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CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT
By Milo Hastings
1920
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE RED AND BLACK AND GOLD STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY ON THE CHANGING
MAP OF THE WORLD
II. I EXPLORE THE POTASH MINES OF STASSFURT AND FIND A DIARY IN A DEAD
MAN'S POCKET
III. IN A BLACK UTOPIA THE BLOND BROOD BREEDS AND SWARMS
IV. I GO PLEASURING ON THE LEVEL OF FREE WOMEN AND DRINK SYNTHETIC BEER
V. I AM DRAFTED FOR PATERNITY AND MAKE EXTRAORDINARY PETITION TO THE
CHIEF OF THE EUGENIC STAFF
VI. IN WHICH I LEARN THAT COMPETITION IS STILL THE LIFE OF THE OLDEST
TRADE IN THE WORLD
VII. THE SUN SHINES UPON A KING AND A GIRL READS OF THE FALL OF BABYLON
VIII. FINDING THEREIN ONE RIGHTEOUS MAN, I HAVE COMPASSION ON BERLIN
IX. IN WHICH I SALUTE THE STATUE OF GOD, AND A PSYCHIC EXPERT EXPLORES
MY BRAIN AND FINDS NOTHING
X. A GODDESS WHO IS SUFFERING FROM OBESITY, AND A BRAVE MAN WHO IS
AFRAID OF THE LAW OF AVERAGES
XI. IN WHICH THE TALKING DELEGATE IS ANSWERED BY THE ROYAL VOICE AND I
LEARN THAT LABOR KNOWS NOT GOD
XII. THE DIVINE DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM THE GREAT GIVE A BENEFIT FOR THE
CANINE GARDENS AND PAY TRIBUTE TO THE PIGGERIES
XIII. IN WHICH A WOMAN ACCUSES ME OF MURDER AND I PLACE A RUBY NECKLACE
ABOUT HER THROAT
XIV. THE BLACK SPOT IS ERASED FROM THE MAP OF THE WORLD AND THERE IS
DANCING IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE ROOF OF BERLIN
CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT
CHAPTER I
THE RED AND BLACK AND GOLD STRUGGLE FOR
SUPREMACY ON THE CHANGING MAP OF THE WORLD
~1~
When but a child of seven my uncle placed me in a private school in
which one of the so-called redeemed sub-sailors was a teacher of the
German language. As I look back now, in the light of my present
knowledge, I better comprehend the docile humility and carefully
nurtured ignorance of this man. In his class rooms he used as a text a
description of German life, taken from the captured submarine. From this
book he had secured his own conception of a civilization of which he
really knew practically nothing. I recall how we used to ask Herr
Meineke if he had actually seen those strange things of which he taught
us. To this he always made answer, "The book is official, man's
observation errs."
~2~
"He can talk it," said my playmates who attended the public schools
where all teaching of the language of the outcast nation was prohibited.
They invariably elected me to be "the Germans," and locked me up in the
old garage while they rained a stock of sun-dried clay bombs upon the
roof and then came with a rush to "batter down the walls of Berlin" by
breaking in the door, while I, muttering strange guttural oaths, would
be led forth to be "exterminated."
On rainy days I would sometimes take my favoured playmates into my
uncle's library where five great maps hung in ordered sequence on the
panelled wall.
The first map was labelled "The Age of Nations--1914," and showed the
black spot of Germany, like in size to many of the surrounding
countries, the names of which one recited in the history class.
The second map--"Germany's Maximum Expansion of the First World
War--1918"--showed the black area trebled in size, crowding into the
pale gold of France, thrusting a hungry arm across the Hellespont
towards Bagdad, and, from the Balkans to the Baltic, blotting out all
else save the flaming red of Bolshevist Russia, which spread over the
Eastern half of Europe like a pool of fresh spilled blood.
Third came "The Age of the League of Nations, 1919--1983," with the gold
of democracy battling with the spreading red of socialism, for the black
of autocracy had erstwhile vanished.
The fourth map was the most fascinating and terrible. Again the black of
autocracy appeared, obliterating the red of the Brotherhood of Man,
spreading across half of Eurasia and thrusting a broad black shadow to
the Yellow Sea and a lesser one to the Persian Gulf. This map was
labelled "Maximum German Expansion of the Second World War, 1988," and
lines of dotted white retreated in concentric waves till the line
of 2041.
This same year was the first date of the fifth map, which was labelled
"A Century of the World State," and here, as all the sea was blue, so
all the land was gold, save one black blot that might have been made by
a single spattered drop of ink, for it was no bigger than the Irish
Island. The persistence of this remaining black on the map of the world
troubled my boyish mind, as it has troubled three generations of the
United World, and strive as I might, I could not comprehend why the
great blackness of the fourth map had been erased and this small blot
alone remained.
~3~
When I returned from school for my vacation, after I had my first year
of physical science, I sought out my uncle in his laboratory and asked
him to explain the mystery of the little black island standing adamant
in the golden sea of all the world.
"That spot," said my uncle, "would have been erased in two more years if
a Leipzig professor had not discovered The Ray. Yet we do not know his
name nor how he made his discovery."
"But just what is The Ray?" I asked.
"We do not know that either, nor how it is made. We only know that it
destroys the oxygen carrying power of living blood. If it were an
emanation from a substance like radium, they could have fired it in
projectiles and so conquered the earth. If it were ether waves like
electricity, we should have been able to have insulated against it, or
they should have been able to project it farther and destroy our
aircraft, but The Ray is not destructive beyond two thousand metres in
the air and hardly that far in the earth."
"Then why do we not fly over and land an army and great guns and batter
down the walls of Berlin and he done with it?"
"That, as you know if you studied your history, has been tried many
times and always with disaster. The bomb-torn soil of that black land is
speckled white with the bones of World armies who were sent on landing
invasions before you or I was born. But it was only heroic folly, one
gun popping out of a tunnel mouth can slay a thousand men. To pursue the
gunners into their catacombs meant to be gassed; and sometimes our
forces were left to land in peace and set up their batteries to fire
against Berlin, but the Germans would place Ray generators in the ground
beneath them and slay our forces in an hour, as the Angel of Jehovah
withered the hosts of the Assyrians."
"But why," I persisted, "do we not tunnel under the Ray generators and
dig our way to Berlin and blow it up?"
My uncle smiled indulgently. "And that has been tried too, but they can
hear our borings with microphones and cut us off, just as we cut them
off when they try to tunnel out and place new generators. It is too
slow, too difficult, either way; the line has wavered a little with the
years but to no practical avail; the war in our day has become merely a
watching game, we to keep the Germans from coming out, they to keep us
from penetrating within gunshot of Berlin; but to gain a mile of
worthless territory either way means too great a human waste to be worth
the price. Things must go on as they are till the Germans tire of their
sunless imprisonment or till they exhaust some essential element in
their soil. But wars such as you read of in your history, will never
happen again. The Germans cannot fight the world in the air, nor in the
sea, nor on the surface of the earth; and we cannot fight the Germans in
the ground; so the war has become a fixed state of standing guard; the
hope of victory, the fear of defeat have vanished; the romance of war
is dead."
"But why, then," I asked, "does the World Patrol continue to bomb the
roof of Berlin?"
"Politics," replied my uncle, "military politics, just futile display of
pyrotechnics to amuse the populace and give heroically inclined young
men a chance to strut in uniforms--but after the election this fall such
folly will cease."
~4~
My uncle had predicted correctly, for by the time I again came home on
my vacation, the newly elected Pacifist Council had reduced the aerial
activities to mere watchful patroling over the land of the enemy. Then
came the report of an attempt to launch an airplane from the roof of
Berlin. The people, in dire panic lest Ray generators were being carried
out by German aircraft, had clamoured for the recall of the Pacifist
Council, and the bombardment of Berlin was resumed.
During the lull of the bombing activities my uncle, who stood high with
the Pacifist Administration, had obtained permission to fly over Europe,
and I, most fortunate of boys, accompanied him. The plane in which we
travelled bore the emblem of the World Patrol. On a cloudless day we
sailed over the pock-marked desert that had once been Germany and came
within field-glass range of Berlin itself. On the wasted, bomb-torn land
lay the great grey disc--the city of mystery. Three hundred metres high
they said it stood, but so vast was its extent that it seemed as flat
and thin as a pancake on a griddle.
"More people live in that mass of concrete," said my uncle, "than in the
whole of America west of the Rocky Mountains." His statement, I have
since learned, fell short of half the truth, but then it seemed
appalling. I fancied the city a giant anthill, and searched with my
glass as if I expected to see the ants swarming out. But no sign of life
was visible upon the monotonous surface of the sand-blanketed roof, and
high above the range of naked vision hung the hawk-like watchers of the
World Patrol.
The lure of unravelled secrets, the ambition for discovery and
exploration stirred my boyish veins. Yes, I would know more of the
strange race, the unknown life that surged beneath that grey blanket of
mystery. But how? For over a century millions of men had felt that same
longing to know. Aviators, landing by accident or intent within the
lines, had either returned with nothing to report, or they had not
returned. Daring journalists, with baskets of carrier pigeons, had on
foggy nights dropped by parachute to the roof of the city; but neither
they nor the birds had brought back a single word of what lay beneath
the armed and armoured roof.
My own resolution was but a boy's dream and I returned to Chicago to
take up my chemical studies.