THE MESSIAH’S ANNUNCIATION
Jones left us and came back with some food. Upon his arm he carried a
stranger’s uniform, which he handed to me.
“You cannot wear those robes,” he said. “Take this. It should fit you;
it belonged to one of our recruits who was ascribed last week and has
not yet returned it to the Wool Stores.”
I was glad to see the last of the priest’s robes. He carried them away,
promising to return for us in an hour. Elizabeth made us eat, but we had
little heart to do so. At her insistence, however, we made the best
display of appetite that was possible.
The room was only faintly illumined by the reflected solar light that
issued up the elevator shaft. With it there mounted the sound of the
voices of the airscouts in their barracks below. Sometimes the elevator
rushed by, arousing a thrill of fear in each of us.
David drew me toward him and began speaking softly.
“You know nothing of Paul,” he said. “His name is Paul Llewellyn—for we
observe Sanson’s laws no longer. He was to have mated Elizabeth.”
“Married?”
“Yes, married, before the Cold Solstice. His grandfather was my father’s
steward at Dolgelly. Our families remained in touch through all the
civil turmoil, and he is the last of his, as Elizabeth is the last of
mine. He was given the name Paul, the father retaining the family name,
which was to alternate in each generation, as is the custom nowadays.
That law of Sanson’s must be one of the first to go. It aimed, of
course, to destroy the vestiges of the family that remained.
“Paul was a Grade 1 defective, and we felt sure that Elizabeth would
come under the same classification, so that they would be free to mate.
They were waiting for the lists to be published, but Elizabeth had not
been ascribed when the last list went up, and meanwhile Paul was sent to
the defectives’ shops. Arnold, did you ever hear of the doctrine called
Apostolic Succession?”
“Of course, David.”
“That the functions of the priesthood are transmitted by the laying on
of hands? The English Church possessed the tradition, and it has never
been lost, though most of our people attach, I am afraid, some magical
idea to the ancient rite. Our bishop is a poor, illiterate old man, a
machinist by trade, but Bonham laid his hands on him before he was
burned in Westminster Hall. Bishop Alfred was to have blessed the union.
A week before Fruit Equinox, Paul was taken in the bishop’s home by
Sanson’s spies. Both were condemned to life imprisonment in the
defectives’ shops as Christians. Both escaped among the last batch of
fugitives. Elizabeth hopes to meet Paul tonight.”
“And I hope so, with all my heart,” I answered.
The cage stopped at the door and Jones came in.
“We can go now. The last of the scoutplanes has gone,” he said.
We went up to the roof. Deep night was over and about us. The
phosphorescent fronts of the glow-painted buildings gave London the
aspect of long lines of parallel and intersecting palisades of ghostly
light; but the glow paint illumined nothing, and the deep canyons of the
streets were of velvety blackness. The white circle of the fortress wall
surrounded us. Outside the region of the glow, London was an
indistinguishable blurred shadow, save where the searchlights from the
departing scoutplanes illumined it. They hovered in a long line above
the city, their position only discernible from the white searchrays that
emanated from them as they swept the city below. Slowly they made their
way into the southern distance.
I groped for reality in this succession of bewildering scenes, and
hardly found it. Rain began to fall, spattering on the crystal walls of
the adjacent gardens, in which the flickering colored lights still
twinkled. My face was wet with it. I was thinking of the old days, when
life was free: Sir Spofforth’s rain-swept garden, the scent of Esther’s
tea-roses, and the hum of the ungainly, noisy town of Croydon that last
evening. I saw Esther’s face vividly upon the velvet screen of the
night.
Elizabeth’s hand stole into mine.
“You are our hope, Arnold. You can inspire us to victory,” she
whispered.
Jones had gotten the scoutplane ready, and the vessel now rested on the
flat roof, as a bird on its perching place. It was a little craft, even
smaller than my memory of it had been, and it carried no Ray shield to
betray its presence. Jones drew David aside and held a whispered
colloquy with him.
“We are about ready,” he said, as they came back to us. “I’ve shifted
the searchlight to the rear socket to balance the extra weight. She’ll
carry us. I’ll have time to take you to your destination and report for
scout duty when Hancock comes the round. But if I fly with the
searchlight showing, any of the planes may signal me to stop—”
He rubbed his chin, and the old irresolution came upon his face.
“If I fly dark it’s a leather vat offense,” he added. “And the
battleplanes would fire on us.”
He paused and rubbed his chin again.
“I’ll fly dark,” he said, and so settled the matter firmly in his own
mind. And, his mind thus made up, I knew nothing would change it.
There was some difficulty in disposing of us. Finally Jones placed us
three in the double seat, Elizabeth in the center and David and I on
either side of her. He himself squatted upon the chassis before us, the
wheel in his hands. He touched the starting lever with his right foot,
and the craft rose heavily into the air, straining beneath her burden.
In spite of the counterbalance of the searchlight behind, the nose of
the plane dipped constantly, so that our flight was a succession of
abrupt ascents and declinations.
It was freezing cold up in the air. Gradually we ascended, till I felt
the fresh wind from the Thames estuary beat on my face. Presently the
south was cleft by flaming serpents, with eyes of fire.
“The food airvans from France,” said David, pointing.
Now we soared over the outlying factories and warehouses. A huge,
glow-painted building sprang into view out of the shadows below.
“The defectives’ workshops for this district,” David continued. “Yonder
is the Council’s art factory.”
The darkness in front of us began to be studded with long parallelograms
of dazzling glow, set at wide intervals, each capped with the conical
Ray guns. From these, extending fanwise toward the ground, appearing
pink in contrast with the glow’s intensely purple white, the
searchlights wavered.
Jones halted the scoutplane. “The battleplanes,” he said, pointing.
“They are posted nightly around London now. You know the reason, David?”
David started and placed his hand in inquiry upon the airscout’s
shoulder. Jones’s voice sank to a whisper.
“It is the merest rumor among our men,” he said. “One reads it in their
faces rather than hears it spoken, for we are afraid of one another. One
can be sure that Sanson has his spies among us. But the scoutplanes are
sufficient to patrol London and detect fugitives, and if the
battleplanes are sent out there is hope the rumor may be true. If the
Tsar has broken out from Tula—”
“Thank God!” said David in a tense whisper.
“He will overrun Skandogermania in a week, for it is as disaffected as
Britain. The airscouts there will go over to him. There is no force to
stop him, except our planes and the Guard.”
I saw the joy on David’s face. Could barbarous Russia indeed bring
freedom to the Western World?
“It is only a rumor,” continued Jones. “A rumor, you understand, David,
backed by the presence of the battleplane squadron around the city
nightly, words let fall in the People’s House, retailed by gossiping
servants, the sudden summons last night of Air-Admiral Hancock—”
“But the Russians have been slaughtered in thousands!” I exclaimed. “I
saw the picture upon the screen.”
Jones laughed and David smiled.
“Those pictures are for the people,” said the airscout. “They were taken
by night inside the fortress here. The Guard dressed for the part.”
“Still, how could the Russians win without the Ray?” asked David
doubtfully.
“I can answer that,” I said. “All history shows that no weapon is strong
enough to conquer men who are ready to die for a right idea against an
evil one. Ideas are stronger than the deadliest arm man has contrived.
That has always been so and always will be so.”
Again Elizabeth’s hand crept into mine. “You must tell our people that,
Arnold,” she said. “You know the secret of stirring them.”
“But Hancock will stand by Lembken?” inquired David.
“Yap, and will hold at least a quarter of our men to him,” said Jones.
“He will serve Lembken through Sanson, so long as Sanson remains loyal.
If Sanson turns against Lembken to seize the supreme power, Hancock will
fight him to the death. Sanson sent the Air-Admiral’s son to the Rest
Cure as a moron, years ago, when Hancock was unknown. Sanson doesn’t
remember it, but Hancock remembers.”
I shuddered. “Why, then, is not Hancock with us?” I asked.
“There are traditions of loyalty in his family,” answered Jones.
“Hancock is queer. Now we go up. Hold fast.”
The scoutplane creaked and rocked and plunged like a ship in a gale as,
foot by foot, he jerked her head into the higher air. The gleaming glow
parallelograms of the battleplanes seemed to shoot downward as we soared
above them. We had passed them when, like some black air monster, a
large, dark plane glided beneath us. I felt our scoutplane thrill as she
shot upward, so suddenly that she rose almost to the perpendicular,
jerking us back against the uprights.
Jones was straining madly at the wheel, and I realized that the dark
plane was in pursuit of us. I saw her swoop out of the night, missing us
by a yard. She disappeared. I heard the divided air hiss as she
approached again, and the next instant the blinding searchlight
enveloped us, and a voice hailed us, piping thin through the frosty
night. Then the light was astern, and groping impotently beneath us as
we rose to a higher level. Jones strained at the vertical rudder,
pushing the plane’s nose up and still upward, battling like a
weather-beaten bird against the wind.
Again the searchlight found us, and then, out of the heart of it,
turning the keen white glare to a baby pink that fringed it, there
hissed a light ten times more brilliant, snapping and crackling, into
the void. Jones veered, still mounting. The dazzling light flared out
again. The upright that I held snapped in my hand. I slipped in my seat,
but David reached out and held me.
Once more the Ray flash came, but under us. The darkness and our pilot’s
courage had saved us. The searchlight groped far underneath. Our
scoutplane dipped, soared, dipped, caught the wind, and we volplaned at
furious speed for miles down a gradient of cushiony air.
I felt Elizabeth tremble, and placed my arms around her to hold her.
Jones stayed the plane and clapped his numbed hands together, whistling
through his teeth. He jerked his head around. The moon was beginning to
rise; it was a little lighter, and I saw that his face was dripping wet.
“A thread of an escape!” he said. “If she had struck us fair with the
Ray we’d have buckled up like paper. Snapped one upright, didn’t it?”
There was a cut of two inches in the steel—a clean cut, and the edges
fused as if from fire.
“That was Hancock’s dispatchplane,” said Jones. “He carries no light.
But—the voice didn’t sound like Hancock’s.”
“Are we safe now?” asked David, looking back to where the shrunken
figures of the battleplanes were ranged behind us on the horizon.
“Safe long ago,” said Jones. “But it was touch-and-go while I was trying
to top that southeaster. He lost us at the summit, though, and he
couldn’t have caught us on that down-grade.”
We started again, traveling more slowly, at a lower altitude, and
planing downward until I heard the wind in the tree boughs and saw the
glistening snow beneath. We brushed the top-most twigs. The scoutplane
flitted backward and forward, seeking the old road.
“I ought to know it in the dark,” said Jones. “I don’t want to turn on
the searchlight if I can help it.”
To and fro we went like a fluttering bird, until the cleft of the road
appeared among the trees. Then we dropped softly to the ground. I was
almost too cramped and cold to move. With difficulty I descended and
helped Elizabeth out. David followed, and we three stood chafing our
hands and stamping until the circulation was restored.
Jones leaned forward from the airplane. “I’ll run her into the trees in
case anyone comes along and sees her,” he said.
“We shall not see you until—?” asked David.
“I’m not going back,” answered the airscout. “Not after this night’s
work. You’ll see me in ten minutes.”
“You are going to join us?” inquired David, joyfully. “Is it—do you mean
Hancock knew you?”
“No. That wasn’t Hancock, either. I know who it was—at least, I think I
know. No, I’ve had enough of the Twin Bosses, after Elizabeth’s
adventures. Put me down as the first airscout who went over.”
David grasped him by the hand and shook it warmly. Jones whistled again,
drew back, and the scoutplane rose to the tops of the trees, beat about,
and vanished.
David turned to me. “Arnold, are you prepared for a great and stunning
revelation?” he asked.
“Yes, he is prepared,” answered Elizabeth for me.
We set off through the trees along a small, well-worn trail, until the
crumbling bricks beneath us heaped themselves into a mound, and I saw
the ruined foundations of the Institute before me, and the hole in the
cellar roof. A sentinel leaped out at us.
“For man?” he asked, leveling a Ray rod.
“And freedom,” answered David.
The sentinel called, and in a moment a crowd came rushing up a short
ladder, wild-looking men with beards and hanging hair, all dressed in
tatters and rags, a woman or two, and a youth who ran forward with a cry
and caught Elizabeth in his arms. I saw the happiness they shared.
David led me to a tall old man with bowed shoulders and a ragged white
beard that spread fanwise across his breast. His hands were seared and
twisted like those of one who has lived years of hardest toil, and the
staff on which he leaned had a crooked handle.
“Bishop Alfred,” he said, “this is the Messiah who was to come.”