HOW THE WORLD WAS MADE OVER
David possessed a small library of books, nearly all of a scientific
nature. Among them, however, I found two histories, and, in spite of
their obvious bias and violent character, I was enabled to understand
what had happened in the world since my long sleep began.
I learned of the great war that had begun a few days after I entered the
cylinder, when Russia and the democracies of Europe stamped out German
autocracy and laid the foundations of democratic government. I learned
how this democratic spirit burst out in 1945, when all the experiences
of the social order, accumulated by mankind since the dawn of history
were jettisoned, with all their lessons and all their warnings.
It was extraordinary to me that none of us had realized the changes
which had been impending. Warnings there had been, as there always are.
They were the decay of parliamentary government in all lands, the
breaking down of tradition and authority in every phase; only there was
nobody to heed them. Then, previously, whether by acknowledgment or in
spite of denial, society had always been founded on servile labor. The
harnessing of the tides, and, later, the control of solar power, threw
millions out of employment, millions of hungry men with time to think
and nothing to reverence.
The book said that the movement could have been stayed by wise measures.
But it was doubtful, for a frenzy for change was spreading like wildfire
over the civilized world. Now only Spain, restored Russia, and
monarchical and prosperous South America resisted it, among Occidental
nations.
I read that in 1945 democracy initiated the millennium by bursting all
the dykes. Millions were slain. London, Paris, Berlin, New York,
Chicago, Winnipeg were burned to ashes, with scores of other cities.
Peace was restored fifteen years later by a few military chiefs who came
into power owing to the universal exhaustion. At that time whole
populations were turning cannibal. All organized industries had been
destroyed. The path for reconstruction was clear.
Men called that the period of reaction, but it might have been the
period of reconciliation. Both sides failed in the ensuing years; the
mob, because it lacked idealism; the leaders, because they failed to
recognize the unassailable truth in the old Socialist propaganda, that
the era of machinery and of an inexhaustible supply of industrial power
had made the systematization of production inevitable. With half the
people workless, it was ridiculous that they should suffer and starve
because they could not buy the goods rotting in the stuffed warehouses.
The system did not fall because it was ridiculous, however, but because
it had become unworkable. Production had to be for use, not profit. When
profit went, rent had to go, and interest, that leech of society, so
long forbidden by the Catholic Church, and no doubt the direst result of
the Reformation. Failure to realize this need dragged down the old order
in 1978. It fell forever, and with it died all hope of a civilization
built on that of the past.
It was then that the writings of the great Wells, since called the
Prophet, were discovered and proved the inspiration of the new order. In
place of the illogical instinct of nations there was to be a New
Republic, based on pure reason, and shining with facets of unanswerable
facts. The world was to forget its past as thoroughly as it had
forgotten the Stone Age. The new revolution was led by Sanson, I
gathered, and swiftly conquered. There ensued two years of worse anarchy
than before. India was lost to Britain, and became a democracy,
convulsed with civil strife. Our savage wards reverted to barbarism.
Australia fell to China. All the world’s archives were destroyed.
Picture galleries went up in flames; statues were smashed to pieces;
monuments were blasted. The Parthenon perished, the British Museum, the
Louvre; east of the Bosphorus there remained hardly a memorial of the
past, except St. Peter’s and Cologne Cathedral. But, at the end of the
two years, the five Provinces of Britain, France, Skandogermania, Italy,
and Hungary found themselves the nucleus of the future Federation of
Man, under a pure democracy.
Here, amid fulsome plaudits, the tale ended; but I went to David to ask
him for some more particulars. He had seen me reading, and I think he
had been prepared for my question.
“I shall be glad to explain anything, Arnold,” he said.
“I have been reading about the new Federation,” I said. “England is,
then, no longer independent? And the United States? And Russia and
Spain?”
He smiled. “Of course, if you do not know these things, Arnold—” he
began. “But surely you are at least aware of the history of your own
country?”
“I know nothing,” I answered.
“Well, then, the United States is an independent nation. We have made
proposals for a union, but the bosses have not yet come to terms. Spain
stamped out her revolution. We were on the point of compelling her to
come in when she discovered the secret of the Glow Ray, which would have
made the effort unremunerative.”
“What is this Ray?”
“It is a combustion by old light, stored solar energy being transmitted
for that and all other power purposes from the great solar works on the
Vosges Mountains. Its invention made the old warfare obsolete. Our
small-arms are miniature Ray mirrors, charged with a single unit; our
big ordnance is supplied from the Vosges by cable connection. The Ray
destroys everything that it encounters, not protected by the glow paint
which you may have observed on the fronts of our buildings. This is the
last and greatest of the coal tar discoveries, and its manufacture is
based upon the exact relationship between the disintegrating glow rays
and an exact color having a fixed number of vibrations.
“Russia,” he continued, “crushed her revolution, too, as she had crushed
earlier anarchistic outbreaks. But though she has discovered the glow
paint, she has not the Ray. The Federation is consequently at war with
her, for her antiquated ideals make her a menace to civilization.
Besides, we need her wheat-fields. We have an army of ten thousand men,
two from each of the five Provinces, and have cooped up the young Tsar,
Alexander, with his army of a million men, in Tula. His surrender is
expected daily.”
“Ten thousand against a million?”
“Yes, with the Ray. However, even ten thousand were difficult to secure,
though the pay of each soldier is five units hourly. Twelve men have
been killed already. That is the weak point in our civilization, Arnold.
In spite of daily lectures by the most gifted orators that the Council
can obtain, showing that the desire for immortality is an inherited
perversion, and that we are immortal anyway, in the germ-plasm, man is
unwilling to die. In time the Council hopes, by reason and education, to
rid men of this ancient terror.”
“What is the ethical basis of our government?” I asked.
“Science, which alone survived the destruction of knowledge. The
scientific books were saved from the twelve million tons of printed
paper, chiefly from the British Museum shelves, that burned for twelve
days upon Blackheath; and from the contents of the Bibliotheque
Nationale that heated Paris during an entire month.
“A commission quickly synthesized the discoveries of earlier
investigators. World councils of scientists laid down the dogmas of
universal knowledge in the Vienna Creed, which was adopted without
dissentients after those who objected had been put to death. The famous
quarrel whether Force is of the same substance as Matter, or a like
substance, was decided here. The Sames conquered the Similars, by virtue
of a proclamation from Boss Rose.
“We know now that Science has given Nature’s complete and final
revelation to mankind. We tolerate no heresies, no independent judgment.
In vital matters toleration means only a dead faith. The Modernist idea
of criticizing the basic principles of our Science becomes a capital
offense, if preached, because the Boss is himself the repository of all
knowledge, and the pronouncements of Boss Lembken supreme. It is not
that we are bigoted, you understand. It is, indeed, suggested that
Science unfolds like a flower, revealing herself in larger scope to each
generation. But new discoveries can only be adaptations of what is
already known.”
I almost thought that there was irony in his tone; but he met my gaze
steadily, challengingly, as if to say, “If these are not your views,
declare them.”
“One thing I want to know is this,” I said. “The history books make no
mention of the blues and the whites. On what do you base the division of
the State into these two groups of citizens?”
“That is Doctor Sanson’s doing,” he answered. “The blues are the
defectives, the whites the perfect specimens of the race. The whites
alone are admitted to posts of responsibility. But most of them prefer
not to labor, and live in seclusion upon State pensions for the sake of
the race.
“This is considered Doctor Sanson’s crowning achievement for humanity,”
David continued. “Before his advent to power, defectives had been living
among the normal population since the dawn of history unrecognized. We
have now an intricate system of points of deficiency whereby they can be
detected infallibly, based partly upon heredity, partly on measurements,
partly craniometry and the Binet-Sanson tests.
“Doctor Sanson has long been anxious to pass his sterilization measure,
but he has been unable to persuade the Council to face the fierce,
ignorant, popular resentment that it would incur, although this practice
is of respectable antiquity in China and the Mohammedan world, and was
reintroduced to the Occident by progressive America a whole century ago.
Of course, the morons and all below a certain grading are not allowed to
reproduce their kind; but Sanson wishes to include the high-grade
defectives also. However, that would reduce the total productivity, and
thus the question bristles with difficulties.”
As I listened to all this jargon I felt more and more bewildered.
“You appear to have created a new aristocracy, then, based on physical
perfection,” I said.
“No, there you are wrong, Arnold,” said David. “Our democracy will never
endure hereditary privileges. What it has introduced is hereditary
disabilities. We simply disqualify from the white, or normal class, the
ninety-five per cent who are below the standard. It was progressive
America that first conceived the plan of raising man to the level of the
hound and the blooded horse.
“Yet,” he continued, “defectives do crop up, even among the offspring of
the whites. They are hard to discover; but by the Sanson tests we can
discover defectives who are, to all appearance, flawless. This class
exists especially among those of unusual mental power, which is in
itself a stigma of deficiency. Then there are the men who write our
books and paint our pictures in the art factories. They present an
anarchical longing for personal license. But they are isolated and never
allowed to mingle with the world. Yes, there are odd kinks in the human
brain. For instance, there still exists a preposterous sense of
nationality, which is being remedied by a system of forced emigration.
The Prophet Wells did not entirely estimate in its exactness the
tenacity of this illogical notion.
“Then there was that extraordinary outbreak, the Name War. Who could
have anticipated that human beings would object to being classified
under letters and numbers, for the sake of statistical simplicity? Yet a
misguided fifty thousand chose to meet death rather than give up their
names. However, Britain is said to be the province of compromises, and
it was agreed that the whites should retain two names, and the blues
one.”
“But surely,” I said, “the people did not vote for these restrictions?”
“You do not understand our system of government, Arnold. Naturally there
can be no voting in matters of science, sanitation, or statistics. Yet,
even here there is an indirect control, for our rulers, who are whites,
are elected by ballot annually, by the high-grade defectives of both
sexes. The Federal Council, which is not now in session, meets once a
year in London, the capital, and consists of five lay bosses, of whom
Lembken is chief, and five Science bosses under Sanson. You will
appreciate the stability of our government when I tell you that for
twenty years every nominated boss has been re-elected.”
I was almost certain of an undertone of irony in his words now.
“You see,” he continued, “non-votes are counted as ayes. Then those
opposing the Council must give their reason, which is filed in the
Bureau of Complaints. And again all such objections have been found to
be invalid, since they have invariably been made by undetected morons,
who have been sent to the workshops for life in consequence. Every
applicant at the Bureau of Complaints is examined by physicians. That
was Sanson’s idea.”
A most ingenious one. Suddenly I became sure that David was testing me;
the whole tenor of his conversation had been ironical, hesitating,
perhaps, and carefully weighed, lest he was running into danger, but
corresponding in no wise to his convictions. But why was he afraid of
me?
“Who is this Doctor Sanson?” I asked him.
To my surprise his voice dropped, and, before answering, he cast a
cautious glance toward the telephone funnel. Then, rising, he stuffed a
sofa cover into it.
“An illegal act,” he said, reseating himself. “If that were known I
should be liable to forced labor in the leather factories for several
years. Now, Arnold, you see my faith in you. Well, then, I cannot answer
you. He is a man of superhuman powers, more feared than any man has ever
been feared. There is a popular belief that he was born a thousand years
ago, and has wandered from land to land, waiting for the new age to
dawn. The Christians called him Antichrist. Nothing has ever been
learned as to his origin. He appeared like a conqueror, about the year
1980, to lead the hosts of the revolution to victory.”
“He is the ruler?”
David shook his head. “Boss Lembken is the titular head. But all know
that Sanson is supreme, although he chooses to let Boss Lembken hold the
reins of power. He could do anything, make any laws he wished, become
supreme ruler of earth. He is believed to be immortal, and to have the
power of renewing his youth whenever he wishes. Arnold, the people
believe that he can bestow immortality upon them and overcome their last
enemy, death. That is the secret of their terror of him. And—”
His voice sank to a whisper:
“You have come at a critical time. For this expectancy has set a date.
None knows how the rumor started, but during the next few months, ‘soon
after the Cold Solstice,’ the prophecy runs, a Messiah is to come to
earth, ignorant of his destiny. When he learns it he will offer mankind
its ancient liberty. Sanson will offer immortality in place of it. Then
will come the most titanic of all struggles, and the result is not
known.”
His voice quavered and ceased. And, staring at him, incredulous at
first, I realized that David was repeating no foolish, popular tale, but
what he himself believed.
Even Science had not succeeded in banishing faith from the hearts of
men. She had made it superstition instead. My brain reeled as the
dreadful picture David had drawn came home to me.
“David,” I exclaimed impulsively, “you are an educated man and an
intelligent one. Why do you not wear the white uniform? Surely you are
not a defective?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Under the Sanson law. My father had epileptic
seizures in his youth. He had to hide—but some day I will tell you about
that. It penalizes me twelve points, and Elizabeth six, thank God!”
And, just as the airscout’s face had expressed fear at my own expletive,
so David recoiled in horror at the word that had burst from his lips.
“Arnold,” he said, taking me by the arm, “there is a book—an illegal
book, to possess which would mean death. I am going to lend it to
you—and after you have read it you can tell me your story.”