THE ROAD TO LONDON
A shadow swept over me, and, looking up, I saw an airplane gliding
noiselessly above; it stopped, hung poised and motionless, and then
dropped slowly and almost vertically into the road, coming to ground
within a dozen yards of where I lay.
There stepped out a man in a uniform of pale blue, having insewn upon
the breast a piece of white linen, cut to the shape of a swan. He came
toward me with hesitancy, and stood over me, staring at me and at my
clothes with an expression indicative of the greatest bewilderment.
“Where’s your brass, friend?” he inquired after a few moments, speaking
in a high-pitched, monotonous, and rather nasal tone. He rubbed his
smooth-shaven face in thought. “Where’s your brass?” he repeated.
I perceived that he wore about his neck a twisted cord whose ends were
tied through the loop of a brass plate, stamped with letters and
figures.
“For God’s sake tell me what year this is!” I cried.
At the profane expletive, which had been drawn from me by my anguish, he
recoiled in dismay; he seemed less shocked than frightened; he glanced
about him quickly, and then cast a very searching look at me. But next
he began to smile in a half-humorous, kindly way.
“You’re one of the escaped defectives, aren’t you?” he inquired. “You
have nothing to fear from me, friend. We airplane scouts have no love
for the Guard. You can go on your way. But where are you lying up? Are
your friends near?”
“Will you tell me what year this is?” I demanded frantically.
“Yap, certainly,” he answered. “This is Thirty-seven, Cold Solstice less
five.” He shook his head and began staring at me again.
I laughed hysterically. “I don’t know what that jargon means,” I
answered, “but I went to sleep in the vault of the Biological Institute
in the year 1915.”
Perplexity had succeeded alarm. The airscout shook his head again. He
was one of those deliberate, slow-moving men whose resolutions, tardily
made, harden to inflexibility; I recognized the type and found the
individual pleasing. He was a good-looking young fellow of about eight
and twenty, with straight, dark hair and a very frank countenance. He
looked like a sailor, and the rolling, open collar, which fell back,
sailor fashion, revealed a muscular throat, tanned, like his face, to
the color of the bricks around us.
“I don’t know what to make of you,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t want
to trap you, but you were better off in the art factories. I don’t know
what to do with you.”
I sprang to my feet, and for an instant I ceased to realize my
predicament. “Will you take me to my friends in London?” I asked. In my
mind was the memory of a university acquaintance who lived in St. John’s
Wood. But then the swift remembrance came back to me, and I hung my head
and groaned.
“Back to London!” exclaimed the airscout. “But you’ll be put to the
leather vats. Doctor Sanson is furious, and the police are searching for
you everywhere. You’re crazed! What’s the sense of running away from
painting pictures and going back to sweat ten years over the hides?”
“Take me to London!” I implored. “I have nowhere to go. Perhaps—I don’t
know—”
I was hoping wildly that somebody whom I had known might still survive.
But by this time I was beginning to pull myself together. I resolved to
wait for his decision.
“Now, friend,” he said, as if he had made up his mind, “your top got
stuffed making those factory pictures, as was very natural. Now, I think
you had better go back to London, and I’ll take you there, since your
friends have shaken you. But of course it must be the police station. I
can’t risk my own liberty. Once more, are you sure you want to go? If
not, I haven’t seen you.”
“I’ll go,” I answered indifferently.
“Yap? Step in, then!”
I took my seat beside him. It will seem incredible, but I had never
ridden in an airplane before. In my other days only a few had seen these
craft. It was hardly more than six years since the Wrights had flown
when my long sleep began. In spite of my oppression of mind, or perhaps
because the days of horror that I had spent in the cellar produced the
unavoidable reaction, I began to feel the exhilaration of the flight as
we ascended to a height of perhaps a thousand feet and drove northward.
The sensation was that of sitting still and seeing the trees flit by
beneath me, and would have been pleasing but for the intense cold, which
pierced through my rags and numbed me. I perceived that the airplane was
under perfect control, and could be stayed without falling. After a
while I realized that there was no motor.
My companion saw me looking at the machine. “Improved solar type,” he
said, patting her caressingly. “Better than a bird, isn’t she?” He
turned toward me. “You’ve been sleeping in the wood these three days?”
he asked. “And find the factories best? I don’t score you for that.
Where’s the rest of you? Five, weren’t there? Why didn’t you keep
together? Where’s that bishop of yours?”
But, seeing that he could elicit no comprehensible answer to his
repeated questions—in truth, I did not know how to reply—he relapsed
into an equal silence. And now the white bank that I had seen on the
horizon began to assume crenellations, which in turn became buildings of
immense height and symmetrical aspect. And I forgot my situation in
admiration and amazement at the panorama that began to unfold beneath
us.
The county of Surrey appeared to be an extensive forest, ending about a
waste of dismantled brick, the suburbs of old London, which extended on
each side as far as I could see. Then the modern town began: an outer
ring of what I took to be enormous factories and storage warehouses; an
inner ring, no doubt, of residences; and then the nucleus, the most
splendid city that the imagination could have devised.
London seemed to be smaller than the metropolis of a century ago. I
could see from the height of Hampstead, in the north, to the region of
Dulwich, and from Woolwich to Acton, all clearly defined, like a great
map unrolled beneath me, though I could recognize none of the old
landmarks, save the unchanging Thames. The interior city was laid out in
squares, huge buildings, sometimes enclosing interior courts, occupying
the blocks formed by the parallel and intersecting streets. As we drove
inward from the outskirts, the buildings became higher, but always
uniformly so, the city thus presenting the aspect of a succession of
gigantic steps, until the summit, the square mile comprising the heart,
was reached.
This consisted of an array of enormous edifices, with fronts perfectly
plain, and evidently constructed of brick-faced steel-work, but all
glistening a dazzling white, which, even at that height, made my eyes
water, and rising uniformly some forty-five or fifty stories. The flat
roofs were occupied by gardens or what I took to be gymnasia, sheltered
beneath tarpaulins. I saw innumerable airplanes at rest, suspended high
above the streets, while others flitted here and there above the roofs,
and a whole fleet lay, as if moored, some distance away, apparently over
the center of the city, above a singular building, which awakened
associations in my mind, though I was unable to name it.
It had a round dome, being, in fact, the only domed building that I
could see. This covered only the central portion of the enormous
architectural mass, and appeared to float in the air above an aerial
garden, laid out with walks that radiated from a flat building, which
filled the space between the floating dome and the roof beneath it. I
surmised that this must be the new House of Parliament. The entire mass
was surrounded by a double wall, with a roofed space of perhaps ninety
feet from rear to front, castellated. Mounted on this were what appeared
to be a number of large, conical-shaped implements, of great size. Long,
graceful bridges on arches connected this wall with the domed building;
and wall and building glistened from top to base so brilliantly that the
glow seared my eyes like sunlight.
As we were now flying at a low altitude, I turned my attention to the
streets, which appeared like canyons far beneath. Along these swarmed a
multitude of travelers, dressed in two colors only, white and blue, the
latter vastly predominating. I could see no vehicles, and I imagined,
what proved to be correct, that the streets themselves were moving. Most
of those journeying seemed content to lean back against the railings,
the lowest bars of which projected, forming a continuous seat, and rest.
Nearly all the streets were traveling in the same direction, those that
reversed this movement being small and comparatively empty. From the
presence of what seemed to be iron stanchions, set along the edges of
these moving ways, I surmised that they were roofed with crystal.
Along the front of the buildings ran single tracks, connecting at
regular intervals with the streets beneath by means of elevators, which
shot up and down continuously, bearing their freight. These tracks were
placed above each other at ten-story intervals, so that there were three
or four rows of these aerial streets, ranging from the ground to the
upper portions of the buildings, all filled with travelers. The
buildings, each comprising an entire block, the elevated streets, with
their graceful bridges flung forth across the chasms, the absence of any
of the old poverty and dirt, and that huge gathering of human beings,
going about their business in so systematic a fashion, fascinated me,
and even aroused my enthusiasm.
Signs evidently indicated to persons approaching in airships the purpose
of each building and landing-stage, but these were in characters
entirely unintelligible to me.
My companion stayed the vessel in the air and tapped me on the arm. I
started, to see him regarding me with the same expression of humorous
perplexity.
“I must put you off here, friend,” he said. “I think I have done the
best I could for you. You would have died in the forest, while
here—well, there’s a chance for you. And it’s better to go to the
leather vats for a few years than to die and go nowhere. I’ll know you
if we meet again. What’s your name?”
“Arnold Pennell,” I answered, clasping the hand that he held out to me.
He almost jumped. “Don’t tell that to the Council, unless you want the
Rest Cure,” he said.
“Don’t tell them my name?”
“Not both names, friend. You know what I mean. If you don’t know—” He
shrugged his shoulders. “Mine’s Jones,” he said. “My father’s was
Williams. My grandfather’s was Jones again. They say it’s one of our
oldest names—common in the days before civilization. Now down we go.”
The airplane swooped down and came to rest upon the roof immediately
beneath us. On this I saw a number of men, apparently practicing
gymnastic exercises; and hardly were we at a standstill when two of them
came running up to us. They were clad in blue uniforms resembling that
of the airscout, but instead of a swan each wore a shield-shaped piece
of linen upon his back and breast.
“What’s this?” they demanded in a breath, pointing at me and bursting
into bellowing laughter.
“One of your defectives,” answered Jones. “I found him in the forest
while patrolling.”
They rushed at me and dragged me from the airplane, swiftly patting me
about the body, as if in search of weapons. Satisfied that I was
unarmed, they turned to the airscout.
“You’ll share the reward!” they cried, again simultaneously.
“Keep it!” replied the airscout tartly, and rose into the air, waving me
a cordial good-bye.
They rushed me across the roof through a crowd of other men, similarly
clad, down an elevator, and into the street. They dragged me upon one of
the moving platforms and conveyed me a short distance, descending at the
entrance to one of the innumerable shining buildings, over which was
inscribed something in the same undecipherable letters.
But, quickly as we had gone, the report of my arrest seemed to have
preceded us, for our way was blocked by a vast and constantly increasing
crowd, that came running up with lively and shameless curiosity, and,
attracted by my rags, I suppose, pressed closely about us and uttered
hoots of laughter. I heard the word “defective” bandied from mouth to
mouth.
I looked at these people attentively. There were both men and women
present, all wearing clothing of the same pale blue color, which seemed
to be prescribed, although the cut of each garment was to some extent
individual. In effect, the men wore sack suits of a coarsely woven
woolen material, with short, loose trousers fastened with laces about
the ankles, and square-cut coats having wide lapels extending to a
broad, turned-back collar that fell over the shoulders like a sailor’s,
revealing a neckpiece of blue linen. The women’s short skirts reached to
the tops of their high boots, and the fashion seemed to run to large
buttons and loose sleeves. They wore no hats. Upon the breast, near the
shoulder, each person wore a small linen badge, indicative of his
occupation.
[Illustration:
I glanced from one to another, and met hard, mirthless eyes, and
mouths twisted in sneering mockery
]
What disconcerted me was the shrewd, mocking smile upon each face. I
glanced from one to another, seeking to find something of the same
friendly interest that animated me, and met hard, mirthless eyes, and
mouths twisted in sneering mockery.
Another thing that startled and almost terrified me was the absence of a
certain conventionality of restraint that had ruled everybody in that
other world of mine. For instance, among those gibing at me was a
gray-bearded man who danced before me like a small urchin. Another made
an expressive pantomime of death. A girl stuck out her tongue at me. I
remembered the plaint, that never since the glorious age of Greece had
the code of public morality coincided with that privately held. This we
all knew; the statesman in parliament was not on bowing terms with the
same statesman in the smoking-room. Some said it was Christianity,
others respectability that bound us in this organic hypocrisy; but now
the two codes seemed to have coalesced. A grandfather grimaced at me; a
gray-haired woman put out her foot to trip me; if there had been stones
I think they would have flung them at me. But suddenly a youngish lad in
white appeared, and the crowd, hastening to make a path for him, shrank
back with servile demeanor. Taking advantage of this, my captors,
linking their arms in mine, made a rush forward, scattering the mob
right and left, and bore me through a swinging door into a small
rotunda, in which a number of other policemen were seated with their
blue-clad prisoners.