THE DOMED BUILDING
“Arnold! Arnold!”
The funnel in the room was calling me, not in its customary strident
tones, but with a muffled, intimate appeal.
David was at the Bureau, and Elizabeth had gone out on one of her
infrequent journeys. It was as if the voice knew I was alone, for it had
never spoken to me before, and had never called in that particular tone
of intimacy and understanding.
“Arnold, I am your friend,” the voice continued. “You will come to no
good in the Strangers’ House. Go out quietly by the external elevator at
once and proceed toward the Temple, where everything will be explained
to you.”
My bewilderment changed to intense expectancy. The Temple was, I knew,
the domed building that seemed to dominate London; I had seen it from
afar each time David and I had gone out together, and each time David
had seemed sedulously to avoid approaching it, proceeding and returning
in a circuitous manner.
“See for yourself the heritage of the new civilization,” the voice
continued. “Do not allow yourself to be made a prisoner by those who
wish you no good. Go out at once by the external elevator. Turn to the
right. Walk slowly. Look about you. Your friends are watching you.”
I went out and descended the building by the external elevator. A minute
later I was upon the traveling street, feeling like a runaway schoolboy,
and animated by an intense desire to solve the secret that lay before
me.
Presently, remembering that I was to proceed slowly, I had the curiosity
to step off the traveling platform into a large, open space on which a
crowd was seated. I took my post beside one of the funnels that
surrounded it, and saw that I was at one of the moving picture
performances. Spelling out the title upon the curtain, I understood that
news from Russia was to be given.
There was none of that blur of vision which was a common defect of the
old-fashioned pictures, and the words spoken from the funnels
synchronized so perfectly with the actions on the screen that the
illusion was complete. Upon the parapet of the fortress reared by our
besieging troops I saw machines with conical tops, faced with large,
glow-painted shields. As I watched, there rushed across the field of
vision a number of men of the most degraded, savage aspect, armed with
long swords, which they brandished furiously, while the funnels yelled
like demons.
“These are the Russian savages, filthy defectives who are attacking the
army of the Federation,” announced the funnel at my side, in such a
personal way that I started, imagining for a moment that someone had
spoken to me.
As the horde neared the fortress a short command was uttered, and from
each of the conical machines a glare of light shot forth. The Russians
wilted and crumpled up. They did not fall; they were rather consumed
like lead dropped into fire, and the next line wilted too as the Ray
caught them, tumbling in charred masses upon the bodies of their
companions. Higher and higher rose the dreadful pyramid of mortality,
until the field was empty.
“The victory of Science over Superstition,” announced each funnel
simultaneously. “The Russians do not possess the Ray. They are degraded
outcasts, refuse from the pre-civilization period, starving in Tula, and
will all die unless they surrender soon. What a pity to have to destroy
so much potential productivity! It is the Tsar’s fault. He is a dirty
moron, full of germ life, and has never produced a hektone in his life.
We shall next see him before the Council. Boss Lembken is on the job.
Praise him!”
“Hurrah” yelled the spectators, rising in their seats to cheer.
The curtain darkened, and the next scene of the drama was displayed. It
was laid in the Council Hall; but inasmuch as the Council was not in
session, and the Tsar was not yet captured, it possessed a certain
unreality for me which the audience did not seem to share. With
considerable interest I watched the ten about the Council table. At the
head sat a figure of enormous girth, dressed in white, with a black, or
probably mull robe about the shoulders. The face, appalling in its
grossness, must be that of Lembken, titular ruler of the Federation, a
fat old man with huge paunch and shrunken throat, on which the sagging
cheeks hung like a dewlap. A fit head for such a people!
Beside him sat a man of about the same age, perhaps sixty years, but
lithe and lean and muscular, and with the keenest, cruelest face that I
ever had seen. His whitening hair was brushed back from his forehead,
and his expression was so full of sinister and malignant power that I
knew this could be none other than Sanson, the devil of this devil’s
world, who ruled the superstitious multitude by the terror of “Science
become Faith,” as old Sir Spofforth had so aptly phrased it.
And, as I looked at him, I seemed to see the features of Herman
Lazaroff, as he might have been in his old age. There was the same
self-confidence, become arrogance, and self-assertion grown with power,
the same demoniac energy and will, trained by its use upon a servile
multitude. Thus Lazaroff might have been, if he could have had his wish
to live again.
What struck me, as I gazed upon the strong, clean-shaven faces about the
Council board, was that they seemed to reproduce the aspect and gestures
of the degenerate emperors of Rome. Was history repeating itself; a
state-fed mob, state-governed industries, the fist of autocracy beneath
the glove of impotent democracy, and those terrific incarnations of
cruelty and insane pride in power?
I saw the Tsar, a dwarfish, wretched figure in a tinsel crown, dragged,
groveling, to Lembken’s feet, while Lembken assumed an attitude of
inflexibility; and then once more the curtain darkened.
“Praise your Boss!” hooted the funnels. “He is the people’s friend.
That’s how he deals with kings! He shows no mercy to the people’s
enemies. The Tsar is a low-grade moron. His heredity is horrible. He
cannot pass Test 1 upon the Binet board. He is a wretched brach, and
will now work in the leathers till he dies, producing for you.”
“Hurrah!” screamed the spectators. “Out with him! To the Rest Cure!”
And the absurdity of the display came home to none except myself. These
citizens were in deadly earnest. How shrewd the mind that had contrived
a pabulum so well calculated to appeal to the mob palate! The contrived
crudeness, the planned abuse betrayed an intimate and assured
acquaintance with the people’s psychology.
“Praise louder!” whispered the intimate voice beside me. “Why do you not
praise when the others do?”
And then I realized that the funnel was speaking to me! Nobody else had
heard, nobody else was meant to hear. I knew that the funnels had a
tele-photophonic attachment whereby one could see as well as hear.
Somewhere, then, the person who had spoken to me that morning was
watching and playing with me. For an instant I felt caught in a trap.
“You do not seem to be an admirer of Boss Lembken,” said a voice upon my
other side; and I swung around to see a little, sallow man in blue, with
a plank badge on his shoulder, indicating that he was a carpenter. “I
see you are a stranger,” he continued, with a glance at my gray uniform.
“What do you think of London?”
“I have not seen much of it as yet,” I answered, remembering David’s
warning.
“Ah, you are diplomatic,” he returned suavely. “One has to be diplomatic
in these days, do you not think? You are of the same opinion as many of
us, only you lack the courage to say it, that certain features of our
civilization are over-developed. Now let us take Doctor Sanson, for
instance—do you not consider that he is pushing his prosecution of
morons to undue lengths? Has he not, in other words, a mania about
them?”
“I think,” I answered, hotly, “that a man whose chief amusement consists
in torturing his fellow-men needs to have his own mentality
investigated.”
“A worthy sentiment,” answered the little man, nodding his head briskly.
“In short, you are with us on that subject. And as for Lembken?”
“I know nothing of him,” I answered shortly.
“No, of course not. You are wise not to commit yourself,” said the
little man eagerly. “One must not pass judgment without investigation.
But still, our democracy has, in some respects, retained the features of
the old despotisms, do you not think? And then, do you consider that the
people are really omnipotent?”
He cocked his head as he spoke, and he had the objectionable habit of
thrusting his face forward, so that he had been forcing me, step by
step, around the circumference of a circle.
“The truth is, you say, we are actually in a condition of slavery,” he
persisted. “We are no better off than our ancestors, for all our boast
of civilization. Is that not so, to your way of thinking?”
“You are very quick,” I answered, “to put words into my mouth before I
speak them.”
“But you think them. Don’t you think them?” he urged, cocking his head
again and watching me with intense eagerness.
The little man had ceased crowding me, and suddenly I saw that he had
contrived to have me speak almost into the mouth of the funnel. It was
only then that the meaning of his pertinacity and of his repulsive trade
grew clear to me.
“Take yourself away!” I cried in anger.
“Oh, certainly! By all means! Yap, yap, if you wish it,” he answered,
drawing back and watching me with a sarcastic smile.
I went upon my way, filled with indignation. I wondered whether the
Council was watching me before summoning me, and why they attributed so
much importance to my views. I stared about me at the streets and the
crowds, the dazzling fronts of the high buildings, and even then I half
believed that this was a dream. Life could not have grown so accursed as
this.
Before I became aware of it I had drawn near to the domed building,
toward which the street was running. The houses suddenly fell away, and
the splendid structure, which had seemed to float above the house-tops
elusively, revealed itself to me. I was near the summit of a rather
steep hill, whose superior portion consisted of a smooth glacis composed
of neatly-jointed stones, across which the converging streets moved
toward the castellated fortification, each terminating before a gate in
this wall. The gate in front of me was composed of huge blocks of stone,
probably with a steel foundation, and swung upon thin hinges of some
metal that must have had enormous tensile strength. It was open and,
like the fortification, was covered with glow paint or plaster, a
dazzling mirror, now white, now blue, and bright as sunlight. Above the
wall were the great conical, glow-painted Ray guns.
I passed through the gateway under a massive arch. Now I saw that the
double wall enclosed a barracks or circular fortress, surrounding the
inner courtyard, and connected with the dome by long bridges, stretched
upon arches. The court within was laid out in grass plots, and was most
spacious.
I stood still and gazed in admiration at the stupendous architectural
scheme of the great building that occupied the center of the circular
space. The dome covered only a small portion of the entire mass, and on
each side was a succession of halls and porticos, approached between
Corinthian columns, and, I thought, intercommunicating. The part
immediately beneath the dome appeared to be of older date than the rest,
and formed the nucleus of the complete conception.
As I stood staring in astonishment, suddenly I knew what the domed
building was. It was St. Paul’s Cathedral; but the cross was gone.
My wonder grew as I watched it. The dome designed by Sir Christopher
Wren remained intact; yet it no longer rested on the summit, but seemed
to soar, supported on numerous low pillars, and, twenty feet beneath it,
on a flat under-roof, was a garden of luxuriating palm trees, and
therefore presumably enclosed by invisible crystal walls. I saw the
gorgeous coloring of tropical flowers, and scarlet creepers that twined
around the trunks of old trees. What a magnificent pleasure-ground for
the Council of the Federated Provinces, high up above the London streets
in the December weather!
An elderly, bent man in blue, with the sign of a hammer on his shoulder,
came slowly toward me.
“Can one obtain a permit to go to the Council garden?” I inquired of
him.
He stopped and looked dully at me. “Eh?” he inquired.
“I want to go up and see the aerial garden,” I responded, pointing.
“You want to go up there?” he exclaimed, and then began to chuckle. He
slapped first one knee and then the other.
“Ho! Ho!” he roared. “That’s good. But listen! You don’t know who you’re
talking to. My daughter lives up there. I’ll never see her again, but I
like to walk here and look up and think about my luck. It gives me
standing. I’ve got to earn a hektone and a quarter monthly, haven’t I?
But I tell you I don’t earn fifty ones a month, and I lay off when I
want to, and there’s not a Labor Boss dares say a word to me. And down I
go on the register for my hektone and a quarter every month, as sure as
the sun rises.”
His hard, shrewd laughter convulsed him again, and he slapped his legs
and leered at me. Then he drew closer to me and laid his hand on my arm
confidentially.
“You’ve heard of this new freedom the people are whispering about?” he
asked, glancing apprehensively about him. “They’re never satisfied, the
people aren’t. They want to get back to the old, bad ways of a hundred
years ago, when there wasn’t food to go around, and the rich sucked the
poor men dry. I’ve read about those days. But the people are forgetting.
Sanson will crush them when they’re ready to break out. Do you know what
they want? Do you? Do you?
“They want God back again, after we’ve put him down. They want their
heaven after their rotten hides are turned into fertilizer. I know. I
know those Christians. London’s full of them today. The defective shops
are full of them. They’re talking and planning for an uprising that will
turn back the hands of the clock. But Sanson will oust them when he gets
ready. He’ll give them the Rest Cure.
“They say there’s a Messiah coming to mate the Temple goddess and bring
back the old, bad days. Do you know what Sanson means to do? He’s going
to mate her himself. And then he’s going to make us all immortal. We’ll
have our heaven on earth then, and keep our bodies too. What’s the use
of a heaven when you haven’t a body to enjoy it with? Sanson will make
us all young again. We don’t want freedom, we want immortality.”
I was so astonished by his gabbling that I remained silent after he had
ended, not knowing how to answer him. He began scanning me slowly from
my feet upward.
“You’re a stranger,” he said, with slow suspicion.
“Yes,” I replied. “Now tell me how I can go up to the Council garden.”
“Garden,” he replied, in apparent stupefaction. “Don’t you know that’s
Boss Lembken’s palace? That’s the People’s House, where Boss Lembken
lives. People can’t go up there. Don’t you know that’s the People’s
House? Who are you?”
Suddenly he started back and a malignant look came over his face.
“You’re a wipe!” he shrieked. “You want to trap me and send me to the
Comfortable Bedroom because I’m too old to work. Never a month passes
but I put up my hektone and a quarter. Look on the register. You want to
switch an old man who minds his own business and puts up his hektone and
a quarter, you rotten moron!”
His old face worked with fear and excitement, and he raised his fist in
a threatening manner; then, suddenly changing his intention, he swung on
his heel and hurried away toward the gate. I saw him glance back
furtively at me and then increase his speed.
As I turned to look at him I perceived that a small wooden gate on the
interior side of the circular fortification stood partly open, and
inside I saw a troop of the international guards at drill.
I crossed the court and came to a halt before the Corinthian columns
that I had seen; and now I perceived that the pedestal of each contained
a bas-relief, a conventionalized figure beneath which was engraved a
tribute to some great leader of mankind. The engravings were in the old
Roman characters, which seemed to have been retained on statues, coins,
and brasses, just as we in our day still inscribed coins and statue
pedestals in Latin. I walked around the columns, reading these
inscriptions.
The first that caught my eye was in honor of Darwin, and read simply,
“The Father of Civilization.”
The next was to Karl Marx. “He interpreted history in the light of
materialism, and gave us the social State, with food for all,” I read.
There was one in honor of Wells, “the Prophet of the Race.”
There was one to Weismann, “who gave us immortality, not in a ghostly
heaven, but in the germ-plasm.”
The next was to Mendel, who had “interpreted man’s destiny in terms of
the pea.” Poor, patient, toiling Abbot, what were you doing in this
galaxy?
And there was one to Nietzsche, “the scourge of Jesus of Nazareth, a
peasant god.”