_The People of the Hives_
Moodily Sarka stared into the depths of the Beryl, which represented the
Earth, and in which he could see everything that earthlings did, after
visually enlarging them, through use of a microscope that could be
adjusted, with relation to the Beryl, to bring out in detail any section
of the world he wished to study. His face was utterly sad. The people at
last truly possessed the Earth--all of it that was, even with the aid of
every miracle known to science, habitable.
The surface of the Earth was one vast building, like a hive, and to each
human being was allotted by law a certain abiding place. But men no
longer died, unless they desired to do so, and then only when the
Spokesmen of the Gens saw fit to grant permission; and there soon would
be no place for the newborn to live. Even now that point had practically
been reached throughout the world, and in the greater portion it _had_
been reached, and passed, and men knew that while men did not die, they
could be killed!
The vast building, towering above what had once been the surface of the
earth, to heights undreamed of before the discovery, was irregular on
its top, to fit the contour of the earth, and its roof, constructed of
materials raped from the earth's core, was so designed as to catch and
concentrate the yearly more feeble rays of the sun, so that its
life-giving warmth might continue to be the boon of living people.
* * * * *
It had been found as Earth cooled that life was possible to a depth of
eight miles below the one-time surface, so that the one huge building
extended below the surface to this great depth, and was divided and
re-divided to make homes for men, their wives, and their progeny. But
even so, space was limited. Neighboring families outgrew their
surroundings, overflowed into the habitations of their neighbors--and
every family was at constant war against its neighbors.
Men did not die, but they could be slain, and there was scarcely a home,
above or below, in all the vast building, which had not planned and
executed murder, times and times--or which had not left its own blood in
the dwelling places of neighbors.
No law could cope with this intolerable situation, for men, down the
ages, had changed in their essential characteristics but little--and
recognized one law only in their extremity, that of self-preservation.
So there was murder rampant, and mothers who wept for children,
husbands, fathers or mothers, who would never return to their homes.
"My grandfather," whispered Sarka, his eyes peering deeply into a
certain area beyond that assigned by law to the House of Cleric, where
men of two neighboring families were locked in mortal, silent conflict,
"should not have frustrated the mad scheme of Dalis! It was slaughter,
wholesale and terrible, but it would have cleansed the souls of the
survivors!"
* * * * *
Mentally Sarka was looking back now to that red day when Dalis, the
closest scientific rival of Sarka the First, had come to Sarka the
First with his proposal which at the time had seemed so hideous. Sarka
remembered that interval in all its details, for he had heard it many
times.
"Sarka," Dalis had said in his high-pitched voice, staring at Sarka the
First out of red-rimmed, fiery eyes, "unless something is done the world
will rush on to self-destruction! Men will slay one another! Fathers
will kill their sons, and sons their fathers, if something is not done!
For always there is marrying and giving in marriage, and each family is
reaching out in all directions, seeking merely space in which to live.
Formerly there were wars which automatically took thought of the
overplus of men; but to-day the world is at peace, as men regard the
term--and every man's hand is against his neighbor! There will be no
more wars, when there should be! There is but one alternative!"
"And that?" Sarka the First had queried suspiciously.
"The segregation of the fittest! The destruction, swiftly, painlessly,
of all the others! And when the survivors have again re-populated the
earth to overflowing--a repetition of the same corrective! Men will die,
yes, by millions; but those who are left will be a stronger, sturdier
race, and by this process of elimination, century by century, men will
evolve and become super-men!"
"And this plan of yours?"
* * * * *
For a moment Dalis had paused, breathing heavily, as though almost
afraid to continue. Then, while Sarka the First had listened in frozen
terror, Dalis had explained his ghastly scheme.
"If it were not for the mountains and the valleys," said Dalis, "and the
world were perfectly round and smooth of surface, that surface would be
covered by water to the depth of one mile! Is that not correct! The
Earth, rotating on its axis, travels about the sun at the rate of
something like nineteen miles per second, so perfectly balanced that
the oceans remain almost quiescent in their beds! But, Sarka, mark me
well! If we could, together, devise a way to halt this rotation for as
much as a few seconds, what would happen?"
"What would happen?" repeated Sarka the First, dropping his own voice to
a husky, frightened whisper. "Why, the oceans would be hurled out of
their beds, and a wall of water a mile high or more--it is all
guesswork!--would rush eastward around the world, bearing everything
before it! It would uproot and destroy buildings, sweep the rocky
covering of the earth free of soil; and humanity, caught on the earth
below the highest level of the world's greatest tidal wave, would be
engulfed!"
"Exactly!" Dalis had said with a grin. "Exactly! Only--the people we
wish to survive could be warned, and these could either be aloft when
the tidal wave swept the face of the earth, or could be safely out of
reach of the waters on the sides of the highest mountains!"
* * * * *
Sarka the First, wanly smiling, catching his breath at last, now that he
realized the utter impossibility of this mad scheme, had been minded to
humor the fancies of a man whom he had believed not quite sane.
"Why not," he began, "take away from men the Secret of Life, so that
they will die, as formerly, when the world was young?"
"When all the world knows the Secret, when even children learn it before
they are capable of walking?" demanded Dalis sarcastically. "You could
only remove knowledge of the Secret from the brains of men by removing
those brains themselves! Your thought is more terrible even than mine,
because it leads to this inescapable conclusion!"
"But supposing for a moment your mad scheme were possible, who should
say whom, of all the earth's people, should be saved, whom sacrificed?"
"What better test could be given than that which I am proposing?" Dalis
had snarled. "Those worthy of being saved would save themselves! Those
who would perish would not be worth saving! As natural, as inescapable
as the law of the survival of the fittest, which has been an axiom of
life since men first crawled out of the slime and asked each other
questions as they caught their first glimpses of the stars and pondered
the reasons for them!"
"But where, then, was there any point in my giving to people the Secret
of Life?"
"Had you paused to think," snapped Dalis, "you would never have done so!
Your lust for power, and for fame, destroyed your foresight!"
* * * * *
"And is it not, Dalis," replied Sarka the First, softly, "for this,
really, that you have come to me? To berate me? To throw at my head mad
schemes impossible of accomplishment? I have always known you for an
enemy, Dalis, because you are envious of what I have accomplished, what
you sense that I will accomplish as time passes!"
"I do not love you, Sarka!" retorted Dalis frankly. "I despise you! Hate
you! But I need the aid of that keen brain of yours! You see, hate you
though I may, I do you honor still. I have something up here," tapping
the dome of his brow, only less lofty than that of Sarka, "which you
lack. You have something I have not, never can attain! But together we
are complements, each of the other, and to the two of us this scheme is
possible!"
"I am very busy, Dalis," Sarka the First had replied coldly. "I must ask
you to leave me! What you propose is impossible, unthinkable!"
"So," retorted Dalis, "you think me mad? You think me incapable of
perfecting this plan about whose details you have not even yet been
informed! You would show me the door as though you were a king and I a
slave--when kings and slaves vanished from the earth millenniums ago!
Then listen to me, Sarka! I know how to do this thing about which I have
told you. I can halt, for a brief moment only, the whirl of the earth
about its axis. And by so doing I can flood the earth with the waters of
the oceans! If you will not listen to me, I shall do it myself! You
shall have two days in which to give me an answer, for I admit that I
need you, who would balance me, make sure I made no fatal mistakes! But
if you do not, I will act ... along the lines I have hinted!"
* * * * *
Apparently as unconcerned as though he had not just listened to a scheme
for almost total depopulation of the world, the destruction of millions
upon millions of lives, Sarka the First had dismissed Dalis--who had
straightway used all his offices to arouse the world of science against
the first Sarka.
But, when the two days of grace given by Dalis had passed, there were no
oceans--for Sarka the First had been planning for a century against the
time when the earth must of necessity be over-populated, and had worked
and slaved in his laboratory against the contingency which had
developed.
He had smiled, though there was a trace of fear on his face after Dalis
had left, for _his_ scheme had been worked out--not to destroy, but to
save!
And from this same laboratory in which Sarka now sat and pondered on the
next step in man's expansion, Sarka the First had, in fear and trembling
at first, but with his confidence growing by leaps and bounds, worked
his own miracle. Untold millions and billions of rays, whose any portion
of which, coming in contact with water, immediately separated its
hydrogen and oxygen, thus disintegrating its molecules, were hurled
forth from their store-houses beneath the laboratory, across the faces
of the mighty oceans of Earth....
And when men saw the miracle, they rushed into the mighty valleys where
the oceans had been, and began to build new homes!
* * * * *
That had been centuries ago--scores of centuries.
Now all the earth, all the livable part of the earth, above its
surface--and below it to the depths of miles--was filled with people,
like bees in a monster hive, like ants of antiquity in their warrened
hills. And there was no place now that they could go.
So they fought among themselves for the right to live.
"But my grandfather was right!" Sarka almost screamed it, speaking aloud
in the silence of his laboratory. "My grandfather was right! Dalis was
wrong! Science should be the science of Life, not of Death! Yet whither
shall we go! Where now shall we find places for our people who are daily
being born in myriads, to live, and love and flourish?"
But there was no answer. Only the humming of the perpetually revolving
Beryl, which showed to the sad eyes of Sarka that the people of his
beloved earth were rushing onward to Chaos, unless....
"If only I could be sure about Jaska!" he moaned. "If only my courage
were as great as that of which I stand in need! For if I fail, even
Dalis, had he succeeded with that scheme of his in grandfather's time,
would be less a monster, less a criminal!"