-purposed automata ringing them round, and waiting with
unrelenting patience to resume their tireless, sleepless pursuits, when
desperation or the pangs of thirst should madden the beasts to bound
over them and continue their futile flights.

It was by means of many variations and extensions of this idea, aided
by the use of disease viruses of many kinds, that sentient life had
been almost completely destroyed upon the land-surfaces of the earth,
even where they had not been sterilized by wide-spreading layers of
concrete which had been poured, like molten lava, from huge
mountain-side cauldrons set up in Rocky Mountains, Andes, Himalayas and
Alps, and forming, as they solidified, hard crusts in which no life
could root, and through which none could pierce upward to find the sun.

The machines of this day were, or had been in past centuries, initiated
by human thought.  They carried out the orders of the First Hundred, as
they were interpreted to them by lesser men.  But they did this with
little present interference.  They designed and constructed each other.
They prepared and supplied themselves with the fuel which they
required.  Their operations were so extensive, so interdependent, so
fundamental, that any ill-formed or unauthorized interference might
have incalculable and disastrous results.  It was one of the first
nursery lessons that nothing could excuse tampering with a machine, or
obstruction of its operations.  To forget this was the one unpardonable
delinquency for which the punishment would be instant death.

So it had been understood.  It was a law which had taken no toll of the
present generation of human lives, for it had been universally obeyed.
The inhibition had become too strong to be broken at any likely
occasion.  When Vinetta exclaimed, in a troubled half-incredulous
wonder of realization, "_You would interfere with the machines?_"
Wyndham understood very well the instinctive terror that shook her
mind.  But he was already resisting the impulses of his new brain more
instantly, more successfully, than he had at first been able to do.
The knowledge that he had only just come into control of that which
another had assembled and moulded was sufficient to encourage him to
question its precepts, unless they were suggested to him with clear
reason in their support.

He answered, "I should be cautious in what I did.  But one thing is
sure.  They will be confused, sooner or later, when men are dead.  They
will end themselves.  We should expect that.  We should not propose to
continue them, which would require knowledge I have not got, and might,
in any event, be beyond our power, being no more than two.

"We shall not have the same dread that men have had in the past days
lest confusion arise among them, but we must beware that they do us no
harm, in a blind way, when they are destroying themselves."

"What a world it will be," she said, "when they have done that!  These
walls!  There will be no houses at all.  There will be cold when they
have gone!  There will be parts of the world, if not all, where we
could not live without making heat.  We must find how this part would
be.  Perhaps, if we were near a volcano--  They must leave the cars, so
that we shall not be kept in one place."

"Yes," he agreed.  "We have much to think of.  But you must not show
that it is of moment to you."

She had, in fact, echoed one of his own thoughts, which had gone
farther.  They might ask him to choose, before they would become busy
to make an end, in what part of the earth he would wish to be.  It
might be wise--he had some reason to think it would--to choose a spot
many thousands of miles away.  But to make such a journey, leaving
Vinetta behind, would be to make it improbable that they would meet
again, even though she should find means to preserve her life when her
companions died.

Facilities of transport were not numerous in these days.  The aeroplane
as a means of human transit had been obsolete for three hundred years.
What use was there is rising, at foolish peril, into the skies, when
you could do nothing at last but come back to earth at the same or
another place?  It was futility _in excelsis_, and therefore to be
rejected even by the most futile age that the earth had seen.  For all
places of descent had become alike.  In a world in which all
differences of season or climates had been adjusted, all physical
discomforts expelled, and on which vegetation had been largely
suppressed, there was little disposition to move about.  Oral
communication had become absolute over the whole earth.  Competition
had been eliminated.  Occupation had almost entirely ceased.  The five
thousand communities, each grouped round its central euthanasia
furnace, and each housed in ten separate tenements, existed, but did
not live.

In contrast to the desire for continual motion which had been the
tragic folly of the twentieth century--a period which had honestly and
simply believed that the "progress" of humanity would be demonstrated
in future years by the ever increasing speed at which it would whirl
about, and which had pledged the sincerity of this curious faith in the
blood of a million dead--the final generation of men required a
compelling reason for motion rather than for remaining still.

It possessed road-tracks, and a kind of automatic car in which men or
goods could be conveyed from one place to another, but these were
extensively employed, and most often were clocked out to their
destinations without bearing a human occupant.

Wyndham rose.  He said, "I must go now.  We have seven days.  We need
do nothing before tonight, when we shall learn more of what the
programme will be.  After that, I will come again."

"No," she said.  "I will come to you."

They parted without meeting of hands or lips, but with a moment's
hesitation, a feeling of awkwardness, of shyness, very strange to
themselves, and which was the measure of the novel intimacy which they
had established in an age which had become complacent in the belief
that it had outmoded love.



It might have been expected, with some reason in its support, that
those who had resolved upon such an act as would destroy not only
themselves but the race to which they belonged would have shown
symptoms, in the brief interval which remained, of depression, if not
despair.

But Wyndham Smith, moving among those who had been the lifelong
acquaintances--"friends" would be too warm a word for that tepid
relationship--of the body and memories he now possessed, observed an
opposite issue.  There was a slight, but definite, increase of
animation among them, as though, having resolved to die, by the
resolution, however faintly, they had come to life--to such life, at
least, as they were ever destined to have.

He was conscious also of a lack of the usual cordiality--repulsion
would be too strong a word--in their attitude towards himself, which he
was at first disposed to attribute to their knowledge that, though he
moved with the form, and spoke with the memories of Colpeck-4XP, he was
actually the strange ego of a distant and most barbarous time.  But
further reflections and observations showed him that it had a different
and deeper cause.  It was his decision to live, even in the solitude of
an abandoned world, which divided them from him.  He experienced
something of the loneliness of one who rejects the religion his kindred
own.

He would have been more conscious of, perhaps more depressed by, this
attitude, had not his mind been sustained by the thought of Vinetta's
loyalty, and occupied by vague plans to preserve her life, and equally
vague speculations as to what their common future would be likely to be.

So far as he could anticipate the course of events, the coming week
would see no change in the eventless routines of life, except such as
might be involved in arranging for the general dissolution, and this
would require little beyond preparations of the temples of euthanasia
for use on a larger scale than that for which they had been designed.
There would also be the question of the machines, which, apart from any
request from himself, might be left to work out their own destructions,
and that of the sterilization of the oceans, for which his own
blundering diplomacy was primarily responsible.  He supposed that
arrangements would be made for the people of each centre to enter the
euthanasia furnaces hundred by hundred, the council doing so at the
last, when they had assured themselves that not only had the other nine
hundred of their community gone on their unreturning journey, but that
an enduring silence had settled upon the five thousand centres of human
life.

Among that final hundred Vinetta would be expected to take her orderly
place in the procession of death.  What possible excuse would be
accepted?  What effectual resistance could be made?  What hope was
there that the remaining ninety-eight would proceed to an abortive
annihilation which would leave her alive to propagate their species
anew, and make mockery of their own intention of mocking God?

He thought of many devices, many plans, but, so far, only to put them
aside.  He knew that he had to foil ninety-eight of the best brains in
the world, of which three were better than his.  He could but hope a
woman's wit was working to better purpose than his could do.

He saw that they must depend entirely upon their own resources, for
neither he nor she had any personal influence or authority, which they
could exercise for their own ultimate benefits, apart from the ruling
Hundred to which they belonged.  Under the urgency of his lawless
twentieth-century will, the brain of Colpeck-4XP devised a most cunning
idea by which all he sought might have been gained, by an order which
was within his personal authority, and would have done all that the
occasion required.

The trouble was that it could not be privately issued.  It could not be
privy to himself and those of lower grade who would accept it from him.
For nothing could be privately done.  When the First Hundred
deliberated, the whole of the world's inhabitants listened-in.  In
fact, everyone could hear everything.  The only privacies were in the
feeding and sleeping rooms, and there was no possibility of issuing an
order during the hours that they were occupied, for everyone was in the
same retirement.  It would have no reception at all.

Neither was there hope of escape on the earth's surface for Vinetta and
himself, even though they could have found means of sustaining life,
while facing the hostility of their fellows: not in its most solitary
island, its deepest, remotest cave.

There were no lands which heat or cold, deluge or drought, caused to be
avoided by social men.  Nowhere that would be secure from the
iron-toothed automata which would be set to smell their
sleeping-couches, loosed upon them, and tireless to track them down....

Considering the coldness of his reception among those with whom he took
the routine exercises of the day, Wyndham was led to wonder whether
this feeling might not augment itself during the week to a more active
antipathy, and add further danger to a situation already appearing
sufficiently ominous.  But reflection enabled him to put this doubt
confidently aside.

There was not, he concluded, enough of aggressive spirit among this
race, self-defeated and self-doomed in its attempt to dodge the divine
law that only by opposition is strength sustained, to raise any
dangerous heat of animosity against himself.  Not even though it should
be increasingly realized, as the days passed, that this man who had
elected to remain alive was not, in his essential soul, one of
themselves, but an alien from a barbarous time.

And their well-trained subordination to restrictive law, all the
negative virtues to which they had been moulded by a social order which
had no criminal element, no opposition, no rebel motion of any kind,
would be sufficient for their restraint.

Though the impulses of his own alien ego contemplated rebellion, he had
coolness of judgment to understand how impossible any lawless or
separate action would be to these men and women whose lives of negative
security had been repeated for centuries in a monotony broken only, as
by a long, slow ripple on a surface of windless sea, by the periodic
selecting of mates, the preparation of the public nurseries, and the
training of a new generation to accept the calm atmosphere of an
existence which bartered pleasure for the absence of pain.

A celestial watcher, observing that, as the centuries passed, each of
these periods had been approached with a diminishing alacrity, or even
a positive and progressive unwillingness to encounter the adventurous
responsibilities which they involved, might have seen the logical,
inevitable end.

Wyndham Smith concluded that, so long as his compact with Vinetta
should remain secret, there would be nothing for himself to fear from
his fellowmen.  But should that be known, there would be no mercy to
hope, no defense useful to urge.  They would be destroyed together by
the cold justice which would hold her to have been bound by her own
vote, and it would be a sentence beyond evasion, and without appeal.

But this secret he might hope that they would not learn.  Had it not
left the problem of saving her own life unsolved, there would have been
no more consolation in that.

In such thoughts the day passed, and the hour of the council meeting
returned.




CHAPTER IV

Wyndham Smith took his familiar place with a sense of frustration,
having made a mistake, which was, in itself, an indication of the
changed ego which controlled the processes of the Colpeck brain.  At
intervals during the day; and with increasing inclination during the
last two hours, it had occurred to him that it might be advantageous to
have a talk with Pilwin-C6P before the council should meet.

It would have enabled him to ascertain what the proposals for the
sterilization of the oceans were, and to consider to what extent it
would be to his interest to support or accept them.  It would be a
natural curiosity for him to feel, a natural enquiry to make; and if it
should appear to indicate that he was already shaken in his wild
intention of surviving his fellow-men--well, there might be no harm in
that!

He might even have been able to influence the event, to come to an
understanding with Pilwin-C6P in advance of the meeting, upon a matter
which, from opposite angles, was of more interest to themselves than to
the general body of the community.  But he had remembered that
Pilwin-C6P was not particularly friendly to himself.  Tepidly they had
disliked each other.  This feeling stirred in him now with an increased
virility.  Hesitating, he had let the time pass.

It was a strange feeling to one who had little previous experience of
divided will, disturbing his mind with a profundity difficult for one
of our habits of indecision to understand.  He took his seat now with
consciousness of a mental disturbance which, if he should fail to
control it firmly, might cause him to betray his alien ego by some
abrupt or unseemly word.  He looked round on the familiar faces of
those who went placidly on their deathward, self-chosen way, with a
sense of separation, of latent hostility, which would increase with
each passing hour.

Only the thought of Vinetta was potent to balance and restrain his
mind, and she was the one whom he must not see.

The chairman, commencing without preamble, as the habit was, said
first, "To operate the resolution of yesterday, I have had an
instruction prepared for your approval.  I believe it to be the general
desire that our intention should be fulfilled with the dignity of
deliberation, but as speedily as may be consistent therewith.  It is
evident that our thousands cannot terminate themselves simultaneously
in a seemly manner.  The congestion of the disintegrators would be too
great.  But in companies of one hundred each, at intervals of twelve
hours, it should be possible without exception, at each of the five
thousand centres.

"I propose that the order of the procession shall be left for the free
determination of each centre, which will naturally consider our and its
own convenience in withholding to the last those who are in any way
concerned in control or provision of the essential services.

"I propose that the procession shall begin at six a.m. tomorrow, and
that the succeeding hundreds shall gain oblivion at intervals of twelve
hours thereafter, so that--as we shall necessarily be the last of our
own thousand--our own release must be deferred until five days hence,
at this hour."

Having said this, the chairman waited for about five minutes, during
which no one spoke, and after this interval of assenting silence he put
the question to each in turn, and the chorus of "I agree"--"I agree"
went down the length of the table and came up on the nearer side,
until, arriving at Wyndham Smith, the chairman said, "I suppose that
you do not vote?"  And he replied, "I do not dissent," as he knew that
the rules of procedure for such occasions required him to do.

In fact, the resolution was one to which, had it not been liable to
misunderstanding, he would have assented with pleasure.  It deferred
Vinetta's danger until the last, and that with the satisfaction of
thinking that the forces of opposition would be diminished by half a
million twice daily, until at last they would be a mere half-million to
two!  And considering how the half-million would be scattered over the
earth's surface, and engaged in simultaneous self-destruction, perhaps
ninety-eight to two would be a truer arithmetic.  With the odds moving
so rapidly in the right direction, Wyndham might be excused a moment of
satisfaction, feeling the terms of the resolution to be of greater
importance than the fact that Vinetta, by voting for it, had confirmed
her assent.

Having disposed of the main proposition with such pleasant unanimity,
the chairman came to the further business arising from the resolutions
of the previous day.

"It having been resolved," he said, "that we should precede our own
departure by doing whatever the circumstances may allow to abate the
vexation of life in inferior forms, and in particular from its further
gestation in the vast reservoirs of the oceans, and this being a matter
on which our brother Pilwin-C6P is our acknowledged authority, it may
be convenient to hear his advice thereon."

It was an invitation which appeared to be expected, and to which
Pilwin-C6P was quite ready to respond.  With no more pause than the
etiquette of the assembly required he proceeded to make a statement,
delivered in the usual leisurely manner, but with a faintly oracular
tone that stirred Wyndham Smith to a fresh antipathy, which he rebuked
in vain as evidence of the inability of his barbarous ego to accept the
restraints and standards of a more civilized time.  Did he wish to be
incapable of strong feelings?  Even of strong dislikes?  He was not
sure that he did!  But he must cease to debate himself.  He must
listen.  What was the sententious fool saying now?

"We know that life, at least within its own most limited range, which
is no more than a short distance above the earth's surface, and a
shorter below, has a most insurgent quality.  It exists in almost
infinite variety, in almost incredible minuteness, in an incalculable
number of individual units.  It has a persistence, and an adaptability,
very difficult to restrain or overcome.

"Yet ... we have found ways.  To an extent we have succeeded.  If it
were practicable to cover the whole surface of land and sea with a
coating of concrete no more than two feet in thickness, it is probable
that the problem would have been finally solved.  But that is not
practicable.



"My ancestor, Pilwin-V2H, thought that it could be accomplished in
other ways.  He had a scheme by which at last the earth would have been
divested of life, excepting only ourselves, and any inferior organisms
which might be required directly for our own use.

"It would be vain to consider now whether, or how far, he were right or
wrong.  He would have commenced upon the oceans, and the collective
wisdom of his contemporaries decided that it was an experiment too
hazardous in its results for them to permit.

"But the record of his proposals--of the methods he would have
adopted--remains.  And the two main objections, which were raised at
the time, no longer apply.

"It was said first that the consequences could not be entirely foreseen
or controlled, and that they might prove to be inimical to the health
or comfort of mankind when the destruction would have reached an
irrevocable point.  With that opening objection we are no longer
concerned.

"It was also urged that the means available were inadequate to the
proposed occasion.  That view was adopted by a large majority of the
council of that time, and may have been right, though it was one with
which Pilwin-V2H, and others who specialized in his department, did not
agree.  But this, again, can give no guidance to us, for we shall be
able to utilize machinery which either did not exist at that time, or
was required for human service.

"The wind-controls in the polar regions and the Sahara, together with
the Australian, Gobi, and Mississippi temperature plants could all be
diverted to this purpose, and would provide a total of sustained
efficiency which even the oceans might not be wide or deep enough to
resist successfully."

As he ceased, a strange sound came from the lower end of the table, the
sound of fear in a human voice.  With less than a seemly interval after
C6P had spoken, it asked, "You would not release the winds while we
still live?"

"No.  It would be absurd to propose that.  The machinery would be
diverted from its present uses on our last day."

A graver, more self-controlled voice asked, "The machinery would
continue to operate for a sufficient time?"

"We can see no reason for doubting that.  It might continue even until
the exhaustion of its sources of power--that is, the deposits of coal
and oil that the earth contains."

"In fact," a young man with Arabian features beneath a high forehead,
and with eyes of an indescribable sadness, whose position at the
chairman's left indicated that he had the second-best intellect in the
world, asked languidly, "You would electrocute life?"

"In the oceans.  Yes.  I do not say that it would be done quickly.
But, in the end, yes."

"Why not on land?"

"That might also be possible."

"And in the air?"

"I am less confident about that.  But conditions might be made such
that it could not endure."

"It has a sound of futility unless it be wholly done."

"The sterilization of the oceans," the chairman interposed, "is a
matter on which we are already agreed.  We discuss methods only, on
which we must, as I think, be guided by the advice we have heard.  But
if it be possible to extend the operations to land and air, it would be
in order to propose that."

"So I would," the Arabic-featured one answered, "if it were advised
that it could be done."

"I could not promise that," Pilwin-C6P answered frankly, "unless we, or
some of us, should remain alive, under less pleasant conditions than we
now have, a sufficient time to direct the operations."

This statement was received with a long silence.  Across the Arabian
face there passed the faint semblance of a mirthless smile.  He shook
his head, as though at his own thoughts.  It was clear that the price
was more than any there was disposed to pay.

Wyndham Smith judged that, though the proposal of their deaths had been
first made in the form of a gesture of refusal against the unkindly
skies, yet they had been impelled to embrace this extremity much less
by desire to affront their Creator than by weariness of their own lives.

Vaguely, it gave him a better hope of the issue of the battle he had to
win.  It encouraged him with the thought that those around him were not
greatly concerned in this question of continuing life, and to remember
that, but for his own blundering argument, the proposition might not
have been considered at all.

"Before," he said, "this proposal be put to a final vote, may I ask how
its operations will affect the possibilities of comfortable life on the
earth during the coming years, on which point you will, agree that I
have an interest that you do not share?"



The question did not meet with an immediate reply, which indeed, by the
ordinary procedure, he did not expect; but he felt that it was
received, if not with any reaction sufficiently strong to be called
hostility, yet with an indifference, an aloofness, which might come to
the same result.

"You will observe," the chairman said temperately, breaking the
lengthened pause, "that it is by your own desire that you will remain,
and if you prefer a course which is contrary to that which will be
taken by all your kind, it may not be their first concern to make it
easy for you.  Yet"--turning to Pilwin-C6P--"it is a question that
should, as I see it, be answered plainly."

Pilwin-C6P did not object to do this, but his voice, as he replied, had
a faint tone of contempt, as that of one who turns his mind to a small
thing.  "The earth, as I suppose, will not have much comfort when we
are gone.  We could not change that, if we would.  But it is large, for
one man.  And his lonely life cannot be a matter of much beyond a few
weeks--or a few years, if you will.  Why should he not go, while he
can, to one of the islands in the tropic seas?

No man has stepped on them, perhaps for some hundreds of years, but
they will be there still.  Their climate will be such that a man's life
may endure even though we remove the controls of heat and wind that we
now have.  And even what we do to the seas will be slow to reach or
affect them."

Wyndham Smith listened to this, and thought that he had heard nothing
deserving thanks.  The idea that he might find a tolerable refuge on
one of those remote, abandoned islands had already occurred to his own
mind.  But, if he should agree to take such a journey, what possibility
was there that Vinetta would escape singly and join him there?

Or did he desire that, for their own temporary convenience, they should
locate themselves in some solitary place from which they or their
descendants would have little hope of reaching a wider world?  And an
island set in the sea from which life in the coming weeks, or years,
was to be electrocuted away, with results incalculable, but certain to
be adverse, if not fatal to that island life?  There would be no more
fish.  The fish-eating sea-birds, if any such still lived in those
lonely seas, would die.  Where would death end?

From wandering into such details his mind was recalled by the fact that
another spoke.  It was Avanah-F3B, whom he had reason to like.  A man
seated almost opposite him, of grave placidity, with thoughtful,
introspective eyes.  His place indicated that he was almost the lowest
intellectually, among the First Hundred, but, actually, where there
were five million to be graded, there was not much difference in that.
He was the chief official historian, his knowledge of the world's past
being very great.

He said gently; "If our brother have the great courage to remain alive
for a time when he will be the last of his kind, might he not take such
control of the machines as the occasion require, so that they may all
do that which we aim to reach?"

It was a second suggestion that Wyndham Smith had no pleasure in
hearing; but he recognized fairly that it was both reasonable in
itself, and likely to arise in the mind of one who regarded the course
of human existence as a panoramic whole to which an orderly finish was
now being put.  His mind, trained in the historical sense, must look
with the same curiosity forward as back.

But what should he say in reply?  Whatever he might have randomly urged
on the previous day, he had no desire for the policy of sterilization
to succeed--certainly no wish to assist it.  And he was, by his
personal predilection, as well as by his acquired proclivities, of a
scrupulous honour, which would object, even at this emergency, to
pledge itself to that which it would not do.

The chairman was acute enough to perceive the hesitation which delayed
his reply, and gave it a natural interpretation.  "It may be," he said,
"that Colpeck-4XP is not finally resolved that he will live a solitary
life when all his kind will have left the earth.  If that be so, it
becomes a pledge that he could not give."

Wyndham Smith saw that he must speak.  Certainly it was a pledge that
he would not give.  Was it one that, apart from the doubt which had
been suggested, he could directly refuse?  How would such a refusal be
received? ... But was there really a doubt?  Suppose that Vinetta
should falter, after further consideration of the hardships they might
have to face?  Suppose--a larger fear--that she should fail to escape
her accepted doom?  Would he have the heart to remain alive in an empty
world?  Since her proposal had been made, the idea of such solitude had
become hard to endure.  He said, with sincerity in his voice, "I am not
yet of a final mind."



Wyndham left the council feeling that, if he had no special cause for
satisfaction, yet that it had gone as well as, in reason, he could have
hoped, and better than he had had some occasion to fear.

He had heard the second resolution--that for the sterilization of the
seas--passed with the same unanimity as the first, he being excused
from voting upon it in the same way as before, but that had been after
it was agreed that he should confer privately with Pilwin-C6P to
discuss the possibility of assisting the project if, or when, he should
finally resolve upon the folly of avoiding the common death.  It was a
pledge which bound him to little, and which he had not seen his way to
avoid.

He had not looked at Vinetta, nor, he supposed, had she looked at him.
It was a cause of satisfaction that she had been discreetly silent, and
had voted for the two resolutions in a manner which had drawn no notice
upon herself.  So far, he supposed, there was not, in any human mind,
suspicion of what they proposed to do.

So far good.  But suppose her attitude had been no less than sincere?
Suppose that, with further thought, she had seen the terrible folly of
the escapade which she had impulsively proposed?  He knew how his own
body, unacquainted as it was with pain or discomfort of any kind,
shrank from the anticipation of what might--what _certainly would_--be
before it, if his resolution should persist.  And his body,
inexperienced in hardship though it might be, was controlled by an ego
of more vigorous, more optimistic, more barbarous days, while she had
no such driving force, no such alien vitality.  Would it be wonderful
if she should reconsider?

He forced his mind away from this self-torturing doubt to wonder what
his experiences might have been in that far life of which he could now
have no memory.  Would he, he wondered, recall them, however faintly,
if they should be recounted to him?  Suppose he should ask Avanah-F3B
to describe what life had been in the England of that distant day?
Would it be vaguely familiar?  Would it perhaps come back to him as, by
some accident of associated ideas, one is reminded of a dream which
otherwise the waking consciousness would never have known?  More
probably, and more to the present point, might not knowledge of the
barbarisms through which he had actually lived until yesterday give him
resolution and courage for those which must be his again in so short a
time?  Certainly, he would have a talk with Avanah-F3B.

But suppose--his mind swung back again to its previous doubt--suppose
she had seen the wisdom of that which was the considered judgment of
_everyone of five millions_ except themselves?  A flicker of rebellion,
a stir of insurgent life, might be natural enough, if she were really
that sixth, unintended child.  But was it likely that it would endure?
Women are traditionally more disposed, even than men, to walk in the
trodden path....  Well, she had said she would come to him.  She must
stand the test.  He would remain where he was, and, should she fail,
they would all go to a common grave; for he saw now, with a convincing
clarity, the folly, the barrenness of a single protest.  A misery to
himself, to end in wretched, abortive death--and a jest to the mocking
gods.

So he resolved.  And in the mood of the torturing doubt which may be
worse than despair he remained till the evening meal appeared; and
after that, for some time, in a deepening gloom, for she was not quick
to come.

But she did so at last, with serene eyes, and such a smile bending her
lips that he was led to contrast the memory of how she had appeared to
him during the earlier days; for it was a smile which, till then, he
had never seen.  He did not know that her coming had brought the same
light to his eyes, and that he smiled in response to her, as
Colpeck-4XP had never been seen to do.

"I thought," he said, "you would never come!"

"You didn't doubt me?" she asked, a shadow of disappointment darkening
her eyes.  And then, before he could reply, with a deeper realization
of what they were, "We have begun to live, you and I, even before they
are quite dead!"

He had risen when she entered, leaving a meal which, having been taken
more rapidly than the regulations required, was nearly done, but a tiny
dish of some opalescent material suggestive at once of china and
polished steel, still showed a little untouched pyramid of mottled-grey
powder.  She looked at it as she asked, "Are you going to swallow that?"

"Yes," he said, "why not?"  He looked bewildered, and then his eyes
changed to a more understanding surprise.  "I had not thought--" he
began, and stopped, seeing all that her question meant.

It was this powder which, taken regularly, secured the body from
extreme sensations of any kind.  It could be discommoded neither by
heat nor cold (which might have exposed it to greater dangers had not
all extremes of temperature been banished, and fire rarely seen until
the last hour of life, unless it were at a volcano's mouth); and the
severest pain would be reduced to a slight, persistent discomfort, such
as would be a warning that the physician's visit should not be long
delayed.

That might mean nothing worse than an increased dose of the easeful
drug, and a process of painless repair, or, if the damage were
pronounced to be beyond remedy, there would be the journey to the
euthanasia furnace, the taking of increased quantities of mottled
powder, and a gradual sliding down in a failing consciousness to the
pleasant glow of a furnace they would not feel....

"We might save it," he said thoughtfully, "for a great need, at a later
time."

"I thought of that," she answered.  "And then not.  I threw it away."

She spoke with a hardening of eyes and lips which he did not miss.  Had
he been familiar with that ancient, profound fable of evolution, he
might have recalled how Eve had plucked the fruit from the tree of
knowledge, and given it to a less resolute hand.  But he saw her to be
determined in what she did, and knew that, happen what might, he would
not doubt her again.

Still, he was unsure of the wisdom of this.  Surely, such a power, such
a protection, might be held for a great need....?  And then he
remembered something which he supposed that she did not know, and saw
what its implications were.

"You were right," he said.  "I will do the same."

"What shall you say to Pilwin-C6P?"

"I will let him talk.  He may think I am not yet resolved."

"But you will not let him persuade you to doubt indeed?"

"No.  Now that I know your mind is equally fixed I have ended doubt.
You have my word upon that."

"Which I know well that you would not break."

"Yes.  You can trust that....  But I have not been thinking so much of
Pilwin-C6P as of talking with Avanah-F3B.  He could tell me much of the
time from which I came, and among the barbarities of which I found
means to live."

"Yes.  You might get some ideas from him....  Have you thought how you
can get me clear without making more trouble than we could meet?"

"I have had many ideas, but none good."

"So have I, but yours is the better brain."

She added confidently, "But there is time yet.  We shall find a way."



A few minutes later, Wyndham went to see Avanah-F3B who specialized in
history.  That was according to the rule that those of lower rank in
each hundred should become expert in a single subject, while those
above exercised their minds in more general ways.

By the same rule, Colpeck-4XP had a wide knowledge of many subjects,
but without particularity in any, he being ranked as one of the better
brains.  That was the custom throughout the whole organization of the
five million of living men.  It did not, beyond a point mathematically
trivial, require or imply the inferiority of the specialist, as those
at the head of each hundred were (very slightly) inferior to those at
the foot of the hundred next above them, and there was thus no absolute
superiority, except in the first hundred, to which Colpeck-4XP and
Avanah-F3B both belonged.  But the arrangement was doubtless based upon
the theory that it is a less severe test of human capacity to attain
proficiency in a single subject than to have a well-balanced perception
of all.

Actually, the subject was one that gave its professor a breadth of
vision superior to that of the majority of his companions, for it had
become habitual to him to consider this quiet twilight of the humanity
to which he belonged, not only absolutely of itself, for satisfaction
or scorn, but relatively to those earlier, more tempestuous ages from
which it came.

He was a man who had lived an eventless life of a hundred and sixty
years, and who was now conscious of some weakening of bodily reactions
which, while they had not reached the point of definite disease, had
been sufficient to suggest to an indifferent mind that the time to seek
a pleasant, dignified exit could not be far.

"I have come to you," Wyndham began, "because I know that you can tell
me much of that twentieth century to which I vitally belong, concerning
which I have a natural curiosity, and which may include matters with
which it may be profitable for me to be acquainted, in view of the
difficult life which I may be leading after this week."

"It is a request," Avanah-F3B replied, "which it will be a pleasure to
grant" (and indeed where in any age could a professor be found who
would not be glad to talk on his own subject?), "but I must tell you
honestly, not merely that there is a limit to what I know, but that I
understand even less.  How can I hope to make clear that which is
confusion to me?"

"Perhaps," Wyndham suggested, "there may be some hope in the fact that
my ego will be native to what I hear."

"Well," Avanah-F3B replied, "we can hope that."  But his words did not
have a sanguine sound.  "You have no memory of those days.  Can you
stir that which you have not got?"  He added, "Perhaps it will be best
for you to ask whatever questions are in your mind, and I will give
what answers I can."

Wyndham agreed that that would be a good way.  He began: "My first
question must be, if it were truly such a barbarous and bloody time,
how did the men of that day endure it to the end, as we, under more
tolerable conditions, are unwilling to do?  And, in particular, how
could the brain that was once mine, knowing all that it must have done,
advise its ego that it would be preferable to return there?"

"The answer to these questions," Avanah-F3B replied, "is not easy to
give, and I am conscious of my incompetence for the attempt.  But it
may be observed, in the first place, and on the evidence of one of
themselves whom we had here, and whom I questioned for several days,
that a large number did destroy themselves, even by most painful and
repulsive methods.  You must also allow for the fact that the majority
of the men of that time appear to have been more or less mad.  The
actual number which had been segregated for that reason by their
fellow-citizens in Great Britain alone during the year concerning which
enquiry was made amounted to about two hundred thousand, this being the
element of the population whose insanity was too absolute to allow of
their walking loose; and there are abundant separate evidences that
this mental unsoundness was more widely distributed.  It was a matter
of degree only.  In many cases the warders may have had a measure of
mental health little superior to that of those whom it was their duty
to guard."



"It has," Wyndham allowed, "a very probable sound, and would explain
much.  I know already, that they sacrificed the safety and most of the
amenities of life--such as they then were!--to the pleasure which they
derived from sitting in machines which moved them about."

"That was so.  But in the course of my researches I have come recently
upon an even more curious evidence.  They had at that period a large
number of buildings which they called prisons, in which they segregated
substantial part of the population.  These people were housed, clothed,
fed, and even amused without being required to undertake any
compensating labour, such as was normally necessary at that period.
Most of them belonged to sections of the population which, when outside
these walls, lived precarious lives, liable to extremes of hunger,
cold, or overcrowding in tenements less sanitary than the prisons were.
They could not enter or leave such places by their own decisions, but
only by that of tribunals which were set up to consider the case of
each applicant separately.

"It has an incredible sound, but the evidence appears to be conclusive,
that it was regarded as a penalty to be taken into one of these
hostels, and a privilege to be expelled from them to face the rain or
wind of the outer street."

Wyndham asked, "Does your knowledge of subsequent history enable you to
tell me whether those men of the twentieth century were struggling in
an opposite direction, or had they already set out on the road which is
ending here?"

"Perhaps it would be the best guess that the evidence supports to say
that they stood where the ways parted, and were uncertain which they
would take.  They acted, in consequence, as one of their own quadrupeds
might have done had it been controlled by a rider who pulled it back
from either road in turn, so that it reared and plunged, as the reins
jerked and swung it, now left, now right, indicating each course in
turn, and then refusing to let it go."

"I have no doubt," Wyndham replied, "that you are right.  The men of
that time may have been mad, and those of this may be saner than they.
Or perhaps you may intend me to understand that insanity, which
commenced at that day, has now come to the point which it was natural
for it to reach.  But, in fact--as perhaps," he admitted courteously,
"I might have made plainer before--this was not the point on which I
was most anxious to benefit from the special knowledge you have.

"I sought rather to improve my knowledge of rough and perilous manners
of life, such as may have approximated to what my own experiences are
likely to be when this week is done."

"Then perhaps," the historian replied, "we may talk again at another
time, when I may tell you things which will turn your mind from such an
idea as that you can exist tolerably after your fellows have left the
earth; if you have ever really had such a thought, which is very
difficult to believe."




CHAPTER V

The chairman of the Council of the First Hundred (Munzo-D7D by name)
had a great though placid pride in the place he held, and a special
satisfaction now, that he should have such a position at the time of
the culminating and concluding act of the race of which he was the
intellectual head.

His fine mind was now exercised continually, and not the less acutely
because it was without the stir of a hastened pulse, upon the coming
consummation of human destiny, which he was resolved should be guided
to its resolved end without fluke or blunder, and in a dignified manner.

In this connection he naturally gave prolonged thought to the case of
Colpeck-4XP, which had developed in so unexpected a manner, and though
the fact that it was no more than a barbarous ego that would survive
tended to reduce both its intrinsic importance and its ulterior
significances, he was not disposed to dismiss it from consideration
without exhaustive examinations.

The facts that the race could not be continued by one individual, and
that all their discoveries, their surgical devices and cunning drugs,
had taken them but a short step upon the path of enduring life, while
they would rob the survival of anything more than residual importance,
also made the decision of Colpeck-4XP more difficult to understand, and
therefore to be examined with the more sceptical care.

So exhaustively did his mind penetrate the possibilities of the
position that he even considered whether there might be any ape-like
creatures existing in some remote, secluded part of the earth, from
which a semi-human race could be born anew; and though he dismissed the
possibility after sufficient enquiry, the idea that Colpeck-4XP must
have some plan hidden in a lawless mind, such as would make mockery of
that which his fellows did, still remained.  Suppose, he thought, he
were planning to save, at the last moment, some wretched woman against
her will?

This occurred to him at once as being the most probable explanation,
and the most dangerous possibility.  It roused him to visit Avanah-F3B
immediately that he heard that Wyndham had been talking with him; and
learning little from the report of that conversation, which was readily
given, he went on to consult Pilwin-C6P.

Avanah-F3B had said cautiously, "He had, as I think, doubts.  His
intention stands; but he is, as yet, less than firmly resolved."

Munzo-D7D felt even that hesitant intention difficult to believe
without more explanation than he yet had, but he found that Pilwin-C6P
could say even less, Colpeck-4XP not having yet made the promised call
upon him.  But he was willing to talk, and he took the question less
impersonally than Avanah-F3B.

In fact, he asked bluntly, "If you have such a doubt, should he not be
put to a quick end?"

Munzo-D7D shook his head gravely at this suggestion.  "He has done no
wrong.  He has had permission to live."

"Which, if he thinks to be left alone, it is sure that he will not
choose."

"So he may decide of himself.  That would be the better way, and would
end all doubt."

Pilwin-C6P did not dispute that, nor did he repeat his lawless idea
that a man should be put to death who had not committed a legal
offence, for he perceived it to be one which Munzo-D7D would not
approve.  But he thought--with which it is possible to agree--that men
need not be over-careful of laws which are to end with themselves in
the next week.  Yet the tyrannies of convention and common order are
very strong, and with these people they had acquired an almost
irresistible power, so that he remained still, and Munzo-D7D went on:

"We are not discussing a likely danger, for it is most improbable that
any woman would be willing to consider so intolerable a condition of
life, and there has been no sign of such a tendency in any of those
who, being in our own Hundred, are known to him: and if his purpose be
to take one away with him against her will in the last hour--well, it
would not be easy to do, and we can make it beyond his power."

"We could make a special law for a special case," Pilwin-C6P suggested,
putting forward his first idea in a different dress, and with more wit
than before.

Munzo-D7D considered this.  It was not an unreasonable suggestion in
itself, there being precedent for resolutions that one or more should
die for the common good.  But he saw that there would be a paradoxical
absurdity here.  They had given the man permission to live as long as
he could, and would execute him at once lest he should abuse the
license which they had allowed.

He saw that it was a proposal to rescind rather than pass a law.  And
he knew that there was an inertia of mind which made the men of his
time reluctant to reconsider any decision to which they had
deliberately come.  If he were to propose it with any prospect that it
would receive the necessary support, there must be, at least, some
evidence, however slight, to explain his fear.  He said, "Well, he will
be coming to talk to you.  You will judge his words with a fine care."



Pilwin was quite willing to undertake that.  He added the best
suggestion he had yet made: "You could ask him to pledge his faith in a
formal way."

Munzo replied thoughtfully, "Yes.  We could do that."

He went out through the wall of the apartment, which was violet shot
with a dull red, and a moment later Wyndham Smith entered, as might be
done without ceremony, it not being a private time.

It was only a few hours since, at Vinetta's prompting, he had rejected
the daily potion of the drug which it was the universal habit to take,
but already he felt a difference which had been puzzling to himself
till he guessed its cause.

He felt more alive, more alert both to ill and good, more aloof from
those among whom he moved, more independent of mind.  It was as though
he watched a moving pageant he did not share.

He took the visitor's seat, and Pilwin-C6P took that which custom
allocated to him.

"I have come to discuss what help, if any, I might be able to give to
your plans, if I should continue to live, as I may not yet have decided
to do."

He was conscious as he said this that his voice had become somewhat
brisker, more decisive in tone than he was accustomed either to use or
hear, and he reminded himself that he must be cautious not to expose
the difference which he felt.  He might succeed in that.  His greater
danger was that he might come to underestimate the quality of the
drug-ridden intellects against which he was obliged to contend.

Already Pilwin-C6P had noticed the change of manner.  He looked
slightly puzzled, faintly resentful, which meant much among this people
of tepid emotion and measured thought.  He answered, "I have given it
some consideration, and I am not sure that there is much you could do,
even with a better will than I believe that you have."

"Why should you think that?  It was my own proposal that you should
have the opportunity of realizing your ancestor's plan."

The retort, which came from the new freedom which Wyndham felt, seemed
to him to have a convincing quality.  As a debating point it may have
been all he thought.  The long moment of silence with which it was met
seemed to give it his own value.  But in the end Pilwin-C6P said only,
"Well, so I think."

Wyndham could not get much change out of that.  He reverted to that
which he had been glad to hear, and which had sounded as though this
matter might be disposed of more easily than he had feared.  "Will you
tell me," he asked, "why you think that I should be of so little use?"

"Because you have not the knowledge of the machines which the occasion
requires.  And even if you had, their control would be beyond the
capacity of a single man, the major concentrations being so widely
apart.  You may ask why should not the success of one only be assured,
if all cannot, but the problem is less simple.  An error in instruction
to one might destroy all in the next hour, for, though they are
separate, their effects are inter-dependent in vital matters."

"Then it will be best for me to leave them alone?"

"There are some things you might do, if you have a good will, and can
give your time for the next three or four days to mastering the
rudiments of control, but I do not say they are much."

"Would they be beneficial to myself in the coming days?"

"No.  Nothing would, as I suppose.  You have made an impossible choice,
unless you are friendly to dirt and pain."

"There may be even worse things."

"So there may.  But that would be a poor reason for choosing them....
The fact is," Pilwin-C6P went on, following his own thought, "it would
be useless to attempt to continue control of the machines unless from
twenty to thirty men should be left alive to give them the full
guidance that they require.  Short of that, it may be best to set them
on a routine path, and leave them to their own ways, which may continue
a long time.

"It might have been a good plan to leave that number, if they would
have been willing to sacrifice themselves, or indeed, we might have
resolved that the women only should go to a present death, which would
have been to make sure end of the race, while dealing with such matters
as this in a leisured way."

Wyndham saw that this was true, taut it was an unwelcome suggestion.
Suppose it should be adopted at this late hour, even in a modified
form, the hope of saving Vinetta would become even less than it now
was.  But he was sufficiently wary not to disclose his fear.  He said,
"So, no doubt, it would be.  But men will not change a plan to which
all have agreed, without more reason than that."

Pilwin did not dispute this.  The talk turned to the conditions which
would have to be faced on the earth by one man who would be alone, and
with the machines either stopped or diverted from their present
services.  It was a subject on which the engineer had no useful
suggestions to make, and his opinions were not pleasant to hear.  "You
may find food of a kind," he allowed, "though I suppose it will make
you ill.  But in a week you will be alive--if you still are--in a
howling hell.  Why do you not come with us in a decent manner?"

"Well, perhaps I shall.  I may not yet be of a fixed resolve."

With those words they parted.  Wyndham went, well content that the
question of the machines had been put aside.  For he had said
definitely that he would not spend the rest of the week in acquiring
knowledge of such doubtful value to the plans of Pilwin-C6P, and of
less to him, and it was a decision which he had not been pressed to
change.  He thought also that he had suggested more doubt as to what
his own decision would be than, in fact, he had.

Actually Pilwin-C6P had been most impressed by a change of tone and
manner which he had attributed to a wrong cause.  "It is the savage ego
that is exposing itself," he thought, "more nakedly as the hours pass.
I suppose he will elect to live as long as he can, his instincts
lacking reason's control.  Well, let him go to death by his own road!
It is nothing to us."

He repeated this conversation to Munzo-D7D, who gave it more thought,
and whose conclusions were not entirely the same as his.



The next two days passed in ways that were momentous enough for some,
including those of the processions that passed into five thousand
furnaces of euthanasia, which, at the hour when the Council of the
First Hundred met on the second day, were roaring hospitable reception
to the fourth half-million reduction of the total of human lives, but
to Wyndham and Vinetta they brought no change except in themselves,
though that might have been enough to engage their minds at a less
critical time.

Wyndham had had two further talks with Avanah-F3B, and had added many
more or less accurate facts to his previous knowledge of
twentieth-century life, but they had increased his previous confusion
rather than helped to elucidate the conditions from which his ego came,
or supplied useful suggestions for the conduct of those which he was so
near to experiencing.  The facts might be comprehensible in themselves.
Some of them were.  But they would not coordinate.  Each of them
appeared to be contradicted or ridiculed by some other which was
supported by historical evidence of an equal weight.

Discussing these difficulties with Vinetta, whom he continued to meet
to the last limits of the hours which custom protected from
observation, it had occurred to both of them that the explanation might
lie in the difference which must divide a drugged from an undrugged
world.  They were already conscious of so much change in themselves,
since they had ceased to use the mottled powder, that it seemed
difficult to set a limit to its potentialities of explanation; but when
Wyndham put this idea to the historian, he found that he had only
increased the nightmare of improbabilities which he sought to probe.

He did not venture to mention that he had already commenced experience
of a body from which the effects of stupefying and drowsing drugs were
clearing away, for he had become too conscious of the vague suspicion
with which he was regarded by his companions to disclose a deviation
from that which was universal custom, and might be held to be
compulsory law, so that he was debarred from making allusion to the
resulting differences as he already knew them to be.  But he suggested
in general terms, "May not the absence of drugs of sufficient potency
to control the actions and emotions of man account for the wild
irregularities by which they destroyed each other's comfort, often
sacrificing the lives they professed to value, or even undermining the
health which they could only risk at such fantastic costs of
humiliation and pain?"

"That," the historian replied, "like other suggestions which you have
made, has a reasonable sound, nor can I say with entire assurance that
it is less than true; but, in fact, the men of that time were takers of
drugs to great amount, and in a variety by which it seemed that
everyone should have been able to suit himself.

"There was one which they called alcohol, of a most potent kind, which
was almost universally swallowed in the country from which you came.
Its effects were admittedly bad, and their medical journals, while
still advocating its use, commonly mention it as a principal cause of
disease, insanity, and premature death, as well as being an incentive
to violent crime."

"And you say that they still advocated its use?  It has an incredible
sound."

"They contended that it was harmless if taken in regular, limited
quantities; or that it was actually beneficial as giving an illusion of
geniality to the intolerable conditions of the existence which they
endured."

"But surely the correct dosage could have been ascertained?"

"So it must appear.  But you will remember the disorders, both mental
and physical, of a time when, as I have told you, men would escape, if
they could, from a safe jail!

"Neither does it appear that, though this drug had been used for many
centuries by countless millions of men, they had been able to arrive at
any agreed opinion upon it.  Some held that it was detrimental in any
quantity, at any time; while most, as I have said, contended that it
was beneficial if not taken in excessive quantities.

"But you must not suppose that the men of that time depended upon this
alone.  They took drugs far more largely than we, and with intentions
alike to ours.  The difference was in the variety of these, and in the
clumsiness of what they did.  Occasionally it appears that a law would
intervene to restrain those who were addicted to one of a particularly
poisonous kind.  But even in these cases the efforts appear to have
been too weak, the penalties too mild; for the evils are mentioned as
going on side by side with the preventive legislation, as two men might
lie in one bed (as, on occasion, they did!).  And of a thousand other
drugs which the whole nation swallowed constantly, in pills and
draughts, there was little knowledge and no restraint.  You may say
that the human race at that time was drugged continually, though
without coherent purpose, or any unity of practice or of result."

"Well," Wyndham concluded, in a despair which may be simple to
understand, "it was my own time, and I would believe of it the best I
can.  But you have called it mad, and I do not see how you can get
beyond that.  It may be that this drugging supplies the explanation of
what they were."

"Even that," Avanah-F3B replied patiently, "might not be safe to
conclude.  It appears that some of the wildest words were spoken, some
of the most sinister actions performed, by the more abstemious men.  It
may be best to say that they were maddened by misery and disease, by
their perpetual motion and frequent wars, and put attempt at further
explanation aside....  But," he concluded kindly, "I need not say that
our chemists would provide either alcohol, or any other of the drugs
which their physicians prescribed, or which were used with less
authority but even more generally, if you would like to be provided
with them for the adventure you have in mind."

Wyndham shook his head.  "My troubles," he said, "may not be so few
that I shall need more."

"I should say that it is wisely resolved.  But, if you will take
counsel from one who can have been of little assistance to you in other
ways, you will apply for your share of our own powder in its euthanasia
form to be reserved for your use, and keep it closely at hand, for, I
suppose, a few hours of a lonely life will be the most that you will
endure."

"It will be mere prudence," Wyndham agreed.  But he did not speak from
the heart.  It was only what he thought it to be mere prudence to say.
For in the last two days he had come to love life as he had not
supposed that he ever could, and to regard death with an equal fear, so
that he would have said that it was more dreadful than pain, which he
knew that Avanah-F3B, broad of mind though he was, would not find it
easy to understand.  Only if he should fail to rescue Vinetta might he
be disposed to consider death as a fearful friend, and that would be in
no mood of resignation, but sheer despair....  All which might be
thought, but must not be said.



So he went, feeling, as he had done before, that he had learned little
which it could be useful to know; and that the lack of sympathy that
was evident in those around him isolated him, even before the appointed
day.  Even the more vivid sense of living which had come with the
abandoning of that mottled-grey powder did not incline him at the
moment to more than a passive inclination to wait the event--or rather
to concentrate upon the saving of Vinetta's life, and defer
consideration of what must follow until they could breathe more freely
in an empty world.  He was waiting, with an impatience he must not
show, for the rest of his kind to die.  And so in this mood he came to
take his place at the council table, to hear an event of the earlier
day which stirred such emotion as he had not expected that his
companions would ever show; and to learn that there could be an
occurrence which would seem more dreadful, even more exciting, to
themselves than it did to him.

It has been briefly mentioned already that the population of the earth,
which had now been maintained for a prolonged period at a steady
maximum of five millions, was settled in five thousand widely
distributed centres, each consisting of ten separate mansions designed
for the accommodation of one hundred inhabitants.  Grouped with each of
these centres were the technical buildings, museums, and libraries
suitable to the tepid interests or activities of its population, the
schools and nurseries which stirred into periodic activities, and, not
least, the furnaces to which, one by one, at an average rate of about
six a year in each centre (but rising at some periods to a much higher
level, owing to the fact that each quarter of the population would be
of approximately the same age) the older members of the community
willingly went.

Originally there had been very beautiful gardens attached to these
centres, but these, with one arbitrary and other necessary, exceptions,
had been destroyed as being too difficult to restrain within the
standards of repression which policy and public opinion required.

The candidate for euthanasia would first partake of a pleasant meal, in
which so large a portion of the daily drug would have been included,
and of so potent a strength, that, as it penetrated his body,
sensitiveness to pain, even in its severest form, would gradually
cease, and a delicious, increasing languor would supervene.

Having partaken of this meal, he would enter the only place, in most
settlements, where horticulture was still practiced--a hot-house of
tropic flowers, with overpowering odors, such as would drug the senses
to pleasant dreams, even, before the powder had had time to assert its
power.

Here he would mount a couch, which would commence to move slowly, on
smoothly grooved wheels, at a pace which he could either accelerate or
retard, but which, if he should not interfere, would take him almost
imperceptibly forward through corridors of increasing heat, which, as
the drug worked, and he became more impervious, he would be unable to
feel, until he would enter an ante-chamber of glowing metal, where he
could watch the purple garment he wore catch fire, and wrap him in
splendid flame.

Feeling no pain, though he might be aware of the scent of his roasting
flesh, he could now, if consciousness still remained, touch the lever
which would shoot him forward into the final furnace, where
disintegration would be instantaneous, or he could continue to glide
gently forward to meet his end.

It had been customary to keep these furnaces and their subordinate
apparatus in constant readiness, so that there should be no risk that
any applicants might be delayed who should resort to them at urgent
need, but their actual use, averaging, as has been said, about one in
eight weeks, had never risen beyond one or two daily, though their
working capacity was much greater.

Now, however, they were required to provide accommodation beyond
precedent, or anything which their designers had foreseen.  At their
maximum activity it had been calculated that it would be possible to
deal with the present plethora of candidates at a rate of ten to the
hour, thus allowing a two-hour interval between the semi-diurnal
batches, which was utilized for the inspection and renovation of
machinery and apparatus which were not subjected to so unprecedented a
strain.

On the first day the reports from all centres had been satisfactory to
the most critical requirements: A million men and women had been
eliminated without fault of organization, or any instance of unseemly
hesitation or foolish haste.  And so--apart from one solitary
incident--it had been on this second day.  But that incident had been
of an appalling character.

At Station 78F, situated where the city of Lubeck had stood in a more
barbarous age, a hundred candidates, composed mainly of young women,
with a few older men such as were non-essential to the concluding
duties of the community, had been allocated to the third release, and
were passing inward at the appointed intervals, when it was observed
through the transparent heat-proof walls of the ante-chamber to the
final furnace that a young woman, Sinto-T9R, was showing signs of
extreme perturbation at a time when she should have been reclining in
languorous ecstasy, to the encouragement of those who watched, and who
would go to the same fate in the following hours.

Perturbation, in the next minute, became panic fear.  Her face became
contorted with pain.  She stopped her couch, and then drove it forward
suddenly, having possibly intended a contrary motion and become
confused by her condition.  As she shot forward into a fiercer heat,
her garment burst into flames.  Her couch remained stationary for some
long moments while she screamed and writhed and roasted in the sight of
scores of appalled and impotent spectators.  Then, freed from her own
control, it moved forward again at its leisurely routine speed, and
vanished into the white core of the ultimate furnace, from which, in
due course, the metal frame would emerge, ice-cooled, and ready to be
furnished anew.

The sight or hearing of this fearful agony had no effect upon those who
were immediately following Sinto-T9R on the road to death, for her
torment was not shared by them, nor, in their half-delirious,
half-stupefied condition, did they show consciousness of what occurred.
But to those who were destined to go the same way in later batches, and
who had seen this disastrous sight, it was a different matter, as it
was in five thousand centres when the incident had been broadcast
throughout the world.



To the men of any age, it would be a disconcerting possibility that,
where they sought euthanasia, they might encounter appalling anguish:
but to these people, dreading pain as beyond endurance and outside the
ordinary experiences of life, the possibility brought a horror not
easily to be realized by earlier generations of men.  The question of
what had occurred, of responsibility for it, and most particularly
whether it might occur again, stirred the world to a stronger ripple of
life than it had experienced during the last fifty of its aimless,
negative years.

The complement of the voluntary victims at Station 78F had been made
up, it is true; but only after arrangements had been made for the
instant reversal of the moving belt at the slightest sign of disquiet
on the part of those who were approaching the final heat, and by
calling for volunteers among those who had been intended for the
immolations of later days.

It was one instance only of evident anguish, where there had been one
and a half million painless deaths, but it had already caused a wild
excitement sufficient to threaten the orderly termination of this
supreme gesture of mankind's rejection of the rule of a blundering
Heaven; and this confusion might increase during the next twelve hours,
as volunteers must be found, or persuasions urged, to make up the
quotas which the night required.

An authoritative decision as to the cause of the incident, and an
assurance that it would not recur, had become of the utmost urgency;
and the First Hundred assembled with faces at once graver and more
alive than Wyndham Smith's adopted memory could equally recall.  With
his own mind released to increased alertness through freedom from the
accustomed drugging, he regarded this unforeseeable development with
satisfaction, as diverting attention from himself, but with a wary
watchfulness for any threat to his own plans, or opportunity which it
might bring.

But he saw that, for the moment, watching was all that he could do.  He
was the one man whom the event did not concern: who would not be
considered to have the remotest interest in it.  It was unlikely that
his opinion would be asked.  To tender it would be a gaucherie to which
even his militant ego would not easily drive the settled habits of
Colpeck-4XP....  The chairman was speaking now.

"I am glad to say," he began, with the slow gravity of one who knew
that he spoke to a waiting world, "that, only a few minutes ago, the
cause of this tragic accident has been ascertained.  It is an
additional pleasure to be able to add that there is no reason to fear
that it may happen again, nor to blame anyone who is alive for the
blunder which has occurred.

"The necessity for producing exceptional quantities of the drug for
which the occasion calls has resulted in a number of machines which
were engaged in occupations for which they are no longer required being
diverted to this purpose.  Among these was one which had been designed
for the manufacture of synthetic bacteria, by which it had been
intended to supersede the uncleanly ferments which have been necessary
hitherto for the fertilization of field and garden soils.  This
machine, though of exceptional intelligence and adaptability, has been
found capable of error, and that error it is certain, by the result,
that it did, in fact, on one occasion among three hundred and six,
commit.

"The use of this machine for this purpose was authorized by
Marceau-Z6B, who passed out of existence during the early hours of the
present day.  Orders, which I am sure you will approve, have been
already issued for the destruction both of the delinquent machine, and
for the whole of its products that remain unused.  It has been
ascertained that the use of this machine was no more than a needless
precaution, the regular sources of supply, which are beyond suspicion,
having proved themselves to be adequate to all requirements.

"The tragic horror which ended the existence of Sinto-T9R, terrible as
it was, may be regarded as a demonstration of the basic equity of our
protest against a form of sentient existence which is not divinely
protected from such possibilities, and a justification of the course on
which we are now agreed."

As he ceased, the sense of an enormous relief, and of profound
agreement with what he said, caused a low murmur of approval to pass
round an assembly which was little addicted to such demonstrations; and
after that there was a long pause of silence, which was not broken
until the chairman spoke again.

"After this explanation," he said, "there can be little reason to doubt
that the orderly procession which has faltered in the last hours will
be resumed with the exactness which the occasion requires; but lest
there should be any in whom a spirit of fear persists, it may be well
that there should be some example among ourselves.

"We must, of necessity, be among the last to seek the peace that
oblivion gives, having the direction of all.  But that responsibility
is not equally on the shoulders of every one.  I propose that ten of
us, five men and five women, shall volunteer to join the next hundred
from this centre, and so go to immediate death.  And lest it should be
said that those who might volunteer might be of more courage than
others, I will not leave it to your own voices, ready though I know you
would be, but I will name ten, with the assurance that they will not be
backward for the example which is required."

In an expressionless silence, as of an assembly that had now reverted
to the trivialities of routine, he mentioned ten names, and that of
Vinetta was second.



Wyndham saw the danger before Vinetta's name was mentioned, and in
sufficient time to control himself to the expressionless calm that the
occasion required.  For what concern should it be to him?

He even had a premonition, approximating to certainty, of that which he
was about to hear.  Was it a trap, or no more than an evil chance?  And
what attitude would Vinetta adopt?  What ground of refusal could she
advance which would not concentrate suspicion upon herself?  Or, if she
should consent, what remotest hope of escape, of evasion, could still
remain?

Wyndham looked at her in an idle way, as, hearing her named, was
natural enough, and was glad to see that she hid her thoughts, beyond
what he would have supposed her able to do.  Perhaps she also had
guessed correctly what she would hear before the list had begun.

There was no haste to comment upon the proposal, which was received
with the same silent, listless gravity by the nine whom, with Vinetta,
it most concerned, as by the general body of the assembly.
Tomorrow--or three days hence--could it matter much?  It appeared to
Wyndham that his companions had sunk into more than normal torpidity,
as though in reaction from the excitement which had stirred them before.

But the Arabian on his right hand, seeing that no voices came from the
lower seats, said, with the infinite weariness in his voice which made
objection sound as colourless as assent, "It is unimportant.  Let them
go, if they will, as I do not doubt that they will be most ready to do.
But I am not sure that it is wise.  Would it not have been better to
regard the incident as so fully explained, so entirely closed, that the
resumption of routine might be assumed, and that no example was
required?"

Wyndham, still too cautious to speak, heard this with a motion of hope
which he must not show.

Vinetta lifted her eyes in a listless way.  With a doubtful wisdom--but
could she disregard this flicker of objection, which might die if it
were not fanned to a wider flame?--she stated, "That was my own
thought, but I would not speak it, lest it be misunderstood."

The voice of one near her offered hope of another kind.  "Even though
they volunteer, it must come to nought, unless there be ten from the
routine list who will yield their places to them.  Should we assume
that?"

Slowly, one by one, others spoke to the same effect.  Vinetta saw that
the proposal would be put aside without further intervention from her.
It was a danger narrowly missed; but was it as casual as it had
appeared?  She wished that she could be surer of that.

She heard the chairman withdraw adroitly from a position which was so
plainly unsupported.  He said, "There is much wisdom in what I hear.
And, beyond that, the fact that the ten I named would have been willing
to volunteer, as their silence told, is an example of as much force as
though it had been done.  As for the trouble of Sinto-T9R, it is over
now.  It is not a thing that would happen twice.  Let all men put it
from mind, and think only that they are near to the pleasant end of a
weary day."

After that the council turned its attention to other matters, to which
neither Wyndham nor Vinetta gave heed, waiting only till the time
should come when they would meet, and could discuss what had occurred.

This they did when the hour of solitude came, Vinetta going to
Wyndham's room, as it was her turn to do, at the first moment that
prudence allowed.

She commenced at once upon the peril through which she had passed, and
with a force and freedom of expression which would have sounded strange
in her own ears a few days before.

"The old scoundrel," she said, "was aiming at me!  I was sure of that.
I could see that he was more savage to take it back than he would have
been had he put it forward with no more purpose than he professed."

"I cannot say that I noticed that.  Munzo-D7D is always expert to
conceal his thoughts."

"So that little will mean much! ... Well, if you didn't, I did.  I saw
that he was hunting me from the first moment he spoke."

"Then was it prudent to interpose as you did?"

"Perhaps not.  But it was a greater risk to keep still.  I could not
tell then how the others felt.  The objection might have died out, and
where should we have been then?"

"Not much worse than we are now, if he really suspects."

"You don't agree that he does?"

"Yes.  I'm afraid I do, more or less.  I doubt whether he would have
made the proposal without more motive than he explained; and the fact
that others thought it needless supports that probability, for it is a
fact that his is the best brain in the world today."

"I will question even that, if it disappear by the week's end, and we
contrive to remain; but I am not thinking that it will be easy for us
to do."

"It is a hard chance, at the best; but it becomes desperate if he have
a suspicion of what we plan.  It is to fight the world, with all its
machines, and its remaining millions of men.  For, though he have no
more than a small doubt, he will make certain you do not live."



He paced the room as he spoke with a restlessness that he could not
still.  Apart from this doubt, they had come no nearer to any plan than
nebulous projects of flight or violence, or a combination of the two,
to be undertaken when her time should arrive, at which moment they
hoped that there would not be more than fifty men and women left in the
world, which was a large place, giving many choices of secluded
retreat, even with its surface stripped and levelled and tamed as it
then was.

It was a difficult--indeed, an impossible--problem to guess what that
remaining fifty--the best brains in the world--would do, when they
should find rebellion just when they would suppose that the last hours
of mankind had arrived, and they had composed their own minds to
renounce the burden of life.

Would they still pass out in the same way, letting the dream of the
extinction of the race go?  It seemed too much to hope.

Would they endeavour to coerce by physical violence the woman whose
rebellion would mock their plans?  It was hard to imagine.  Physical
violences had become a legend of more barbarous days.

Suppose Wyndham should assault them with a lethal weapon contrived and
secreted for the occasion?  Would they resist?  Would they go to death
by way of a bloody scuffle, instead of the dignified, painless path
they had designed?  Imagination was baffled again.

Or, if they should observe Wyndham and Vinetta in sudden flight at the
last hour, would they delay their own deaths for pursuit?  Would they
risk remaining alive, two or three score, in a world from which their
customary amenities would be removed?  A world of cold and heat, and
unfriendly winds, and of snow or rain that might fall in the daylight
hours.  It was still harder to think.

But Munzo-D7D might contrive to deal with it in other ways.  He would
be alive till the last, as his place required: as a captain must remain
on a sinking deck.  He was not to be despised, being bold and subtle,
and very wise.  And he might still be able to control the machines.

Considering that, Wyndham had a doubt of whether he had not been
foolish in refusing to spend these last days in obtaining knowledge of
their control, as Pilwin-C6P had proposed.  But it was useless to
regret that.  On the whole he could come to no better conclusion than
that, if Munzo-D7D did not suspect, they had a most slender chance,
but, if he did, it was next to none.

So he said, in a mood of depression as strange to his previous
experiences as were those of elation or self-confidence which he had
known since the effects of the drug had cleared from his deadened
nerves.

Vinetta, more elatedly conscious of a shadow which had nearly fallen
upon her and now moved somewhat away, heard him in a frowning fear
which she did not hide.

"You are not leaving hope?" she asked.  "I thought you had been
resolved that we should not lose! ... I think I should die if you fail
me now."

She laughed shortly, in the next breath, at the literal truth of her
last words, which she had not meant in that way, and, as she did so,
their eyes met and the mood of doubt fell from him like a dropped
cloak.  She found herself caught in muscular arms that strained her
close as their lips met.  Then he said, "We will live, though the world
fall.  We will find a way."

"Yes," she agreed, made confident by her love, both in her own wit and
the strength of those holding arms, "there is much that we must not
lose!  We will find a way."

Her words, confident as his own, yet waked him to sudden fear.

At the next moment they became alert to the fact that the hour of
safety was done.  There might be nothing in that.  It was a small
chance that she would be encountered in returning to her own room,
which was not far.  But her face paled as she became aware of the
needless peril to which they had exposed themselves through that short
failure of self-control.  In a moment she was gone, through the opaque,
impalpable wall.

Next morning, having spent the night in devising resolute plans and
subtleties by which suspicions might be turned aside, he went to
Vinetta's room, to meet one who had been as sleepless as he, through
she had spent the night in another mood.

"I suppose," she said, "it is over now.  I was seen to leave.  You must
let me die.  Or, if we try it in the next hour, will it be less than
useless to flee?"




CHAPTER VI

"You will be safe," Wyndham said, "till the council meet, and even then
we may turn suspicion aside by a bold, or perhaps by an indifferent,
front.  Could you lie at sufficient need?"

She regarded him with grave eyes, to which some hope had returned,
seeing how he had put the idea of abandoning her aside as not worth a
word, and had equally refused to admit despair, or to consider
immediate flight, which would have been to call the same thing by
another word.  "Yes," she replied, "I could do that."

It was not a question that would have been asked by the Colpeck-4XP of
a week before.  He had been of an exact integrity, both in act and
word, which had been emphasized even at a time when disorders of speech
or act were seldom seen in a placid life, from which all forms of
competition, all strong emotions, had been discarded, and
irregularities of conduct were matters of speculative curiosity or
tradition rather than experiences of living men.

But he felt differently now.  He fought a battle of life and death, and
the odds were millions to one.  If others left him and Vinetta alone,
so he would leave them.  But if they threatened the life which was now
of twofold responsibility and value, he would shield himself with
whatever might most avail, be it truth or lie.

He had almost lost the feeling that he was one of a common stock, with
the obligations that social order entails.  The bond of allegiance
weakened with every hour.

Apart from that, he had a feeling of responsibility for what had
occurred.  If he had not allowed love to seize the reins of his mind,
to the exclusion of cooler thought, if he had not roused her for the
moment, she would not have overstayed her time, and this danger would
not have come to her door.

He did her the justice to remember that it was she who had shown the
larger measure of self-control, that it was she who had broken away,
who had remembered, although too late, the present peril in which they
stood.

Blended with this, there was a feeling of fierce regret that they had
made no more of a chance they had had--perhaps the last that they ever
would.

They were alone again now, but their minds must be on different
matters, in different moods.

Wondering half-consciously at himself, he proposed a plan, prompting
her in what she should say to support the denial he had resolved, but
he found it to be a matter on which she had no scruple at all.  Loyalty
and truth were as natural to her as to him, but they were to be given
where they belonged.  Chivalrous and abstract altruisms have always
been the devisings of men rather than of those who must guard their
young.

Vinetta said, "He will be slow to talk when he hears that."  She
approved a plan at once subtler and bolder than would have been likely
to rise in her own mind.  She added, "You had better go.  We may not
meet again till the last hour.  But I understand.  You can count on me."

They parted with few words, as having put emotion aside now the battle
joined.

Wyndham went to his gymnasium exercises, which were a dead routine, as
all was, now that competition had been condemned.  These exercises were
of a routine as exact and invariable as the meals, but took place in a
common room.  It was strange to observe men and women who would compass
their own destructions on the next day, or before, exercising
themselves lest their muscles stiffen or their digestions fail, but the
force of custom was very strong, and what else was there to do?

Munzo-D7D entered the gymnasium.  He looked round as one having an
object in what he did.  He saw Wyndham and crossed over to him.  He
said, "We must talk.  Will you come to me when the hour of converse
arrives, or shall I come to you?"

Wyndham looked at him carelessly.  He said, "I have much to do.  But
you can come to me if you will.  I suppose the talk will be soon done."

There was lack of customary courtesy here, though nothing at which
Munzo-D7D could legitimately take offense.  He said, "I will come."  He
went at that, having other matters with which to deal.

He came to Wyndham at the first moment he could.  He knew enough to
guess more, and his guess was good.  He thought he could make a
decisive end of the last trouble which humanity had to face as its
twilight came.

There was no privacy in the conversation which followed, because anyone
in the whole world who desired to do so could listen in.  On the other
hand it was an abstract improbability, apart from prior arrangement,
that anyone would.  Wyndham had no doubt that Vinetta would have tuned
in to his own room of reception, which was why he had declined to visit
Munzo-D7D, as courtesy had required.  Otherwise than by her, he could
not tell that he would be overheard, though he hoped he might.

Munzo-D7D knew that Pilwin-C6P and Avanah-F3B would be witness to every
word that was said.  He thought he had been wise to arrange that.  It
would have been wiser to have talked first in a more private way.

He began quietly, as was his natural manner.  He did not think to make
trouble, but rather to end it with a finality which he supposed that it
would be easy to reach.  He said, "The days pass.  You have said that
you have not been fully resolved, either to live or die.  But it is a
decision you cannot much longer defer."

"As to that," Wyndham replied, "I am now resolved.  I have decided to
live."



He saw that he must make provisions for continued existence which could
not be concealed.  Within a few hours, or a day at most, he must make
his decision plain.  Having one lie in his mind which must be stoutly
sustained, he could not cumber himself with another of less evident use.

Munzo-D7D did not look surprised to hear that.  It was, he believed,
the truth, though he had not supposed that it would be so roundly
declared.  He went on, with a friendliness which he felt in a tepid
way, though he knew it to be an alien ego to whom he spoke.  "But do
you think you are wise?  You will be alone.  You can have little
comfort and less joy, but you will be sure of privations and many
pains, for which your body is, by its training, unfit.  And at last you
must die in a futile way, and in a misery you can only dimly imagine,
for it is certain that the furnaces will not endure.  Is it worth
while, for so certain, and so unseemly an end?"

He thought this question would lead to what he had come to say by a
short path, but Wyndham's reply was unexpected, and delayed them both
from the real issue to which they must come at last.

"Have you considered," he asked, "the old belief that we may be
possessed of immortal spirits, and that what we do here may have
consequences we cannot guess?"

Munzo-D7D looked with questioning surprise at the speaker of that which
it was hard to take in a serious way; and jesting was an indecency
which had long died from the mouths of men.  He asked, "Will you tell
me you believe that?"

"It is possible, and beyond disproof."

Munzo answered patiently, as one would bear with the incredible
foolishness of a child.  (Was it possible, he asked himself, that an
alien ego could make no better use of a Colpeck brain?)  "There are
many grains of dust on the surface of the earth?"

"Yes, there are."

"There are countless millions even in a square yard of earth?"

"Yes.  We agree there."

"If each of those specks of dust represented a million years, the
aggregate would be beyond our power to conceive?"

"It would be very long."

"But to eternity it would be nothing, though it were multiplied a
million million times, and by that again?"

"So, to our finite minds, it appears to be."

"So it is.  Can you think of that, and imagine that all our futile
human births will continue thus?  It is not for wisdom to entertain."

"Yet, we are now.  We may be then.  Not understanding what reality is,
we may refuse to assert, but must we not equally refuse to deny?"

Munzo, who had spoken so far with more quickness of reply than the
habit was, reacting to the speedy answers that were given to him,
became silent.  He restrained himself from what he felt to be an
irrelevant issue.  He asked, "And you have no other reason than that?"

"Having given reason enough, need I add more?"

Munzo became silent again.  He had brought the conversation to the
point at which he must make a direct attack.  "If," he said, "you had a
hope which will prove false, it would be kindly to let you know?"

"I have little hope, so you need have no trouble for that."

"But if you had?"

"Even so, I do not ask you to interfere.  A false hope is soon done,
and there may be nothing better to take its place.  But I suppose I
have none.  You choose your way, and I mine.  You can let me be."

"But if you plan to have a companion, making a mistake in that?"

"Why should you invent that?  I have told you it will be wiser to let
me be, lest I say more than you would be willing to have publicly
known."

Munzo considered this in a quiet pause, being a genuinely puzzled man.
He said at last, "Your words have no meaning to me."

"That is how I feel about yours.  I do not interfere with what you may
plan to do.  It is nothing to me.  Why are you concerned about mine?"

"I will tell you in simple words.  Vinetta has been to your private
room at a monstrous hour.  If she plots to live, it will come to
nought.  We shall make sure provision for that."

"Who has told you that foolish tale?"

"It is no tale.  It is what I have seen with my own eyes."

"That is to say, you will assert that which is absurd in itself, and
for which you have no confirmation at all.  Vinetta was here as we
know, though it was not at a monstrous hour.  It was later than that.
And you can guess what she was here to say.  But it is all nothing to
me.  You can persuade her to what you will, or she can refuse.  Being
the man who is to remain alive at the last, you can do what you will,
but I say again it is nothing to me.  You must find another, if Vinetta
prefer to die."

Munzo stared at this, as he well might.  He said at last, "I do not
know what you mean.  You talk as though you are mad.  But that is not
my concern.  I have warned you how it will be, in a friendly way, and
you must live or die as you will."

Wyndham answered, "As you say you have finished, you may now listen to
me.  Vinetta told me the offer you made to her, which she did not
accept.  If I wished your death, or regarded her, whether she live or
die, I could tell the Council all that I know, and I suppose they would
arrange your death on a sooner day.  But if you think to protect
yourself by a false tale, such as would convict Vinetta and me, I will
tell the truth, and I suppose she will do the same and you will have
brought the trouble on your own head."

He rose as he spoke, which was a signal for his visitor to leave which
no man could disregard.  Munzo-D7D rose also.  He said, "I had not
thought that a barbarous ego could bring such wickedness to a
disciplined brain.  It is cunning beyond belief, which you will find
useless to you."

Wyndham asked, "Are you sure you are not imputing yourself to me?"

Munzo went without attempting further retort.  He walked like a man
dazed.  But Wyndham did not overlook that he had the best brains in the
world, though they might be drugged to the pace of a sluggish blood.
He thought that further trouble would not be slow to arrive.



As he left Wyndham's room, Munzo-D7D thought more briskly than his
habit was.

He did not doubt that Colpeck-4XP plotted to save a woman alive and so
continue the race, making a mock of the five millions who were now
going to death for what would be no more than an empty dream.  He had
suspected it, in advance of proof, and had correctly deduced, first
that such a woman must be of his own thousand, and most probably one of
the hundred of his own house, and then, going over the two score or
more of women that the First Hundred included, he had settled upon
Vinetta as the one whom Colpeck-4XP would be most likely to choose, and
who would be most likely to consent to join in so gross a crime.

He had seen in the event of yesterday an opportunity of eliminating
this danger while pursuing a separate object, and he admitted frankly
to himself that he had blundered in that.  He saw also that, to the
extent to which he had kept his purpose in his own mind, these
preliminary activities could be construed in a false way, and that it
was a wickedness which Colpeck-4XP--so tragically, so fundamentally
changed now!--would not scruple to commit.

He saw that he could conclusively refute accusations against himself by
going the way of death at an earlier day, but he saw also that this
would be to accept defeat on the major issue, which he was resolved
that he would not do.  Where he had thought to enforce discipline in a
dignified, emotionless way, he found himself involved in a struggle
which threatened his own honour, the credence and confidence of his
fellowmen, and the success of the great project in which they were
cheerfully joined, against a boldly defiant and incredibly unscrupulous
foe.

With these thoughts chaotic in a storm-tossed mind, he yet showed the
quality and promptness of his judgment by resolving to go instantly to
Vinetta, to challenge her with her offense, and to convict her, if he
could, of the truth, or snare her to a different lie from that which
her fellow-conspirator had told.

He delayed only to call on Pilwin-C6P, to ask him to listen in to the
coming conversation, and to call up Avanah-F3B that he might do the
same.

Pilwin-C6P was quite willing to do that.  He was pleasantly excited by
what he had heard already.  He had even thought that, if such events as
yesterday's and today's should become frequent, it might have been
almost worth while to remain alive.  That was in a world of continuing
comforts, of course.  No heat or hunger for him!  He had too much sense.

"Yes," he agreed readily, "that is the best thing you can do.  If you
can get her to admit in our hearing that she has been plotting with
Colpeck-4XP, you will have no more trouble with her.  And if she be
alive this time tomorrow, after admitting that, she will be a most
clever girl.  And, besides, you will have gone a long way towards
clearing yourself."

That was not a view of the matter at which Munzo could take offense,
though it was one that he did not like.  He saw, with an increase of
irritation, that it was logically sound.  To prove that Vinetta had
been plotting with Colpeck-4XP did not demonstrate that he had not
approached her also with a proposal which he, as the man who was to be
last alive, would be particularly able to make.  Rather, it might be
urged, his own rejected advances had put him on the track of his more
favored rival.  It may be held to be an evidence of some courage, as
well as of an integrity which there was never true occasion to doubt,
that the idea of abandoning the investigation did not enter his mind.

He went on to Vinetta, who did not object to seeing him, but who looked
at him with a smouldering hate in her eyes which she made no effort to
hide.

"It is no use coming to me again," she said, before he had time to
begin.  "I have given you my last word, which I will not change."

"You have given me no word at all," he replied, seeing that he was to
be met with a concerted tale, and striving to control himself to speak
such words as it would be well for others to hear.  "I have not spoken
to you, outside the council room, for more weeks than I have leisure to
count.  Will you hear what I have to say now before you reply?"

"Yes," she said.  "I will listen, though I expect it will be to hear
lies, such as that which you have just said."

"All men," he replied, with some dignity, "know that I do not lie."

"So they know of me, and more particularly of Colpeck-4XP; which is
why, for my own protection, I have confided in him.  And, besides that,
he is one who stands apart, by the decision that he has made, so that
he can bear witness to all with impartial words."

"If you have the integrity that you boast," he replied, "will you go to
death in the next batch?  If you will do that, there is no occasion for
further words."

"But why should I?  So that the only witness against you may be
removed, and you may make proposals to some other girl which she may
receive in a different way?  No, indeed!  You may accuse me of what you
will.  I will defend myself with my living lips.  Why should I be
afraid?  I am of the First Council as well as you.  It is you who
should go to an early death, as I shall not scruple to say."

"You are the Unlawful Child," he said as though thinking aloud.  "I
suppose that will explain much.  But I should not have thought that
even the influence of the barbarous ego for whom you sin could have
made you so cunning and bold to lie."

"It is you who lie.  You do not even know that I am.  But I suppose it
was because you thought that, that you approached me with the proposals
I would not hear."

"I will say no more," he replied, with a temperate restraint which it
is possible to admire.  "The whole matter shall be laid before the
council tonight."

She found no satisfaction in hearing that.  If he had not been
frightened to silence by the accusations which had been suggested
against him, the battle was still unfought, and the issue was hard to
meet with a sanguine guess.

He left her, marvelling at the wickedness with which his zealous
efforts for law and order had been defied.  Surely such criminalities
belonged only to the traditions of ancient days!

But so it was.  Eve, who had plucked at the tree of knowledge before,
now plucked at the tree of life with a sharper need, and sin had
re-entered the world....

Munzo-D7D went on to Avanah-F3B, thinking to confide in him, and to get
some comfort therefrom; for the historian was friendly, they having
congeniality of disposition, and being accustomed to spend much time
together in the conversations which, dull and slow as they might have
sounded to the ears of another age, had become the most stimulating
occupation of millions of wearied lives.

He was received with interest, and the sympathy which he expected to
meet.  Curiously, Avanah-F3B, though harmless himself as an elderly
sheep, seemed less surprised, and far less horrified, by what he heard
than either the narrator or Pilwin-C6P had been.



Perhaps, as a historian, he was so familiar with plot and crime that
the strangeness of such ancient depravity intruding into a civilized
age did not impress his mind with the aspect of monstrosity which it
showed to them.  He was not shocked or incredulous.  He was mildly
interested, even mildly excited.  It was like one of the ancient tales
in the consideration of which his life consisted, rather than in its
placid contemporary environment.

He even had a passing wish that he might live to know what would
happen.  Personally, he would not object, nor speak a word to hinder,
if it should appear probable that Vinetta, or any other young woman,
should survive to become the mother of a new race.  The proposed exit
of humanity from the records of time had a dramatic quality which had
pleased his mind, and he had given it the support of a ready vote.  But
so also did that of the surreptitious survival of two who would renew
their kind, so that a new vista of history would commence with the next
dawn.  He would regard that with equal benignity, tempered only by
regret that it was something he would not see.

But, if the thought that he would no longer live brought a feeling of
sorrowful regret, he did not therefore hesitate in his own intention.
It would be pleasant to watch, but not at the cost of discomfort to his
own skin.  A man may love drama, but he will not wish to watch the play
with a cold draught blowing about his legs.

He disconcerted Munzo-D7D, as the narrative closed, by saying with
friendly sincerity, "If you have really such a purpose, and can find a
woman more complaisant than Vinetta has proved, it will be an act of
friendship to tell me more."

Munzo was confounded by this to a point at which his resolution to
inform the council faltered.  If Avanah took it thus, how might it
appear to others who would regard it In a spirit less friendly and less
detached?

He returned to Pilwin-C6P, hastening his steps more than was seemly for
a man to do, for the hour of siesta was near and he was determined to
resolve the question, of whether or not he were doubted by him also
without further delay.

Pilwin was amused.  He had listened in, as he had, for a second time,
been requested to do.  He said, "You have touched fire with a bare
hand.  Whoever lies, there is no doubt that Vinetta thinks herself
equal to dealing with you."

Munzo answered, "She may be equal to me or not.  The question does not
arise.  She thinks herself equal to defy the council and put us all to
contempt.  That is a greater thing, which she must not do."

"Well," Pilwin said, as though it were a matter on which opinion should
not be hastily formed, "be it truth or lie, you are one who should know
best.  But I will say this: if they lie, they lie well."  He added,
"The barbarian has asked to see me this afternoon."

"You have agreed?"

"Yes.  I had intended to watch the furnace at work.  I like the glow of
the inner blaze as it is thrown on to the roof of the ante-chamber when
the doors open.  But I will see him.  It is for your sake rather than
mine.  I will get the truth if I can.  Or perhaps you will not thank me
for that?  Should I put it another way?"

Munzo asked, "Am I to suppose from that that they will fool all men
with their incredible tale?"

"Not at all.  They have not made me believe.  But you must allow me a
space in which to weigh all in an open mind, as reason prompts us to
do.  Especially as it is all the occupation I have.  As to sterilizing
the seas, I have given all the orders the occasion requires.  But I can
tell you that they will not succeed.

"I have had reports today of the conditions in the lonely parts of the
earth where men have ceased to resort, and as for the suppression of
life, it is evident that it cannot be done.  Or I should rather say
that concrete is the sole cure.

"You know how we have tried.  The hunting machines, large and small,
that make fuel from their prey, so that they do not cease to pursue,
nor to fill their maws--the inoculations--the spreading oils--the
dosing of great districts with extremes of heat, cold, such as most
creatures cannot endure--the great electric shocks--they have done
much, but the reports from all sides are that life is insurgent again
in a hundred forms.  We may make an end of ourselves, but it will
remain a disease that we cannot cure."

Munzo listened to that which would have interested him more at another
time.  As he had observed Pilwin's reaction, and remembered that of his
previous auditor, his judgment warned him that the tale which
Colpeck-4XP and Vinetta had conspired to tell might be sufficient to
confuse counsel, even though it should not be confidently believed.
Where he had not hesitated for his own repute, he paused at the thought
of the larger issues which it was his duty to guard.

He said, with courtesy, "By your leave," as he did an act of rudeness,
at which Pilwin must stare incredulous surprise, till the explanation
came.  He reached to draw forth the writing material of his host,
without permission for such a liberty being given.  Having obtained
them, he wrote, "I would not ask aloud, lest we be overheard.  I would
have none guess what I now do."

After that he drew swiftly and well.  Their eyes met, and, more than
once, Pilwin nodded assent.  When he rose to go, Pilwin had no doubt of
his integrity, nor that they were led by one who would bring all to the
resolved end.  He settled himself to his midday rest with a satisfied
and amused mind.  It was a mental attitude which did not change as he
thought of the visitor he was to receive during the afternoon.



Wyndham came to Pilwin-C6P with intention both to conceal and deceive,
and with the purpose of acquiring information it might be useful to
have, and, perhaps, to gain active help.  He had no inclination to give
further trust because he was received with more cordiality than he had
expected to meet.  He was wise in that.  Pilwin had reserves in his own
mind, and if he gave help it might be such as leads to a covered pit.
There were deceits in his heart such as it had not held till that hour,
for when Eve reached for the fruit, it was to be more than a single
sin; and life repeats itself in a round that is never different, though
it is never the same.

Wyndham said, "I ask your help.  I must choose a place where I will
live when I am alone in the world.  I know that you have special
knowledge of what the climates were before we controlled the winds, and
which I suppose they will be again."

"Could you not go to the librarian for such information as that, rather
than come to me?"

"I have been to him.  But he knows so much that I am merely confused.
He suggests a hundred places, and has objections to all."

"Well, so there are."

"I believe that.  But I must make a choice."

"So you must, if you persist in this crazy attempt.  I will tell you
frankly what I think.  Go where you will, you are not likely to endure
for a moon's length.  I should guess at ten days, if not less.

"You must consider that, though men lived when the winds were loose,
they were born to tempest and frost and heat, while you have been bred
in a different way."

"I have thought of that.  That is why I desire an equable spot."

"Which will not be easy to find.  But there is one thing in your favor.
That is, if you stay in this Northern Hemisphere, as I suppose you
intend to do.  It is the time of the year when the light will increase,
and the air will be more or less temperate, even at night, for three
moons, if not more."

Wyndham knew that.  He wished to get an answer to his first question.
He asked again, "Well, where should you advise me to go?"

"It is not easy to answer.  Will it be well to stay in one place?  If
you wander north for six months, and then south for the same time, you
may think to avoid extremes, either of heat or cold, though you may
find in practice that it is less simple than that.  Primitive men did
not generally do so, having houses and herds and young children, and
other things which would have been awkward to move about.  But you will
be quite alone."

"Yes.  It will be a greater loneliness than the earth has known."

"Well, it is your choice!  So you might wander at will.  But when I
think of this, there is another difficulty which I can see.  There is
the question of food.  You must grow, and, I suppose, store.  You will
require archaic, primitive tools.  Have you thought of that?"

"I have selected a number from our museum already."

"Well, you see what I mean.  Even though you may be quite alone, you
will have too much to carry about.  Primitive people had domestic
beasts of burden and perhaps carts.  But there are none of these left
in the world.  You might have a machine.  But would it last under your
single control?"

"I will have no machines.  They have wrecked the world."

"Well, if they have, they have.  But what is it to you?  You need not
consider that.  You are not founding a new race.  But I see reason to
doubt how long a machine sufficiently simple to control would be
obedient to you.  You may be wise to commence as you must go on."

"Then where should you advise me to be?"

"I have thought that a mountainous district may be best, in what was
the temperate zone, and will doubtless be so again.  As the seasons
change, you can go up or down.  You will find a great difference in
climate can be reached in that way by no more than an uphill walk, or a
short descent.

"I have thought whether you could move growing food in the same way,
planting it in boxes, and drawing it up or down, but I doubt whether
you will find it a satisfactory plan."

"No.  I don't think I should.  But what mountain do you recommend?"

"Well, you might find it best to choose one where we are growing trees,
of which there are few.  I believe that wood is required for many
purposes in a primitive life.  There is Mount Ida, in Asia Minor, where
men lived, I believe, in remote times.  You must not think that I
recommend it.  Go where you will, I suppose you will be a most
miserable man.  But I can think of nowhere better than that."

"Neither can I.  It sounds to me a good choice."

Wyndham recognized advice that seemed to be honestly given, and, in
itself, sound.  After some further talk, he said definitely that that
was where he would go.

"You will gather what you require, and go tomorrow, I suppose, while
the means of transit are still reliable."

"No.  I have decided to wait the end.  I will have the comforts of
decent life for as many days as I can."

Pilwin did not argue about that, though he pointed out that the running
of the long-distance automatic cars might be affected, almost
immediately, by the changed conditions of the earth and the new uses to
which its major plants would be put.  "You might go safely," he said,
"or you might end in a ghastly death, or be maimed in a disconcerting
manner which you will wish to avoid."

But even on this matter he was helpful.  Why should not one of the
aeroplanes which were accustomed to cross the world with certain
supplies such as were required while they were fresh be used for this
final service?

"It is true," he said, "that they are not designed for human
occupation, but you would have courage for that, and the question of
skill would not arise.  I could even procure you one which is
accustomed to alight in the district to which you propose to go."

"It would be a service of kindness," Wyndham agreed, "for I could not
go in a quicker or better way, and it will carry the tools and garments
that I require."

"Well, I am glad to help you in so simple a matter.  Considering that
my own troubles are so nearly done, and the nature of that which, at
the best, you will have to face, it is a small thing to assist you the
most I can."

Wyndham thought that this sounded sincere, as it partly was.  With
repeated thanks, he would have risen to go, but Pilwin changed the
subject abruptly.  He said, "This is a queer business about Vinetta and
Munzo-D7D.  I should not have thought him one to design that which
would be both folly and crime."

"You have heard something of that?"

"Yes.  I listened in, at his own request, when he was talking to you."

"Well, when you call it crime, I suppose you are right.  You cannot
expect me to call it folly, except in thinking that Vinetta would
agree.  I suppose few women would."

"I should have supposed none.  He must have placed his hope in her as
the Lawless Child.  I wonder how he thought to save her life when her
turn came in the procession of death, she being nearly sixty before the
last?"

"She didn't know.  He told her no more than that he would provide her a
way."

"Well, so he would have done, I suppose, had she agreed.  He has a fine
brain.  It was well that she had discretion to refuse, and to come to
you.  I wonder why she did that?"

"She may have thought that I should believe her tale better than most.
But it is a question to be asked of her rather than me....  As she
refused, it can be put out of our minds.  Why should we vex the
thoughts of others before they die?"

"So I think.  Would you have taken her yourself, if she had been
willing to go?"

"Yes, I would.  For two are better than one.  But it is not a life to
persuade any woman to share; and when I heard them all vote for their
own deaths, I put such thoughts from my mind."

Wyndham went, and Pilwin pondered the conversation without coming to
any definite conclusion, though he wondered whether Vinetta had offered
to go with Wyndham, and might still hope to do so.

"Well," he said to himself at last, "be it as it may, there will be
provision for all."



Wyndham went to the council prepared to meet whatever accusation might
be made against himself, and to support Vinetta in the tale which he
had prompted her to tell.  Doubtless she went in the same mood.  But
they found that they had armed themselves for a battle which did not
come.  Seeing that there was to be no open conflict, he watched
narrowly for a flank attack--for some proposal which would make certain
of Vinetta's death, without disclosing that as its direct purpose.  He
did not underrate the ability of the brain that was in opposition to
his, nor the fact that it had the overwhelming advantage of being on
the side of the universal decision, with all the material forces of
civilization in its support.

He saw that, if such oblique attack should be made, it might be
difficult for either Vinetta or himself to resist it without drawing
suspicion upon themselves, and perhaps leading to a position which
would discredit them in advance, if Munzo-D7D should subsequently
charge them with the conspiracy he had discovered.  But he could do
little even mentally, to prepare for an attack the nature of which was
so vague a conjecture.  He was like a general who cannot tell from what
quarter his foes will burst out of the fog that surrounds his lines.
And, in the result, there was no attack at all.  The meeting went on
its quiet, leisurely course, already laden with the atmosphere of
approaching peace, and with the news from all centres that men and
women slid punctually to their easy deaths.

And the next day passed in the same way, with its reduction of a
further million of remaining lives, and Munzo-D7D still gave no sign.
He had even abandoned his previous intention of asking Colpeck-4XP for
a solemn pledge that he would not seduce a companion to share his
renunciation of this final gesture by which mankind would reject their
Creator's will.  It had become too plain that the confidence he would
have felt in his companion's veracity--he would have said in his
honour--would be misplaced.  The position must be dealt with--was being
dealt with already--in other ways.

The day passed without Wyndham and Vinetta meeting except by casual,
public chance, when they did not speak.  They had both seen, without
consultation, that the secret meal-time contacts must be abandoned.
While there had been no suspicion directed upon themselves, the lawless
audacity of the proceeding, joined to the fact that all men were in
retirement at the same hour, had rendered it a matter of little hazard.
But now, if any could be found who would shorten their own retirement
for so great a cause, there would be no difficulty in stationing them
in innocent, neutral positions, such as would enable them to observe
the crossing from one room to another.  And who would believe that they
could engage in indecencies, so profound with less motive than in tact
they had?

They were long hours for Vinetta, who must spend them in the customary
indolent manner, but for Wyndham, making preparations which must appear
to be for one only, so that many things which he would have collected
for Vinetta he must not touch, they were soon gone.

In the early afternoon the aeroplane from Asia Minor arrived and
settled with the seeming discrimination of an alighting bird, upon the
landing-place to which it was drawn by its self-regulating magnetic
controls; and he began to load it at once, finding a curiously exciting
pleasure in a sense of ownership more particular and absolute than he
had previously known.  He knew it to be a barbarous atavistic instinct,
but what thrill it gave of exultant conquering life!  And when he
should add Vinetta--dearest acquisition of all--to the cargo he would
bear away through the skies, he would have found life, which he saw
that those around him had never had.  That was why they were destroying
themselves.  They were not doing anything more than to recognize an
existing fact.

He felt himself to be alone already, among the walking dead--more
alone, far more than he would be when two dawns had come, for the dead
kept him from the one other who was alive.  In this mood he went too
near to despising the sluggish brains and timid pain-dreading bodies of
those among whom he moved.  What power was theirs to contend with the
undrugged brain of a living man?  He moved with confident steps,
feeling a disposition to sing, but having no words or tune for so
primitive an exhibition.



In the afternoon, the museum, from which most of his ancient treasures
were taken, became vacant, and entirely at his own disposal.  The
curator, one of the fourth hundred, and also a Colpeck (-4GZ), had been
friendly, and given him much curious and possibly useful information
respecting articles in his charge.

He had shown him replicas, ancient themselves, of still more ancient
things, among which had been weapons, such as had been used in very
barbarous times.  Short broadswords, such as the savage Romans had used
to stab upward under their enemies' hearts: long Polish lances of a
later millennium, which had been the still more curious weapons of men
who sat on the backs of animals more primitive than themselves.

Showing these, he had mentioned a tradition of those savage,
quarrelsome days, that the nation which used the shorter weapon would
always dominate those who tried to reach their foes at a longer range.
Remembering this, Windham selected the Roman sword.  He made himself
grotesque to his own eyes by girding it to his side with a leather
belt.  He practised with it, cleaving a block of oak, till he observed
that he had dulled its keenness of edge, and must labor awkwardly to
sharpen it to his own satisfaction again.  He did not show this weapon
abroad, having a thought which he feared, probably without foundation,
might arise also in other minds.

He spent some time also in apparent indolence, loitering round the
furnace, and watching the process of dissolution, to which the men and
women he knew submitted themselves in a placidly contented, mildly
excited, unbroken stream.

They did not object to his presence there.  Rather it was a sight to
reconcile any who might otherwise have felt a pang of reluctance, a
disposition to regret the mystery of existence which they were casting
away before the inevitable hour when it would have been taken from
them.  To think of the fearful life which would be the penalty of his
unnatural rebellion against the universal verdict was enough to hasten
them contentedly through the humid atmosphere and intoxicating odours
of the conservatory toward the consuming heat of the central fire,
which would be as pleasant to feel as it would be beautiful to see.

He even penetrated into the preliminary hothouses which his exceptional
position enabled him to do without causing it to be supposed that he
was seeking dissolution before his time.  Idly he watched a crawling
automaton passing from pot to pot, raising itself to drive a long
sensitive proboscis into the soil of each, and then going off to
communicate the information it had recorded to another automaton, which
would subsequently give to each the water that it required....  With
equal indolence, he lounged round the outside of the ante-chamber to
the final portal, where others stood to watch the disappearance of
friends into the irrevocably devouring flames.

It was next morning that he passed Vinetta, and said casually, "Do not
object to enter the furnace when your time shall come.  You will have
nothing to fear."

It was unlikely that any would notice or overhear, but, if they should,
what was there in that to raise objection or cause remark?  The words
were not spoken in a furtive or significant manner, and their substance
was no other than excellent advice.

Vinetta heard them with an instant's blankness of incomprehension, an
instant of incredulity, of fear.  But it was no longer than that.  With
a recovered serenity, she answered, "No, of course.  I shall go when my
turn comes!  There will be nothing to fear."

After that, he appeared to take no further notice of her.  But he
watched in a constant dread.  His fears fluctuated between the doubt
that the aeroplane which had been suggested for his use might be the
bait of some fatal trap, and the greater probability that Munzo-D7D, or
perhaps Pilwin-C6P, of whom he had an almost equal distrust, might have
devised something against Vinetta from which, as he could not guess it,
he might fail to give her the protection that she required....  Well,
he must trust something to her.  She was no fool.  Her thoughts would
move on the same lines as his own.  And of her courage he had no doubt.

The latter was the more probable danger, both because he could imagine
no possible way in which the aeroplane could involve him in any peril,
though he exhausted imagination upon it, and he did not think that the
probity of Munzo-D7D--which he did not credit the less because of the
criminality of his own mind--would allow him to practise against the
life of one whom the council allowed to live, without obtaining formal
revocation of that decision.  Vinetta was in a different position.  To
ensure her death was to enforce the popular will, which was also
ratified by her own consent.

But the day came and went, and nothing sinister happened at all.  The
last council was held.  The last dispositions for the slackening
control of the earth which men had shown themselves so incompetent to
possess had been made.  The night passed.  The dawn rose which mankind
had resolved should be the last it would ever see.

As it broadened across the sky, the last million of humanity began
their procession toward the annihilation which they considered to be
the final end of their separate lives.  At Wyndham's centre the
incineration of the Second Hundred commenced.  That of the First
Hundred was to follow immediately after the usual two-hour interval,
for which, however, there would be no occasion at the other centres, at
which the destruction of the penultimate would be followed immediately
by that of the final Hundred.  This arrangement was possible because
the resources of the furnaces were sufficient for the last act without
renewal or renovation of their resources, and was convenient because it
allowed the council time for a brief final session, at which it could
receive reports that the last Hundreds had entered upon the procession
of death.




CHAPTER VII

As it turned out, Pilwin-C6P was not actually late for the last
council, but he would have been so in the next second, and he was the
ninety-ninth to take his place, the hundredth seat remaining vacant,
for Colpeck-4XP did not come.

There was little regard for that vacant seat.  He who had renounced the
decision of all his race might go his own way, as the time was
obviously arriving for him to do.  He had been seen until a few minutes
before, hanging round the furnace with that absurd weapon swinging
against his thigh, and what his fate would be in the coming days was
not pleasant to think.  It would have been easy to feel a gentle
sorrow--the strongest emotion which a well-controlled human ego should
be permitted to experience--for a man so enamoured of dirt and pain,
had it not been neutralized by an equally faint contempt.

Munzo-D7D, looking down the two familiar rows, was more interested to
observe that Vinetta's seat was filled.  Her face showed the same
placidity that was the common expression of those around her.  A
placidity beneath which there was a faint pleasure, a mild relief, as
of those who have come through a boring day, but who know that the hour
of repose is near.

Pilwin-C6P had delayed for a message to reach him from a distant
station--HI4--which, when it came, would have had no meaning to any but
him.  His eyes met those of the chairman as he took his seat, and he
gave a slight but sufficient nod.  Munzo-D7D understood that the
necessary dispositions had been made.  Vinetta might go to her death in
a seemly dignified way, such as would be painless for her.  It might be
supposed that she would.  But if some evasion had been contrived, it
would be the worse for her.  Much the worse.  There would be no
difference beyond that.

Munzo-D7D put her out of his thoughts.  He had a speech to make, and
that was an occupation that gave him the greatest pleasure he had,
which may not have been overmuch.  He spoke the funeral oration of
mankind, which, to mankind at least, was to deal with a momentous event.

But what he said was simple and short.  The decision to which they had
come, and which would be consummated and concluded before the next sun
should rise, was not hurried, nor such as might have been altered had
it been subject to longer debate.  It was a decision to which mankind
had been slowly tending, as Avanah-F3B would have told them, from the
barbarous ages--from as far back as the twentieth century, when mankind
had blasphemed and rejected the traditional God by telling Him flatly
from a half-populated earth that a few children were much better than
more.

What natural alternative was there?  To beat vainly at doors which
would never open to human cries?  Or to go the way of endless
futility--the way the ant had gone in remote times, and in which it had
endured as a monumental warning to men?

He was followed by grave, assenting voices to which there is no
occasion to listen.  "Let the dead bury their dead," is a good text.

With the living we may be concerned, and Wyndham Smith was alive.  He
had seen in this council meeting an interval during which he would be
as entirely alone as though he were already the only man in the world,
and it was upon this he had relied for the success of the plan, at once
audacious and simple, for Vinetta's rescue.  This was no more than to
enter the euthanasia furnace at a time when he knew that he would be
unobserved, and hide among the dense greenery of the inner hothouses,
from which position he could watch the approach of Vinetta's couch,
snatch her from it, and either remain hidden there, or, if there should
be interference after her empty couch should have reached the
ante-chamber of death (where it could be observed from outside), to
defend her against such as might still be alive, and of a disposition
for violence.

He calculated that there could not be more than fifty-five (including
eighteen women) who would be alive when he should attempt the rescue,
and of these not less than five would have already entered the furnace,
and more would have drugged themselves before discovery could be made.

His hope went farther than that.  Was it certain that, with so few
alive, there would be any watchers who would observe the emptiness of
that slow-moving couch?  Well, perhaps he must answer yes to that.  It
would still be more likely than not, even apart from the possibility
that there might be a special curiosity to see her pass into the fire.
But, even so, when he went over the list of those who would be alive,
it was hard, to think of them as engaging in a physical struggle, or
putting aside the pleasant form of dissolution which was so near, to
face with weaponless hands the thrusts of that broad and most deathly
blade.

In fact, when he considered what they would do, imagination was
baffled.  He could not even make a probable guess.  But he knew what he
would do himself, with Vinetta's life as the stake, and it was likely
to be unpleasant for them.

So he entered and hid.  He had calculated that he would have to wait
until the immolations began, and then for about four hours, but he had
attached little importance to that.  He knew it to be no more than the
beginning of irregularities of living, many of which might involve more
serious discomforts or dangers than waiting for five or six hours
behind a cover of broad-leaved plants.

He had even had foresight to provide himself with food which could be
eaten during the hours of vigil.  It was strange to have to think, for
the first time in his life, of the need of providing food before the
hour of hunger should come!  Always, it had appeared before him, the
nursery experiences of barbarous times being continued till death in
the life he knew.  But now the last meal that would be served to
mankind by its subservient machines had been distributed and consumed.
That had been in the morning.  It had been decided that the evening
meal would not be required....



The first hour passed quickly enough, and with little discomfort.  For
that time, he was not even careful to conceal himself, knowing that he
could not be seen except by those who would pass him on their way to
death, and that procession had not yet begun.

Actually, when it did, the need for concealment was not much, for those
who lay on the passing couches were already stupefied by the drug they
had swallowed, and even if they had perceived and recognized him, were
in no condition to return to give the alarm.  But by that time his own
condition had become little better than theirs.

He had noticed as he entered, the heavy, alluring, sickly scent of the
flowers blooming on the vines that spread over and hung down from the
trellised roof.  It was strange to him, for the flowers were grown in
no other place, and he had not previously penetrated so far into these
portals of death.  The flowers were large, with single, wide-open
petals, wax-white, with blotches of dark brown on their upper, and a
fierce orange colour on their under sides.  The scent was unlike
anything he had encountered before.  Different from, and much more
powerful than, that of the outer conservatories.

After a time he ceased to notice it, though its effect did not lessen
for that.  He became conscious of increasing torpor of body, and
difficulty in maintaining connected thought.

He did not know how much this might be due to the heavy, sensuous
odour, or how much to the hot, damp air which his body, having been
accustomed from birth to dry, equable, temperate warmth, was
ill-prepared to endure.  He became sharply afraid that, as the hours
passed, he might be subdued by these conditions, so that he would be
unfit for the rescue which he had planned.

He imagined himself lying unconscious while Vinetta would pass on the
way of death, and waking too late, to know that he had failed her, and
that he would be alone indeed in an empty world....  Or perhaps he
would never wake.  Perhaps he would lie there, unconscious or dead,
until, as he knew would be the case within two days at the most, the
intended fire would spread through the building, consuming that which
could no longer be useful to man....  His mind wandered from this
thought to consider the need for conserving fire in some crude form in
the life which was before him now.  But perhaps it would be simple
enough.  Was there not a volcano near the place where he was intending
to live?  He believed vaguely that they were sources of perpetual
fire....

He pulled himself up in abrupt panic to recall what he had been
thinking before.  Something more important than that.  Why did his
thoughts wander in this impotent aimless way?  He had been thinking of
Vinetta, of course.  Of how she might lie on her moving litter,
fearing, wondering, _trusting_ that his rescue would not be delayed,
till it would be too late.

Could he fail her thus?  Suppose she should see him lie unconscious?
Would she not spring up at the sight, and might not the position be
saved, even then.  If that were so, would it not be better for him to
risk being seen by those who would pass earlier, and remain in the open
passage between the palms?

But she might herself be too dazed to observe him, too drugged to rise?
No, he thought not.  She would avoid swallowing the drug.  Certainly
she would not do so to a deadening quantity.  He saw hope here, for the
others might pass him in stupefied oblivion, while she might be alert.
But, if so, and she should not observe him, or fail to rise, might it
not mean that she would be defenseless against the flames?  He imagined
her, like Sinto-T9R, aware too late of the horror to which she had been
betrayed, and writhing in the flame of her burning robe.  Trust in him,
obedience to his whispered word, would have brought her to that!

Love of life, which his ego had brought from a remote time, was
strengthened by consciousness of the supreme issues involved.  He
remembered that his honour was pledged; he thought of Vinetta, and love
and pity became the most potent forces of all in a prolonged struggle
against the languorous poison which remained neither lost nor won.

He thought, as his senses wavered towards unconsciousness narrowly kept
at bay, that he might endure better if he could quench the thirst which
was increasingly difficult to endure, and he saw a possibility of that,
if he should have courage to outrage all the teachings of youth by
interfering with a machine.

The automaton whose duty it was to investigate the drying of the soil
in the great pots and report to its comrade, who would give them what
they required, had recently finished its round.  It lay at ease near
him at the side of the path, cleaning its proboscis in the thorough
leisurely manner which was characteristic of all the machinery of this
age, for though they might design each other, as they largely did, the
first to be designed came from human brains, which had given their own
characteristics to them.

Its companion, having been informed of the quantity of water which
would, be required, had filled itself to that amount, and now came
crawling along the passage, where it halted its laden belly, stretched
out a very long, flexible neck that sought among the great pots for
those to whom it had been instructed to minister, and commenced to give
them the quantities of water that they required.

Why, Wyndham thought, should he not divert that injecting nozzle to his
own mouth?  If a plant should go dry in consequence, surely it would be
a triviality, especially as it was doomed to destruction within the
week?  He put the inhibitions of childish days firmly aside.

He made difficult way along and over the pots, breaking through
ruthlessly where he could not otherwise pass, until he came to where
that long neck advanced like a lengthening worm to one that was much
smaller than those around it.  He could not guess that his life hung
upon the smallness of that pot.

He caught the flexible, twisting neck in his hands, endeavouring to
draw the mouthlike nozzle to his own lips, and was surprised to be
opposed by a stubborn strength which his utmost effort could not
overcome.

An engineer, soothing it with discriminating fingers, could have
compelled it to the desired obedience, but he lacked the knowledge
which the position required.

Yet, though he loosed it, he did not resign the effort.  He saw that it
would only release its water at the places to which it had been
directed, and so, bending down, he advanced his own mouth to the nozzle
above the surface of the pot.

The next moment he fell back, as the nozzle was pushed forward into his
throat with an injection of choking violence.

He rose spitting out water of a foul and poisonous taste, much of which
had been forced down his throat by the premature violence with which
the automaton had been irritated to act.  He had not guessed that it
was not pure water, but a liquid plant food, which he was attempting to
drink, and of which a large quantity had been forced into his gullet.

Ceasing to spit water, he spat blood from a throat that was bruised and
torn.  After that, he vomited violently, which may have been a good
thing, probably saving his life, but he did not regard it in that way.



Had he been in a mood for such reflections, he might have considered it
to be a warning of what the life he had chosen was likely to be.  It
was an experience as new as it was foul.  He had never done such a
thing before: never seen it: scarcely knew that it could be.  But it
had the immediate effect of rousing him from the control of that
deadening scent, so that he might have thanked it doubly both for
relieving him from the poison he had swallowed, and the most dangerous
lethargy against which he had made no more than a losing battle before.

This upheaval of body and mind was scarcely over when he became
conscious of sounds which warned him that the first arrivals of the
final hundred were entering the furnace, and he withdrew to the shelter
the leaves supplied.  Near him the automaton stretched its long neck in
a helpless manner, vomiting a stream of foul water across the floor.
Either the wrench he had first given, or his subsequent action, had
caused it to lose the sense of direction which enabled it to find the
pots to which it had been directed by its companion.

After an abortive effort, which resulted in nothing better than
striking down at the hard floor, it had given up the attempt, and
commenced to belch out indiscriminately the contents of its distant
belly.  Wyndham observed the truth of his childhood's lesson--interfere
with a machine, and no once could foretell what it would do.  Well,
they could go on their own way now, and make way for a more primitive,
simpler world!

One by one, at intervals of five or six minutes, the laden couches
began to pass.  Soon after, at similar intervals, the furnace would
flare up, as a victim was received through its open doors.  The glare
which shone into the highly heated anteroom was reflected through the
doors of non-inflammable glass, into the hothouse in which Wyndham hid:
its roar could be heard by him at such moments more distinctly than it
came to those who loitered outside.

He knew that he had still hours to wait, and, as he recovered from the
physical shock he had endured, he became apprehensive again of the
effect of the deadening scent.  He saw that he must face a much longer
ordeal than he had yet had.  But he found that he was assisted by some
freshness of air that came through the opening of doors.  Every six
minutes the door through which he had come would slide open for a couch
to pass, and a breath of dry air would follow, which felt cool and
life-giving to him.  Every two minutes after, the further door would
slide open, bringing an influx of hot air, hard to breathe, but still
free from the heavy scent, and, half stupefied though he was, with
these helps he endured.

He did not observe that any of those who passed accelerated their own
transit, nor that they retarded it, to the delaying of those behind.
They appeared to accept the pace at which the cable drew them forward,
lying dormantly, so that their degree of consciousness was not easy to
judge; but it was certain that they took no notice of him, even when he
came venturesomely out, to take fuller advantage of those short-lived
currents of cooler air.

So the time passed, until the moment came when Vinetta would be due to
appear on the next couch.  All his life, Colpeck-4XP had been sheltered
from apprehension of disaster, from occasion for fear.  But Wyndham
felt fear now.  He learned anxiety, as he had not yet done, even in the
last days.

Would she come?  Would they have played some cunning trick?  Would she
be already too overcome to rise, so that he would be burdened by her
insensible form in whatever struggle for her release might be upon him
in the next hour?  _Would she be already dead_?  Suppose they had made
certain of their own will by administering--perhaps without arousing
her suspicion--some sudden poison?  If they had, he resolved that he
would sally out and deal such vengeance to those concerned as is
possible to wreak on men who are seeking death in the next hour.....
Now she had come through the open door.  He scarcely waited until it
closed before his arms were round her and he had lifted her from the
couch, which moved on, being so lightened, at a slightly faster pace
than previously.

She hung heavily on his arm, so that he saw she was unable to stand on
unsteady feet.  She looked at him with brave eyes that were yet dazed,
fighting with sleep.  She said, "I will not doubt.  He must have a
plan," as though repeating words that she had said to herself before,
and not being yet conscious of where she was.

He answered her in exultant confidence, born of what seemed to be an
easy success, "So I had.  You are safe now," but the puzzled look did
not leave her eyes.  In fact she was unsure whether she were awake or
under the power of a drug-bought dream.

Kisses had more effect.  Her eyes changed.  She spoke in a more natural
voice.  "I had to swallow some.  They watched all that I did.  I could
not tell what you meant me to do."

"It is over now.  You are safe.  We must stay here for a few hours, and
after that we shall be free."

So it seemed obvious that they should do.  While they talked, two
subsequent couches had passed them, the occupants of which had shown no
interest in, no awareness of, their existence.  Even though it should
be observed when her couch reached the ante-room that Vinetta had left
it, it might appear better to wait the event where they were than to
expose themselves, and challenge opposition, by walking out.  Every
couch that passed them reduced by one, woman or man, the number of
their potential foes.  Why hasten the event while time so steadily
shortened in their favour the still desperate odds?

So they stayed for the next hour, and saw eleven more of the last
hundred glide forward to the resolving fire, but by that time the
difficulty of retaining consciousness had become so great that it was
evident that another five hours of that atmosphere would be beyond
mortal endurance.  For some time Wyndham had been comparing the
advantage of the numerical reduction that they were witnessing with the
disadvantage of his own dizzying brain.  He did not wish to stagger out
so dazed that he would fumble in vain for the hilt of that strange
weapon against his thigh.  Now Vinetta said, "I am getting so that I
cannot stand.  If you delay more, you must leave me here.  Is there
nowhere else we can hide?"

She knew the words to be foolish as she uttered them.  To go forward
was to enter the ante-room, where, as the emptiness of her couch
appeared to have been unobserved, it was possible that they also might
not be under instant observation, but they knew that the heat, even at
the near end, would be beyond endurance.  On the side nearer the
furnace it would be so great that their garments would burst into
flame.  How much they would feel it they could not tell, nor what the
pain of burning would be, which was outside their experience; but they
knew that it would be sufficient to damage their bodies beyond repair.

To go back would be to enter the cooler greeneries which were under
observation both by those outside, and any who might be entering and
still in possession of their normal senses.

The place where they were was the only part of the way of death which
was not open to outside observation, and that was solely because the
density of the tropic plants blinded the heat-proof glass.  It was also
the only section that was not artificially lighted.  Light entered from
either end, and above a full moon shone through the glass roof.

Being unable longer to endure the atmosphere where they were, they took
the only possible course when they went back, and they used such
prudence as the position allowed when they halted in the corridor
through which the couches commenced their journey.  Here they were in
full view of those who were taking their final draught, and would have
been from the outside also, had any been there to see, but they did not
go out among them immediately.  They paused in the purer, cooler air,
drawing in breaths that restored them to something which approached
their natural vitality before they were subject to more than the
curious glances of those who remained alive.



For the reason that Munzo-D7D and Pilwin-C6P had kept their suspicions
secret--Avanah-F3B had already entered the furnace--the appearance of
Vinetta was a matter of blank surprise to all but these two, but it
didn't require that they should be--as they were--the best brains of
that dying world for them to be able to guess what its meaning was.
They saw the whole declared purpose for which they, with five millions
of their fellows, had undertaken that procession of death reduced to
mockery by the treacherous defiance of a single woman.  It was not
surprising that murmurs rose.

It may be hard to guess to what these would have led had they been left
to their own courses, but Pilwin asked, "Shall I warn him of what he
does?"  And Munzo, having replied, "It would be an act of kindness,
which he would thank," moved among his companions with reassuring
words, so that they continued the orderly process of that on which they
were engaged, only turning curious eyes to where Pilwin-C6P could be
seen in conversation with Colpeck-4XP, which, from earnestness,
developed an evident anger, and then a sight so unprecedented and
incredible that men might ask themselves whether they had not already
passed from the living world to such vivid dreams as dissolution by
fire may give.

"I have come," Pilwin-C6P commenced, looking at Vinetta as he spoke,
though the words might be meant for both, "to warn you in friendly
words, while there is still time to avoid the horror to which you go."

"As to that," Wyndham replied, with deliberation, feeling that every
passing second was gain to him, both to fill his lungs, and for the
number of those who might obstruct his purpose to reduce themselves,
"we thank you, being content to believe that your purpose is friendly
to us, but we have made our choice, and ask no more than to be left
alone to bring it to the best end that we can."

"I am not greatly concerned for you," Pilwin replied, with no
friendliness in his voice.  "You have made deliberate choice, knowing
what you do, which had the council's assent.  But you have persuaded
Vinetta to attempt that which will bring her to a most dreadful death,
which there is still time to avoid, if she will go the way which wisdom
points, and which her honour requires."

Hearing this, Wyndham was moved both to anger and fear on behalf of the
woman he had come so nearly to save, for he resented the implication
that he had persuaded her to dishonour herself, and he knew Pilwin-C6P
well enough to judge that he would not have said what he did without
confident belief in the warning his words conveyed.  He replied, "As to
her honour, I should say it would be hard to find, if she should join
you in the most craven act that the earth has known.  And will you tell
me what your laws will be worth by tomorrow's dawn?  It will be for the
living to make their own....  But I am more concerned to know what you
may mean when you talk of Vinetta being near to a dreadful death, which
we must know how to avoid.  Having said so much, I will ask you to tell
me that."

"That is more than I have permission to do."

"Permission from whom?  The council could have resolved nothing without
our knowledge, and there can be no other permission you need to have."

Pilwin did not argue this.  He replied, "It would make no difference if
I did, for it is a death impossible to avoid, and too late to change."

"I prefer to judge that for myself.  Having said so much, you must say
more."

"What I say is that Vinetta must go the way of her kind, or a time will
soon come when she will curse you for persuading her to a worse end."

"You have done, I suppose, some devilish thing, and I will know what it
is though I pull the tongue from your mouth."

Pilwin-C6P did not actually think of being personally assaulted.  The
man who confronted him was Colpeck-4XP, whom he had known from
childhood, and the idea of a violent scuffle developing between them
seemed--as it would have been a week earlier--too grotesque for a
waking dream.  But he did not like the look in his antagonist's eyes,
and instinct, stronger than reason or experience, caused him to take a
backward step even as this threat was spoken, and that step was the
signal for Wyndham's leap.

It was not a fight.  It was rather an all-in wrestling match of great
energy and supreme incompetence.  The two bodies, superbly
gymnasium-trained, were yet utterly without practice in any contests or
trials of skill with those of their own kind, which had been prohibited
by law, as involving the element of competition and the necessary
consequence that some would be defeated, as others won.

The course of events would have been by a different route to the same
end, had Wyndham remembered his Roman sword, but he was not seeking to
kill.  He aimed to force confession from reluctant lips, and he obeyed
blind, primitive instinct when he leaped at his opponent's throat, as
his barbarous ego would be likely to do.

Instinct, equally atavistic, prompted Pilwin's resistance, but strength
of purpose, and impulses of anger and fear, were on Wyndham's side, as
was the fact that his body, for several days, had been releasing itself
from the tyranny of the deadening drug.  For the first moments, the
advantage was his.

He brought Pilwin to the ground.  He caught him by the hair, striking
his face.  "Will you speak now?"

Pilwin felt no pain from the blows he took.  He might not yet be
experiencing the full effects of the final draught which he and his
companions had just taken, but his daily dosage gave him sufficient
immunity against superficial pains.  His answer was to clutch at a foot
which was driven sharply into his ribs.  He pulled Wyndham down.  The
two men rolled on the floor.

Pilwin tried to rise, and Wyndham to beat him back.  Their single
garments were torn away.  Pilwin was left nearly naked: purple shreds
of cloth trailed grotesquely from the sword-belt which Wyndham wore.
The sword itself had slipped from a sheath where it had only loosely
lain, and fallen upon the ground.



Vinetta watched the struggle without offering assistance.  She did not
stand back either from timidity, or reluctance to interfere, or because
she thought it a man's part to fight in a woman's cause.  The etiquette
of the event did not enter her mind.  She was, in fact, more completely
freed, even than Wyndham, from any sense of loyalty to her kind, or
their customs, or dying laws.  Her loyalty was to him alone, her
thought was single that she fought for her life against desperate odds,
and if it should be lost in the end, it would be through no foolish
scruple of hers.  But she thought shrewdly that if she should make any
motion to interfere, others might do the same, and the odds would be no
better for that.  Only, when she saw Wyndham's leg move on the floor
perilously near to the bare blade, she stepped forward and picked it up.

She hated Pilwin-C6P, as she had reason to do: there was only Munzo-D7D
whom she hated more.  She would have been glad to see Wyndham break him
in some fatal way, but she understood that they must aim at a smaller
thing.  They must make him tell, if they could, that which it was vital
for her to know.

So, having confidence in her companion, she looked on for the first
minute, quietly content; but the next waked her to an unwelcome sight.
She was cool-witted enough to see that Wyndham was not having the best
of the bout.  The fact was that his experiences of the last seven
hours, the swallowing of that foul water, the vomiting, the enervating
endurance of the scent-laden atmosphere of the hothouse, had rendered
him less fit than his opponent for a prolonged struggle, of which he
became aware as the first impulse of anger spent itself on one whom it
had battered, but who did not yield.

Less drugged than Pilwin in another way, he felt the pain of the hurts
he took, though it may be doubted whether there were disadvantage in
that.  He became aware that, in spite of his utmost effort, Pilwin
would be likely to break away, and with this realization his purpose
changed.  He remembered that Munzo-D7D was looking on.  Doubtless he
also knew of the trap which had been set for Vinetta's life.  Let him
see an example of what befell one who refused to speak!

He looked up at Vinetta.  Their eyes met, and she understood that he
asked her aid.  There came to his mind what the curator of the museum
had told him of how the Roman soldier was taught to thrust upward under
his convex shield.  With a supreme effort, he dragged Pilwin down.  He
got his knee sideways across his throat.  "In his belly," he gasped.
"Push it up."  Would she never do it?  Every second it seemed
impossible that he could retain his grip of the writhing man....  He
was breaking loose....  He was down again....  Wyndham knew it to be
the last supreme effort that he could make.  Frantic hands grappled and
strained and tore.

Vinetta was not aware of any slowness in what she did.  She was instant
to catch the meaning of the glance, and the gasped words.  Coolly
watching her chance, as her feet moved slightly at the side of the
writhing man, she pushed in the short broad blade with so firm a thrust
that there was little but the hilt that remained in view.

Pilwin felt no pain.  He did not know the nature of his own hurt.  But
he gave a terrible choking cry.  His body moved convulsively, and
Wyndham felt its muscles relax.  Breathing hard, he relaxed himself
from an effort such as is only possible when the issue is life or
death.  He heard Vinetta's voice asking, in a controlled excitement,
"Is it enough?  Shall I pull it out?"



Munzo-D7D watched the scuffling men, and was not greatly concerned.  It
was a ridiculous, ignominious exhibition, but it had been Pilwin's own
idea that he should interfere with advice which it was not necessary to
give, and which had evidently been ill received.  If he got hurt--or
perhaps damaged would be the better word, the question of acute pain
being remote--it could hardly be a matter of great concern to others
who were now assembled with him to pass the portals of death.  Still
less would Munzo's mind be disturbed if the barbarian should limp away
with a laming wound.  And as to Vinetta, her fate was already settled.

It had always been a weakness with Pilwin-C6P that he would find
reasons for doing things rather than for letting them remain.  It had
been the proverbial fault of all who had borne the Pilwin name for six
generations past.  Let him kick or be kicked, it did not occur to
Munzo-D7D to lift a finger, or suggest that other fingers should be
lifted for him.  Rather, if he showed any concern, it was to hold back
those who looked on at so strange a sight, that they should not further
impair the dignity of this culminating moment of human fate.

Such, at least, was his attitude while the two men struggled upon the
ground.  The nature of Vinetta's interposition was not clearly seen,
nor its significance understood, until Wyndham rose breathlessly from a
foe who was making no more than convulsive writhings amid a pool of
blood which spread from the hilt of a weapon driven so deeply that its
blunt-shaped point was out two inches beside his spine.

"Yes," Wyndham said, "pull it out.  We do not know how quickly we may
want it again."  For the moment, he could scarcely see steadily, he
could scarcely stand, so great had the effort been which had held his
foe for that fatal thrust.

Vinetta pulled out the sword, which she found surprisingly hard.  Doing
it, she was deluged with blood, which shot upward to spray the leaves
of the pathside plants.

Wyndham took it from her hands.  His sight was steadying now.  "You did
well," he said.  "In another moment I must have let go."

"But how you held him!" she replied.  "It was long enough."  Admiration
was in her eyes.

She looked down on a dying foe, and her glance changed to a pitiless
contempt of one who showed symmetry of muscular form with which few
Greek statues could have compared.  So, for that matter, did the man at
her side....  She would have said that she had good reason to hate.
Those who had killed her mother, who would have destroyed her also had
they been as sure of her identity as she now was in her own mind--what
loyalty did she owe them?  Had she ever owed?  They went the way they
chose, and she might have said that they chose well.  And one lay thus
who had practiced against her life in a way which might still bring her
to bitter death.  Could she have less than satisfaction in that?

Their eyes turned from the dying man to the little crowd who watched
them through the open archway.  Even those who had been occupied with
their last meal had risen to regard this final episode in the history
of their race, after they had supposed that the last word had been
said, and the curtain begun to fall.

Wyndham saw Munzo-D7D in the centre of those who were most advanced.
He said, "There he is."  Ignoring the others, he advanced upon him, the
bloody sword in his hand.  Munzo's indifference had already changed to
apprehensive doubt, as he had seen the state to which Pilwin's
twitching body had been reduced.  There were many barbarians of
Wyndham's own twentieth century to whom it would have been an
unpleasant sight, though they were used to scenes of violence and
death, to crushing each other on bloody roads, and to hanging the
disembowelled carcasses of other animals very similar to themselves
along the sides of their public streets.  But to these people it was an
exhibition revolting almost beyond endurance to see, and intolerable to
imagine as an ignominy which their own bodies might be about to suffer.

Munzo-D7D had no inclination to await a conversation which might end
with him sprawling in the same way, with his own entrails protruding in
that ghastly manner.  The thought of resistance, single or in
combination with his fellows, did not enter his mind.  He thought only
of how he might reach the furnace which would give him release in the
decent, dignified manner his civilization required without encountering
that advancing sword.



The problem might have appeared difficult to some, Wyndham being
between him and the only corridor of approach, but he had the best
brains of his time, and it was a question of mathematics which he had
no difficulty in solving in a simple manner.  He turned, and, as he did
so, said to those around him, "Do not fear.  It is I whom he seeks."
Then he retreated quickly through the outer door.

Wyndham saw his movement, and followed, as he had been expected to do.
The group of those between them, reassured by Munzo's words, did not
imitate his flight.  They served slightly to hinder Wyndham's pursuit,
though not much, drawing quickly to right and left, as Munzo had
foreseen that they would.  He wanted sufficient start, but yet to
ensure that Wyndham would follow at no great distance.

So he did.  Vinetta, close behind, would have stopped him if she could,
but she called words which he did not hear.  Her mind held singly, to
the one point.  Munzo-D7D must be kept alive, that he might be made to
talk.  Let him be kept outside the furnace while the rest should go to
their deaths, and they would have him safely enough.  Besides that, she
feared to be distant from Wyndham's side.  The threat was not to both.
It was single to her.  Her only hope was in him.  So, as she could not
stay him, she went the same way.

Munzo, seeing he was pursued, began to run at his best pace.  He knew
that Wyndham could run faster than he, but the distance in his mind was
not great, and he thought that he had sufficient start.

So it proved.  He ran with the speed of a desperate man.  He was
resentfully aware that he occupied his last hour in an absurd way, but
he sacrificed his dignity in a small matter, that he might save it in a
larger.

Wyndham's recent occupation had not been the best possible preparation
for such a pursuit, but he was younger, and he also was in the mood
from which exceptional effort is born.  For the length of the building
he followed Munzo, who could be clearly seen on the white, moonlit
pavement, content to know that he was gaining at every stride.  But
when Munzo turned under the furnace wall, and returned along its
further side, Wyndham increased his effort, seeing how he had been
fooled, and guessing the purpose in Munzo's mind.

When Munzo got back to the door he had left, Wyndham was not more than
three or four yards behind.  Munzo burst through the group of those who
stood uncertainly there.  He called, "Follow me to the way of a clean
death."

These words, and the sight of Wyndham's approaching sword, had the
effect on which Munzo relied.  The little crowd closed behind,
following his flight towards the inner chambers, and impeding Wyndham's
pursuit.

Wyndham's voice was furious on their rear.  "Fools, let me pass!  It is
not you that I seek."  Words failing to clear his way, he tried what
the sword would do.  One man fell with a cleft head, having no need to
run farther to find his death.  But the others scrambled on the faster
for that, as he might have guessed that they would.  They passed
through the hothouse corridor, a jostling, screaming crew, frantic in
flight, with Wyndham's sword jabbing upon their rear.

Spreading out in the hot ante-chamber of death, they left the way to
Munzo open at last, but it was too late to be of any avail.  Fortunate
in his sensitiveness to pain, Wyndham became aware that every step
towards the furnace encountered a fiercer heat.  He stopped, and as he
did so became aware of Vinetta's hand on his arm, pulling him back.

"You cannot help me now," she said; "but that is no reason that you
should die."

They saw Munzo, his robe flaring around his shoulders, still running on
to the furnace as swiftly as his tired legs could be made to move,
while his lungs were scorched by the heated air.  He had had the wit to
perceive that, if he did not urge his steps with his dying will, he
might not reach the furnace at all, and he was still anxious to end in
a seemly manner.

Some, of those who followed were less wise or less resolved in what
they did.  They fell round the furnace threshold, roasting and smoking
there.

Wyndham, looking at the end of the race to which he had so strangely
come, was moved to a gust of laughter, that the roaring furnace could
not consume.

Homeric laughter, peal on peal, shook the heated air of the
ante-chamber, and might be thought no unfitting requiem of the race of
men, or introduction of their craven souls to the Ultimate Reality they
had gone to face.

But Vinetta did not laugh.  She said, with an excusable note of
bitterness in her voice, "Well, I hope you know how you can save me
now!"

Munzo-D7D might have retorted to that mocking hilarity with the proverb
that he laughs longest who laughs last, but that he was no longer in
condition to make retort on any earthly occasion; and, besides, it was
a proverb he had not known.




CHAPTER VIII

Wyndham looked at the hand that was still on his arm, and that had
drawn him back none too soon, for he was aware that his whole body was
scorched and dry.  He placed his own hand upon hers.  "We have come
through more," he said, "than we thought we should.  We shall find a
way."

She was not without courage, as has been seen.  She took what comfort
she could from confident words.

They went back, with linked arms, and hands, at a slower pace than they
had come.  In the hothouse corridor, where they spent too much time
before, they found that, when they thought that they were left alone in
an empty world, they had assumed more than was true.

A black-browed woman, Swartz-O2A, had been thrown aside in the rush,
and was now rising, on unsteady feet, dazed from a head-wound, the
cause of which was shown by the broken side of one of the pots.  Blood
ran from her short-cropped hair, and dropped from a damaged ear.

Wyndham looked at her doubtfully.  Were there to be three, rather than
two?  It was a thought that he did not like, though he could see
advantages, more than one.

Vinetta looked, and her doubt was of another kind.  She saw a woman
against whom she had nursed for years a hate that she must not show,
for the records said that Swartz-O2A had been active, not merely to
vote--as all had--but to argue for her mother's death.  "Why," she
thought, "should Pilwin's belly be slit, and hers whole?"  Well, there
had been a present reason for that.

"She seems too stupid to move," Vinetta said.  "She had better follow
her friends."  With firm hands, though without roughness, she pulled
off the woman's outer cloak.  Then Vinetta put on the woman's cloak and
slipped off her own garment from beneath it.

They drew her into the hot ante-chamber, where there was now a smell of
roasting flesh such as would have been pleasant to twentieth-century
nostrils, but was nauseous to theirs, taking her as near to the furnace
as their own skins would endure.  They withdrew in haste from the
scorching heat, and looked back to see that she had not moved.

"We can't leave her there.  She will only scorch," Vinetta said
doubtfully.  Feeling the heat as they did, it was hard to think of
others as being immune from the dreadful pain.  Certainly, it was not
pleasant to think of the woman walking blindly away from the central
heat, and waking to further consciousness in a half-roasted condition
on the next day.

There was a rough mercy in what he did when Wyndham, completing a
series of actions of the possibility of which Colpeck-4XP would not
have thought in his wildest dream, ran forward into the heat, and with
a hard kick sent the woman stumbling and sprawling forward to fall
among those who were already roasted flesh at the furnace-mouth.

As he rejoined Vinetta, she turned away.  "Come," she said, "we have
lost too much time now."

"I don't want to stay here," he said.  "I hope we may never see such a
place again....  But why did you want the woman's robe?  We can get all
you care to take."

He had loaded the aeroplane with such things as seemed likely to be
useful to him or them, omitting only such as were specifically
feminine, which he had not ventured to take.  His plan had been that
they should add such articles as she chose in the hours before morning
came.

But she was now in an urgent haste to be gone, thinking that the threat
to her own life of which Pilwin-C6P had spoken in such ominous words
must be something close around, which they might avoid by a rapid
flight.  She did not think it could be any trick which would wreck the
plane, for it had been clear that it was against her only that it was
aimed, and anything of that kind would apparently have been equally
fatal to Wyndham, even had she gone the way of obedient death.

Wyndham did not object to the haste she showed.  The value she put on
her own life did not price it more highly than he, and they both knew
that whatever had seemed certain to the two by whom it had been
contrived would not be easily foiled.

"In any case," Wyndham said, "the garments are of little account."

He meant that the only difference between those worn by men and women
had been that the woman's purple was of a darker shade, and he had
stored a supply for his own use.  The need of that differing.  shade
would not be much from this hour!



With sufficient moonlight on smooth, white paths, they went to the
place--it was no more than half a mile distant--where the aeroplane
lay.  They went by a quiet desolate road, but with hearts beating with
vague fear, and apprehensive eyes searching the gloom.  The warning of
Pilwin-C6P was potent already to spoil the peace of the new life which,
without that, would have had perils and problems enough.

But nothing happened at all.  The night was quiet and vacant around
them.  They looked back to the community buildings, which were lit up
to the extent which was usual during the darker hours.  So far, they
had not deviated from their routine through the absence of the human
residents, by whom they had been designed and controlled.  But that
collapse would be sure to come.

The aeroplane was easy to find, having lit itself, as its duty was,
when the night had come.  It required no pilot, and it was not usual
for it to carry living passengers, but its design had been partially
governed by the habits of earlier centuries.  It was more bird-like in
form than the first aeroplanes, having a head which had once been a
passenger-cabin _de luxe_, as it would retain a level floor even when
the body swerved or dived in the wild skies of those early days.

Its wings also moved in a bird-like manner, spreading more widely for
increase of speed, and flapping regularly, for it was with these that
it flew, rather than with its tail, which was used for steering only.

Seen from below its wings appeared to move with no more than a sluggish
ease, like those of a heron in lazy flight, but they could propel it at
a great speed through the windless skies.  Its engines were soundless,
which increased the illusion of living wings.  Under normal conditions
of flight it was of an absolute safety.  There was no record of
accident to any aeroplane which had been sent aloft since the skies
were tamed.  How it would behave if tempests should sweep again through
the upper air was less easy to judge, which was another reason why
Wyndham was content to agree to an instant start.

But literally instantly, they found that it could not be.  The controls
in the head-cabin, which were intended to be worked while it was still
on the ground, were clearly marked, and their directions were explicit.
Its destination must be set as the starting lever, was moved.  On that
lever being turned over, it would occupy itself in taking in fuel and
oil, and in testing its vital parts for a period which would not be
less than twenty minutes, and might be much longer if it should
discover any defect such as might require the substitution of a
duplicate part.  For it was constructed to test and repair itself or,
at the worst, to indicate that it was unfit for flight and must submit
to the care of the hospital sheds, where machines of greater competence
would operate upon it.

"I agreed," Wyndham said, "with Pilwin, that I would go to Mount Ida,
which he strongly recommended as a place where, though I might not
live, I should take longer to die."

"It sounds a good choice," she replied doubtfully, "and is a long
distance from here."

"So it may be.  But I was not sure then that Pilwin was thinking only
of me, and I am more doubtful now."

He looked at the direction controls, which showed that there were no
less than twenty stations to which the aeroplane could be set to
alight.  The third was Mount Ida.  His eye passed on rapidly.  He knew
what he looked for, his decision being already made.  He raised his
hand to the ninth, _Taormina_, and turned it over before she could
protest.

She looked at it and him with contracted brows.  "Well," she said, "it
is done now!"  She knew that the destination could not be altered when
it had once been set.  "Of course, it is a place they will never guess.
But have you thought of the mists?  Could we live through them?"

She thought his action showed that, he would sacrifice everything for
her, as he might have done, but in this choice he had thought of more
than had yet come to her mind.



The winds and weather were now controlled to an extent that ensured
equable temperature and peaceful skies in all places which had been the
regular abodes of men, but the effect of the equinoxes remained, and
some differences between winter and summer in the two hemispheres there
had still been.  The effects of reduced hours of sunlight in the
northern winter had been corrected by wind currents, which left the
Mediterranean a stagnant area hidden in mist for six months of the
year.  There was no trouble for that.

The sea was vacant, since men had ceased the folly of moving vainly
about.  No one dwelt on its shores.  Only, in some parts of Sicily, the
cultivation of grapes had been allowed to continue during the summer of
sunny days, and of regulated rain during the nights.  They had been
tended entirely by automata, which could dig and plant, and in due
season gather the crop, and load it for transport to the central
food-depot in Hungary.  Men might not have visited it at all during
recent years.

Wyndham had disregarded the threat of the Mediterranean mists.  He had
inquired what the climate of Sicily had been in the ancient days.  Such
he supposed it would be again when the winds were free.  He had learned
from the librarian that it had been temperate in winter, and that it
was sufficiently mountainous to allow them, as he rather crudely
dreamed, to mitigate the effect of seasonal changes by climbing up to
the heights, or moving down to the shore-levels.  It had an active
volcano, to which he also attached a theoretical importance which might
be modified by experience.

Finally, though it was an island, it was no longer detached from the
mainland.  The old Messina ferry had been replaced by an enormous
concrete causeway.  The power of Etna in stimulated eruption had been
harnessed to this gigantic task about two centuries earlier.  The
librarian could not say that it had been visited by any of the present
generation, but there could be no doubt that it still stood in that
windless sea.

Wyndham's imagination, inflamed by Avanah's historical tales, had gone
forward to vague dreams of an earth released again to renewed riot of
life, swarming with greater beasts, perhaps including some of
semi-human character, against which his descendents, multiplying
themselves in that spacious island, would erect an impregnable barrier
where the causeway joined the land.  They would be secure In their
island home, and yet free, as the centuries would pass, to sally out to
win a wider domain.

Something of this he said, while they waited in the aeroplane cabin,
and heard within its entrails the noises of the preparations it made
for the coming flight.  They had secured the door by which they had
entered.  They could do no more to safeguard her life from a danger the
nature of which they could not guess, nor from what direction it would
arrive; and the spacious dream did something to turn her mind from its
present fear.

It was an hour before dawn when the plane gently and steadily lifted
its bird-like head, and began to move forward along the ground.
Quickly the pace increased.  The wings lifted.  Before its course the
ground dipped sharply, and as it did so the plane rose, with a rapid
flapping of wide-spread wings.

The dim bulk of the buildings, in which they had passed the whole of
their pain-free, negatives lives till that hour, showed beside and then
beneath them in the level light of the setting moon.  That sight, at
least, had gone forever from mortal eyes, as had the dull glow of the
euthanasia furnace which held the ashes, or was still baking the flesh,
of the ninety-eight with whom they had ruled the world to so vain an
end.  The steady wing-beats bore them onward and up, under the starry
vault of a cloudless sky.  On the far low horizon to which they flew
there was the first faint hint of the coming dawn.

The main cabin--the upper body, as it were, of the great bird--was
plainly meant only for transit of goods, for the safe reception of
which it was fitted with large cupboards and shelves, bars and ropes
and hanging straps, and fixed grooves along which sliding partitions
might be run, as the nature and quantity of its cargo required.
Beneath, in a lower compartment, were the engines and all the
complicated mechanism of flight.  Only the small head-cabin had been
adapted for the human occupants for whom it had been originally
designed.

The tools and garments, the stores of food, and other articles which
Wyndham had collected for his lonely and desperate quest were in the
main cabin.  The head-cabin, steady in its level flight, as though
borne on a sentient neck, and giving wide views above, around, ahead,
through transparent panels and roof, was uncumbered, but still allowing
little more than comfortable space for them to stand, or stretch
themselves on the pneumatic, silk-soft cushions with which it was
furnished.



For the moment, at least, they were secure, in the safe and lonely
heights of the placid air.  And they were not merely alive in bodies
drugged to a condition of dull existence, scarcely sentient either of
pleasure or pain.  They were exultantly, passionately alive, and aware
of each other, in this great moment, so high, so lonely, so hardly won.

Wyndham cast from him the sword-belt he had ceased to need.  He was
incredibly careless, for the first time in his ordered life, that he
was not free from dirt or the stains of his own and another's blood.

He caught Vinetta in eager arms, and kissed her as they stood beneath
the dim light of the stars.  A week before, Colpeck-4XP would not have
thought such ecstasy as theirs was possible to human kind.

Soon the pale gold of sunrise, which was a familiar monotony of that
time of year in the windless skies, broadened and rose wide and high,
chasing the stars.  But its core was no longer pale.  It was an intense
crimson, fading upward into a colder gold where the day-star shone.  It
was such a dawn as she had not seen.

"It is the dawn," she said, in the exultation of the moment through
which she came, "of a new world.  It may have been so when the world
began."

Wyndham lifted his eyes.  In the northern sky he saw the long trail of
a windy cloud, that drifted over the last of the falling stars.

"So it may be," he said.  "We will call it a good omen for us.  But it
may be well that we did not delay till a later hour."

"So it was," she agreed, with another meaning than his.  "There is no
doubt about that."

He rose to regard further the strange magnificence of the windy dawn,
and to guess the meaning of those wisps of clouds in the wide fields of
the northern air.  He looked down on a barer landscape than had been in
the old, disorderly, fecund days, when trees and weeds of little value
were left to breed almost at their own wills, and dogs were allowed to
live which were of no value or use at all.  Bare of life it might be,
random or tamed, but its contours were little changed.  Its hills rose.
Its rivers twisted, thin, silver ribbons beneath the dawn.

The sight to him was almost strange, and recalled something that
Munzo-D7D had said to him--or at least to Colpeck-4XP--a few months
before, which had been accepted at the time as an argument difficult to
refute.

He had said that, if the Universe had been the work of a constructive,
orderly mind, it would have been more neatly arranged: the stars would
have been the same distances apart, and the rivers would have run
straight to the sea, with tributaries at right-angles, and at regular
intervals.  "But everywhere," he had said, "there is disorder and
senseless waste, such as would disgrace the brain of a child."

Wyndham recalled this, but a difference of circumstance, or perhaps of
ego, caused him to be less friendly to the plausible argument.
Certainly it was true that the rivers wandered about, and he had seen
before that the stars were strewn as though Blind Chance were their
only god.  But was it not possible that this was just because they were
the work of an Infinite Mind?  That it is only the finite brain,
capable of no more than a succession of single thoughts, which must
have method and pattern in its designs, lest they fall to confusion it
cannot rule?

Munzo's idea--as he did not know--was not new.  An old, forgotten poet
had put it aside by no better device than bold assertion of what was
not.  "Order," he had written, "is Heaven's first law," to which the
obvious comment must be that, if it be so, it is a law which it does
not keep.

Wyndham said something of this as he looked down on those twisting
rivers, calling Vinetta to share his thought, as it might often become
his habit to do, if she should survive the snare by which Munzo-D7D had
contrived her death.

And, as might also be a frequent experience, she looked with different
eyes, and replied with more practical words.  She had been taught, with
some detailed exactness, the physical features of the earth, which her
occupation had required her to know, and of which his own knowledge was
vague and slight.

She asked abruptly, "Do you know where we are?"

"Not exactly.  Does it matter?"

"But you can see which way we are going!  You can see that by the sun."

Yes.  He could see that, now he looked with observant eyes.  They were
flying almost due east.  Certainly not a straight way to Taormina,
though for Mount Ida it would have been well enough.

That was a fact.  But what could they do?  If the plane were taking
them to another place than that to which it had been set, it was a
matter with which they could not venture to interfere.  They were faced
by the warning not to change the controls after they had been set for
flight.  The mechanism was not--they could but suppose--intended to be
manipulated by a pilot _en route_.  No one would normally be with it
upon its flights.  If Pilwin-C6P had had it manipulated in some manner
which would land them where his trap was set, they dare not attempt an
interference which, if it were not futile, might lead to disaster they
could not guess.  The aeroplane, winging its steady way towards the
great mountains ahead, became to them as a giant eagle bearing them to
its own place like a taken prey.

But what could they do?  Nothing, while they remained in those
cloudless heights.  The aeroplane required no aid from, and might yield
no obedience to, them.

Being so impotent to control the event beyond what they had already
done, they became aware of the physical ennui that followed a day and
night of tension and strife, and many exhausting moods.  If they slept
now, would they not be more equal to whatever there might be to face
when the moment of landing should come?  Soon, the plane flew on
towards the mountain range that made a late dawn for the climbing sun,
and the two who remained alive in a lonely world were unconscious of
what it did.



"If we be flying east when we wake," they had said, "we shall know
Taormina to be a place we shall never see."  But when they waked they
could tell nothing of that.  The sun was hidden above, and the earth
beneath.  The great bird in whose head they flew was beating wings
which were obscured by the driving sleet.  The wind was a rushing
tempest without, with which the wide-stretched wings strove, beating
more rapidly than they had done before.  The head-cabin, although the
plane was designed to keep it steady, swayed and shook its occupants
from their feet, if they rose from the pneumatic cushions without the
support of a friendly bar.

To the two who looked, it was a strange and terrible sight, for it was
the first time that they had known the forces of wind and rain in
insurrection from human control.  They had heard of such outbreaks
before in most ancient tales, and seen them in pictures that still
remained.  They had no capacity to judge whether the fury they
witnessed now were stirred to a dangerous degree, nor knowledge of how
far the plane, which had been accustomed to move through a placid air,
was adapted to endurance of such conditions.

When the tempest parted for a moment, it showed a pale sun high in the
sky, and clouds that raced across it at a fantastic speed.  It was not
a sufficient glimpse to enable them to judge the direction in which
they flew, but it showed them that they were going the way of the wind,
which was contrary to what they had supposed.

"I understood," Wyndham said, "from something Pilwin let out, that
there would most probably be a great wind from the north.  If that be
so, we are going in the right direction now."

"It may be only because the plane has been blown off its course, the
wind being too strong to face.  But are you sure you are right?  By the
way the sleet falls behind, I should have said we were flying dead into
the wind."

"I should say that is because we are leaving the wind behind.  We are
flying faster than it."

So it was.  Whether it had no strength to outface the gale, or because
they were both of the same mind, the plane flew the wind's way, and had
put on its utmost speed, as though in haste to reach the safety of
solid ground before more turmoil should vex the air.

There was no change for the next hour, except that once they had a
glimpse, at no great distance beneath, of a most turbulent sea.  They
could not guess whether they had come so low by the plane's choice, or
whether it were being forced down by the elemental violence through
which it flew.  They took what comfort they could from the thought
that, had they continued eastward, land would have been a more likely
sight.

After that the plane, no less sensitive to nearness of water or land
than if its controls had been subject to the caprices of human hands,
soared upward to such a height that they were surrounded by blinding
snow.  There was no change of temperature in the cabin, but they saw
wings and body steam as the ice which had been swiftly forming upon
them was melted away.

"I had heard that they used to be fitted with this device," Wyndham
said, "though I supposed that it would have been given up, not being
required in our day.  The upper surfaces heat themselves if the ice
form.  I suppose we steam overhead in the same way."

"I know little about these planes.  If we are heading for Taormina, how
soon shall we be due?"

"In about two hours, by a schedule that I saw at the landing ground.
Mount Ida, would, of course, be a longer flight.  But in this storm?
We might either have been blown out of our course, or helped by a
following wind so that we should be sooner there."

So they might.  They could only wait the event, not knowing the
destination which they struggled to reach, nor how far the plane might
be equal to the conditions through which it flew.  Indeed, as the gale
increased to hurricane violence, striving and buffeting the great bird
in whose head they still lay till it seemed a miracle that it did not
tear off those wide-beating wings, they could not even guess whether
they were in exceptional storm, or whether such experiences had been
the routine of those who flew in the heavens of ancient days.

They could only comfort themselves with the vague knowledge that the
plane was so constructed that it would become aware of, and turn away
from, any threatening contact of land or water, except only at the
landing-places it knew, to any of which, when it should near them, It
would be magnetically drawn in such a way that, under peaceful skies,
its landing would have been safe and sure.

And the time of waiting was not long, for, a full hour before, by
Wyndham's reckoning, they should have been over the Sicilian coast,
they became aware that the plane was no longer content to go, more or
less, by the way that the tempest drove.

It beat up into the wind, heeling over as it did so until it seemed
that one lifted wing pointed to heaven, and one earthward into the
black abyss of the storm.  But even then its head remained little
inclined, and in the end it came round with broad wings lying upon the
wind.

But if it had intended to plane downward against the strength of the
gale, it was a miscalculation of its mechanism which must be changed
for a more strenuous descent.  It must fight with hard-beating wings
for every yard of its downward course, that the hurricane should not
sweep it away, until, beneath the barrier of a mountain height that was
yet not visible in the storm, it came to a lesser rage of what was
still no less than a shrieking gale.  Steadily it came to rest on a
level place.

The day was still far from spent, but they could see nothing of where
they were through that blackness of beating storm.  It would have been
folly to venture out, even had they been free from the vague terror of
Pilwin's threat.

As it was, they barred the only entrance to the interior of the plane,
which was at the rear of the main cabin, and waited with what patience
they could for the coming of clearer skies.



Wyndham waked to look up to a blue sky, and a risen sun.

He thought, "Though we die, as it is most likely we shall--and sure at
last--in a painful way, we can have no envy for those who have gone to
death by a duller road."

Yet he had hope, even that it might not be till a distant day, as he
saw that the storm had fallen to nothing more than a strong wind from
the north, which swept through an empty sky; and this rose the more
when he saw Mount Etna's long snow-topped crest--which he knew from
pictures the librarian had brought out, at which he had glanced while
he had affected a greater interest in Mount Ida, and other
places--looking as though it were no great distance away.

He saw that the plane had been true to the direction that it received,
and if Pilwin had baited some cunning trap on the assumption that it
would be Mount Ida to which they would take their flight, it might be
hoped that it would end in nothing worse than the snapping of empty
jaws.

He guessed correctly that, through whatever cause, these automata of
the skies did not fly from one station to another by direct routes, but
along the lines of invisible rectangles of the air.  Their course must
have been north-easterly until they had approached the great barrier of
the Alps, and then turned southeastward along the course of the Rhone
valley, at the time when the mercy of circumstance had brought the full
force of the storm upon them from the northwestern quarter.

With the wind's buffeting help they had not merely arrived, but done
the distance in one or two hours less than the scheduled time.  Their
greatest peril, the extremity of which he was unable to judge, had been
when it had become necessary to resist the gale, and reach the
landing-ground in defiance of its furious strength.  But the event had
proved that these automata had been designed with sufficient subtlety
and resource to overcome the caprices of weather which had for so long
been banished from peaceful skies.

The thought led him to ponder whether there might not be further use
for so efficient a servant.  He supposed that this place where it had
settled would be provided with reservoirs of fuel and oil from which it
would replenish itself, if he should give it the signal to set out on
another flight.  But he put the idea aside, except for a final
extremity.  If they should find climatic or other conditions impossible
here, or if it should become necessary to flee the nameless terror
which still threatened Vinetta's life, it might become wise to fly to a
distant place.

But he saw that, two only as they now were in an empty world, they must
not seek to find adventures of land or air, but in every way to avoid
danger, to play for safety at every point.  There would be enough of
unavoidable hazard, of difficult chance, that would come to them.  It
was their part to conserve their own lives until their children should
reach sufficient age to be independent of them--and life, so lived,
might become very dear, very delightful, in quiet, laborious days--only
supposing that Pilwin's words should prove to have been no more than a
baseless threat, or to have told of an arrow that missed its mark....

But though the plane might have taken its last flight, and be destined
never again to spread its now indrawn wings in the lawless skies, he
saw that it might be put to another use.

It would give them shelter, though it would not maintain the equable
heat in the living-cabin which had rendered them indifferent to the icy
heights through which they had flown.  That had been derived from the
heat generated in its flight.  But it would still be a protection from
cold wind or the blaze of a too ardent sun.  So he thought, striving to
make imagination supply that which experience was unable to yield.

There was security, too, of a kind, in its metal walls, strong though
light, and its bolted door....  If he only knew the danger from which
he must guard her who had become so finally irreplaceable, so
inexpressably dear!

The thought drew his eyes to Vinetta, awakened now and coming into the
main cabin.

"It seems queer," she said, "to be able to sleep at what hours we will,
and to eat in the same way."

She looked round as she spoke.  More quickly even than Wyndham had
done, she recognized the contour of Etna against the sky.  "It seems,"
she said, "that we have come to the right place.  We have won the first
bout, if no more....  But where is the mist?  At this time of year, I
had heard that you can't see ten yards, even at noon."

"I suppose the tempest swept it away."

"So you said it would.  You were right about that.  I wonder what the
orchards look like.  Isn't it true that the oranges grow in the misty
months, and when the sun comes they are soon ready to pick?"

"Yes.  So I was told.  An orchard must be a strange sight.  It is hard
to imagine thousands of trees with growing fruit on them in no order at
all.  I believe all the millenniums of cultivation haven't succeeded in
making it grow in regular rows, or equally on all branches, as you
would think that it would.  Of course, the leaves in the hothouses were
in the same mess."

"Well, we can see them when we have fed.  They can't be very far from
here.  And it's too early in the season for the automata to coming
picking the fruit, even if they will still go on doing it from now on."

"We mustn't go far from here.  We shall have to leave everything that
we can't carry about; and I thought we could use this as a house.  It's
a safer one than we should be able to make for ourselves, and, if we
don't start it again, it will stay here for ever."



She considered this with a doubtful frown.  "We should have to promise
each other that we'd come in and out at the same time.  I don't mind,
if we do that."

He thought her reception of his idea cold, and her condition fantastic.
"I don't see," he replied, "why we need trouble about that.  It can't
move, if we don't start it again.  Why worry as though we thought it
might?"

"Well, I should.  And suppose it did?  It might carry one of us away
where we should never get back or, if we did, after years, we should
find the other had wandered off, looking for us."

Put thus, it was not a pleasant idea, and so, seeing the gravity of her
eyes, he assented to a proposal which, in any event, might not have
been far from what would have occurred; for neither of them was likely
to go far from the other's sight, being alone together as they were,
and she under a menace which, as they could not tell what it was, must
still walk beside them, a constant, indestructible fear.

After that, being in full accord, and with a pleasant sense of
exhilaration at the novelty of the coming days vanquishing colder
fears, they ate together--an anarchistic novelty in itself--and decided
to leave the plane and set out to explore the land which was to be
theirs in the coming years.

What was there to fear, though they should leave all their possessions
in the plane, and be away till the twilight came?  They had not been
used to entertain the dreads, or to take the precautions, which had
been normal in lawless times.  The idea of theft, its use or occasion,
had left the world.  Fears of savage men or wild beasts had been
equally obsolete for many generations past.  They had been taught to
believe that beasts of prey, and most others, had been cleared from the
whole face of the earth.  Certainly, if any remained, it had become a
matter for the automata, not for them.  The age when men had sought the
wilderness that they might find beasts there, and kill them in dirty,
dangerous ways, had been succeeded by saner ideals and cleaner customs.
And now, even the harmless fellow-beings, among whom they had grown up
had elected to leave the world.  They were alone on an empty earth.

It was true that some of the automata might still be--indeed, almost
certainly were--pursuing their daily tasks, indifferent to the fact
that their masters controlled no more.  There must be respect for them.
There might be need to keep out of their way.  But, intricately and
inter-dependently though they were made, and much as they could do
without immediate direction or supervision, it was yet only in
pre-designed repetitional ways.  None of them--if there were any here,
of which there was no sign--would attack the plane.  They would not
even know that it would be there.

The sun shone, though the sky was streaked in places with flying cloud.
It shone on a peaceful scene, not suggesting fear.  They stepped out to
feel at once its warmth, and a wind that was chill to them.  They had
not thought until now of clothes as a protection from cold.  The single
garment and the flexible sandals they wore had been nothing more than a
conventional mode, part of the negative reticence to which existence
had sunk; but they saw now that there would be more urgent
considerations to replace those which had died with yesterday's funeral
pyres.

"If we climb," Wyndham said, "to the highest point we can find, we
shall see what the land is like, and decide where it will be best to
explore.  Besides, as the day will grow in heat, we cannot tell how
much we shall be going up to a cooler place, and coming down again as
the heat declines."  He attached great importance to that, interpreting
a fact which he had been told without the qualifications which it
required.

Vinetta assented willingly.  Theorising, perhaps reasoning, less than
he, she was alert to circumstance, waiting to learn quickly by the
event, willing for him to decide whenever her own instincts were still.
And as they climbed easily upward by ancient, half-crumbled paths which
had been made before history was, to tame the precipitous hills, their
gymnasium-trained bodies making no difficulty of the steep ascent, it
seemed that Wyndham's reason might have been good, for they took a side
which avoided the northern wind, and yet did not protect them from the
heat of the mounting sun.  Had they been used to variations of
temperature; there would have been little cause for anything less than
satisfaction in that.  For Sicily, as it had been in the ancient days,
it was no more than a sunny noon of the middle spring, but when Wyndham
said, "If we find it beyond endurance, we may have to fly to another
place," she thought it a sensible word.

As the climb began, they passed barren, broken slopes and craggy
hollows which had been luxuriantly fertile in ancient days, but now,
having been regarded by the automata as too irregular for
cultivation--they having more of flatter, richer land than the
satisfaction of their masters' demands required--had been drenched, as
had more level stretches of stony ground, with a liquid potent to
destroy not only plant, but all insect or other life that the soil
contained.  Now it lay barren and brown to the scorching sun.  No
errant seeds could be blown from it by any wind to the detriment of the
vineyards and orange and citron groves that flourished to the inland
valleys.

Yet, as they rose, they observed numerous signs that, in these places
of permitted cultivation at least, the suppression of promiscuous life
had not been as absolute as they had been taught to believe.  They came
to a jutting angle of rock, where they could not only look out to a
width of sea, with the opposite Italian coast receding eastward beyond
their sight, but down on a land-locked cove with a strip of
white-shining sand, where a colony of herring-gulls screamed and flew,
looking from above as though they flew low, skimming the sea.

More portentous, and more alarming to those to whom it was so
unaccustomed a sight, a golden eagle, with a stretch of wings that
seemed enormous to those who looked up, passed over their heads, and
then came again, lower, nearer, having no appearance of fearing men,
but rather as considering whether they were fit to be meat to him, or
perhaps warning them to climb no nearer to where he made his dwelling
above the clouds.

At the third swoop he came so near that Wyndham struck at him with the
sword that was already bare in his hand.  He thought to hack at a wing
which aimed a buffet at him, but the great bird shunned the blow with
an ease of rapid motion which showed how delusive was the seeming
laziness of these slow-beating pinions.

After that, he kept at a greater distance, and after a time, when they
turned to another path, lost interest in them, and disappeared over the
mountain-top.

The gulls might thrive on that which the sea gave, until, if ever, the
posthumous devisings of Pilwin-C6P should take it away, but on what
could the eagles feed?  It was a question which might have been more
puzzling to those with more knowledge of the habits of such birds than
either Wyndham or Vinetta had, but it was answered in the next hour.



Climbing higher, they came to grassy hollows among the rocks which the
automata had not reached to destroy.  Under the temperate mist which
had covered the whole Mediterranean basin during the last six months,
above which the sun had moved like a dim, white shield, the grass had
grown to a vivid green such as that land had seldom known in its
natural climatic conditions.  Crocus and asphodel flowered, which might
have descended from those which bent to Ulysses' feet.

They looked round and down on as fair a scene as the earth can show,
with many mountains behind, and beneath the intense blue sea, and on
the right Etna's long, snow-sided, serrated edge, with its plume of
smoke that trailed away on the wind.  They looked with eyes from which
the influence of the deadening drug which had wrecked their race had
been cleared away, aware once more of beauty and sorrow, of joy and
pain, and of the wisdom of God when he paused on the seventh day to
observe that the earth was good.

Going upward still, they came to a cave that had been there perhaps for
ten thousand years, during which it had more than once been lost and
found and opened again, and yet, for all its age, was not the work of
nature, but of human hands.

A place of worship of ancient, foolish, forgotten gods: of sacrifices
within its sunless chambers, its hollowed altar still little changed,
and its cistern still half-filled with a dreadful witness of human
bones; of chambers where the priests dwelt; of oracles through which
they divined; and of deep store-pits, whether for use of the priests
alone or of the tribe they ruled, with steps leading thereto which had,
at a dark turning, a fatal gap, through which thief or foeman would
fall into a pit of another kind.

As they stood looking into the mouth of the cave, which twisted so that
they could see little of what it was, a thin, wolf-like dog came
trotting up, without seeing them at first, moving with the confidence
of one who comes to her own home.  But as Wyndham turned, she sprang
back, with a whining cry.  She did not snarl, nor show anger that
strangers stood at the mouth of her own lair.  She cringed.  Her tail
drooped.  She had an aspect of abject fear.

Yet in a moment her expression had changed.

She paused in her panic flight.  She came slowly, timidly back.  She
was at least as strange a creature to them as they were to her, but her
first reaction did not suggest that she was ferocious, or inclined to
pick a quarrel with these strangers about her gate.  Rather she acted
as though they were half-forgotten friends, to whom advances should be
made with discretion, but still in expectation of being received in the
same spirit.

"It was the automata that it feared," Vinetta said, making a simple
guess; "it must go in a constant dread."

"It is a dog," he suggested; "or a fox, or perhaps a wolf."

"No.  A wolf was fierce.  It had great teeth.  And a fox had a thick
tail."

"Well, we will call it a dog.  You know how useful they were to men in
the old days.  We must practice to get them to serve us in the same
way."

Vinetta looked doubtful.  She drew down fastidious brows.  "They used
to hang round the feet of men--in their houses.  You would not have
them living with us?"  She was prepared for much, but, crudely
considered thus, it was too abrupt a descent from the life she knew.

Wyndham saw he had gone too far, and his own prejudices revolted in the
next instant, sympathizing with her own repulsion.  "No," he said, "I
didn't mean that.  But they might be useful in other ways.  We shall
have time to learn what they are like."

They went on, not entering the cave farther at that time, to which it
seemed that the dog had a prior right.  They climbed higher yet.
Looking back, they saw that the animal followed them, as though in a
timid curiosity.  Then they saw another dog trotting towards the
entrance to the cave.  It carried a smaller animal hanging limp in
death from its mouth.  They saw more of these creatures later, a
species of cony that burrowed among these higher rocks, where the
automata did not climb.  There was an explanation there of how the dogs
and the eagles fed, and of why the conies were hard to see.

The dog which was following them barked when she saw her companion, and
the second one looked up, but did not reply, having his prey in his
mouth.  After a moment's hesitation, the first one bounded back to join
her mate, and the two disappeared into the cave together.

"They've gone to eat the creature they have caught," Wyndham said.  "Or
perhaps to give it to young ones they have got inside."  It seemed to
them a most filthy idea.  He added, "Shall we come to that?"

She had a sickening recollection of the steaming entrails of
Pilwin-C6P, as they had protruded while he yet lived.  The idea of
eating such--  She put it firmly aside.  Why spoil the beauty of land
and sky with such thoughts as that?  "I don't see why we should."

"No.  We will hope not."

A yellow lizard, darting from stone to stone, diverted her mind, though
she was not sure that it was a pleasant change.  "The whole world," she
said, "seems alive."

It was a strange condition to them, to be thus surrounded by fecund,
fighting life.  "We shall get used to it in time," he replied.  "I
suppose they all enjoy it in their own ways.  We have chosen the same.
You won't say you are getting sorry for that?"

No.  Of that, at least, she was very sure.  Come what might, she would
not regret.

Height piled on height they had climbed, and at last, when the sun
warned them that noon was some hours behind, they came, after hand and
foot had been used for a scrambling climb, to a plateau, narrow and
flat, where they could ascend no more.  They were not on any peak of
the Sicilian hills.  They were far below the snow level.  To the south
and west, Etna still shut out any farther view.  But they had reached a
point where they could judge what the country was, valley and height,
and they had gained a wide view of sea and coast, and the Italian
mainland beyond.

They had a view also, broken at times by obtruding hills, of a wide,
concrete road which wound from the inland groves to where the
sea-causeway united what had once been Messina with Italy.  The terrors
of Scylla and Charybdis had been tamed by the engineering skill that
reined the air-currents which had riotously wandered and ruled the
world.  The causeway had been lapped for two hundred years by the quiet
waves of a tideless sea.  But now, far off though they were, they could
see the line of breakers, whiter than it, which beat on its northern
side.  What they had been in yesterday's rushing tempest could be
vaguely guessed from what they now were beneath the force of a falling
wind....  Compared with the causeway, the long road seemed a duller
white, the reason for which could only be read at a nearer view.




CHAPTER IX

As they returned, and had no longer the doubt of what was ahead, or to
choose a way, they talked, during the easier descents, of the life
which they might hope to build in so fair a land, if only the threat to
Vinetta, which was in their minds, not on their tongues, should have
glanced aside.

Wyndham spoke with some appreciation of the assistance which he had had
from the librarian and museum curator--particularly Colpeck 4GZ--but he
had found the historian's knowledge of less certain avail.

Avanah had not lacked willingness, and his learning, even concerning
most ancient times, had been very great.  Some things which he had told
of simple primitive methods of existence had been illuminating, and
might prove to be of practical value, but in response to Wyndham's
natural curiosity, as it had been directed upon his own unrememberable
twentieth century, although Avanah had been able to supply much
strange, and some repulsive, detail, a credible vision of what the life
of that time had been would not emerge.

He tried to imagine them retiring at night into their little, separate
houses, where lights blinked or failed amidst patches of unstable
darkness, exhausted by a day spent in aimless whirling about, and in
ceaseless watchfulness to avoid disastrous collision with other maniacs
similarly employed; or, if they should belong to the unfortunate class
quaintly labelled "pedestrians," in derision of the fact that they
still moved on their own legs, cleansing their sandals as they came in
from the stains of the bloody roads.

He imagined them at a later hour in the "kitchens" behind their lairs,
baking slabs of raw flesh cut from the beasts they killed.  But there
would be no consistency even in that.  One man might feed on milk,
another on fish.  There was no settled process in what they did....
With filthy hands, often ungloved, they would grope in the dirt which
at that time covered so large a part of the earth's surface....  Their
backs ached, bending to the spade.  Diseases of cold and damp caused
their limbs to stick out stiffly at grotesque angles....  Yet they had
some complicated machines....  Daily they must read printed words with
half-blinded, myopic eyes, to obtain the information which was
necessary to enable them to maintain their precarious lives.

No.  He could realize separate facts, but a coherent picture refused to
come.

Beyond that, what he could understand roused him to a curious
repulsion.  Primitive existence had its disadvantages, no doubt, as he
would soon learn.  And so, most surely, had the negative, sheltered
civilization which had now faded away.  But this period from which his
ego derived seemed to have given hospitality to all the horrors of
both, and with a bizarre streak of insanity--perhaps because of that
streak--added thereto.

But of the earlier beginnings of human life he could form pictures,
bewildering, enough, yet with a greater aspect of reality, and a more
genial simplicity.  He regarded them, however mistaken he may have
been, as more primitive, but less barbarous, times.

As they repassed the ancient cave, the two dogs came out together, but
with no display of hostility.  Showing rather a wistful indecision, the
one they had first met followed them some distance down the
mountain-side, paused, and then came on again, her companion, with
greater hesitation, coming some distance behind.  Finally he refused to
follow farther, and after a moment of whimpering uncertainty she
turned, and they raced back together.

Observing a line of descent which appeared easier than that which they
had climbed, they bent somewhat to the left of their previous track,
and so came upon the great concrete road which they had observed to run
from the interior to the sea, and which had appeared to be of a
somewhat duller white than the mole by which it was connected with the
Italian mainland.  Now they saw the cause of this difference.  A thin
film of volcanic dust had settled upon the life-denying surface, and
upon this a grey-green moss, microscopically minute, had commenced to
grow.

It had not been a matter which the automata would observe, or which
they could report to the superior machines by which they were designed
and sent out on their agricultural errands.  It illustrated the vanity
of attempting suppression of promiscuous life.

"I wonder," Wyndham said, "whether it would have saved them if they had
had any idea of what fools they were."

He saw that only life can destroy life while the earth's surface
remains.  It will rise resurgent from any loss, in a new form which
will conquer death.

"I expect," Vinetta replied more lightly, "that men always have been
fools, more or less.  I dare say we're being silly enough now."

"If we are, we know of about five millions who were sillier still," he
said, responding to her mood, as it was easy to do.  They were finding
life to be good in new and almost unbelieveable ways.  So long as they
would remain two, they had no doubt that it would continue so.  While
that fact endured, they would be bold to face a mutable world.  But if
either should be alone....



When the next dawn came with little light in a sunless sky, they had
cause to be glad of the shelter that the plane gave, and that they had
stores of food which rendered them, as yet, independent of what
foraging might obtain.

The wind rose again, blowing from a more westerly direction than it had
done on the previous day, and bringing torrential rain.  The cabin was
no longer heated, and though the temperature would not have been
regarded as uncomfortably low by those whose bodies had acquired the
most moderate adaptability--being, in fact, no more than three or four
degrees below that to which they had been accustomed--they found it
shiveringly depressing as they waited inactive for the wind and rain to
cease.

They exhausted themselves with the practice of such gymnastic exercises
as were possible in that narrow space, and when these could be
sustained no longer, they searched out additional garments from the
stores, finding that these had more than a conventional use.

It was in consequence of this experimental activity that they had their
first experience of how easily the foundations of life may shake when
there is no precedent of routine to control the eccentricities of human
conduct.

Vinetta, finding that the masculine garments, lighter in color, and
somewhat different in shape from that which she wore (they being the
ones that Wyndham had thought it prudent to bring) did not fall
precisely in place above her own, attempted the reversing of one of
these, and in so doing cast a loop of cloth briskly behind her neck.
She felt it catch, pull, and tear, and turned quickly, but not quickly
enough, to find that it had caught upon one of the control levers by
which the plane was started upon its lonely journeys.

She looked for one moment of blank consternation upon that small
polished bar, not more than five inches in length, which had responded
so readily to the trivial pull.  She remembered the warning that these
levers, having once been set, must not be changed before the completion
of any flight which the plane had been directed to undertake.

"Look," she exclaimed, "look what I have done now!"

Wyndham saw, and no words of explanation were needed.

"What will happen if we put it back now?" she asked.  But it was a
question to which, unless the dubious experiment should be tried, there
could be no reply.  Wyndham recalled his experience with the watering
automaton, and it did not encourage blind interference now.  Doubtless
a sufficiently skilled engineer would have been equal to dealing with
the emergency, but could they dare to interfere with the intricate
mechanism of this automaton of the air, with ignorant and almost
certainly blundering hands?

The control had been set for Warsaw, which they supposed vaguely would
be an arctic region under the new conditions of weather which were now
sweeping over the world.  Wyndham said, "If we go north, we shall
freeze.  Nor do we even know that there will be food when that which we
have shall fail."

"You mean we must leave the plane?  Within fifteen minutes from now?"

So he did, and to that they agreed, without further words, though
consternation was in their eyes.

Already, they could hear rumbling and gurgling movements within the
belly of the plane, indicating that its preparations for flight
commenced.  They could see that it was taking liquid fuel from the
great sunk tank which was in close proximity to its landing-ground.

But what of their possessions which were stored in the plane?  What of
the tempest that raged without?  There were no two answers to that.
They must save what they could, bundling it out to lie in the drenching
storm.  They must lose much, for Wyndham's loading had been liberally
done.  They might be unfit to face the inclemency, of the storm, but,
one way or other, they must learn to endure unendurable things.

With a haste which put discrimination aside, they began to unload the
plane, carrying bundles of tools and weapons, cases of food, utensils
and clothing, out into the violence of wind and the soaking rain.

The entrance into the store-room was too narrow for two people, even
unburdened, to pass each other, so that they must time themselves to
alternate exits rather than to work side by side, as they would have
preferred to do, and, as the minutes passed, Vinetta became
increasingly apprehensive that the plane would rise while one or the
other of them would be inside and the other out, so that she would have
ceased the vital salvage at which they toiled rather than risk the
possibility of such separation.

"But we are risking nothing," Wyndham said reasonably; "there is nearly
ten minutes yet, and we know that these machines are not erratic in
what they do."

Perhaps it was natural that his thoughts were more sharply concerned
for the securing of that which he had been at care to collect, much of
which, at the best, and however irreparable it might be, must be borne
away.  "We'll manage three more lots, if not four," she heard, as his
voice receded.

The next time, as they met, with sodden garments clinging to
rain-drenched forms, he burdened to start outward, and she returning
with empty arms, he said hurriedly as he passed out, "At the worst, the
one who went could fly back."

Her voice followed him, "Then why didn't we go together?"

He had thought of that already.  Perhaps it might have been best at
first.  To have let the plane have its way, and remain within it.  To
go to Warsaw, and then return by the simple method of setting the
controls to Taormina again.

But with half their possessions already spread on the rain-beat ground,
it had seemed a more dubious plan.  And there was the incalculable
risk, of whether the plane were equipped for numerous flights without
attention they could not give.  Suppose that its next flight should
have been to some depot of supplies or renovations where it could have
renewed itself in essential particulars?  Probably not.  But they did
not know.

Or suppose the weather in the northern skies should be such that it
would have no strength to endure?

No.  Even together, they would not adventure again into the perilous
skies.  Into those heights he supposed that man had risen for the last
time, at least for ages to come.  He had conquered the air, but had
been unable to rule himself, so that his curiosity and his cunning had
come to this.

But to risk that either should go alone--  No, they were alike in
declining that.  Yet, at the last, Vinetta's anxiety to avoid the risk
brought them very near to that which she had been over-careful to avoid.

"You'll make this the last?" she asked, as they met, he passing outward
again, and she stretching impatient hands for whatever might be most
quickly snatched in that urgent haste.

"I don't know," he said.  "We mustn't stop to talk.  There are some
things that we're bound to have."



He was out of hearing before the sentence was finished.  He had thought
of some utensils which there might be time to find.  There were two
minutes yet, if not three.  The dashes in and out were very quickly
done.

She came out, and would have restrained him, but he pushed past her.
"There is time," he said breathlessly.  "I shan't run any risk.  You
can be certain of that.  But don't hinder me now."

In an impatient fear, that increased as the seconds passed, she stood
waiting beside the door.  She had been unconscious of cold as she had
toiled, but she shivered now.  Her drenched garments flapped in the
gusty wind.  She did not observe that.  The life which had been
concentrated upon its physical self was forty-eight hours behind.  But
she was sick with apprehension and fear.  She heard movements within
the plane which reminded her of those which had preceded its former
flight.  In a few seconds, she thought, it would rise.  She was right
in that.

Wyndham, searching desperately for a package of cooking and frying
utensils which the museum had contained, and which he had been assured
were essential to the comfort of a primitive existence, had found it,
just as he had decided to risk no further second, and just as that
premonitory rumble which had alarmed Vinetta had become audible to him
also.

He picked up a case which, under other circumstances, he would have
unpacked for a double load, and dashed for the entrance passage.  In
it, he collided with Vinetta, who had decided that he delayed too long,
and that her only course of safety was to join him within.

The moment's obstruction was almost fatal.

"It's too late.  We'd better stay now," she protested, for one delaying
second.

"Nonsense.  It's not moving yet.  There's time enough, but there's none
to be wasted."

Wyndham had the advantage of the higher position in the sloping
passage, and of the heavy case that burdened his arms.  It was of such
weight that he knew he could not continue to support it for more than a
few seconds longer, and of such size that he had difficulty to avoid
wedging it between narrow walls.  His resolute advance bore her
backward, hustling her, in fact, so roughly that she failed to turn, as
she should have done, at the outer door.  There were two steps thrust
out from this, and below them a drop of about eighteen inches to the
ground.  Descending in awkward haste, she slipped upon sodden soil.

Wyndham, close behind her, would have thrown out the heavy case, and
followed it down the steps.  There would have been time for that,
before the plane had commenced to move, but that it would have fallen
crushingly upon Vinetta as she was regaining her feet.

Obviously, even in that emergency, he could not hurl upon her a
crushing weight, nor could he balance himself with that burden to
descend the steps.  As she rose, he felt the plane move.  It was its
motion rather than hers which enabled him to loose the heavy case,
which fell forward on to the steps, and rebounded to the ground,
already six feet below, where it broke with a clattering distribution
of quaint articles of several obsolete metals, aluminum, iron, and tin,
on the rain-soaked earth.

The next moment, Wyndham leaped.  He landed on feet which slipped from
beneath him, and rose limping on a sprained ankle, which would be more
painful in the next hour.

Vinetta ran to him.  "You are not hurt?" she exclaimed, seeing him
rise.  "Oh, I am so glad!"

She was met by a gust of anger, born of the pain he felt, and the
moment of acute fear through which he had passed.  "If," he said, "you
will not learn to do what you are told, you will wreck us both.  It is
no thanks to you that I am not up there now, or hurt worse than I am."

Her eyes followed the plane, which had already soared to a great
height, seeking a field of flight which no mountains would obstruct,
and was lost to sight, as she gazed, in the driving clouds, She was too
glad that he was not there, and too conscious of her own fault, to
reply with an equal heat.

"If you want to hit me," she said, "I don't mind.  You are quite right
as to what I deserve."

The answer amazed him by its accurate reading of his own mind, which it
revealed to himself more clearly than he had understood before.  Yes,
he had felt that to strike her would bring relief.  It had been no more
than a moment's impulse, but it had been there.  Was the path of
descent to primitive roughness of conduct as swift as this?  And if so,
what might he not be doing in a month--in a year--from now?

Certainly, Colpeck-4XP would have been surprised at the acts and speech
of the body which his ego had ruled no more than a few days before.
Wyndham Smith's surprise--he having the same experiences, the same
traditions, the same body with which to deal--was but little less.  But
the Colpeck-4XP of a week before had never passed through a moment of
such anxiety, had never felt such pain as Wyndham was feeling now.
Yet, however deeply anger had stirred his mind, Vinetta's quieter
answer enabled him to recover self-control, and with it he was aware of
some measure of shame.  "It was my fault," he replied generously; "I
stayed almost too long."  He regained complacency with the thought that
he had not failed.  Pots, frying-pans, and other utensils of even
vaguer purpose might be bruised in their abrupt descent, but would
still be fit to remind them for years to come of the fact that he had
succeeded in what he sought.

"Anyway, I got them," he said.

"Yes," she replied, "you don't often fail."

There was accord between them once more; and they had need of that, and
of all the fortitude that they possessed, in the next hours.  They
stood soaked and cold beneath drenching rain amid the litter  of food,
clothes, and utensils which were all they had been able to save from
the wreck of the world they knew.  They were without shelter, and
Wyndham walked already with a limp which was to become worse.

"We've got to do something," he said, "we can't stand here.  We should
die of cold."

"We should be warmer if we were walking about."

"I don't know how much I could.  There's something wrong with my leg."

"There's the cave where the wolves are."

"They're not wolves, they're dogs."

Vinetta observed the irritation in his voice.  Neither of them had yet
experienced the moral degenerations that result so easily from
discomfort or pain.  But she had sense to see that it was not a time
for disputing on such questions as that.

"We'll call them elephants, if you like," she replied equably.  "It's a
long way off.  But it looked like a good cave.  And it's the only one
we know."

"How will the beasts take it?"

"They seemed friendly enough.  Anyway, we ought to be able to deal with
them."

"We should be a long while getting everything up there."

"We shouldn't want everything at once.  And we've got all the time
there is."

Wyndham hesitated.  His ankle was throbbing in an unpleasant manner,
even though he leaned his weight on the other leg.  It had taken hours,
in better weather, to get up there.  But he saw the proposal to be, in
itself, not merely sound, but attractive.  It had appeared to be a most
desirable cave, and he saw a home--a lair which would be their own, and
where there would be a sure meeting-place if they should wander
apart--to be their most urgent need.

He was reluctant to plead his own infirmity as an obstacle, and he was
utterly ignorant of the nature of sprains, or the effect which
prolonged exertion would have.

Falling into the same scale, there was a strong reluctance to start out
on a vaguer search: to limp about in the rain for a rest they might
never find.

"Anyway," he replied, as though the proposal had been already agreed,
"it's no use standing here.  The sooner we start the better."

"We must take some food," she said, "but not much.  Not till we know
that we're going to settle there.  We should feel silly having to drag
things back."

She looked at the way he moved, in a frowning doubt.  It was no more
than a slight limp, but there was a wide difference from yesterday's
easy stride.  And it was her fault!  There was no doubt about that.
She added, "I'll carry anything that we must.  You'll need to have that
sword free, if the elephants want to argue it out."

He did not agree without protest, but she had her way in the end.  He
walked on as erect and free as his limp allowed, and she went beside
with a burdened back.  If the spirit of Munzo-D7D could behold them
now, he might reflect that the punishment of their insurgence had been
speedy to come.  Avanah-F3B would have regarded them with different and
more curious eyes.  They had taught in their periodical schools, which
were empty forever now, that all forces hostile to man, both animate
and inanimate, had been exterminated or tamed; but here, in two days'
time, their boasted civilization had gone like a faded dream, and there
was the sword at the man's side, and the load on the woman's back.



As they climbed, the skies cleared.  They looked up to sunshine and
windy clouds.  Their clothes steamed in the pleasant heat of the sun.

"To think," Vinetta said, "that we have become glad of such weather as
this!"

It was a lesson they were re-learning at every hour.  That which before
had brought no discomfort had brought no joy.  The weather had been the
same from childhood to death, and they had regarded its controlled
perfection with an indifference which did not change.  So it had been
in every experience of life.  Men had resolved that pain should be
expelled from the world.  They had had their way, and pleasure and pain
had gone off together.  Were men wrong to make war on sorrow and pain?
That would be hard to believe.  Yet was it not a fight which they must
wage, but, at their peril, they must not win?

Wyndham did not vex his mind with such questions as this.  Pain had
become a neighbour too close for his peace, and when men speak of its
salutary nature it is usually farther away.  He rested at times, but
found little relief from that.  His ankle had become hot and swollen,
and it seemed to him that each time he rose it had become worse during
those times.

"What shall we do," he said, "if it become worse?  If my leg go bad?  I
must have broken something inside."

Their eyes met in troubled ignorance, from which came a greater fear
than they would otherwise have had.

Vinetta would have him stop more than once, but, as the pain became
worse, so did the instinctive desire to have some sheltered place he
could call his own, in which he could lie secure, either to recover or
die.

Once, while they sat by the side of the path, on rocks which were
already hot and dried by the midday sun, they were soaked again by a
sudden shower which, within five minutes, had passed away.

Vinetta took little notice of that, having a greater trouble now, which
she saw to have arisen from her fault; but Wyndham found actual
comfort, his hot ankle feeling the relief of the cooling rain.

"If the rain had not stopped," he said, "it would have got well.  It is
that it needs."

Vinetta took what hope she could from this sanguine view.  She looked
up for clouds.  But the wind came from the west, and in that quarter
the sky was clear.

When they were some distance below the cave, they paused at a wayside
spring.  Vinetta looked at many foot-marks in half-dried mud.  "This,"
she said, "is where the elephants drink."

Very gladly they did the same, finding more pleasure in that than they
could have supposed that drinking could ever give, for the afternoon
had become very hot for those who climbed in the sun.

Vinetta said, "If you will stay here, I will go on, and see whether
there will be any trouble with the--dogs."

"I can't let you go alone.  If there's fighting, it's my place to do
that."

"I wasn't thinking of that.  I want to make friends if I can."

"And if they don't look friendly, you will come back without going
close?"

"Yes, of course.  I don't want to get hurt.  I want you to rest, if you
can."

Reluctantly he gave way.  He was so lame now that every upward step was
torture, and he was in no condition to enter into an argument of force
with two active animals whose methods of warfare were unfamiliar.

There was, to him, an even stronger inducement in that running spring,
into which he had already plunged the throbbing foot, finding in its
coolness, if not healing, a quick relief.

Vinetta went on alone.  She went with the feeling that she had
undertaken a delicate mission, but without thought of using force, or
fear of attack.  She blamed herself, with some reason, for the
misadventures of the day.  It was her carelessness that had started the
plane.  Her impatient fear that had obstructed Wyndham when he would
have descended safely had she trusted him.  She saw that it had become
her part to retrieve the position as best she could.

She came close to the cave without meeting either of the dogs, which
was not how she would have preferred it to be.  She judged soundly that
to enter in their absence was not the road to a friendly understanding.
But, when she was no more than ten yards away, the female dog came out,
not as being aware of her presence, but as having other affairs on hand.

She bounded two or three yards up the rocky face of the hill, ignoring
the path, and then stopped abruptly as she became aware of Vinetta's
presence.  Then her hairs bristled, and she uttered a low ominous growl.

Vinetta had sense enough to stand still, and to speak in a friendly
tone.  Her voice had an instant effect.  Bristles sank, and the growl
changed to an uncertain bark.  Had Vinetta shown either anger or fear,
it is likely that she would have had the fangs of a powerful animal at
her throat.  But she remembered the experience of the previous day.
She thought that patience would win if only the other dog did not
appear too soon.

She was fortunate in this, and in the correctness of the judgment which
she had formed.

The animal, doubtless descended from ancestors which had been the
friends and servants of men, proved to be of a timid friendliness, only
anxious to know that she would be met in the same spirit.  They were
almost equally strange to one another, but there was nothing in the
experiences of either to rouse distrust.  The dogs had their own reason
for fear, but their enemies had not a human smell.

Tentative advances from either side came to close contact at last.
Vinetta endured a cold nose on her naked leg.  She stroked, for the
first time in her life, the hair of a living quadruped.  They entered
the cave together, for Vinetta to be nervously introduced to three
two-month puppies.  Their occupation was repugnant to her, being the
playful worrying of the fleshless remnant of a cony, on a floor that
was not free either from bones or dung.  But she saw that the cave was
spacious, and with a plurality of chambers, some of them being lighted
by high slits in the rock.  It might be a better home than she had
expected to find, and, if they could dwell together in peace, there
would be room both for the dogs and them.

But exploration could wait.  Her present doubt was whether the absent
dog would be as friendly as his mate had proved.  Should she go back
now, or wait to be introduced to him as an accepted guest in his own
lair?  With some doubt, and perhaps more courage than wisdom, she
resolved to remain, and was justified by the event.  The dog came in
with a cony in his mouth, which it seemed to be his habit to provide
for the family larder.  After an uncertain moment he accepted the
position, making no friendly advances, but confining himself to a
watchful neutrality.  Vinetta decided that the time had come to return
to Wyndham, who had found her absence too long for his own peace,
though he had had sufficient discretion to await her at the spot where
they had parted.



The dogs were together, and watched with a silent intentness, but made
no hostile demonstration, as Wyndham, with some support from Vinetta's
arm, limped into the cave.

He was anxious to rest, but went on to an interior chamber, separate
from that which the dogs occupied.  There was satisfaction in the
spaciousness of this rock-hewn dwelling of prehistoric man, which
offered a better home than they had thought, or could reasonably have
expected to find, or to make with their own hands.

But there was no place for rest better than the stone floor on which
they sat, finding it dry but hard.  It offered little comfort for the
hours of darkness and sleep.  No men, of any period or condition, would
have viewed it with complacency in that particular, and to these two,
who were only beginning to experience the annoyance of physical
discomfort, it was impossible as a place of rest.

"I must go down again," Vinetta said, when they had eaten a meal
together.  "I can bring a bundle of clothes on which to lie, if nothing
better than that."

"They will be wet now."

"They will have dried in the sun."

"I don't want you to go alone."

"What else is there to do?"

Wyndham did not know how to answer that.  It was evident that if he
should go alone, even if it should be a physical possibility, it would
be dark long before he could struggle back.  It would be the same if
they should go together, and what protection or help could he be to
her, lamed as he was?

She added, seeing that her question had reduced him to silence, "The
most important thing is that your leg shall get right again.  You can
see it's the walking that makes it worse."

He could not deny that.  He had dread, for her sake as much as his own,
that it might get worse in some way that would cause his death.  Or if
he should be crippled, it would be poor prospect enough.  Reluctantly
he gave way, and she set out alone, looking back as she went out with a
glance of courage and love that haunted him during the long hours of
her absence, as though it were the last he would ever see.

His thoughts were sombre enough for this while.  In the stress of
accidents and misadventures which the day had brought, Vinetta appeared
to have put the fear of Pilwin's threat out of her mind, but it was
easy to recall it now, and to remember that Munzo and he had had the
resources of the whole earth under their control.  Was it likely, with
so much at stake, and with such power in their hands, they would have
deceived themselves with a plan so futile that it would never even
reveal itself to those whom they had so contemptuously warned?  It was
beyond reasonable hope.

Even without that, might it not be thought that Pilwin's confident
prediction that his life would endure for ten days, or more probably
less, was already being fulfilled?  Surrounded by circumstances that
they were unfit to face and inexperienced to control, were they not
already blundering rapidly down their deathward way?

He was in this mood when the female dog trod silently into the chamber,
now darkening to a deeper gloom than the outer twilight, and came
curiously towards him.  He felt a wet nose on his shin, and then a
long, red tongue shot out, licking diligently the inflamed ankle.
Wyndham had a moment of doubt as to the purpose of the active tongue.
Did the animal confuse that injured leg with the flesh of the dead cony
which the puppies worried in the outer cave?  In a more combative mood
he might not have allowed himself the second's pause which showed the
harmless nature of what she did.

As it was, he took an unreasonable satisfaction from the contact of the
licking tongue.  "That," he thought, "is the way in which they heal
themselves, when they are damaged in the rough life they live.  I will
suppose she has healed me now."  Vinetta, entering with a burdened back
in the deepening gloom, saw the animal lying close to Wyndham while his
hand caressed a rough head, as no man had done for three centuries
past.  In fact, since the passing of the decree by which dogs and other
domestic animals had been condemned to extermination, as being
unsuitable for a highly civilized and mechanised world.

"She has healed my leg," he said, "in a way that these creatures know."

Wyndham said the next day that his ankle was much better, imagination
and courage assisting diagnosis of that which was not really a bad
sprain.  To support his assertion, he hobbled about.  Better it might
be.  She would not dispute that which they both wished to believe, but
it was evident that it was not well.

Clearly, they must be parted again, with whatever reluctance it might
be faced.  They had no fear of the dogs now.  Rather she thought of
them as likely to give warning of hostile approach, or even protection,
to a wounded man.

The danger, vague, imponderable, but no less formidable menace for
that, was on Vinetta, and appeared to them a darker cloud as more
immediate troubles became less.  But they would be without means of
life almost at once, if they should both remain in the caves.  Even
water must be fetched from the spring.  And there were many things,
priceless to them, which were now scattered at the mercy of sun and
rain, and of the gulls, which had risen, a screaming crowd, when
Vinetta had returned last night to the scene of that rushed and
scrambled salvage beneath the rain.



She went alone, as she must, putting a brave front on her fear, and
coaxing the two dogs to be her companions, to which they consented
gladly at first, but withdrew at about the same place, and in the same
order as before, when they had found that she was resolved on a
downward path.  Returning with a can of the water they needed, she set
out again, to be joined and then abandoned in the same way.

It was clear that the dogs had a dread of descending to the lower
levels which was shared by smaller creatures.  For, from when the cave
was a few minutes' walk behind, she saw no lizards upon the path, no
conies scuttling among the rocks....

So the next week went.  Vinetta experienced the indignities of toil and
of hardening hands, for there was much to salve, and the burdened
upward journeys were long and hard.

The dogs persisted in their refusal to follow her even to the lower
hills, except on one occasion, when the female appeared to forget her
terror for a time, until, at a sudden memory, or more probable scent,
she stopped dead, stood for one shivering second as though paralyzed by
fear, and then rushed back, whining, and with her tail abjectly between
her legs.

Vinetta stood for some moments after this, in doubt whether she should
continue downward.  Was the animal's instinctive terror a warning
which, if it were heeded, might save the life of one whose senses were
more obtuse?

So it might be.  But the scene continued peaceful and quiet.  She
reflected that she might never find courage to venture down again, if
she should turn back now from a shadow she could not see.  She bared
Wyndham's sword, which he had insisted on her wearing when she was out
alone, and went on with a resolute front, and a shaking heart.

Nothing happened at all.  Talking it over at night, they agreed that
the shadow of fear was upon all the creatures who had escaped the
general massacre which the automata had perpetrated over so large a
part of the earth's surface.  It was a shadow, they supposed, that
would slowly lift.  Yard by yard life would spread down the hillsides
again.  New generations would be born in whom there would be less and
less of the inbred fear.  The gospel of regnant death had destroyed
itself, and the better gospel of life would resume obedience to the
divine command.

But if Vinetta had fear in the daylight hours, and must toil when
muscles were tired, and become familiar with the degradation of dirt,
and if Wyndham must spend long hours of fretful anxiety as to whether
she would return, and of anger at his own incapacity, yet there were
compensations for both, beyond the experience or imagination of anyone
of the five millions who had preceded them on the deathward path which
all men in turn must tread.

To Vinetta there was the twice-daily pleasure of her loaded return; the
reunions which had a poignancy only possible to two who are alone in an
empty world; the sharp hunger which gave a pleasure to the taking of
food--as the tired muscles found pleasure in rest--beyond anything
which she had conceived as possible in the painless life which was now
so utterly, so unregretfully, gone.  And after that there was the
satisfaction of security in the sheltered cave, behind the lair of the
watchful dogs, and the joy of comradeship.

To Wyndham also there was a sufficient, though somewhat different,
pleasure in sorting and cleaning the articles of a permanent nature
which Vinetta brought, and in arranging, or storing them away in the
recesses of the man-made caves.  It gave to both of them a joy of
possession, of wealth, which also had been outside the experiences of
their previous lives.  He had by this time thoroughly explored the
caves, and knew the extent and potential strength of this dwelling of
ancient priests.  It was in the course of that exploration that he came
nearly to a worse accident than that which had lamed him already.
Indeed, it may be said that the earlier fall saved him from what would
have been the more serious injury.

There was a hole in the inner wall through which he could look down
into a further chamber, a round pit, having a depth of fifteen or
twenty feet, such as might have been used in ancient days for the
storage of treasure, or perhaps grain.  There was no approach through
that hole, but farther to the right there was a winding stair.  The
stone steps, steeply cut, twisted spirally to the left, the light
falling upon the right-hand wall, and in such a way that the steps were
partly in darkness.

Wyndham descended five of these, very slowly, their steepness being
difficult to one who had a stiff and painful ankle on which he was
reluctant to throw his weight.  To that slowness, and a warning whimper
from one of the dogs, who had been watching him in an obvious disquiet,
he owed his life, or the chance of a broken limb which, in that place,
might have been the same thing.

For the sixth and seventh steps had been most cunningly cut away, not
entirely, but so that there was no more remaining than about nine
inches from the wall, and on these fragments there fell a light, which
was faint, but sufficient to give assurance and guidance to steps which
were not there.  Wyndham, stretching out a tentative foot, saved
himself; but with great difficulty, even so, where there was nothing at
which to clutch.

Waiting till his eyes became more used to the gloom, he saw a pit
beneath him, narrow and very deep, from which, had he fallen, it would
have been very difficult to escape, even had his limbs remained whole,
which would have been improbable after such a drop.

He saw that they who hollowed out these store-chambers from solid rock
had had a thought of thieves, and had prepared for them a dreadful
trap.  But for those who knew there was sufficient width of step on
which they could tread, perhaps with the aid of a friend's hand above
or below.

For himself, lamed as he was, he resolved that the store-pits should
remain unused, at least to a further day.




CHAPTER X

The eighth day Wyndham, who had relieved Vinetta by fetching water on
the previous afternoon, resolved that he would be equal to making the
journey with her.  There was still much to bring up, for what two
people can throw out in fifteen minutes may be much more than one can
carry in fifteen journeys up a mountainside.  He silenced Vinetta's
protest that it would be too great an exertion for a leg that was still
of doubtful soundness, with the easy promise that if he found the first
journey hard she should go the second alone.

The wild storms of the first day had been succeeded by light northerly
winds and clear skies.  The nights were still chilly, but the days were
cloudless and very warm.

The shadow of Pilwin's threat had become less menacing, more remote, as
the days had passed without any sinister incident, and it became an
increasingly reasonable conclusion that the danger had been
successfully avoided by the speed with which they had taken to the air,
or that they had foiled it by changing the direction in which they
flew.  They even discussed the probability of Pilwin having spoken a
baseless threat, in final effort to persuade Vinetta to the end which
he saw her otherwise likely to miss.  That might be no more than a poor
guess, but they felt that, whatever the explanation might be, the
shadow of death withdrew.

So it was in pleasant accord with themselves and the earth which had
become so entirely theirs that they went down the track which was now
well-marked, even as it descended the higher cliffs.  They caught
inland glimpses of vineyards and citron-groves, and agreed that the
exploration of what must soon be a main source of food-supply as their
stores declined should not be long deferred, even for the urgency of
their immediate project.

"In the normal course," Wyndham remarked, "the automata would, I
suppose, have been here before now, as the winter mists had been
clearing away.  So I thought it would be for this year, but Pilwin told
me that it was most difficult, even for him, with all his engineering
knowledge, to forecast exactly what would occur.  Much of the minor
machinery will, I understood, be likely to go out of action almost at
once; but some of it may continue to operate, even for years, if the
condition of its work be unaffected by other defaults, or by climatic
changes.  In the end there is no doubt that it must go mad, and wreck
itself, or just stop and stand about in an imbecile attitude till it
rots to dust."

He spoke as one who regards a matter of natural interest which is
outside his own immediate concern, but Vinetta answered in a less
impersonal tone, "I hope, while I live, I may never see one again.  It
was through them that the ruin came.  Machines and mankind cannot dwell
together.  They must destroy us, or we them, which we lacked the
courage to do."

Wyndham understood how she felt, but considered it in a cooler and more
logical mind.  "Would you say the same of every tool that we have?"

"They are worked by the power of our own hands."

"But men used other creatures to bear them about, and to draw their
ploughs, in most ancient days."

"They were creatures of living blood."

"Men also used the powers of water and wind."

"They were forces already here.  They did not bore into the entrails of
earth, establishing dead power to replace that of life."

Wyndham did not deny that.  He wondered whether men might not have made
machinery to obey their wills, and still taken a fairer road to a
nobler end.  But he could see no certain answer.

What they had done was plain enough, and had come to a most absolute
end, unless they two could repeople an emptied world.

"Well," he concluded, "I will say with you, I do not want to see them
again.  We will look for a greener earth."

"It is no use saying that.  They are coming now."

Her voice had become sharp with fear.  Wyndham followed her eyes, and
saw that her words were true.

They had come to the point where, as they rounded the mountain-side,
they could see far down, far off, in the clear air, the whole line of
the causeway that crossed the narrow Messina Straits.  On it black dots
moved.  Vinetta gazed at them and the blood left her cheeks.

"So they may be," Wyndham allowed.  "But I cannot see certainly.  They
are too far off."

"But I can.  I can see just what they are."

As she said this there was relief in her voice, and her face resumed
its natural colour.

"I knew," Wyndham allowed, "that you had wonderful sight, but to see
what they are!"

Vinetta's sight had always been a cause of wonder among companions
whose powers of vision were normally good, but it seemed impossible
that she could distinguish clearly those moving specks.  But she had
looked with the eyes of fear.

"There are about two hundred of the agriculturists," she said, "and one
control, and two killers."

"Killers?" he asked, in so sharp a tone as to show the unspoken dread
which had been in both their minds.

"No," she answered, not to what he asked, but what she knew him to
mean, "Just the ordinary kind.  What they use for insects within the
ground."

There was a great relief in her voice, showing the depth of her secret
fear.  For the first time they spoke freely of that which had been a
suppressed dread in the minds of both.

"It wasn't ever," he said, "a reasonable thing to have feared."

"No.  I told myself that.  It wasn't as though there had been any trail
to follow.  Not when we came through the air.  It would have been
different at Mount Ida.  They may have relied on our going there."

"There wouldn't have been any trail there."

"Not exactly.  But they might have used some of my clothes.  I've
always had a doubt that a robe went from the gymnasium.  You can see
how that might happen without my being sure.  That is why I changed
into Swartz-O2A's cloak."

Yes.  He could see that.  But they had not gone to Mount Ida.  And
there was no menace in the automata which were approaching now.

"All the same," he said, "we don't want them here.  I've grown to
loathe them since I came out of the influence of the drugs that we used
to take.  I hope, some day, we shall be able to stop them coming over
that mole.  That is, if they don't end themselves, as I hope they may."

"You'd need machinery to do that!"

They laughed easily at the paradox of the idea.  It had become easy to
laugh, with the knowledge that the approaching regiment held no menace
to them.  But their hatred did not lessen for that.

"A storm," he said, "such as we had last week, would sweep them away,
If it should come at the right time."

So it might be.  But now the skies were clear, and the wind still, as
the automata came over that broad causeway, moving two abreast, with
the control behind them, and the two killers closing the rear.



They were a weird sight, but less so than might have been witnessed
almost anywhere on the earth's surface half a millennium earlier.  For
as the automata had developed in the range and complexity of their
undertakings, there had been a tendency to produce them in the closest
possible imitation of men.  This had been particularly the case with
the domestic automata, of which the more expensive designs had
approximated so closely to the human form in appearance and action that
it might be unsuspected by a casual guest that the demure parlour-maid
who waited upon him was not compact of living flesh.

But as these automata became a commonplace (and class after class of
the community had been urged to cease breeding under the threat that
their children would starve in a world which would no longer pay wages
to chauffeurs, field labourers, or domestic servants who could be so
inexpensively replaced), to manufacture them in human likeness became
an outmoded fashion.  The truly modern woman did not desire that she
should be considered sentimental enough to employ a fallible human
housemaid, who might be ill at inopportune times, and would not consent
to be broken up quietly when the time should come for her to be
replaced by a newer specimen.

Only the Major Killers had still been cunningly fashioned in human
forms, with the reasonable purpose that the hunted beasts might
continue to fear mankind, thinking that they were human hunters on whom
their teeth broke in vain, and who were for ever upon their tracks.

The two hundred agricultural automata which now advanced over the
causeway, moving on caterpillar belts at about six miles an hour, bore
a superficial resemblance to the smaller pattern of battle-tank which
was designed by the barbarians of Wyndham's own century, the blundering
progress of which had often been more fatal to the occupants of its own
entrails than those against whom it fought.

They would operate upon broad, straight, concrete paths, between double
rows of the vines or orange trees which it was their duty to tend,
reaching out long, flexible arms on either side, which were adapted for
stirring the soil, pruning the branches, or gathering the fruit, as
they might be directed from the control automaton, shaped like a squat,
round pot, which had them in charge, and which was itself controlled by
the governing automata at Buda-Pesth, that being the central station at
which all food-producing activities were organized and directed.

The two killers were of a different appearance.  In form they resembled
rather elongated black swine, having six legs, and a flexible proboscis
which they could project to a length of two or three feet, or withdraw
until it was no more than the upper lip of a strong-toothed snout, with
which they would crunch their prey.

They had a capacity for scenting living flesh, in all except human
form, which was so keen that it would follow the smallest worm or
insect beneath the ground, pushing after it until its flight--if it had
been alarmed--ended in inevitable capture.  Their normal duty was to
follow the work of the agriculturists on the cultivated levels, but
they might at any time be drawn aside if they should encounter the
scent of a quadruped, the keenness and pertinacity of their pursuit
being in proportion to the strength of the scent, which was itself
regulated by the size of the animal upon whose traces they came.

As the cultivated lands had become increasingly barren of anything on
which they could feed, they had been more easily drawn aside, and
become more persistent in following any creature of the higher rocks of
whose existence they might become aware, so that the terror of the dogs
lest they might leave a scent which would bring these creatures upon
their trails, in pursuits which would never tire till they were
exhausted and caught, is easy to understand.

Having learned what they were, Wyndham and Vinetta went on, with the
same assurance that they were too far off for them to see anything more
of them for that day, and with the confidence that they would meet with
no interference if they should keep out of the way of the invaders, as
it should be easy to do.

"After all," Wyndham said, "they will be working for us, cultivating
the fruit on which we must learn to live when our stores of better food
are consumed."

"But we must not let them gather the fruit, and send it away."

"No.  We can be before them in that."

"What will they be likely to do when they find that the fruit is gone?"

"I suppose, nothing at all.  It would be as though the crop had failed.
But, in fact, the question will not arise.  The quantity we shall need,
or have time to pick, will make no difference to them.  And they can do
what they will with the rest.  They can collect it for the manufacture
of food for men who are all dead.  It will be nothing to us."

Vinetta's mind had wandered to consider what he had said about living
mainly on fruit, which sounded to her like too much of a good thing, if
no worse than that.

"The dogs," she said doubtfully, "eat the conies.  I wonder what they
would be like if we get tired of the grapes."

"They have a filthy taste," Wyndham assured her.  "I gnawed a strip of
flesh which the puppies tore, while I was confined to the cave.  It
made me sick.  You would not like it at all."

"It seems to suit the dogs."

"We should not like killing them."

"But the dogs would do that for us.  They will do anything they can.
They like praise."

"Well, so they would.  We might try burning the flesh.  We know that is
what the barbarians did.  I have that burning glass from the museum
which will make a fire on a sunny day.  We must find something to burn."

"So we could.  There are still trees on the steeper cliffs."

So they forgot the automata for the time, as they talked of their own
concerns.



It was a few days later that Wyndham went out alone, as he was
beginning sometimes to do, to watch more closely the operations of the
automata, and to decide how nearly the crops of oranges and citrons
which had grown, but not ripened, in the warm mist of the winter
months, would be fit to pick.  The problems of how, or whether, they
could be stored, or how far they might continue to mature as the
seasons changed, had still to be faced.

He went without fear, for he knew that the killers were trained to
aversion from human flesh, nor would he have been without hope that his
intelligence would be sufficient to foil them, even had they started to
hunt him down.

He thought rather to observe them at their work, and to consider how,
if in any way, they could be safely destroyed.  With his new vision of
life he hated these automata whose sole occupation was destruction of
the sentient life that they were unable to share.  He was even repelled
by the cony-killing habits of the dogs, and more by Vinetta's
suggestion that they should learn to live by the same means.

He had a mind more given to abstractions than was hers.  It was the
immediate practical issue at which she looked.  They had to live, as
she meant they should, and the lives of a thousand conies were of no
account by the side of that.  Yet his reflections, wandering into
abstractions of vaguer shape, must end at the same gate.  To destroy
life is to create.  Destroy death, and life will go out by the same
door.  Even individual immortality would have the unavoidable result
that generations which would have followed would never be.  He saw that
which baffled; but nothing to excuse the sin by which mankind had ended
so much of the rich life of the teeming earth, and so nearly ended
itself.  There had been deaths from which had risen no further life.
Deaths abortive, blaspheming the creation of God, such as those which
the killers were dealing now.

Or, at least, which they would have dealt, had the opportunity been
theirs.  But he saw them smell with their delicate proboscides around
tree-trunks where no insects crawled.  He saw them burrow into soil
which no earth-worms lifted, which was stirred only by the stretched
arms of the agricultural automata, the metal fingers of which raised,
and crumbled it round the roots of the grateful trees.

He looked at the hungry, restless killers, wondering how they could be
destroyed or disabled, so that whatever remained of sentient life might
endure in the emptied soil.  He did not think that it would be easy to
do.

The covering of their black bodies was a metal alloy which was smooth,
supple, and very strong.  It was not formed of loose plates, or the
links of mail.  It was a glovelike skin.  All was metal, even to the
cloven, hog-like hooves.  Their mouths, which, when the proboscides
were drawn back, showed rows of razor-sharp metal teeth, were to be
avoided with care.

Behind them, there were apertures from which vapour would issue at
times, being from the combustion that went on within.  Perhaps some
weapon driven in at those openings might cause damage sufficient to end
their activities?  He considered that they must ultimately depend for
their strength upon consumption of the creatures they caught.  Getting
no more than an occasional insect, their enduring vigour could not be
much!  Perhaps there might be hope in that.

He would do nothing rashly.  It was a matter for careful thought, where
error could not be risked.  His lifelong inhibition against interfering
with the machines made it easy to be cautious now.

But he walked past them, seeing that they took no notice of him, and
observed again how hungrily they pursued their hunting, and with what
meagre results.



The killer walked on the edge of the concrete path, which it preferred
to the softer soil over which its proboscis hovered restlessly,
stretching for a scent that was not there.  At the place where Wyndham
passed it and its companion, and walked ahead without troubling to give
a backward glance, its proboscis swayed restlessly towards the path,
and then jerked away.  It could scarcely have been more irresolute,
more confused, had it been capable of a conscious thought.

Very strongly it smelled man, which it had been taught to avoid.
Faintly, but unmistakably, it smelled dog.  Large dog, which it was
fiercely eager to reach.  More, in fact, than one dog, for its
perceptions were so keen, so delicate, that it could distinguish the
two animals that had been rubbed against human legs, and even the
puppies that had been fondled by Wyndham's hands.

But for that smell of man it would have been already trotting hard, its
six legs moving with clumsy speed on the tempting track.  As it was, it
moved slowly, uncertainly, as though conscious of wrong-doing, and
being drawn forward against its will.

Its comrade, working twenty yards behind on the other side of the path,
came to the same spot, and behaved in the same way.

Ten minutes later, though still with slow, uncertain movements, they
had left the plantations, and, side by side, were climbing the
mountain-side.

So they went on, but at a decreasing pace, with longer pauses, and may
have been on the point of abandoning a scent which did not strengthen,
and was so repellently blended with that which they were forbidden to
follow, when they came to the place where the dog which descended with
Vinetta had recognized her danger and fled.

At that, their demeanour changed.  Here was scent, separate, strong and
rich.  It was confused neither with that of Wyndham nor Vinetta, for
the she dog, in her abject flight, had taken her own path.  The two
killers no longer moved like hounds on a doubtful scent.  They galloped
up the rocks, steep though they were, jostling each other in their
eager advance.

Soon they came to a place where they were confused by the very
plenitude of that alluring odour.  They went slightly separate ways,
but it was to the same goal.  From that moment there could be only one
end.  The dogs might avoid them by constant flight for a week, even a
month, but in the end an implacable, unswerving chase would run down a
panting, exhausted, or possibly sleeping prey.  There would be a moment
of futile writhing in the grip of the cruel jaws, or snapping against
smooth, tooth-breaking sides, and the two automata would settle down to
tear at a common meal.  So, at least, it would have been if the last of
mankind had left the earth in the grip of the evils they themselves had
bred.

Wyndham was at the cave-mouth when he looked back, and might not have
done so then had he not heard one of the dogs cry out in fear with a
wail like a beaten child.

It may have been that cry which guided Vinetta's mind to the right
track: She had come out of the cave, and saw the automata at the same
moment as Wyndham.  She said, "They're not after us.  It's the dogs."

The two animals, which had moved a few steps right and left, and then
stood as though paralysed by a sense of unescapable doom, drew at last
in shivering fear behind their human friends, as to the sole hope that
remained.  It was a plea it would not have been easy to refuse, even
had their fear of the killers been greater, or their hate less than it
was.

Vinetta looked questioningly at Wyndham, as though seeking a decision
from him which she felt unequal to make.  She said, "You won't find
that sword any good."

"No; but we might this."

He walked to where a great stone stood by the mouth of the cave.  He
bent to it, using all his strength.

Seeing his intention, and that it did not move, Vinetta gave her aid.
The two dogs stood watching intently; their drooping tails having
lifted slightly, and began to sway in gratitude for a championship
which they already instinctively understood.  The automata were
scrambling rapidly upward, but still some distance below.

Pulled by four straining arms, the great boulder lifted and rolled over
into the centre of the sloping path.  Wyndham paused, waiting his time.

"Now," he said, "let it go."  Their arms strained again, and the stone
bounded down the slope.  The dogs barked sharply for joy of that which
they could not themselves have tried.

The four who watched saw the boulder leap straight downward upon the
advancing automata.  It seemed inevitable that one at least must be
crushed, or tumbled backward the way it came.  And then, when the stone
was almost upon them, it bounded upon a rib of projecting rock, and
leaped clear over.

Unperturbed, as conscious climbers could not have been, the automata
continued their clambering upward way.

Wyndham bent to another stone.  It was smaller than the first.  But it
was more tightly wedged.  By the time they had it in position, the
nearer of the automata was not more than thirty yards away, and they
were advancing fast, with the strong scent of the dogs' lair drawing
them on....  The stone struck the first squarely upon the head, bounced
upon it, and turned somewhat sideways as it leaped downward, leaving
its victim sprawling upon the slope.  They saw that its proboscis was
crushed and limp, but beyond that they had not time to regard or care
what its injuries might be, for the second automaton came on in blind
oblivion of its comrade's fate, and there was no time for poising
another stone.

"Back!" Wyndham said.  "Back quickly!  Into the cave."

"_Into the cave?_"

"Yes, it's the best chance."

Through his mind, as he said it, there passed a doubt.  What if he were
directing them to nothing better than a cornered death?  But it was the
plan he had formed against such an emergency in a cooler hour, and his
judgment was too settled to change it now.



They ran back into the cave, but not in too blind a haste to catch up
the puppies and bear them with them, as they passed through the inner
chamber, and felt their way down the steps to that deadly gap, in a
gloom which was the greater because they had allowed no time for their
eyes to adjust themselves from the bright sunlight without.

Vinetta went first, with a puppy under one arm, and Wyndham's hand
reaching to hers.

"You cannot go wrong," he said, "if you press close to the wall.  I
have seen how the steps are cut."

When she said she was safe, he followed, with the other two puppies.

The dogs, with these examples before, and the fear behind, needed no
coaxing to follow.

Very cautiously they descended the remaining steps into the grain-pit,
timorous of a second trap, but there was no more occasion to fear.

"Keep the dogs to one side," Wyndham said, as they entered the rounded
hollow of the pit.  "If the killer gets here, he will follow the scent,
and may chase them round so that we can all escape by the way we came.
Remember the trick Munzo played upon us."

As he spoke, he turned to reascend the steps.  Vinetta made a movement
to follow.

"No, you don't," he said, in a voice she had only heard from him once
before.  "You stay here.  Do as I say.  Will you never learn?  You
would be in the way.  You will do your part if you keep them to one
side of the pit."

Protest rose to her lips, and died as she remembered how she had
brought everything to the edge of disaster when she had interfered at a
moment of crisis before.

He went back up the steps, and was none too soon.

Looking upward to the light, he had a clear view of the killer already
commencing to descend the steps.  With the strong scent drawing it on,
it had the eagerness of a living thing.

Wyndham looked at the gap.  Was it wide enough to engulf a creature of
such length?  Would it blunder blindly into the trap? or would it
remain there, waiting, perhaps for months, blocking the only exit,
while they would starve?  It was a possibility, he had not previously
considered.  His mind had concerned itself only with the hope that the
pursuer would fall into the pit, and with the danger that it might
cross the gap.  But now, with the quickness of thought, he saw himself
labouring with his bare nails to enlarge the hole in the wall through
which he had first looked into the pit--toiling at that impossible task
while Vinetta starved, and the killer waited above the steps.

There was another risk that it might keep close to the wall, and
descend, as they had done, on the narrow fragments of the steps which
had been allowed to remain.  But he did not regard this as a great
risk.  The killer's legs were set much farther apart than his own, or
those of the dogs.  He doubted that it would be possible.  Besides,
what reason was there for it to hug the wall?

Unfortunately, there was a simple answer for that.  It followed the
scent of the dogs, and where they had gone close to the wall, its
proboscis went the same way.  Its left side rubbing the walls, a left
foot came down firmly upon the jutting fragment of step.  A second
later, its right forefoot was pawing the air.  The black, supple,
hog-like body lurched forward, but did not fall, neither could it
easily recover itself.  The instinct to draw back may have been
lacking.  However cunningly these automata may have been constructed,
however many contingencies they may have been adapted to deal with,
there must always have been some events which would find them lacking,
some which they would face as fallibly as a man may do, when an
unprecedented problem bewilders his mind.

The reactions of the automaton may have been confused by the fact that
its left forefoot was firmly planted, and that it could not move to
that side, which the wall forbade, when footing failed on its right.

Wyndham saw it with its right foot and its proboscis feeling the air.
The proboscis touched him, and shrank back from the human scent.  He
struck twice with his sword at the smooth shining head, as it hung over
the void.  There was no use in that.  The blade slipped along a surface
so hard and smooth that he could expect to do no more than damage his
weapon's edge.

He saw that the event was in a critical doubt.  The killer might hang
suspended there; it might draw back and remain a waiting menace, which
was perhaps most of all to be feared; or it might even lurch itself
successfully over the gap.  Thinking to turn a doubtful scale, he
caught hold of that outstretched proboscis, and strove to pull it
downward with all his weight.

He succeeded almost too well.  The beast-like form shot into the pit so
abruptly that for one perilous instant it seemed that he was destined
for the same depth.  It was the backward push of the descending body
rather than his own adroitness which enabled him to retain his place on
the lower step.

For a long minute he gazed into the obscure depth.  Like a dying beast,
the automaton struggled and kicked.  But those who built that pit, with
its smooth, narrowing walls, had done their work well, in their distant
day.  It might struggle or lie still as it would, but it was there that
it must remain while the earth endured.

Wyndham went down to where Vinetta waited beside the dogs.  "There is
nothing more to fear," he said.  "You can come up when you will."



The months passed.  The automata worked in the orchard groves,
indifferent to the fact that their human masters had ceased to need the
food which they were diligent to provide.  Every week a train of
automatic vans had arrived, and departed after loading themselves with
the gathered fruit, which, as Wyndham had been glad to observe, did not
ripen in a single crop, but, with the partial exception of the grapes,
gradually throughout the year.

The summer had been hot and dry, but at the time when the two hundred
gardeners were due to leave there came heavy storms from the north-west.

Wyndham, venturing out alone in a windy interval of the rain when the
skies were bright, saw, far off, the great causeway hidden in the white
foam of the upflung waves.  He had seen it beaten and submerged more
than once before by tempestuous seas, and had wondered, with hope
rather than fear, whether it might not be breached and finally swept
away.  He had explored most of the island, more or less, by this time,
mainly with Vinetta.

He regarded it now as a secure home, or rather as one which would
become secure if that road to the mainland were swept away.  For there
was ever a doubt of what might come from the larger spaces beyond.  But
though it might show marks of the buffetings it received from the angry
waves, the great mole endured.

Now he saw the long train of the automata moving over the shoreward
road, indifferent to the raging wind, with the round pot-like control
in the rear.  He wondered, with an increasing interest, what they would
do when they came to meet the fury of those sweeping waves.

He watched an event which showed that they had no wisdom implanted in
them to meet a condition which had been so long unknown to a tamed
world.  They went on.  Had he been endowed with Vinetta's sight he
would have taken back to her a more vivid report than he was able to do.

"I have little doubt," he said, "that they have been swept away.  They
went blindly on to the mole.  I watched till the control tank in the
rear of all went into the waves.  It kept on for some time, though it
was entirely covered as often as not.  But it went at last."

"Then," she said, well content, "there is hope that we shall not see
them again."

It was a hope that grew in the next week, for there was wreckage upon
the shore.

They had come at this time to hate all things that reminded them of
those empty days before life came to its natural flower.  They had many
hardships now, many difficulties, many doubts, hope and fear
alternating as the dawns and sunsets came, but existence itself had
become a joy such as they could never have conceived it to be in the
painless days.

They gathered possessions of many kinds.  They had a sense of owning
the earth.  Not knowing what the winter conditions would be, and
expecting vaguely something much worse than is the lot of that favoured
land, they had made a store of grapes, dried in the sun.  They knew
nothing of the making of wine, so that there was fair hope that its
curse would long be kept from the lips of men.

They had gathered a store of fuel against the same fear of winter
storms and a freezing air; having already learned the making of fires
and roasting of conies' flesh.  They did this on the altar where human
victims had groaned and burned countless centuries earlier.

Vinetta looked at the gathered skins of the conies, stiff and foul as
they were, and dreamed of garments against the cold.  "It is done," she
said, "with the bark of some tree.  If only I knew which!"

"There is not much choice here," Wyndham replied.  "The only trees are
those that have endured on the heights, above the belt of the barren
ground; and the fruit trees below."

"Well," she said, "we must try with all."

So they struggled to regain fragments of long forgotten knowledge,
blundering on through many failures towards infrequent success.  But
oh, the joy of the gain achieved, of the discovery made.

And, in all things, the five dogs were their faithful servants and
friends, as they had been from the day when they had watched their two
enemies destroyed by the powerful protectors that they had found.  They
were such companions that Vinetta did not feel as much alone when
Wyndham left her now as she otherwise must have done....  And so the
time went on; until the night when Wyndham did not return.



Wyndham had said with truth that the world was wide.  He was right in
that.  He had guessed that the plot which Munzo and Pilwin had made
against Vinetta's life had largely assumed that it was to Mount Ida
that they would go.  So it had.  He was right again.  But he was not
right in concluding either that they had depended upon that assumption,
or that the alternative was that Vinetta should be pursued blindly
throughout the world.

When Munzo's pencil had traced its plans beneath Pilwin's understanding
eyes, he had expected that it was to Mount Ida that they would go, and
he had provided that Vinetta's end would be speedy there.  But he had
left nothing to chance.  The Major Killers were less numerous than they
had been at an earlier day, but he knew that there must still be from
half a dozen to twice that number which would be in condition for
instant service.  He arranged for each of these to have a shred of one
of Vinetta's garments inserted into its scenting organ in such a way
that it would be a continual irritation, urging it, as its construction
required, to suck the blood of the woman whose scent it knew.

The whole number of these were sent to Mount Ida to make Vinetta's
destruction sure, but, if she were not there, they would not scatter in
search over the wide range of the earth, but go systematically to the
various points at which the plane could alight, in the neighbourhood of
one of which she would be certain to be.  They would travel by roads
along which they would be able to pause at regular intervals to refuel
themselves, as they were designed to do, and so long as these depots
should supply their infrequent needs, and their mechanism remained
sound, there could be no change or diminution in the blind, fierce
impulse that drove them on.

This plan, ordered by Pilwin with his usual careful efficiency, had
worked with no more than a single accident.  The Major Killers in
working order being less numerous than the stations to which the plane
might possibly have been directed, Pilwin had had each of them set so
that they would visit a second, if the search of the first should find
no victim to satisfy their unconscious chemical thirst.  This had
resulted, with a humour which lacked the audience it deserved, in two
of them meeting, while hurrying in opposite directions, and attacking
each other with destructive fury as they perceived a whiff of the scent
they sought.  But there was no safety for Vinetta in this, though one
of those destroyed in this fratricidal strife had made Taormina its
goal.

It did no more than delay the event, a second killer, which had spent
many weeks in hunting round Lake Garda's shores, coming to the Sicilian
mole in the early afternoon of a day that was bright and still.

The mole was scarred and battered, and looked unlikely to survive
through another year, but it was yet whole.  There was no wind-driven
weight of sea to sweep over it, and wash the deadly invader off.  It
trotted on at its invariable pace upon level ground, which was about
seven miles an hour....  When Wyndham saw it, it was advancing along
the shore road, at a point which they had often overlooked, but where,
he was glad to think, Vinetta and he had never had occasion to go.

Wyndham, in no danger himself, stood for one moment of indecision,
resolving what he would do.

Should he warn Vinetta?  There were two objections to that.  He was
some miles away from the cave, and there would be extra effort, which
might be beyond his strength; and the killer might come on Vinetta's
track before he should find it again.

He had long formed a most desperate plan against the danger which was
now here.  In fact, they had talked it over together, and, in its
simpler, original form it had seemed as good as, or better than that
which had been fatal to the Minor Killer within the cave.

But that had assumed that a good distance would be maintained as the
scent was laid.  It had assumed that Vinetta herself--Wyndham not being
far off--would be the bait of a cunning trap.  Wyndham saw that it must
be the endurance of human muscles that would be tested against the
killer's mechanical strength in a most equal duel.  His human wit
against the chemical purpose which drove it on.

"Well," he thought, "she must wait my return, till the dusk at least.
There is no help for that.  It will be well for her if the dusk do not
fall and I have not come."  He would save himself if he could and he
hoped he might, but he could not call it better than a poor chance.
Thinking this, he began to descend the hill, so that he would come to
the path upon which the killer advanced.

As he did this, he began to tear off his garments, of which he now wore
several, feeling the chill of the cooling evenings, which, though they
were temperate enough, he faced for the first time.  He threw most of
them away, but kept the one which Vinetta had worn as she had toiled
and sweated beside him, bearing fuel into the cave for their winter
store.  He had not thought it necessary to tell her that he had taken
this, nor that he wore it when he went out by himself, as he sometimes
did in these last days.

He descended till he was near the killer, which took no notice of him.
He had not seen one of this pattern before, and he liked its looks even
less than he had expected.  It had the height and girth of a tall man,
and its metal body was supple, and smooth, and bright.  It had a
man-like face, but that which should have been its nose was a cruel
beak.  Its eyes shone with an inward light, and had for lashes a kind
of antennae, which would warn it of any obstruction while it was still
some yards away.  It had hairs of a similar utility on its knees.  When
it fought, its eyes would close metal lids to a narrow slit.  Its lower
jaw was very large, with long pointed teeth.

Wyndham saw that his sword might as well have been left behind for any
use it would be.  He knew that the smooth toughness of the metal in
which the killer was sheathed would blunt its edge without its own
surface showing a mark of the hardest blow.  He cast it from him, and
stood holding Vinetta's garment in his hand.

He had no wish to interfere with the killer so long as it continued
upon the southward road.  It was the way he would have it go.  He
sought only to save his strength, which could be done by crossing a
bluff of the higher ground where the road took a wide outward sweep.
Doing this, he went at half the killer's pace, and yet arrived on the
road ahead, so that he had leisure to sit on a stone and rest for a
short time.

While he did so, he tore a long strip from the garment that Vinetta had
worn, and laid it in the midst of the road.

Immediately that he saw the killer appear, he stepped forward to the
spot where the rag lay.  He laid the remainder of the garment beside
it, and then commenced to run away, trailing it along the path.

He looked back, and saw that the killer had stopped, and picked up the
rag.  He ran on again, seeking to lengthen the distance the most he
could, so long as he could be sure that he was pursued.

He saw the killer swallow the rag, which was fuel to it, though it
would have thrived better on living flesh.  It went on its knees,
smelling the dust.  Then it came on again.  At a place where Wyndham
had trailed the garment a few paces aside, it made a similar bend.

That was conclusive.  It had picked up the scent.  Wyndham turned and
ran.  He was no longer concerned to make sure that he would be
followed.  He had only to keep ahead.  But could he do that?  Many
miles away, he saw Mount Etna's ridge, snow-white and jagged, with one
black column of smoke that rose straight upward to a windless sky.  The
sun was still high overhead.  When the sky reddened to sunset behind
that ridge, would there have been an end of the race of men?  He ran on.



After a time, he looked back.  There was half a mile of bare road in
view, but the killer was not in sight.

He continued at a hard run towards the mountain which, as the sun sank
in the sky, seemed ever to recede....  But yet, as the hours passed, it
became higher, more forbidding against the sky.  There was hope in
that, though also a warning threat.

... For the last hour he had feared to look back.  He knew that he must
have gained some ground at first.  But since then he had slackened
pace, as feet faltered and muscles ached on an upward way.  He did not
seek to foil the pursuer by any wile, for it was his object to lead it
on, and though he knew that he might save himself by casting the
garment aside, he did not consider that, for he knew that, should he
fail now, fate might not allow him a second chance.

Should he fail now, the next pursuit might be on Vinetta's track, and
it was easy to guess how small her chance of escape would be likely to
be--even apart from the final risk, which must be perilously taken,
whether by him or her.

He did not have to climb the mountainside by the rough tracks which he
must have used in more ancient days, a broad zigzag path having been
laid by those who, at one time, had made great use of the mountain's
volcanic power.  But the ascent was steep and long, and by this time he
had looked backward and down, and had seen the pursuer less than a
quarter of a mile behind.

That would have been margin enough had he been fresh, but now he was
urging reluctant limbs, and panting at every step.

On the height of the black and rugged edge, Wyndham left a path which
was crusted with frozen snow.  The extremity of his exertions had made
him indifferent to the icy temperature.  Rather, it had served to brace
his exhausted muscles for the final peril which was to come.

For a moment, he faced the sunset light that told him that the summit
was won.  With the next, he had plunged downward into a deepening gloom
that yet shone with a shifting glow.  The air was hot to breathe, and
dry with volcanic dust.  The cold of the windswept summit was left
behind, and the temperature rose with each slippery downward step.

Soon, as his eyes adjusted themselves to the sombre gloom, he was aware
of a pool of liquid lava, blacking and bubbling below.  He breathed
with labour, a foul, gaseous vapour choking his lungs.  Vinetta's
garment, now soiled and ragged, was still trailing behind his steps....
He heard the killer descending, now twenty yards in his rear.  Its
muscles did not ache, its speed was not lessened.  If the next minute
did not shake it off, he would be a dead man, and there would be an end
to the human race.

... It was not how he had meant it to be.  He had imagined Vinetta and
himself together, laying a trail which would have ended below, and
going away in safety while the killer was still miles behind.  This was
different, as imagination and actuality are ever likely to be.

The killer was now close behind: the hot liquid lava was close before.
Already his feet were scorched on a shaking soil.  He threw the garment
forward, and leaped aside.  After he had gone a few yards, he stood
still.

For good or evil, success or failure, the game was played.  If he had
thrown the garment too far--if the killer should elect to follow him
rather than it--then it was lost.  He knew that he could never struggle
up from that crater-mouth at the pace that the unwearied automaton
could command, for his strength was done.

For a moment the issue paused.  The killer, as though impossibly aware
of its danger, or doubtful of the direction in which to pursue its
prey, slackened its steps.  It stood still.  Then the scent of that
fatal garment must have reached it through the fumes of the naptha'd
air.  It rushed forward.  Its legs plunged in the molten fire.  Even as
it sank, its claws closed on the soiled rag.  Its jaws tore, and
swallowed, and tore again.  So it sank from sight.

Wyndham became conscious that his feet were slipping.  His sandals
smoked.  Wrenching them free, he turned to struggle up from the hot
gloom of that sulphurous pit.

He mounted slowly and with panting gasps, having become aware of how
spent he was.  But his heart sang.

He did not know that he shivered on the cold summit, where the light of
the sunset failed.  He had no after-memory of how his stumbling feet
descended, crunching the snow, with no better light to aid than the
stars could give.

It was wide dawn when he came again to the cave, to be met by the
barking dogs, and Vinetta's arms.

In the lonely night, she had learned the meaning of prayer.






[End of The Adventure of Wyndham Smith, by S. Fowler Wright]
