THE LORDS OF MISRULE
I saw her eyelids quiver and half unclose an instant, and, though there
was no other sign of awakening upon the mask-like face of sleep, I knew
she lived. The indicators upon the dials showed that five days remained
before the opening of the cylinder. And, as I stared through the glass
plate, so horror-struck and shaken, some power seemed to take possession
of me and make me very calm. An immense elation succeeded fear and
rendered it impotent. Esther was restored to me. We had not slept
through that whole century not to meet at last.
How many years we two had lain side by side within our cylinders, down
in the vault, I could not know. Yet there had been a sweetness behind
those misty memories of my awakening as if our spirits had been in
contact during those hundred years of helpless swoon.
The eyelids quivered again. But for the emaciation and the dreadful
pallor I might have thought she was only lightly sleeping, and would
awaken at my call. The love in my heart surged up triumphantly. For her
sake I meant to play the man before the Council.
I meant to go there now. I think my instinct must have been the courage
born of hopelessness, such as that which had carried the bishops to
their death. For only a desperate stroke could win me Esther; and such a
stroke must be made, should be made. With steady steps I returned to the
priests’ room.
The dotard was waiting for me, and he came forward, smiling and blinking
into my face, searing my soul with eyes as hard as agates.
“I am going to the Council,” I said quietly.
He looked at me in terror. He seized me by the arm.
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “You are to go to your friends. The Council
is not in session.”
“It is in session. I have been held for it.”
“You don’t understand. That is the Provincial Council. This is a matter
for the Federal Council, and Sanson is not your friend. Don’t you
understand now? Sanson is working on the problem of immortality and
doesn’t suspect. Boss Lembken is your friend. Don’t you know he is your
friend?”
“No,” I answered contemptuously.
The old man clutched me in extreme agitation.
“If you are headstrong you will go to ruin,” he cried. “Boss Lembken is
your friend. He sent for you. Not Sanson. Boss Lembken discovered who
you were while Sanson was dreaming over his victims. If Sanson knew he
would get you into his power and overthrow the priesthood. He means to
destroy the Ant and have no god. He is going to mate the goddess when
she awakens—”
He saw me start and clench my fists, and a deep-drawn “Ah!” of relief
came from his lips. For I had betrayed my identity beyond all doubt; and
it was to make sure of this that I had been sent into the Temple. I
could see it all now.
“Now listen to me,” he said, coming near and thrusting his repulsive old
face into mine. “Boss Lembken wants you. He wants to help you and give
you power. But he was not sure of you; and so he had to use craft and
caution. When the Messiah comes Lembken will overthrow Sanson and make
the world free again. It was Lembken who sent for you.”
He was becoming incoherent with fright at my obduracy.
“The People’s House is above the Temple,” he continued. “Boss Lembken
lives there. He has a beautiful palace. You will be happy there. And
Sanson has no palace and no delights. He wants nothing except to
vivisect the morons. So you will not want to go to Sanson. He can offer
you nothing. We must be cautious, and if he is in the Council Hall we
must wait till he has gone, for he controls the Guard, and if he saw you
he would have you seized. That is why I gave you a priest’s
robes—because Sanson dares not stop the priests, who are under Lembken.
Come with me, then.”
I accompanied him out into the gallery above the auditorium, in which
the orators were still declaiming to a lessening crowd. Sanson or
Lembken, it mattered little to me. I felt enmeshed in some plot whose
meaning was incomprehensible. But I meant to win Esther. I walked like a
somnambulist, feeling that the dream might dissolve at any moment. A
shaft from the western sun struck blood-red on a window. A pigeon that
had perched among the columns fluttered to the ground. Above me I saw
tier upon tier of galleries.
We ascended the marble stairway, the guards making no attempt to stop
us, nor were we challenged. I noticed that they were armed with Ray
rods, similar to those that I had seen in the cellar; and they raised
them in salutation as we passed.
We ascended flight after flight, and always the guards posted at the top
of each saluted us and stepped aside. We passed across a little covered
bridge and presently entered a small rotunda, in which a dozen guards
were seated, sipping coffee and chatting in low tones. Behind them was
an immensely high door marked in large letters
COUNCIL HALL
To the right and left of it were smaller doors.
We entered the door on the right, and the priest, stopping, whispered to
me:
“You must make no sound. If Sanson is in Council he must not discover
us.”
I found myself in a small room, with the inevitable door at the farther
end. Upon one side were two apertures in the wall, disclosed by sliding
panels that moved noiselessly—spy-holes, each as large as the bottom of
a teacup. The priest stooped before one and I looked through the other.
The immense Council Hall was dim, and it took a few moments for my eyes
to grow accustomed to the obscurity. Then I saw at the distant end a
raised platform, on which stood two high chairs, like thrones.
There were three men upon this platform, one occupying each chair, and
the third standing.
One was unmistakably Lembken, the obese old boss of the Federation. He
wore a trailing gown of white, with a short mull cape about his
shoulders, and there were golden ants—as I discovered afterward—stamped
all over the fabric. He was lying rather than standing, and his feet
rested upon a stool. He was smiling in evil fashion, and he was stout to
the verge of disease. I could not see his face distinctly.
Upon the second throne sat a man with a fanatic’s face and a square
beard of black that swept his breast. He had a large ant badge on either
shoulder of his white gown, and on one finger was an immensely heavy
ring of gold that projected beyond the knuckles. This was the Deputy
Chief Priest.
Standing between the two in the shadows, lolling back half-insolently
against Boss Lembken’s chair, to whisper in his ear, and again turning
to the priest, was Sanson. I could not mistake the whitening hair
brushed back, the gestures of intense pride and power, though I could
hardly see the face. He wore a tight tunic of white, without a badge,
and he bore himself with a complete absence of self-consciousness. There
was not a trace of pose in the completeness of that manifested
personality, with its alert poise, cat-like and tense, as if each nerve
and sinew had been disciplined to serve the master-soul within.
As I watched I heard a strident, metallic voice call in loud tones:
“Wait till the Goddess awakens and the Messiah comes! He’ll make an end
of Sanson and his cruelties, and give us freedom again!”
Now I perceived that behind Sanson and between the two thrones stood a
telephone funnel, attached to some mechanism. It was from this that the
voice had issued. It was followed by the clacking sound of a riband of
paper being run off a reel. Sanson stepped back, picked up the riband,
and ran it through his fingers, glancing at it indifferently.
“The speaker lives in District 9, Block 47, but we do not yet know his
name. A trapper is watching,” said the voice in the funnel.
A bell rang, the door on the left of the Council Hall was opened by a
guard, and a girl of about eighteen entered. She was robed in white and
on her shoulder was the sign of a palm tree. She stood before Boss
Lembken’s throne with downcast face and clasped hands, trembling
violently.
“They sent for me,” she said in a low voice.
I saw the smile deepen on Lembken’s face. He sat leering at her; then he
shifted each foot down from the stool and gathered himself, puffing,
upon his feet. He put his hand under her chin and raised it, looking
into her face. The girl twisted herself away, screamed and began running
toward the door.
“Let me go home! Please—please!” she cried.
The guard at the door placed one hand over her mouth and dragged her,
struggling, through a small door behind the funnel, which I had not
seen.
I clenched my fists; only the thought of Esther held me where I was.
“Ascribe the heretics,” said Lembken to the deputy priest, and puffed
out behind the guard.
Sanson stepped backward and touched the funnel mechanism, which
instantly began to scream.
“Heresy in the paper shops!” it howled. “Examine District 5. They say
there is a God. Weed out the morons there!”
The writing mechanism began to clack again. I saw the paper riband coil
like a snake along the floor between the thrones. Sanson stopped the
machine, which was beginning to screech once more. He moved to the
vacant throne and sat down.
Again the bell tinkled, and there came in a man of about thirty years,
in blue, leading a little boy by the hand. He looked about him in
bewilderment, and then, seeing the priest, flung himself on his knees
and pressed his lips to the hem of his robe.
“It is not true that I am a heretic, as they say,” he babbled. “I
believe in Science Supreme, and Force and Matter, coexistent and
consubstantial, according to the Vienna Creed, and in the Boss, the
Keeper of Knowledge. That man dies as the beast dies. And that we are
immortal in the germ-plasm, through our descendants. I believe in
Darwin, Hæckel, and Wells, who brought us to enlightenment—”
“That boy is a moron!” screamed Sanson, interrupting the man’s
parrot-rote by leaping from his chair.
He dragged the child from the father, switched on the solar light, and
set him down, peering into his face. He took the child’s head between
his hands and scanned it. His expression was transformed; he looked like
a madman. And then I realized that the man was really mad; a madman
ruled the world, as in the time of Caligula.
The father crept humbly toward Sanson; he was shaking pitiably.
“He is a Grade 2 defective,” he whispered. “You don’t take Grade 2 from
the parents. He is Grade 2—the doctors said so—” He repeated this over
and over, standing with hands clasped and staring eyes.
“I say he is a moron!” Sanson shouted. “The doctors are fools. He is a
brach. Look at that index and that angle! Look at the cranium,
asymmetrical here—and here! The fingers flex too far apart, a proof of
deficiency. The ears project at different angles, my eighth stigma of
degeneracy. He is a moron of the third grade, and must go to the Vivi—”
With an unhuman scream the father leaped at Sanson and flung him to the
ground, snatched up the boy in his arms and began running toward the
door. From his throne the priest looked on impassively; it was no
business of his. The guard appeared.
But before the man reached the guard at the door Sanson had leaped to
his feet and pulled a Ray rod from his tunic. He pointed it. I heard the
catch click. A stream of blinding, purple-white light flashed forth. I
heard the carpet rip as if a sword had slashed it. A chip of wood flew
high into the air. On the floor lay two charred, unrecognizable bodies.
I confess my only impulse then was of fear. How could I confront that
devil, or Lembken, in his hell, when for Esther’s sake I must be
cautious and wise? I plunged toward the farther door. The priest caught
at me, but I shook him off and flung him, stunned, to the floor. I
opened the door and rushed through.
I was amazed to find myself upon a long, slender bridge that spanned the
central court of the vast structure. I stopped, bewildered, not knowing
where to turn, and the whole scene burned itself upon my brain in an
instant.
The immense mass was divided into four separate buildings. The Council
Hall, from which I had emerged, was on the southern side, and, looking
beyond it, I saw the Thames, winding like a silver riband into the
distance. Facing me was the north wing, by which I had entered,
containing the Vivisection Bureau and other halls of nameless horrors,
with Sanson’s quarters. On my left hand the Temple towered high over me.
Above my head I saw the outlines of the noble dome, and the palm trees
behind their crystal walls. A blood-red creeper trailed down through a
chink in the wall.
Upon my right was a massive fortress that I had not hitherto perceived,
floating above which was a whole fleet of airships, evidently the same
that I had seen when I flew into London. There must have been more than
a hundred of them, ranging from tiny scoutplanes to huge monsters with
glow shields about them, projecting conical machines like those that
studded the top of the enclosing wall, but smaller. On their prows were
great jaws of steel, in some cases closed, in others distended, fifteen
feet of projecting jaw and mandible, capable, as it looked, of crushing
steel plate like eggshells.
The bridge on which I stood ran from the Council Hall to the wing where
Sanson dwelled. A bridge from the Temple building ran straight to the
fortress of the airships at right angles to this, the two thus crossing,
forming a little enclosed space in the center. At various spots, bridges
from the enclosing fortress crossed the court and entered the pile of
buildings. And the whole concept was so beautiful that even then I
stopped to gaze.
But I did not know whither to turn. In front of me, where the bridge
entered Sanson’s wing, a guard stood watching me. As I approached the
central place where the two bridges met he raised his Ray rod with a
threatening gesture.
I turned to the right. Here, where the bridge from the Temple entered
the fort of the airships, I saw an airscout in blue, with the white swan
on his breast, watching me. Again I stopped. My mind was awhirl with the
horrors that I had seen; I could not think! I did not know what to do.
All exit seemed barred to me except that whereby I had come.
Beneath me lay the court, a broad expanse of white, inlaid with
geometrical figures of green grass. On it crawled tiny figures in blue.
I was halfway between the court below and the Temple dome above; yet
everything was so still that the voices below came up to me.
A group had gathered, chattering excitedly, about something that lay
hard by the Temple entrance. As they moved this way and that I saw that
it had been a woman. She had been young; her garments had been white;
there was a gold palm on a torn-off fragment that a gust of wind drove
up toward me. I caught at it, but it went sailing past and fluttered
down in the central court between the buildings.
I saw the spectators look up toward the aerial gardens. The blood-red
creeping vine now swung from an open crystal door. That paradise of
tropic beauty, those flame-colored flowers were such as blossom in hell.
The crystal door above me clashed to and reopened as the wind caught it.
It seemed to clang rhythmically, like a clear tocsin, high up beneath
the dome, a bell of doom to warn the blood-stained city. Again it
sounded like a workman’s hammer; and the silence that covered everything
made the sounds more ominous and dread, as if Fate were hammering out
the minutes remaining before she slashed her thread.
An old man pushed his way through the gathering crowd. He peered into
the white face, and wrung his hands, and wept, and his voice rose in a
high, penetrating wail.
“It’ll all be ended,” I heard him cry. “I can’t work now. I can’t make
up my time. I’ve spent my credit margin. I’m old and outed and done
with. I’ll have to go to the Comfortable Bedroom.”
It was the old man whom I had seen earlier that day. The crowd jeered
and pressed forward, those who were behind craning their necks and
rising on their toes to see the joint spectacle of death and grief. The
old man shook his gnarled fist at his dead daughter.
“You’ve killed me,” he sobbed in rage. “Why couldn’t you have stayed up
there till Sanson has made us all immortal? I’m going to the Comfortable
Bedroom now, and my body will die like a beast’s, and I’ll be ended.”
And he broke into atrocious curses, while the crowd screamed with
delight and mocked his passion.
The little gate on the inner side of the fort opened, and a troop of the
Guard emerged, carrying a stretcher. At the sight of them the mob
scuttled away. The guards picked up the body and carried it within the
gate. One began scattering sand.
Out of the crowd leaped an old man with flowing hair and beard. He stood
out in the court and shook his fist toward the Temple dome.
“Woe to you, accursed city!” he screamed. “Woe to you in the day of
judgment! Woe to your whites and harlots when the judgment comes!”
The crystal door banged and clashed open. A woman in white put out her
hand and closed it. A latch-click pricked the air. The sun gilded the
dome and turned it to a ball of fire. Down in the court the madman cried
unceasingly.
[Illustration:
“Woe to you, accursed city!” he screamed. “Woe to you in the day of
judgment! Woe to your whites and harlots when the judgment comes!”
]