TURBER'S ULTIMATUM
Alan and I, in the tower with Lea and San, were simultaneously heading
for the same Time-place to which Turber now took Nanette. We did not
know that Turber stopped in 1779. It would have availed us nothing. But
we did know his final destination. The knowledge was poor consolation.
Turber was practically impregnable in that giant city. Old Powl had
said it; we knew that Lea and San thought so. All our efforts had been
to keep Turber from taking Nanette there. It was his final strong-hold.
As our tower sped forward in Time from the forests of little New
Amsterdam, Alan and I found ourselves again with the barrier of
language between us and Lea and San. Lea was beginning to talk a
little. Her ability to learn was far in excess of what was normal to
Alan and me. Already she seemed to understand much of what we said.
But it was still an awkward barrier.
We made them understand that we would stop in the giant city. San would
land us there at a time similar to Turber's arrival.
Alan said: "We'll go to the authorities, Ed. They will be intelligent,
scientific people. They'll understand this tower--it won't be magic to
them. We'll make them organize an expedition against Turber. Rescue
Nanette--get her back safely."
My heart was heavy. It was all the rational plan we could make. But
that giant city! What new conditions with which we would have to cope!
A new civilization, all strange to us.
Lea said: "Yes. That best." She indicated 2445 A.D. on the dial. "You
and Alan there. San and I got to--"
She indicated the year 5000 A.D. Alan knew what she meant. She and San
would make a hurried trip on to that Time when the city was in ruins,
and would search in the ruins for that super-powerful weapon. They
would get it and bring it back to us.
Lea added: "Tell them--not yield to Turber. Weapon coming--Lea and San
bring it in tower."
We sped forward--a trip of much less than an hour. The Indian forests
melted away. The city flowed up around the tower. Central Park was
here. We saw the city flow over it. We saw huge streets about us. Then
a roof over us, with our tower set in a monstrous metal street.
Lea shook our hands. "Good-by, Alan--until we come with weapon."
The tower lurched to a halt. A surge of noises flooded in through the
windows. The noise of the huge city. And there were shouts of human
voices. And dazzling lights everywhere. Turber was here in this same
city, now, with Nanette. We were to make our last desperate play
against Turber here.
San flung the door open. Alan and I leaped from the tower steps. Behind
us, the tower flashed into a phantom and was gone.
* * * * *
The city street was a roaring torrent of voices, human and electrical;
a confusion of strange sounds and stranger sights. The street was solid
metal. Traffic levels rose in tiers one above the other. Vehicles were
passing: scurrying cars on wheels; a monorail hanging from a trellis,
with dangling cars showing as a string of lights high overhead. And a
great translucent spread of roof like glass above it all.
A blare of blue and yellow lights. A moving sidewalk on one of the
lower tiers was jammed with human figures. They craned down to see the
commotion we were causing.
The empty street space showed a mangled vehicle which had evidently
been too close when the tower materialized. Twisted, blackened metal;
and there were three human bodies lying dead in the street.
"Stand still, Ed! Let them take us!"
I clung to Alan. A crowd of strangely garbed figures rushed at us.
But they did not approach too close; a ring of them, milling about;
shouting--but too fearful to seize us.
We stood confused. Out of a million new impressions, my mind grasped
so few! Mechanisms everywhere; gleaming mirrors with moving images;
traffic lights and signals; clanking, clattering mechanisms; movement
everywhere.
I saw fifty feet up the tiers of sidewalks, a street of open-faced
shops with merchandise on display. The narrow viaducts were a lacework
of metal overhead. The city roof above them glowed with light--I think
it was daytime.
Alan said: "There ought to be an official."
The milling crowd was mostly men. All garbed in sober colors--black and
grays. Hatless, with close-clipped bullet heads. Close-fitting trousers
with legs like jointed stove-pipes; short black jackets. Women with
dark skirts like inverted funnels; hair close-clipped.
An official in white appeared. A roaring electrical megaphone on his
chest magnified his voice. The crowd scattered obediently. He waded
through it. He stood near us and roared at the congesting traffic. A
halted swinging train above us, moved along. Signal lights flashed.
The tangle of vehicles began struggling to sort itself out. Other
officials--all in white uniforms--showed on the bridges, and in small
rostrums on the different levels. A magnetic crane swung out into the
air. It seized an offending vehicle--lifted it clear of the jam.
The officer gripped us. "Come with me."
English, readily understandable, yet wholly strange. I cannot set it
down here. I cannot approximate its swift brevity--its suggestion of
eliminated syllables; its close-clipped intonations. Compared with it,
our own speech was ancient, flowing and flowery.
"Come--"
"We're friends," said Alan hastily. "Don't hurt us--take us to your
government headquarters. You can do that, can't you?"
The fellow stared. Astonished, I think, at Alan's strangely antiquated
English.
"They have already sent for you," he said. "Come."
He led us swiftly away. The crowd stared after us.
Into a small tunnel. A lighted car whirled us aloft. It passed endless
floors--or streets, or tiers. People everywhere. The car stopped its
vertical movement; it rolled sidewise upon a track. Our captor spoke
into a mouth-piece on his chest. I heard the answering voice.
"Room 400--tier 8 Tappan Government House, Westchester, Section 6 N. W."
"Yes," he said. He repeated it to the operator of our car who sat at a
switch.
The microscopic voice added: "Bring them."
"Coming now."
* * * * *
Our car whirled off, along a track; went over bridges of glaring,
tumultuous streets; through vaulted passages of buildings where behind
transparent panes I could see what seemed busy commercial offices; up a
long incline until I fancied we were almost under the roof--
Looming spires were now beneath us--streets and house-tops; then a
great building through which we plunged along a lighted passage. Rooms
with busy workers were everywhere.
This giant beehive!
I heard once above the mingled commotion of sounds: "Turberites expect
to buy city--" A broadcasting voice; and as we sped over a bridge,
dangling now from a single overhead track, I saw in the blur of light
far beneath us a giant oblong area of light, with moving letters. A
news-bulletin. I read:
Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand Billions--Wolf Turber's
price--payable in minted gold, silver, platinum and ancient jewels.
And then:
Council of Ten in Session. Turberites' Ultimatum expected soon.
We flashed into a black vacuum tube. It was a trip of perhaps ten
minutes. We emerged into an area where the city was less congested.
Descended to a trestle near the ground. The roof was lower. In places
it was gone. I saw the daylight--a gray overcast summer day. This was
the morning of June 12, 2445 A.D.
Alan whispered: "This must be about Tarrytown. There's the river."
To the left we saw the Hudson. A solid ground level of metal buildings
spread beneath us. Only the streets were roofed over here. Streets were
laid out in orderly parallels. Our single car sped above them, flashing
over switches.
I saw that there were no docks along the river. No sign of boats;
occasional low covered bridges crossed over to the other shore which
was solid with houses.
"Say, look behind us," Alan murmured.
A glare of light was back there. The roof seemed nearly a thousand feet
up; tracks and viaducts and traffic levels came from it like a tangle
of exposed veins and arteries spreading out over this wider northern
area.
Our guard said: "Here."
The car stopped within a towering building near the river. We emerged
into a lighted metal corridor. Guards passed us along it; we went
through great swinging baize doors.
We stood in the presence of the government council.
* * * * *
I think most strange of all this age, was its rapidity. Its
machine-made precision permeating every detail. Within half an hour, at
this council of the Anglo-Saxon Republic, of which Great New York and
Great London were twin capitals, we were understood and accepted; the
part we might play in this crisis Turber was precipitating was grasped
by these leaders.
I recall now our amazement at the dispatch with which fundamentals
were reached. The arrival of our tower had already been investigated;
witnesses in some local court near the scene had been interrogated; the
reports transmitted to scientific authorities--and the whole lay now
before this council.
Turber had carefully guarded his aero in that portion of the city which
he owned. It had never been seen by the governmental authorities. But
its existence was suspected and understood as an explanation of the
presence of Turber's rabble.
Within half an hour the main details of what we had to tell were drawn
from us by swift questions. There were no by-paths. No astonishment;
no theories. Half a dozen men of science arrived shortly after we were
brought in. They listened; they stated the scientific laws--well known
in this age--which made credible what we had to say.
It was a narrow room of metallic, vaultlike aspect. Ten men sat around
a table littered with documents, reports and summaries of the Turber
affair; and the more recently compiled data on us. Mirrors and grids
with moving images of distant scenes were on the walls; ovals of
windows and a swinging door disclosed an adjacent room humming with
the sounds of instruments; messengers passed in and out. There was a
table in a corner with instruments and two intent operators.
The business concerning us was dispatched with a celerity that left us
both confused. The interrogation of us was suddenly nearly over. The
president of the Great New York Branch of Anglo-Saxonia demanded of
Alan:
"You say your tower will return with a weapon for us to use against
Turber?"
"Yes. That is, we hope so."
"What sort of a weapon?"
"We don't know. A projector--"
"Electronic, probably." He was obviously greatly interested.
I said: "But you must have such weapons here."
"No. Our world aerial power makes them inoperative. There was a class
of weapons up to the years around 2000, called explosives. And then
came the electronic weapons. We have none of them. They would not
operate--and war itself is obsolete--"
Was it? I doubted that, with the menace of Turber here. The president
seemed to read my thoughts. He said:
"We are business men. We know nothing of war." His grave face clouded
with anxiety. He repeated as though to himself: "We know nothing of
war."
I regarded Alan. Then I said: "We have come here to have you help us.
And to help you. My friend's sister is held by Turber--"
An expedition against Turber to release Nanette. We urged it.
The president said impatiently: "You know nothing of what you talk.
That is utterly impossible of success."
Alan said: "We know nothing of your conditions--that's true. But we
must release my sister. Our purpose is the same as yours--if we can
kill Turber--his Empire, as you call it, would go to pieces with his
death. That's obvious from what you say."
We listened while the council went on with its business. Gradually it
was growing upon us how impregnable was Turber in this Time-world.
This was only five hundred years in the future of our own world of
1945! And less than eight hundred years in the future of that little
New Amsterdam! My mind went back to those forests with their roving
Indians. This same Space which now was this giant city! Eight hundred
years is not a long time in history.
What a stupendous change!
* * * * *
The Council was discussing the aerial power-vibrations broadcast over
the world from the main power plant in Scotland. The city comptroller
said: "The Turberites refused today to pay the rental fees." He
gestured to the table before him. "Here is the report--a protest from
the Great London office. The Turberites are pirating the power now.
Stealing it--the Wolves!
"How can we stop them? We cannot, without war."
My mind clung to Nanette. Cut off from us. No chance to get to her--it
would start the warfare, which of everything else I understood at once
was what this Council feared. There were mirrors here--and hundreds
more in the adjoining room--picturing present scenes all over the city,
and over the world. But none from the Turber area--that was insulated
against them.
How changed was this world from ours of 1945! Changed in every smallest
detail. Our familiar nations were gone. White, Yellow and Black
nations now, in a trinity of alliance. The White Nation was headed by
Anglo-Saxonia.
It was a vast world of business unified by transportation. There were
no ships, it seemed, on the seas, save perhaps locally in very small
areas. No great railroads. The age of the air.
Power was universally distributed by aerial vibrations. It was
broadcast by a central plant in Scotland. Transformers were at Niagara,
the Iguazu in South America, and Victoria Falls in Africa. The power
was tapped by air-liners; by the city trains; by the factories which
now were spread over every rural district; it operated all lights--all
motors down to the smallest.
* * * * *
There was now spread before us, in terms of this super-modern world,
the culmination of Turber's plans. There was a Turber Empire here now.
He had brought, with many trips of his aero, a constant stream of
villains gathered from the Past. How many thousands of them, we never
knew. And brought his treasure.
The city here knew him first as a wealthy man with a business
organization, buying up small sections of the city. His wealth and
his power grew, until now, ten years after his appearance in this
Time-world, he was a figure gigantic. He and his followers--his
organization--owned now all the southern area of the city. In ancient
terms: Staten Island--New York Harbor--a portion of Brooklyn--and
adjacent New Jersey.
Outside the city the Turberites owned and had colonized a strip of
land some twenty miles wide by six hundred miles long. Bought with
gold--like a gigantic railroad right-of-way. The strip ran from the
New Jersey edge of the city southward through New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Virginia, and into the Carolina Mountains. All ancient terms,
these, of course.
An agricultural section; and factories; and mines. A wall of metal and
masonry, huge as the old Great Wall of China, hemmed in this Turber
Colony. Food and all the supplies necessary to life were produced by
Turberites for their section of Great New York. They had organized
their own air transportation.
And now, the Turberites were ready to show their true colors! They
stopped paying for the use of the aerial power. That was just
today--June 12, 2445. They had flung up insulation a week ago--against
the government news mirrors. They demanded--the demand had come
today--that the city sell itself for the sum of four hundred and fifty
thousand billions of dollars. The government was to sell for this sum,
incredibly too small; to pay the citizens, each for his proportionate
property ownership, what would be a mere pittance; and order every one
to leave the city. In one transaction, they were to abandon this world
capital; disorganize its business; fling thirty million people into
unemployment!
It was unthinkable. And it had given to the world a hint of the real
menace of Turber. This was the beginning of his intended ruling of the
world. By money power, and by force of arms, he meant to extend his
despotism over all humanity.
We heard it all discussed, now at this Council meeting. And I saw these
men, gigantic governmental Captains of Industry. Men of business,
nothing more. Business men, trying to meet a crisis of war and
handling it by business principles. An impossibility!
* * * * *
The president's thin face was haggard and harassed. His stiff circular
coat was rumpled; he passed a hand over his face and dropped his
close-clipped gray head. An old man, utterly tired. But in a moment
he looked up again. He spoke, more vehemently than I had heard any of
these men speak before.
"We must learn what weapons the Turberites have. If he is to attack
us--when? We have plenty of men--the city police army--"
"Armed how?" asked Alan.
"With the needle-swords. And the steel slingshots--our men are very
expert--and they have projectors of compressed air, and sleeping gas."
Primitive weapons, modernized! My heart sank.
"How many of the police are available?" I asked.
"We have some two hundred thousand here. And Great London will send us
by liner all the police we need."
"Are your air-liners armed?" Alan asked.
"No. How could they be? Except with short-range slings."
Another man said: "If Turber cuts off the incoming supply ships--if his
ships are armed--our city here will starve in a day."
A commotion in the adjoining room interrupted us. A messenger came out.
"A communication from Turber!"
The president read the document.
"It has come!" He spoke with a strained hush to his voice. "He gives us
but half an hour. An ultimatum! He says we vacillate like children all
this morning, and give him no answer to his business proposal. Either
we accept his purchase price--and our citizens must start leaving the
city within thirty minutes--or he will begin war! We must tell him now.
He gives us just sixty seconds to answer!"
Some one said huskily: "We shall have to yield."
The president looked at Alan. "That projector which your tower went to
get--if we had it we could ask that the world-power be shut off. Then
we could use it, against Turber."
No one answered him. He added:
"Do you think your tower will bring it?"
"Yes," said Alan.
Messages were flooding in from the other world governments. Demands for
details. They passed ignored.
The president stood up; his slim figure wavered. "I think--I think,
gentlemen, we should not yield. If you are against defending
ourselves--defending the world from these wolves, stand up now and say
so."
No one moved. He turned suddenly; his voice rang out:
"Tell the Wolves we are not afraid."
He stood listening for the answer. It came within a few seconds.
Clattering messages from the southern--the Manhattan section of the
city.
Turber's attack had started!