As Easy as A.B.C.
(1912)
_The A.B.C., that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score
persons, controls the Planet. Transportation is Civilisation, our motto
runs. Theoretically we do what we please, so long as we do not interfere
with the traffic_ and all it implies. _Practically, the A.B.C. confirms
or annuls all international arrangements, and, to judge from its last
report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little Planet only too ready
to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders_.
'With the Night Mail[1].'
[Footnote 1: _Actions and Reactions_.]
Isn't it almost time that our Planet took some interest in the
proceedings of the Aërial Board of Control? One knows that easy
communications nowadays, and lack of privacy in the past, have killed
all curiosity among mankind, but as the Board's Official Reporter I am
bound to tell my tale.
At 9.30 A.M., August 26, A.D. 2065, the Board, sitting in London, was
informed by De Forest that the District of Northern Illinois had
riotously cut itself out of all systems and would remain disconnected
till the Board should take over and administer it direct.
Every Northern Illinois freight and passenger tower was, he reported,
out of action; all District main, local, and guiding lights had been
extinguished; all General Communications were dumb, and through traffic
had been diverted. No reason had been given, but he gathered
unofficially from the Mayor of Chicago that the District complained of
'crowd-making and invasion of privacy.'
As a matter of fact, it is of no importance whether Northern Illinois
stay in or out of planetary circuit; as a matter of policy, any
complaint of invasion of privacy needs immediate investigation, lest
worse follow.
By 9-45 A.M. De Forest, Dragomiroff (Russia), Takahira (Japan), and
Pirolo (Italy) were empowered to visit Illinois and 'to take such steps
as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and _all that that
implies.'_ By 10 A.M. the Hall was empty, and the four Members and I
were aboard what Pirolo insisted on calling 'my leetle godchild'--that
is to say, the new _Victor Pirolo_. Our Planet prefers to know Victor
Pirolo as a gentle, grey-haired enthusiast who spends his time near
Foggia, inventing or creating new breeds of Spanish-Italian olive-trees;
but there is another side to his nature--the manufacture of quaint
inventions, of which the _Victor Pirolo_ is, perhaps, not the least
surprising. She and a few score sister-craft of the same type embody his
latest ideas. But she is not comfortable. An A.B.C. boat does not take
the air with the level-keeled lift of a liner, but shoots up
rocket-fashion like the 'aeroplane' of our ancestors, and makes her
height at top-speed from the first. That is why I found myself sitting
suddenly on the large lap of Eustace Arnott, who commands the A.B.C.
Fleet. One knows vaguely that there is such a thing as a Fleet somewhere
on the Planet, and that, theoretically, it exists for the purposes of
what used to be known as 'war.' Only a week before, while visiting a
glacier sanatorium behind Gothaven, I had seen some squadrons making
false auroras far to the north while they manoeuvred round the Pole;
but, naturally, it had never occurred to me that the things could be
used in earnest.
Said Arnott to De Forest as I staggered to a seat on the chart-room
divan: 'We're tremendously grateful to 'em in Illinois. We've never had
a chance of exercising all the Fleet together. I've turned in a General
Call, and I expect we'll have at least two hundred keels aloft
this evening.'
'Well aloft?' De Forest asked.
'Of course, sir. Out of sight till they're called for.'
Arnott laughed as he lolled over the transparent chart-table where the
map of the summer-blue Atlantic slid along, degree by degree, in exact
answer to our progress. Our dial already showed 320 m.p.h. and we were
two thousand feet above the uppermost traffic lines.
'Now, where is this Illinois District of yours?' said Dragomiroff. 'One
travels so much, one sees so little. Oh, I remember! It is in
North America.'
De Forest, whose business it is to know the out districts, told us that
it lay at the foot of Lake Michigan, on a road to nowhere in particular,
was about half an hour's run from end to end, and, except in one corner,
as flat as the sea. Like most flat countries nowadays, it was heavily
guarded against invasion of privacy by forced timber--fifty-foot spruce
and tamarack, grown in five years. The population was close on two
millions, largely migratory between Florida and California, with a
backbone of small farms (they call a thousand acres a farm in Illinois)
whose owners come into Chicago for amusements and society during the
winter. They were, he said, noticeably kind, quiet folk, but a little
exacting, as all flat countries must be, in their notions of privacy.
There had, for instance, been no printed news-sheet in Illinois for
twenty-seven years. Chicago argued that engines for printed news sooner
or later developed into engines for invasion of privacy, which in turn
might bring the old terror of Crowds and blackmail back to the Planet.
So news-sheets were not.
'And that's Illinois,' De Forest concluded. 'You see, in the Old Days,
she was in the forefront of what they used to call "progress," and
Chicago--'
'Chicago?' said Takahira. 'That's the little place where there is
Salati's Statue of the Nigger in Flames? A fine bit of old work.'
'When did you see it?' asked De Forest quickly. 'They only unveil it
once a year.'
'I know. At Thanksgiving. It was then,' said Takahira, with a shudder.
'And they sang MacDonough's Song, too.'
'Whew!' De Forest whistled. 'I did not know that! I wish you'd told me
before. MacDonough's Song may have had its uses when it was composed,
but it was an infernal legacy for any man to leave behind.'
'It's protective instinct, my dear fellows,' said Pirolo, rolling a
cigarette. 'The Planet, she has had her dose of popular government. She
suffers from inherited agoraphobia. She has no--ah--use for Crowds.'
Dragomiroff leaned forward to give him a light. 'Certainly,' said the
white-bearded Russian, 'the Planet has taken all precautions against
Crowds for the past hundred years. What is our total population to-day?
Six hundred million, we hope; five hundred, we think; but--but if next
year's census shows more than four hundred and fifty, I myself will eat
all the extra little babies. We have cut the birth-rate out--right out!
For a long time we have said to Almighty God, "Thank You, Sir, but we do
not much like Your game of life, so we will not play."'
'Anyhow,' said Arnott defiantly, 'men live a century apiece on the
average now.'
'Oh, that is quite well! I am rich--you are rich--we are all rich and
happy because we are so few and we live so long. Only _I_ think Almighty
God He will remember what the Planet was like in the time of Crowds and
the Plague. Perhaps He will send us nerves. Eh, Pirolo?'
The Italian blinked into space. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'He has sent them
already. Anyhow, you cannot argue with the Planet. She does not forget
the Old Days, and--what can you do?'
'For sure we can't remake the world.' De Forest glanced at the map
flowing smoothly across the table from west to east. 'We ought to be
over our ground by nine to-night. There won't be much sleep afterwards.'
On which hint we dispersed, and I slept till Takahira waked me for
dinner. Our ancestors thought nine hours' sleep ample for their little
lives. We, living thirty years longer, feel ourselves defrauded with
less than eleven out of the twenty-four.
By ten o'clock we were over Lake Michigan. The west shore was lightless,
except for a dull ground-glare at Chicago, and a single
traffic-directing light--its leading beam pointing north--at Waukegan on
our starboard bow. None of the Lake villages gave any sign of life; and
inland, westward, so far as we could see, blackness lay unbroken on the
level earth. We swooped down and skimmed low across the dark, throwing
calls county by county. Now and again we picked up the faint glimmer of
a house-light, or heard the rasp and rend of a cultivator being played
across the fields, but Northern Illinois as a whole was one inky,
apparently uninhabited, waste of high, forced woods. Only our
illuminated map, with its little pointer switching from county to county
as we wheeled and twisted, gave us any idea of our position. Our calls,
urgent, pleading, coaxing or commanding, through the General
Communicator brought no answer. Illinois strictly maintained her own
privacy in the timber which she grew for that purpose.
'Oh, this is absurd!' said De Forest. 'We're like an owl trying to work
a wheat-field. Is this Bureau Creek? Let's land, Arnott, and get hold of
some one.'
We brushed over a belt of forced woodland--fifteen-year-old maple sixty
feet high--grounded on a private meadow-dock, none too big, where we
moored to our own grapnels, and hurried out through the warm dark night
towards a light in a verandah. As we neared the garden gate I could have
sworn we had stepped knee-deep in quicksand, for we could scarcely drag
our feet against the prickling currents that clogged them. After five
paces we stopped, wiping our foreheads, as hopelessly stuck on dry
smooth turf as so many cows in a bog.
'Pest!' cried Pirolo angrily. 'We are ground-circuited. And it is my own
system of ground-circuits too! I know the pull.'
'Good evening,' said a girl's voice from the verandah. 'Oh, I'm sorry!
We've locked up. Wait a minute.'
We heard the click of a switch, and almost fell forward as the currents
round our knees were withdrawn.
The girl laughed, and laid aside her knitting. An old-fashioned
Controller stood at her elbow, which she reversed from time to time, and
we could hear the snort and clank of the obedient cultivator half a mile
away, behind the guardian woods.
'Come in and sit down,' she said. 'I'm only playing a plough. Dad's
gone to Chicago to--Ah! Then it was _your_ call I heard just now!'
She had caught sight of Arnott's Board uniform, leaped to the switch,
and turned it full on.
We were checked, gasping, waist-deep in current this time, three yards
from the verandah.
'We only want to know what's the matter with Illinois,' said De Forest
placidly.
'Then hadn't you better go to Chicago and find out?' she answered.
'There's nothing wrong here. We own ourselves.'
'How can we go anywhere if you won't loose us?' De Forest went on, while
Arnott scowled. Admirals of Fleets are still quite human when their
dignity is touched.
'Stop a minute--you don't know how funny you look!' She put her hands on
her hips and laughed mercilessly.
'Don't worry about that,' said Arnott, and whistled. A voice answered
from the _Victor Pirolo_ in the meadow.
'Only a single-fuse ground-circuit!' Arnott called. 'Sort it out gently,
please.'
We heard the ping of a breaking lamp; a fuse blew out somewhere in the
verandah roof, frightening a nestful of birds. The ground-circuit was
open. We stooped and rubbed our tingling ankles.
'How rude--how very rude of you!' the maiden cried.
''Sorry, but we haven't time to look funny,' said Arnott. 'We've got to
go to Chicago; and if I were you, young lady, I'd go into the cellars
for the next two hours, and take mother with me.'
Off he strode, with us at his heels, muttering indignantly, till the
humour of the thing struck and doubled him up with laughter at the foot
of the gang-way ladder.
'The Board hasn't shown what you might call a fat spark on this
occasion,' said De Forest, wiping his eyes. 'I hope I didn't look as big
a fool as you did, Arnott! Hullo! What on earth is that? Dad coming home
from Chicago?'
There was a rattle and a rush, and a five-plough cultivator, blades in
air like so many teeth, trundled itself at us round the edge of the
timber, fuming and sparking furiously.
'Jump!' said Arnott, as we bundled ourselves through the none-too-wide
door. 'Never mind about shutting it. Up!'
The _Victor Pirolo_ lifted like a bubble, and the vicious machine shot
just underneath us, clawing high as it passed.
'There's a nice little spit-kitten for you!' said Arnott, dusting his
knees. 'We ask her a civil question. First she circuits us and then she
plays a cultivator at us!'
'And then we fly,' said Dragomiroff. 'If I were forty years more young,
I would go back and kiss her. Ho! Ho!'
'I,' said Pirolo, 'would smack her! My pet ship has been chased by a
dirty plough; a--how do you say?--agricultural implement.'
'Oh, that is Illinois all over,' said De Forest. 'They don't content
themselves with talking about privacy. They arrange to have it. And now,
where's your alleged fleet, Arnott? We must assert ourselves against
this wench.'
Arnott pointed to the black heavens.
'Waiting on--up there,' said he. 'Shall I give them the whole
installation, sir?'
'Oh, I don't think the young lady is quite worth that,' said De Forest.
'Get over Chicago, and perhaps we'll see something.'
In a few minutes we were hanging at two thousand feet over an oblong
block of incandescence in the centre of the little town.
'That looks like the old City Hall. Yes, there's Salati's Statue in
front of it,' said Takahira. 'But what on earth are they doing to the
place? I thought they used it for a market nowadays! Drop a
little, please.'
We could hear the sputter and crackle of road-surfacing machines--the
cheap Western type which fuse stone and rubbish into lava-like ribbed
glass for their rough country roads. Three or four surfacers worked on
each side of a square of ruins. The brick and stone wreckage crumbled,
slid forward, and presently spread out into white-hot pools of sticky
slag, which the levelling-rods smoothed more or less flat. Already a
third of the big block had been so treated, and was cooling to dull red
before our astonished eyes.
'It is the Old Market,' said De Forest. 'Well, there's nothing to
prevent Illinois from making a road through a market. It doesn't
interfere with traffic, that I can see.'
'Hsh!' said Arnott, gripping me by the shoulder. 'Listen! They're
singing. Why on the earth are they singing?'
We dropped again till we could see the black fringe of people at the
edge of that glowing square.
At first they only roared against the roar of the surfacers and
levellers. Then the words came up clearly--the words of the Forbidden
Song that all men knew, and none let pass their lips--poor Pat
MacDonough's Song, made in the days of the Crowds and the Plague--every
silly word of it loaded to sparking-point with the Planet's inherited
memories of horror, panic, fear and cruelty. And Chicago--innocent,
contented little Chicago--was singing it aloud to the infernal tune that
carried riot, pestilence and lunacy round our Planet a few
generations ago!
'Once there was The People--Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People, and it made a hell of earth!'
(Then the stamp and pause):
'Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, oh, ye slain!
Once there was The People--it shall never be again!'
The levellers thrust in savagely against the ruins as the song renewed
itself again, again and again, louder than the crash of the
melting walls.
De Forest frowned.
'I don't like that,' he said. 'They've broken back to the Old Days!
They'll be killing somebody soon. I think we'd better divert
'em, Arnott.'
'Ay, ay, sir.' Arnott's hand went to his cap, and we heard the hull of
the _Victor Pirolo_ ring to the command: 'Lamps! Both watches stand by!
Lamps! Lamps! Lamps!'
'Keep still!' Takahira whispered to me. 'Blinkers, please,
quartermaster.'
'It's all right--all right!' said Pirolo from behind, and to my horror
slipped over my head some sort of rubber helmet that locked with a snap.
I could feel thick colloid bosses before my eyes, but I stood in
absolute darkness.
'To save the sight,' he explained, and pushed me on to the chart-room
divan. 'You will see in a minute.'
As he spoke I became aware of a thin thread of almost intolerable light,
let down from heaven at an immense distance--one vertical hairsbreadth
of frozen lightning.
'Those are our flanking ships,' said Arnott at my elbow. 'That one is
over Galena. Look south--that other one's over Keithburg. Vincennes is
behind us, and north yonder is Winthrop Woods. The Fleet's in position,
sir'--this to De Forest. 'As soon as you give the word.'
'Ah no! No!' cried Dragomiroff at my side. I could feel the old man
tremble. 'I do not know all that you can do, but be kind! I ask you to
be a little kind to them below! This is horrible--horrible!'
'When a Woman kills a Chicken,
Dynasties and Empires sicken,'