She fed another leaf to the fire. "... impostor ..."

"Harriet--" he advanced toward her, but she waved him away with the

sharp blade--"can't burn George's work this way ... gave his life ..."

I had not thought highly of Joe's talents as a musician, believing them

byandlarge to be but reflections of his unfortunate affectations. I

think I can say I appreciate good music and Ive often taken a great deal

of pleasure from hearing a hotelband play Rubinstein's Melody in F, or

like classical numbers, during mealtimes. But even if Joe's symphony was

but a series of harsh and disjointed sounds, I thought its destruction a

dreadful thing for Mama to do and the more shocking, aside from any

question of artistic taste, because of its reversal of all we associate

with the attitude of true motherhood.

"Mrs Thario," I protested, "as your son's friend I beg you to

consider--"

"Impudence," declared Mama, pointing the sword at me so that I

involuntarily backed up although already at a respectful distance.

"Damned impudence," she repeated, feeding another page to the fire.

"Came into my house, bold as brass and said, 'Cream if you please.' Ha!

I'll cream him, I will!" And she made a violent gesture with the saber

as though skewering me upon its length.

I whispered to Constance, who was standing closest, that her mother had

undoubtedly lost her reason and should be forcibly restrained. Unhappily

the old lady's keen ears caught my suggestion.

"Oho. 'Deranged,' am I? I spend my life making more money than I can

spend, do I? I push my way against all decency into the company of my

betters, boring them and myself for no earthly reason, do I? I live on

crackers and milk because Ive spent my nervous energy piling up the

means to buy an endless supply of steaks and chops my doctor forbids me

to eat? I starve my employees half to death in order to give the money I

steal from them to some charity which hands a small part of it back, ay?

I hire lobbyists or bribe officials to pass laws and then employ others

to break them? I foster nationalist organizations with one hand and

build up international cartels with the other, do I? I'm crazy, am I?"

Excited by her own rhetoric she put several pages at once into the

flames. Constance pleaded, "Mama, this is all we have left of Joe.

Please, Mama."

"Sundays the church banner is raised above the Flag. I never heard a

post chaplain say immortality was contained on pieces of paper."

"Comfort, then, Mama," suggested Winifred.

"Creative work," muttered the general.

"Is it some trivial thing to endure the pangs of childbed that the

creations of men are so exalted? I have offered my life on a battlefield

no less and no more than my grandfather fought on at Chancellorsville.

Little minds do not judge, but I judge. I bore a son; he was my

extension as this weapon is my extension."

She thrust the sword forward to emphasize her utterance. "I will not

hesitate to judge my son. If he did not die in proper uniform at least I

shall not have him go down as a maker of piano notes instead of

buglecalls." She threw the balance of the score into the fire and

stirred it into a blaze with the steel's point.

The ringing of the telephonebell put a period to the scene. Constance,

who spoke several languages, answered it. She carried on an

incomprehensible conversation for a minute and then motioned to me with

her head. "It's for you, Mr Weener. Rio. I'll wait till they get the

connection through." She turned to the mouthpiece again and encouraged

the operator with a soothing flow of words.

I was vastly relieved at the interruption. It was undoubtedly Preblesham

calling me on some routine matter, but it served to distract attention

from the still muttering old lady and give her a chance to subside.

Preblesham's voice came in a bodiless waver over the miles. "A W? Can

you hear me? I can give you a tip. Just about three hours ahead of the

radio and newspapers. Can you understand me? Our big competitor has

bought the adjoining property. Do you get me, A W?"

I nodded at the receiver as though he could see me, my thoughts racing

furiously ahead. I had understood him all right: the Grass had somehow

jumped the saltwater gap and was loose upon another continent.

_73._ I had about three hours in which to dispose of all my South

American holdings before their value vanished. Telephone facilities in

the Thario house, though adequate for the transaction of the general's

daily business, were completely unequal to the emergency. Even if they

had not been, Mama's occasional sallies from her fireplace fort, saber

waving threateningly, frequently endangered half our communications and

we suffered all the while from the idiosyncrasies of the continental

operators who seem unable ever to make a clear connection, varying this

annoyance by a habit of either dropping dead or visiting the nearest

café at those crucial moments when they did not interrupt a tense

interchange by polite inquiries as to whether msieu had been connected.

I must say that in this crisis Stuart Thario displayed all his soldierly

qualities to the full. Sweeping aside his domestic concerns as he would

at the order of mobilization, he became swift, decisive, vigorous. The

first call he put through was to the Kristian IV Hotel, engaging every

available empty room so that we might preempt as much of the switchboard

as possible. Pressing Constance and Winifred into service as secretaries

until his own officestaff could be summoned and leaving Pauline to deal

with Mama, he had us established in the hotel less than threequarters of

an hour from the time Preblesham phoned.

Even as the earliest calls were being put through a barely perceptible

signal passed from the general to Winifred and presently large parts of

the Kristian IV bar were being arranged on a long table at the general's

elbow. I had little time for observation since I had to exert all my

powers of salesmanship on unseen financiers to persuade them by

indirection that I was facing a financial crisis and they had a chance

to snap up my South American holdings at fractions of their values; but

out of the corner of my eye I admired the way Stuart Thario continuously

sipped from his constantly refilled glass without hesitating in his

duplicating endeavors.

I expected the news to break and end our efforts at any moment, but the

quickness with which I had seized upon Preblesham's information

confirmed the proverb about the early bird; the threehour reprieve

stretched to five and by the time Havas flashed the news I had liquefied

almost all of my now worthless assets--and to potential financial

rivals. Needless to say I had not trusted solely to the honor of the men

with whom I had conversed, but had the sale confirmed in each case by an

agent on the spot who accepted a check, draft, or cash from the buyer.

Only on paper did I suffer the slightest loss; in actuality my position

became three times as strong as before.

_74._ The world took the extension of the Grass to South America with a

philosophic calm which can only be described as amazing. Even the Latins

themselves seemed more concerned with how the Grass had jumped the gap

than with the impending fate of their continent. The generally accepted

theory was that it had somehow mysteriously come by way of the West

Indies, although as yet the Grass had not appeared on any of those

islands, and even Cuba, within sight of the submerged Florida Keys, was

apparently safe behind her protective supercyclone fans. But the fact

the Grass had appeared first at Medellin in Colombia rather than in the

tiny bit of Panama remaining seemed to show it had not come directly

from the daggerpointed mass poised above the continent.

_La Prensa_ of Buenos Aires said in a long editorial entitled "Does

Humanity Betray Itself?": "When the Colossus of the North was evilly

enchanted, many Americans (except possibly our friends across the River

Plate) breathed more easily. Now it would seem their rejoicing was

premature and the doom of the Yankee is also to be the doom of our older

civilization. How did this verdant disease spread from one continent to

another? That is the question which tortures every human heart from the

Antarctic to the Caribbean.

"It is believed the cordon around North America has not been generally

respected. Scientists with the noblest motives, and adventurers urged on

by the basest, are alike believed to have visited the forbidden

continent. It may well be that on one of these trips the seeds of the

gigantic _Cynodon dactylon_ were brought back. It is well known that the

agents of a certain Yankee capitalist have been accustomed to taking off

on mysterious journeys near the very spot now afflicted by the emerald

plague."

It was a dastardly hint and the sort of thing I had long come to look

upon as inseparable from my position. Of all peoples the Latinamericans

have long been known as the most notoriously ungrateful for the work we

did in developing their countries. Why, in some backward parts, the

natives had been content to live by hunting and fishing till we

furnished them with employment and paid them enough so they could buy

salt fish and canned meats. Fortunately _La Prensa_'s innuendo, so

obviously inspired by envy, was not taken up, and attention soon turned

from the insoluble problem of the bridging of the gap to the southward

progress of the weed itself.

From the very first, everyone took for granted the victory of the Grass.

No concerted efforts were made either to confine or to destroy it. The

World Congress to Combat the Grass, far from being inactive, worked

heroically, but it got little cooperation from the peoples most closely

affected. When at one time it seemed as though the congress had got hold

of a possible weapon, the Venezuelans refused them the necessary sites

and Brazil would not allow passage of foreign soldiers over its soil.

Nationalism suddenly became rampant. "We will die as Ecuadorians,

descendants of the Incas," exclaimed the leading newspaper of Quito.

_El Gaucho_ of Lima pointed out caustically that most of Ecuador's area

really belonged to Peru and the Peruvians were the true descendants of

the Incas anyway. "We shall all die as unashamed Peruvians!" thundered

_El Gaucho_.

In vain the Church pointed out the difference between Christian

resignation and sinful suicide. The reply of most South Americans, when

they bothered to reply at all, was either that the coming of the Grass

expressed God's will toward them or else to scorn the Church entirely.

Imitations of Brother Paul's movement flourished, with additions and

refinements suited to the Latin temperament.

So the efforts of the World Congress were almost entirely limited to

searching each ship, plane, and individual leaving the doomed continent

to be sure none of the fatal seeds were transported. Even this

precaution was resented as an infringement on national sovereignty, but

the resentment was limited to bellicose pronouncements in the

newspapers; the republics looked on sullenly while their honor was

systematically violated by phlegmatic inspectors.

_75._ The Grass grew to unheardof heights in the tropical valley of the

Amazon. It washed the slopes of the Andes as it had the Cordilleras and

the Rockies, leaving only the highest peaks free of its presence. It

raced across the llanos, the savannas and the pampas and covered the

high plateaus in a slow relentless growth.

The people ran from the Grass, not in a straight line from north to

south, but by indirection, seeking first the seacoasts and then escape

from the afflicted land. Those North Americans who had eluded the Grass

once did not satisfy themselves with halfmeasures when their sanctuary

was lost, but bought passage on any bottom capable, however dubiously,

of keeping out the sea and embarked for the farthest regions.

_76._ In point of time, I am now about halfway through my narrative. It

is hard to believe that only eleven years have passed since the Grass

conquered South America; indeed, it is extraordinarily difficult for me

to reconstruct these middle years at all. Not because they were hard or

unpleasant--on the contrary, they carried me from one success to

another--but because they have, in memory, the dreamlike quality of

unreality, elusive, vague and tantalizing.

Like a dream, too, was the actual progress of the Grass. We were all, I

think, impressed by the sense of repetition, of a scene enacted over and

over again. It was this quality which gives my story, now that I look

back upon it, a certain distortion, for no one, hearing it for the first

time, and not as any reader of these words must be, thoroughly familiar

with the events, could believe in the efforts made to combat the Grass.

These efforts existed; we did not yield without struggles; we fought for

South America as we had fought for North America. But it was a nightmare

fight; our endeavors seem retrospectively those of the paralyzed....

The Grass gripped the continent's great northern bulge, squeezed it into

submission and worked its way southward to the slender tip, driving the

inhabitants before it, duplicating previous acts by sending an influx

from sparsely to thickly settled areas, creating despair, terror,

disruption and confusion; pestilence, hysteria and famine.

The drama was not played through in one act, but many; to a world

waiting the conclusion it dragged on through interminable months and

years, offering no change, no sudden twists of fortune, no elusive

hopes. At last, mercifully, the tragedy ended; the green curtain came

down and covered the continent to the Strait of Magellan. The Grass

looked wistfully across at Tierra del Fuego, the land of ice and fire,

but even its voracity balked, momentarily at any rate, at the

inhospitable island and left it to whatever refugees chose its shores as

a slower but still certain death.

South America finally gone, the rest of the globe breathed easier. It

would be a slander on humanity to say there was actual rejoicing when

the World Congress sealed off this continent too, but whatever sorrow

was felt for its loss was balanced by the feeling that at long last the

peril of the Grass was finally ended. No longer would speculative

Germans, thoughtful Chinese or wakeful Englishmen wonder if the

supercyclone fans were indeed an effective barrier; no longer would

Cubans, Colombians or Venezuelans look northward apprehensively. Oceanic

barriers now confined the peril and though the world was shrunken and

hurt it was yet alive. More, it was free from fear for the first time

since the mutated seeds had blown over the saltband.

I must not give the impression that a wiping off of the Grass from the

accountbooks of humanity was universal and complete. The World Congress

periodically considered proposals for countermeasures. On the top of

Mount Whitney Miss Francis still labored. New assistants were flown to

her as the old ones wandered down the great rockslide from the old stone

weatherhouse off into the Grass during fits of despondency, went mad

from the realization that, except for problematical survivors on the

polar caps, they were alone in an abandoned hemisphere, or died of

simple homesickness. In the researchlaboratories of Consolidated

Pemmican formulas for utilizing the Grass were still tinkered with, and

the death of almost every publicspirited man of fortune revealed a will

containing bequests to aid those seeking means of controlling the weed.

_77._ It is not, afterall, a detached history of the past twentyone

years I am writing. Contemporaries are only too well aware of the facts

and posterity will find them dehydrated in textbooks. I started out to

tell of my own personal part in the coming of the Grass, not to take an

Olympian and aloof view of the passion of man.

The very mention of a personal part brings to mind a subject which might

be painful were I of a petty nature. There were people who, willfully

blind to the facts, held me responsible, in the face of all reason, for

the Grass itself. Although it is difficult to believe, there have been

many occasions when I have been denounced by demagogues and my blood

called for by vicious mobs.

But enough of morbid retrospection. I think I can say at this time there

was, with the exception of certain Indian nabobs, hardly a wealthy man

left in the world who did not owe in some way the retention of his

riches to me. I controlled more than half the steel industry; I owned

outright the majority stocks of the world oil cartel; coal, iron,

copper, tin and other mines either belonged directly to me or to

tributary companies in which I held large interests.

Along with the demagoguery of attributing the Grass to Albert Weener

there was the agitation for socialism and the expropriation of all

private property, the attempt to deprive men of the fruit of their

endeavor and reduce everyone to a regimented, miserable level. It is

hardly necessary to say that I spared no effort to combat the insidious

agents of the Fourth International. Fortunately for the preservation of

the free enterprise system, I had tools ready to hand.

The overrunning of the United States wiped out the gangs which operated

so freely there, but remnants made their escape, taking with them to the

older continents their philosophy of life and property. Gathering native

recruits, they began following the familiar patterns and would in time

no doubt have divided the world into countless minute baronies.

However, I was able to subsidize and reason with enough of their leaders

to persuade them that their livelihood and very existence rested on a

basis of private property and that their great danger came not from each

other, but from the advocates of socialism. They saw the point, and

though they did not cease from warring on each other, or mulcting the

general public, they were ruthless in exterminating the socialists and

they left the goods and adjuncts of Consolidated Pemmican and Allied

Industries scrupulously unmolested.

Strange as it sounds, it was not my part in protecting the world from

the philosophy of equality, nor my ramified properties, which gave me

my unique position. Unbelievably, because the change had occurred so

gradually, industry, though still a vital factor, no longer played the

dominant role in the world, but had given the position back to an

earlier occupant. Food was once more paramount in global economy. Loss

of the Americas had cut the supply in half without reducing the

population correspondingly. The Socialist Union remained selfsufficient

and uninterested, while Australia, New Zealand and the cultivated

portions of Africa strove to feed the millions of Europeans and Asiatics

whose lands could not grow enough for their own use. The slightest

falling off of the harvest produced famine.

At this point Consolidated Pemmican practically took over the entire

business of agriculture. Utilizing byproducts, and crops otherwise not

worth gathering, waste materials, and growths inedible without

processing, with plants strung out all over the four continents and with

tremendously reduced shipping costs because of the small compass in

which so much food could be contained, we were able to let our customers

earn their daily concentrates by gathering the raw materials which went

into them. I was not only the wealthiest, most powerful man in the

world, but its savior and providence as well.

With the new feeling of security bathing the world, tension dissolved

into somnolence and the tempo of daily life slackened until it scarcely

seemed to move at all. The waves of anxiety, suspicion and distrust of

an earlier decade calmed into peaceful ripples, hardly noticeable in a

pondlike existence.

No longer beset by thoughts or fears of wars, nations relaxed their

pride, armies were reduced to little more than palaceguards, brassbands

and parade units; while navies were kept up--if periodic painting and

retaining in commission a few obsolete cruisers and destroyers be so

termed--only to patrol the Atlantic and Pacific shores of the lost

hemisphere.

The struggle for existence almost disappeared; the wagescales set by

Consolidated Pemmican were enough to sustain life, and in a world of

limited horizons men became content with that. The bickering

characteristic of industrial dispute vanished; along with it went the

outmoded weapon of the tradesunion. It was a halcyon world and if, as

cranks complained, illiteracy increased rapidly, it could only be

because with everyman's livelihood assured his natural indolence took

the upper hand and he not only lost refinements superficially acquired,

but was uninterested in teaching them to his children.

_78._ I don't know how I can express the golden, sunlit quality of this

period. It was not an heroic age, no great deeds were performed, no

conflicts resolved, no fundamentshaking ideas broached. Quiet, peace,

content--these were the keywords of the era. Preoccupation with politics

and panaceas gave place to healthier interests: sports and pageants and

giant fairs. Men became satisfied with their lot and if they to a great

extent discarded speculation and disquieting philosophies they found a

useful substitute in quiet meditation.

Until now I had never had the time to live in a manner befitting my

station; but with my affairs running so smoothly that even Stuart Thario

and Tony Preblesham found idle time, I began to turn my attention to the

easier side of life. Of course I never considered making my permanent

home anywhere but in England; for all its parochialism and oddities it

was the nearest I could come to approximating my own country.

I bought a gentleman's park in Hampshire and had the outmoded house torn

down. It had been built in Elizabethan times and was cold, drafty and

uncomfortable, with not one modern convenience. For a time I considered

preserving it intact as a sort of museumpiece and building another home

for myself on the grounds, but when I was assured by experts that Tudor

architecture was not considered to be of surpassing merit and I could

find in addition no other advantageous site, I ordered its removal.

I called in the best architects for consultation, but my own artistic

and practical sense, as they themselves were quick to acknowledge,

furnished the basis for the beautiful mansion I put up. Moved by

nostalgic memories of my lost Southland I built a great and ample

bungalow of some sixty rooms--stucco, topped with asbestos tile. Since

the Spanish motif natural to this form would have been out of place in

England and therefore in bad taste, I had timbers set in the stucco,

although of course they performed no function but that of decoration,

the supports being framework which was not visible.

It was delightful and satisfying to come into the spacious and cozy

livingroom, filled with overstuffed easychairs and comfortable couches,

warmed by the most efficient of centralheating systems or to use one of

the perfectly appointed bathrooms whose every fixture was the best money

could buy and recall the dank stone floors and walls leading up to a

mammoth and--from a thermal point of view--perfectly useless fireplace

flanked by the coatsofarms of deadandgone gentry who were content to

shuffle out on inclement mornings to answer nature's calls in chilly

outhouses.

So large and commodious an establishment required an enormous staff of

servants, which in turn called for a housekeeper and a steward to

supervise their activities, for as I have observed many times, the

farther down one goes on the wagescale the more it is necessary to hire

a highsalaried executive to see that the wage is earned.

I cannot say in general that I ever learned to distinguish between one

retainer and another, except of course my personal manservant and

Burlet, the headbutler whom I hired right from under the nose of the

Marquis of Arpers--his lordship being unable to match my offer. But in

spite of the confusion caused by such a multiplicity of menials, I one

day noticed an undergardener whose face was tantalizingly familiar. He

touched his cap respectfully as I approached, but I had the curious

feeling that it was a taught gesture and not one which came naturally to

him.

"Have you been here long, my good man?" I asked, still trying to place

him.

"No, sir," he answered, "about two weeks."

"Funny. I'm almost certain Ive noticed you before."

He shook his head and made a tentative gesture with the hoe or rake or

whatever the tool was in his hand, as though he would now, with my

permission, resume his labors.

"What is your name?" I inquired, not believing it would jog my memory,

but out of a natural politeness toward inferiors who always feel

flattered by such attention.

"Dinkman," he muttered. "Adam Dinkman."

... That incredibly dilapidated frontlawn, overrun with sickly

devilgrass and spotted with bald patches. Mrs Dinkman's mean bargaining

with a tired man who was doing no more than trying to make a living and

her later domineering harshness toward someone who was in no way

responsible for the misfortune which overcame her. I wondered if she

were still alive or had lost her life in the Grass while an indigent on

public charity. It is indeed a small world, I thought, and how far we

have both come since I humbled myself in order to put food in my stomach

and keep a roof over my head.

"Thank you, Dinkman," I said, turning away.

A warm feeling for a fellow American caused me to call in my steward and

bid him give Dinkman £100, a small fortune to an undergardener, and let

him go. Though he might not realize it immediately, I was doing him a

tremendous favor, for an American with £100 in England was bound to do

better for himself in some small business than he could hope to do as a

mere servant.

Looking back upon this too brief time of tranquillity and satisfaction I

cannot help but sigh for its passing. Preceded and followed by periods

of turbulence and stress, it stands out in my life as an incredible

moment, a soothing dream. Perhaps a faint defect, so small as to be

almost unnoticed, was a feeling of solitariness--an inevitable

concomitant of my position--but this was so slight that I could not even

define it as loneliness and like many another defect it merely

heightened the charm of the whole.

I had wealth, power, the respect of the world. The unavoidable

detachment from the mob was mitigated by simple pleasures. My estate

was a constant delight; the quaint survivals of feudalism among the

tenantry amused me; and though I could not bring myself to pretend an

interest in the absurd affectation of foxhunting, I was well received by

the county people, whose insularity and aloofness I found greatly

exaggerated, perhaps by outsiders not as cosmopolitan as myself.

Excursions to London and other cities where my presence was demanded or

could be helpful afforded me a frequent change of scene and visits by

important people as well as more intimate ones by Preblesham and the

Tharios prevented The Ivies--for so my place was called--from ever

becoming dull to me.

The general fell in love with a certain ale which was brewed on the

premises and declared, in spite of his lifelong rule to the contrary,

that it could be mixed with Irish whisky to make a drink so agreeable

that no sane man would want a better. The girls, particularly Winifred,

were enchanted with my private woods, the gardens and the deerpark; but

Mama, throughout their visits, remained almost entirely silent and aloof

except for the rare remarks which seemed to burst from her as though by

an inescapable inward compulsion. These were always insulting and always

directed at me, but I overlooked them, knowing her to be deranged.

_79._ Perhaps one of the things I most enjoyed about The Ivies was

wandering through its acres, breathing through my pores, as it were, the

sense of possession. I was walking through the cowslips and violets

punctuating the meadow bordering one of the many little streams, when I

came upon a fellow roughly dressed, the pockets of his shootingjacket

bulging and a fishingline in his hand. For a moment I thought him one of

the gamekeepers and nodded, but his quick look and furtive gestures

instantly revealed him as a poacher.

"Youre trespassing, you know," I said with some severity.

"I know, guvner," he admitted readily, "but I wasnt doing no harm; just

looking at this bit of water here and listening to the birds."

"With a fishingline in your hands?"

"Well, now, guvner, that's by way of being a precaution. You see, when I

go out on a little expedition like this, to inspect the beauties of

nature--which I admit I have no right to do, they being on someone

else's land--I always say to myself, 'Suppose you run into some gent

looking at a lovely fat trout in a brook and he hasnt got no fishline

with him? What could be more philanthropic than I produce my bit of

string and help him out?' Aint that a proper Christian attitude,

guvner?"

"Possibly; but what, may I ask, makes your pockets bulge so

suspiciously? Is that another philanthropy?"

"Accident, guvner, sheer accident. Walking along like this with my head

down I always seem to come upon two or three dead hares or now and then

a partridge or grouse. Natural mortality, you understand. Well, what

could be more humane than to stuff them in my pockets and take them home

for proper burial?"

"You know in spite of all the Labour Governments and strange doings in

Parliament, there are still pretty strict laws against poaching."

"Poaching, guvner? I wouldnt poach. I respect what's yours, just as I

respect what's my own. Trespassing maybe. I likes to look at a little

bit of sky or hear a meadowlark or smell a flower or two, but

poaching--! Really, guvner, you hadnt ought to take away a man's

character."

I thought it a shame so sturdy and amusing a fellow should have to eke

out his living so precariously. "I'll tell you what I'll do," I said.

"I'll give you a note right now to my head gamekeeper and have him put

you on as an assistant. Thirty shillings a week I think it pays."

"Well, now, thank you, guvner, but really, I don't want it. Thirty bob a

week! What should I do with it? Nothing but go down to the Holly Tree

and get drunk every night. I'm much better off as I am--total

abstinence, in a manner of speaking. No, no, guvner, I appreciate your

big heart, but I'm happy with my little bit of fish and a rabbit in the

pot--why should I set up to be an honest workingman and get dissatisfied

with my life?"

His refusal of my wellintentioned offer did not irk me. In a large and

tolerant view you could almost say we were both parasites upon The Ivies

and it would not hurt me if he stole a little of my game to keep himself

alive. I gave him a note to protect him against any of the keepers who

might come upon him as I had, and we parted with mutual liking; I

remembering for my part that I was an American and all men, poacher and

landlord alike, were created equal, no matter how far each had come from

his beginnings.

_80._ Shortly after, Miss Francis ended her long sojourn at Mount

Whitney and returned to England. The ordeal of living surrounded by the

Grass, which had destroyed her assistants, seemed to have made no other

change in her than the fading of her hair, which was now completely

white, and a loss of weight, giving her a deceptive appearance of

fragility at variance with the forthrightness of her manner.

I put down her immunity to agoraphobia as just another evidence that she

was already mad. Her refusal to accept the limitations of her sex and

her complete indifference to our respective stations were mere

confirmations. With her usual disregard of realities she assumed I would

go on financing her indefinitely in spite of the hundreds of thousands

of pounds I had paid out without visible result.

"Ive really got it now, Weener," she assured me in a tone hardly

befitting a suppliant for funds. "In spite of the incompetents you kept

sending, in spite of mistakes and blind alleys, the work on Whitney is

done--and successfully. The rest is routine laboratory work--a matter of

quantities and methods of application."

"I don't know that I can spare you any more money, Miss Francis."

She laughed. "What the devil's the matter with you, Weener? Are your

millions melting away? Or do you think any of the spies you set on me

capable of carrying on--or are you just trying to crack the whip?"

"I set no spies and I have no whip. I merely feel it may not be

profitable to waste any more money on fruitless experiments."

She snorted. "Time has streamlined and inflated your platitudes. When I

am too old to work and ready for euthanasia I shall have you come and

talk me to death. To hear you one would almost think you had no interest

in finding a method to counter the Grass."

Her egomania and impertinence were really insufferable; her notion of

her own importance was ludicrous.

"Interested or not, I have no reason to believe you alone are capable of

scientific discovery. Anyway, the world seems pretty well off as it is."

She tugged at her hair as if it were false and would come off if she

jerked hard enough. "Of course it's well enough off from your

pointofview. It offers you more food than you could eat if you had a

million bellies, more clothes than you could wear out in a million

years, more houses than you could live in if the million contradictions

which go to make up any single human were suddenly made corporeal. Of

course youre satisfied; why shouldnt you be? If the Grass were to be

pushed back and the world once more enlarged, if hope and

dissatisfaction were again to replace despair and content, you might not

find yourself such a big toad in a small puddle--and you wouldnt like

that, would you?"

I had intended all along to give her a small pension to keep her from

want and allow her to putter around, but her irrational accusations and

insults only showed her to be the kind from whom no gratitude could be

expected.

"I'm afraid we can be of no further use to each other."

"Look here, Weener, you can't do this. The life of civilization depends

on countering the Grass. Don't tell me the world can go on only half

alive. Look around you and notice the recession every day. Outside of

your own subservient laboratories what scientific work is being done?

Since Palomar and Mount Wilson and Flagstaff went what has happened in

astronomy? If you pick up the shrunken pages of your _Times_ or

_Tatler_, do you wonder at the reason for their shrinkage or do you

realize there are fewer literates in the world than there were ten years

ago?

"The Americas were upstart continents, werent they? I am not speaking

sarcastically, my point is not a chauvinistic one, not even

hemispherically prideful. And the Old World the womb of culture? But how

much culture has that womb borne since the Americas disappeared? Without

a doubt there are exactly the same number of composers and painters,

writers and sculptors alive on the four continents today as there were

when there were six, but in this drowsy halfworld how many books of

importance are being produced?"

"There are plenty of books already in existence; besides, those things

go by cycles."

"God give me patience; this is the man who has humanity prostrate."

"Humanity seems quite content in the position you ascribe to it."

"Of course, of course--that's the tragedy. It's content the same way a

man who has just had his legs cut off is content; suffering from shock

and loss of blood he enters a merciful coma from which he may never

emerge. The legs do not write the books or think the thoughts, whether

these activities wait for the cyclical moment or not, but the brain,

dependent on the circulation of the blood and the wellbeing of the rest

of the body for proper functioning. And who are you, little man, to

stand in the way of assisting the patient?"

"I shall not argue with you any further, Miss Francis. If mankind is

really as subject to your efforts as your conceit leads you to believe

then I am sure you will find some way to continue them."

"I'm sure I will," she said, and we left it at that.

To say her accusations had been gravely unjust would be to defend myself

where no defense is called for. I merely remark in passing that I gave

orders to set aside a still greater fund toward finding a reagent

against the Grass, and to put those who had lately assisted Miss Francis

in charge. I did this, not because I swallowed her strained analogy

about a sufferer with his legs cut off, but for purely practical

reasons. The world was very well as it was, but an effective weapon

against the Grass might at last make possible the neverdiscarded vision

of utilizing it beneficially.

_81._ Meanwhile life went on with a smoothness strange and gratifying to

those of us born into a period of strife and restlessness. No more wars,

strikes, riots, agitation for higher wages or social experiments by

wildeyed fanatics. Those whose limitations laid out a career of toil

performed their function with as much efficiency as one could expect and

we others who had risen and separated ourselves from the herd carried

our responsibilities and accepted the rewards which went with them. The

ships of the World Congress continued patrolling the coasts of the

deserted continents and restrictions were so far relaxed as to permit

planeflights over the area to take motionpictures and confirm the Grass

had lost none of its vigor. Beyond this, the generality of mankind

forgot the weed and the regions it covered, living geographically as

though Columbus had never set forth from Palos.

It was at this time a new philosophic idea was advanced--giving the lie

to Miss Francis' dictum that no new thoughts were being thought--which

was, briefly, that the Grass was essentially a good thing in itself;

that the world had not merely made the best of a bad situation, but had

been brought to a beneficent condition through the loss of the Western

Hemisphere. Mankind had desperately needed a brake upon its heedless

course; some instrumentality to limit it and bring it to realization of

its proper province. The Grass had acted as such an agent and now,

rightly chastised, man could go about his fit business.

This concept gained almost immediate popular support, so far as it

filtered down to the masses at all; prominent schoolmen endorsed it

wholeheartedly; statesmen gave it qualified approval--"in

principle"--and the Pope issued an encyclical calling for a return of

Christian resignation and submission. Hardly was the ink dry upon the

expressions of thanksgiving for the punishment which had brought about a

new and better frameofmind than the philosophy was suddenly and

dramatically tested by events.

The island of Juan Fernandez, Robinson Crusoe's island, a peak pushed

out of the waters of the Pacific 400 miles west of Chile, densely

populated with refugees and a base for patrolboats, was overrun by the

Grass. It was an impossible happening. Every inhabitant had had personal

experience of the Grass and was fearfully alert against its appearance.

The patrols covered the sea between it and the mainland constantly; the

distance was too far for windborne seeds. The tenuous hypothesis that

gulls had acted as carriers was accepted simply for want of a better.

But the World Congress wasted no time looking backward. Although between

Juan Fernandez and the next land westward the distance was three times

greater than between it and South America, the Congress seized upon the

only island to which it could possibly spread, Sala-y-Gomez, and made of

it a veritable fortress against the Grass. Not only did ships guard its

waters by day and keep it brilliantly lit with their searchlights at

night, but swift pursuitplanes bristling with machineguns brought down

every bird in flight within a thousand miles.

The island itself was sown with salt a halfmile thick after being mined

with enough explosives to blow it into the sea. The world, or that

portion of it which had not fully accepted all the implications of the

doctrine of submission, watched eagerly. But the ships patrolled an

empty sea, the searchlights reflected only the glittering saline

crystals, the migrant birds never reached their destination. The outpost

held, impregnable. Again everyone breathed easier.

Five hundred miles beyond this focalpoint, its convict settlement long

abandoned, was Easter Island, Rapa Nui, home of the great monoliths

whose origin had ever been a puzzle. Erect or supine, these colossal

statues were strewn all over the island. Anthropologists and

archaeologists still came to give them cursory inspection and it was on

such a visit an unmistakable clump of Grass was found.

Immediately the ships were rushed from Sala-y-Gomez, planes carrying

tons of salt took off from Australia and the whole machinery of the

World Congress was swiftly put in operation. But it was too late; Easter

Island was swamped, uninhabited Ducie went next, and Pitcairn, home of

the descendants of the _Bounty_ mutineers followed before even the

slightest precautions could be taken. The Grass was jumping gaps of

thousands of miles in a breathless steeplechase.

On Pitcairn there was nothing to do but rescue the inhabitants. Vessels

stood by to carry them and their livestock off. The palebrown men and

women left for the most part docilely, but the last Adams and the last

McCoy refused to go. "Once before, our people were forced to leave

Pitcairn and found nothing but unhappiness. We will stay on the island

to which our fathers brought their wives."

There was no stopping the Grass now, even if the means had been to hand.

The Gambiers, the Tuamotus and the Marquesas were swallowed up. Tahiti,

dwellingplace of beautiful if syphilitic women, disappeared under a

green blanket, as did the Cook Islands, Samoa and the Fijis. The Grass

jumped southward to a foothold in New Zealand and northward into

Micronesia. Panic infected the Australians and a mass migration to the

central part of the country was begun, but with little hope the

surrounding deserts would offer any effective barrier.

_82._ My first thought when I heard the Grass for the second time had

broken its bounds, was that I had perhaps been a little hasty with Miss

Francis. It was not at all likely she would succeed where so many better

trained and better equipped scientists had so far failed, but I felt a

vicarious sympathy with her, as being out of the picture when all her

colleagues were striving with might and main to save the world;

especially after the years she had spent on Mount Whitney. It would be

an act of simple generosity on my part, I thought, to give her the

wherewithal to entertain the illusion of importance. When all was said

and done, she was a woman, and I could afford a chivalrous gesture even

in the face of her overweening arrogance.

I am sorry to say she responded with complete illgrace. "I knew youd

eventually have to come crawling to me to save your hide."

"You mistake the situation entirely, Miss Francis," I informed her with

dignity. "I am conferring, not asking favors. I have every confidence in

my research staff--"

"My God! Those guineapig murderers; those discoveryforgers; those

whitesmocked acolytes in the temple of Yes. You value your life or your

purse at exactly what theyre worth if you expect those drugstoreclerks

to preserve them for you."

"I doubt if either is in the slightest danger," I assured her

confidently. "Hysterics have lost perspective. Long before the Grass

becomes an immediate concern my drugstoreclerks, with less exalted

opinions of their talents than you, will have found the means to destroy

it."

"A soothing fairytale. Weener, the truth is not in you. You know the

reason you come to me is that youre frightened, scared, terrified. Well,

strangely enough, I'm not going to reject your munificence. I'll accept

it, because to do God's work is more important than any personal pride

of mine or any knowledge that one of the best things _Cynodon dactylon_

could do--if I do not take too much upon myself in judging a

fellowcreature--would be to bury Albert Weener."

I remained unmoved by her tirade. "When you returned from Whitney you

told me there remained only details to be worked out. About how long do

you think it will be before you have a workable compound?"

She burst into a laugh and took out her toothpick to point it at me. "Go

and put your penny in another slot if you want an answer to an idiot

question like that. How long? A day, a month, a year, ten years."

"In ten years--" I began.

"Exactly," she said and put away the toothpick.

_83._ I phoned Stuart Thario to fly over right away for a conference.

"General," I began, "we'll have to start looking ahead and making

plans."

He hid his mustache with the side of his forefinger. "Don't quite

understand, Albert--have details here of activities ... next three

years ..."

I pressed the buzzer for my secretary. "Bring General Thario some

refreshment," I ordered.

The command was not only familiar on the occasion of his visits, but

evidently anticipated, for she appeared in a moment with a trayful of

bottles.

"Bad habit of yours, Albert, teetotalism ... makes the brain cloudy ...

insidious." He took a long drink. "Very little real bourbon left ...

European imitation vile ... learning to like Holland gin." He drank

again.

"To get back to the business of making plans, General," I urged gently.

"Not one of those people getting worried about the Grass?"

"Not worried. Just trying to look ahead. I can't afford to be caught

napping."

"Well, well," he said, "can't pull another South American this time."

"No, no--and besides, I'm not concerned with money."

"Now, Albert, don't tell me youve finally got enough."

"This is not the time to be avaricious," I reproved him. "If the Grass

continues to spread--and there seems to be little doubt it will--"

"All of New Zealand's North Island was finished this morning," he

interrupted.

"I heard it myself; anyway, that's the point. As the Grass advances

there will be new hordes of refugees--"

He was certainly in an impatient mood this morning, for he interrupted

me again. "New markets for concentrates," he suggested.

I looked at him pityingly. Was the old man's mind slipping? I wondered

if it would be necessary to replace him. "General," I said gently, "with

rare exceptions these people will have nothing but worthless currency."

"Goods. Labor."

"Have you seen the previous batches of refugees foresighted enough to

get out any goods of value before starting off? And as for labor, all

our workers are now so heavily subsidized by the dole that to cut wages

another cent--"

"Ha'penny," corrected General Thario.

"Centime if you like. --would be merely to increase our taxes."

"Well, well," he said. "I see I have been hasty. What did you have in

mind, Albert?"

"Retrenchment. Cut production; abandon the factories in the immediate

path of the Grass. Fix on reasonably safe spots to store depots of the

finished concentrates, others for raw materials. Or perhaps they might

be combined."

"What about the factories?"

"Smaller," I said. "Practically portable."

"Hum." He frowned. "You do intend to do business on a small scale."

"Minute," I confirmed.

"What about the mines? The steelmills, the oilfields, the airplane and

automobile factories? The shipyards?"

"Shut them down," I ordered. "Ruthlessly. Except maybe a few in

England."

"The countries where theyre located will grab them."

"There isnt a government in existence who would dare touch anything

belonging to Consolidated Pemmican. If any should come into existence

our individualistic friends would take care of the situation."

"Pay gangsters to overturn governments?"

"They would hardly be legitimate governments. Anyway, a man has a right

to protect his property."

"Albert," he complained querulously, "youre condemning civilization to

death."

"General," I said, "youre talking like a wildeyed crackpot. A

businessman's concern is with business; he leaves abstractions to

visionaries. Our plants will be closed down, because until the Grass is

stopped they can make us no profit. Let some idealistic industrialist

take care of civilization."

"Albert, you know very well no business of any size can operate today

without your active support. Think again, Albert; listen to me as a

friend; we have been associated a long time and to some extent you have

taken Joe's place in my mind. Consider the larger aspects. Suppose you

don't make a profit? Suppose you even take a loss. You can afford to do

it for common humanity."

"I certainly think I do my share for common humanity, General Thario,

and it cuts me to the heart that you of all people should imply such a

sentimental and unjust reproach against me. You know as well as I do I

have given more than half my fortune to charitable works."

"Albert, Albert, need there be this hypocrisy between you and me?"

"I don't know what you mean. I only know I called you to evolve specific

plans and you have embarked instead on windy platitudes and personal

insult."

He sat for a long time quietly, his drink untouched before him. I did

not disturb his meditation, but indulged in one on my own account,

thinking of all I had done for him and his family. But only a foolish

man expects gratitude, or for that matter any reward at all for his

kindnesses.

At last he broke his silence, speaking slowly, almost painfully. "I

have not had what could be called a successful life, even though today I

am a wealthy man." He resumed his drink again and I wondered what this

remark had to do with the subject in hand. Perhaps nothing, I thought;

he is just rambling along while he reconciles himself to the situation.

I was glad he was going to be sensible afterall. Not that it mattered; I

could get many able lieutenants, but for oldtime's sake I was pleased at

the abandonment of his recalcitrance. He relaxed further into the chair

while I waited to resume the practical discussion.

"When you first came to me in Washington, Albert, seeking warcontracts

for your microscopic business, I suppose there was even then a mark upon

your forehead, but I was too heavy with the guilt of my own affairs to

see it. We all have our price, Albert, sometimes it is another star on

the shoulderstraps or a peerage or wealth or the apparent safety of a

son....

"I have come a long way with you since then, Albert, through shady deals

and brilliant coups and dark passages which would not bear too much

investigation. I'm afraid I cannot go any further with you. You will

have to get someone else to kill civilization."

"As you choose, General Thario," I agreed stiffly.

"Wait, I'm not finished. I have always tried, however inadequately, to

do my duty. Articles of War ... holding commission in the Armies of the

United States...." Emotion seemed to be sobering him rapidly. "Duty to

you ... Consolidated Pemmican ... resign commission. Must mention spot

... try Sahara...."

He stood up.

"Thank you, General Thario," I said. "I shall certainly consider the

Sahara as location for depots."

"You won't change your mind about this whole thing, Albert?"

I shook my head. How could I fly in the face of commonsense to gratify

the silly whim of an old man whose intelligence was clearly not what it

had once been?

"I was afraid not," he muttered, "afraid not. I don't blame you,

Albert. Men are as God created them ... or environment, as the socialist

fellers say ... you didnt put the mark on your forehead ... Not

successful ... Joe (I called him George but he was Joe all the time)

wanted to go to West Point afterall ... First Symphony in the fire ...

_I_ burned Joe's First Symphony ... Do you understand me, Albert? Though

I refuse, I am still guilty ... Cannibal Thario, they said ... Chronos

would be better ... classical allusion escapes the enlistedman...."

He walked out, still mumbling inarticulately and I sat there saddened

that a man once alert and vigorous as the general should have come at

last to senility and an enfeebled mind.

_84._ The defection of General Thario threw a great burden of work upon

my shoulders. Preblesham was able enough in his own sphere, but his

vision was not sufficiently broad to operate at the highest levels. The

process of closing down our plants was more complicated than had been

anticipated and Thario's military mind would have been more useful than

Preblesham's theological one. The employees, conceiving through some

fantastic logic that their jobs were as much their property as the mills

or mines or factorybuildings were mine, rioted and had to be

pacified--the first time such a tactic was resorted to in years. In some

places these misguided men actually took possession of the places where

they worked and tried to operate them, but of course they were balked by

their own inefficiency. Human nature being what it is, they tried to

blame their helplessness on my control of their sources of raw material

and their consequent inability to obtain vital supplies; as well as the

cutting off of light and power from the seized plants, but this was mere

buckpassing, always noticeable when some radical scheme fails.

But the setting up of depots in the Sahara, as General Thario had

suggested, and by extension, in Arabia, was a different matter. Here

Preblesham's genius shone. He flew our whole Australian store of raw

materials out without a loss. He recruited gangs of Chinese coolies

with an efficiency which would have put an oldtime blackbirder to shame.

He argued, cajoled, bullied, sweated for twentyfour hours a day and when

in six months he had completed his task, we had seven depots, two in

Arabia and five in Africa, complete with four factories, with enough

concentrates on hand to feed the world for a year--if the world had the

means to pay, which it didnt--and to operate for five.

During those six months the Grass ravenously snatched morsel after

morsel. New Zealand's South Island, New Caledonia, the Solomons and the

Marianas were gobbled at the same moment. It gorged on New Guinea and

searched out the minor islands of the East Indies as a cat searches for

baby fieldmice in a nest her paw has discovered. It took a bite of the

Queensland coast just below the Great Barrier Reef. The next day it was

reported near Townsville and soon after on the Cape York peninsula, the

Australian finger pointing upward to islands where lived little black

men with woolly hair.

The people of Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane took the coming of the

Grass with calm anger. Preparations for removal had been made months

before and this migration was distinguished from previous ones by its

order and completeness. But although they moved calmly in accordance

with clear plans their anger was directed against all those in authority

who had failed to take measures to protect their beloved land.

Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania went. The Grass swept

southward like a sickle, cutting through South Australia and biting deep

with its point into Western. Although we were amply provided with raw

material, considering the curtailment of our activities, Preblesham, on

the spot, could not resist buying up great herds of sheep for a penny on

the pound and having them driven northward in the hope of finding

somehow a means to ship them. I am sorry to say--though I'm afraid I

could have predicted it--this venture was a total loss.

_85._ Burlet, unfolding the _Times_ on my breakfastplate, coughed

respectfully. "If I could speak to you at your convenience, sir?"

"What is it, Burlet? Lord Arpers finally come through with a higher

offer?"

"Not at all, sir. I consider the question of service closed as long as

you find yourself satisfied, sir."

"Quite satisfied, Burlet."

"I ad in mind the discussion of quite another matter, sir. Not relating

to domestic issues."

"Very well, Burlet. Come into the library after breakfast."

"Very good, sir."

With a world of problems on my mind I thought it would be wryly amusing

to resolve whatever difficulties troubled my butler. Promptly after I

had settled myself at my desk and before I rang for my secretary, Burlet

appeared in the doorway, his striped vest smoothed down over his rounded

abdomen, every thin hair in place over the dome of his balding head.

"Come in, Burlet. Sit down. What's on your mind?"

"Thank you, sir." To my surprise he accepted my invitation and seated

himself opposite me. "I ave been speculating, sir."

"Really, Burlet? Silly thing to do. Lost all your wages, I suppose, and

would like an advance?"

"You misappre--end me, sir. Not speculating on Change. Speculating on

the Grass."

"Oh. And did you arrive at any conclusion, Burlet?"

"I believe I ave, sir. As I understand it, scientists and statesmen are

exerting their energies to fight the Grass."

"That's right." I was beginning to be bored. Had the butler fallen prey

to one of the graminophile sects like Brother Paul's and gone through

all this rigmarole merely to give me notice previous to immolating

himself?

"And so far they ave achieved no success?"

"Obviously, Burlet."

"Well then, sir, would it not be a sensible precaution to find some

means of refuge until and if they find a way to kill the Grass?"

"There is no 'if,' Burlet. The means will be found, and shortly--of that

I am sure. As for temporary refuge until that time, no doubt it would be

excellent, if practicable. What do you propose--emigration to Mars or

floating islands in the oceans?" Both of these expedients had long ago

been put forth by contestants in the _Intelligencer_.

"Journeys to other planets would not solve things, sir. Assuming the

construction of a vessel--an assumption so far unwarranted, if I may say

so, sir--it would accommodate but a fraction of the affected

populations. As for floating islands, they would be no more immune to

airborne seeds than stationary ones."

"So it was discovered long ago, Burlet."

"Quite so, sir. Then, if I may say so, protection must be afforded on

the spot."

"And how do you propose to do that?"

"Well, sir, by the building of vertical cities."

"Vertical cities?"

"Yes, sir. I believe sites should be selected near bodies of fresh water

and tremendous excavations made. The walls and floor of the excavations

should be lined with concrete, through which the water is piped. The

cities could be on many levels, the topmost peraps several miles in the

air--glass enclosed--and with pipes reaching still igher to bring air

in, and completely tight against the Grass. They should be

selfcontained, generating their own power and providing their food by

ydroponic farming. Such cities could hold millions of people now doomed

until a way is found to kill the Grass."

There was a faintly familiar ring to the scheme.

"You seem to have worked it out thoroughly, Burlet."

"Polishing the plate, sir."

"Polishing the plate?"

"It leaves the mind free for cerebration. I ave a full set of blueprints

and specifications, if youd like to inspect them, sir."

It was fantastic, I thought, and probably quite impractical, but I

promised to submit his plans to those with more technical knowledge than

I possessed. I sent his carefully written papers to an undersecretary of

the World Congress and forgot the matter. Idleness certainly led to

queer occupations. Vertical cities--and who in the world had the money

to erect these nightmare structures? Only Albert Weener--that was

probably why Burlet took advantage of his position to approach me with

the scheme. Completely absurd....

_86._ Probably the complaints of the Australians gave final impetus to

the Congress to Combat the Grass. They met in extraordinary session in

Budapest and declared themselves the executive body of a world

government, which did not of course include the Socialist Union. All

qualified scientists were immediately ordered to leave whatever

employment they had and place themselves at the disposition of the World

Government. Affluence for life, guaranteed against any fluctuations of

currency, was promised to anyone who could offer, not necessarily an

answer, but an idea which should lead to the solution of the problem in

hand. While they were issuing their first edicts the Grass finished off

the East Indies, covered threequarters of Australia and attacked the

southern Philippines.

Millions of Indonesians traveling the comparatively short distances in

anything floatable crowded the already overpopulated areas of Asia. As I

had predicted to General Thario, these refugees carried nothing with

which to purchase the concentrates to keep them alive, and conditions of

famine in India and China, essentially due to the backwardness of these

countries, offered no subsistence to the natives--much less to an influx

from outside.

The Grass sped northward and westward through the Malay States and Siam,

up into China and Burma. In the beginning the Orientals did not flee,

but stood their ground, village by village and family by family,

opposing the advance with scythes, stones, and pitiful bonfires of their

household belongings, with hoes, flails, and finally with their bare

hands. But the naked hand, no matter how often multiplied, was as unable

to halt the green flow as the most uptodate weapons of modern science.

And the Chinese and the Hindus dying at their posts were no more an

obstacle than mountain or desert or stretches of empty sea had been.

It was now deemed expedient, in order to keep public hysteria from

rising to new selfdestructive heights, to tone down and modify the news.

This proved quite difficult at first, for the people in their

shortsightedness clamored for the accounts of impending doom which they

devoured with a dreadful fascination. But eventually, when the wildest

rumors produced by the dearth of accurate reports were disproved, many

of the people in Western Europe and Africa actually believed the Grass

had somehow failed to make headway on the Asiatic continent and would

have remained in their pleasant ignorance had it not been for the

premature flight of masses of Asiatics.

For the phenomenon contemporary with the close of the Roman Empire was

repeated. A great, struggling, churning, sprawling, desperate efflux

from east to west began; once more the Golden Horde was on the march.

They did not come, as had their ancestors, on wildly charging horses,

threatening with lances and deadly scimitars, but on foot, wretched and

begging. Even had I been as maudlin as Stuart Thario desired I could not

have fed these people, for there were no longer railroads with

rollingstock adequate to carry the freight, no fleets of trucks in good

repair, nor was the fuel available had they existed. The world receded

rapidly from the machineage, and as it did so famine and pestilence

increased in evermounting spirals.

The mob of refugees might be likened to a beast with weak, almost

atrophied legs, but with a great mouth and greater stomach. It moved

with painful slowness, crawling over the face of southern Asia, finding

little sustenance as it came, leaving none whatever after it left. The

beast, only dimly aware of the Grass it was fleeing from, could

formulate no thoughts of the refuge it sought. Without plan, hope, or

malice, it was concerned only with hunger. Day and night its empty gut

cried for food.

The starving men and women--the children died quickly--ate first all

that was available in the stores and homes, then scrabbled in the fields

for a forgotten grain of rice or wheat; they ate the bark and fungus

from the trees and gleaned the pastures of their weeds and dung. As they

ate they moved on, their faminedistended stomachs craving more to eat,

driving the ones who were but one step further from starvation ever

before them.

Long ago they had chewed on the leather of their footgear and devoured

all cats, dogs and rodents. They ate the stiffened and putrid carcasses

of draft animals which had been pushed to the last extremity; they

turned upon the corpses of the newly dead and fed on them, and at length

did not wait for death from hunger to make a new cadaver, but mercifully

slew the weak and ate the still warm bodies.

The Asiatic influx was a social accordion. The pulledout end, the high

notes, as it were, the Indian princes, Chinese warlords, arrived quickly

and settled into a welcoming obscurity. They came by plane, with gold

and jewels and government bonds and shares of Consolidated Pemmican. The

middle creases of the accordion came later, more slowly, but as quickly

as money could speed their way. Men of wealth when they began their

journey, they arrived little more than penniless and were looked upon

with suspicion, tolerated only so long as they did not become a public

charge.

The low notes, the thick and heavy pleats, took not days nor weeks nor

months, but years to make the trek. They kept but a step ahead of the

Grass, traveling at the same pace. They came not alone, but with

accretions, pushing ahead of them millions of their same dispossessed,

hungry, penniless kind. These were not greeted with suspicion, but with

hatred; machineguns were turned upon the advancing mobs, the few

airplanes in service were commandeered to bomb them, and only lack of

fuel and explosives allowed them to sweep into Europe and overwhelm

most of it as the barbarians had overwhelmed Rome.

But I anticipate. While the bulk of the Orientals was still beyond the

Himalayas and the Gobi, Europe indulged in a wild saturnalia to

celebrate its own doom. All pretense of sexual morality vanished. Men

and women coupled openly upon the streets. The small illprinted

newspapers carried advertisements promising the gratification of strange

lusts. A new cult of Priapus sprang up and virgins were ceremoniously

deflowered at his shrine. Those beyond the age of concupiscence attended

celebrations of the Black Mass, although I was told by one communicant

that participation lacked the necessary zest, since none possessed a

faith to which blasphemy could give a shocking thrill.

Murder was indulged in purely for the pleasure. Men and women, hearing

of the cannibalism raging among the refugees, adopted and refined it for

their own amusement. Small promiscuous groups, at the end of orgies,

chose the man and woman tiring soonest; the two victims were thereupon

killed and devoured by their late paramours.

As there was a cult to Priapus, so there was an equally strong cult to

Diana. The monasteries and convents overflowed. But in the tension of

the moment many were not satisfied with mere vows of celibacy. In secret

and impressive ceremonies women scarified their tenderest parts with

redhot irons, thus proving themselves forever beyond the lusts of the

flesh; men solemnly castrated themselves and threw the symbols of their

manhood into a consuming fire.

I wouldnt want to give the impression bestial madness of one kind or

another overtook everyone. There were plenty of normal people like

myself who were able to maintain their selfcontrol and canalize those

energies promoting crimes and beastly exhibitions in the unrestrained

into looking forward to the day when the Grass would be gone and sanity

return.

Nor would I like anyone to think law and order had completely abdicated

its function. As offenses multiplied, laws grew more severe,

misdemeanors became felonies, felonies capital offenses. When death by

hanging became the prescribed sentence for any type of theft it was

necessary to make the punishment for murder more drastic. Drawing and

quartering were reinstituted; this not proving an efficient deterrent,

many jurists advocated a return to the Roman practice of spreadeagling a

man to death; but the churches vigorously objected to this suggestion as

blasphemous, believing the ordinary sight of crucified murderers would

tend to debase the central symbol of Christianity. A less common Roman

usage was adopted in its stead, that of being torn by hungry dogs, and

to this the Christians did not object.

But the utmost severity of local and national officials, even when

backed by the might of World Government, could not cope with the waves

of migrants from the East nor the heedlessness of law they brought with

them. As the Grass pushed the Indians and Chinese westward, they in turn

sent the Mongols, the Afghans and the Persians ahead of them. These

naturally warlike peoples were displaced, not by force of arms, but by

sheer weight of numbers; and so, doubly overcome by being dispossessed

of their homes--and by pacifists at that--they vented their pique upon

those to the west.

As the starving and destitute trickled into Europe and North Africa,

giving a hint of the flood to follow, I congratulated myself on the

foresight which led to our retrenchment, for I know these ravening

hordes would have devoured the property of Consolidated Pemmican with as

little respect as they did the scant store of Ah Que, Ram Singh or

Mohammed Ali. My chief concern was now to keep my industrial and

organizational machinery intact against the day when a stable market

could again be established. To this end I kept our vast staff of

researchworkers--exempt from the draft of the World Government which had

been quite reasonable in the matter--constantly busy, for every day's

delay in the arresting of the Grass meant a dead loss of profits.

_87._ Josephine Francis alone, and as always, proved completely

uncooperative. Undoubtedly much of her stubbornness was due to her sex;

the residue, to her unorthodox approach to the mysteries of science.

When I prodded her for results she snarled she was not a slotmachine.

When I pointed out tactfully that only my money made possible the

continuation of her efforts, she told me rudely to seek the Wailing Wall

in Jerusalem before it was covered by the Grass. Again and again I urged

her to give me some idea how long it would be before she could produce a

chemical even for experimental use against the Grass and each time she

turned me aside with insult or rude jest.

I had set her up in--or rather, to be more accurate, she had insisted

upon--a completely equipped and isolated laboratory in Surrey. As it was

convenient to my Hampshire place I dropped in almost daily upon her; but

I cannot say my visits perceptibly quickened her lethargy.

"Worried, Weener?" she asked me, absently putting down a coffeepot on a

stack of microscope slides. "_Cynodon dactylon_'ll eat gold and

banknotes, drillpresses and openhearths as readily as quartz and mica,

dead bodies and abandoned household goods."

I couldnt resist the opening. "Anything in fact," I pointed out, "except

salt."

"A Daniel!" she exclaimed. "A Daniel come to judgment. Oh, Weener, thou

shouldst have been born a chemist. And what is the other mistake? Give

me leave to throw away my retorts and testtubes and bunsen burners by

revealing the other element besides sodium _Cynodon dactylon_ refuses.

For every mistake there is another mistake which supplements it. Sodium

was the blindspot in the Metamorphizer; when I find the balancing

blindspot I shall know not only the second element which the Grass

cannot absorb but one which will be poison to it."

"I'm not a chemist, Miss Francis," I said, "but it seems to me Ive heard

there are a limited number of elements."

"There are. And three states for each element. And an infinite number of

conditions governing their application. What's the matter--arent your

trained seals performing?"

"All the research laboratories of Consolidated Pemmican are going night

and day."

"Then what the devil are you hounding me for? Let them find the

counteragent."

"Two heads are better than one."

"Nonsense. Two blockheads are worse than one insofar as they tend to

regard each other as a source of wisdom. I shall conquer the Grass, I

alone, I, Josephine Spencer Francis--and as soon as possible. Now you

have all the data in its most specific form. And I shall accomplish this

because I must and not because I love Albert Weener or care a

litmuspaper whether or not his offal is swallowed up. I have done what I

have done (God forgive me) and I shall undo it, but the matter is

between me and a Larger Accountant than the clerk who signs your monthly

checks."

"What do you think about temporary protective measures in the

meanwhile?"

"What the devil do you mean, Weener? 'Temporary protective measures'?

What euphuistic gibberish is this?"

I outlined briefly my butler's plan of vertical cities. Miss Francis

startled me with a laugh resembling the burst of machinegun fire.

"Someone's been pulling your leg, poor terrified Maecenas. Or else youre

befuddled with too many _Thrilling Wonder Scientifictions_. Pipes into

the stratosphere! Watersupply piped in through concrete walls! Doesnt

your mad inventor know the seeds would find these apertures in an

instant?"

"Oh, those are possibly minor flaws which could be remedied."

"Well, go and remedy them and leave me to my work. Or pin your faith on

substantialities instead of flights of fancy."

I went up to London, my mind full of a thousand problems. I had caught

the economical British habit of using the trains, conserving the petrol

and tyres on my car. The first thing I saw on the Marylebone platform

was the crude picture in green chalk of a stolon of _Cynodon dactylon_.

What idiot, I thought as I irritably rubbed at it with the sole of my

shoe, what feebleminded creature has been let loose to do a thing like

this? The brittle chalk smeared beneath my foot, but the representation

remained, almost recognizable. On my way to the Savoy I saw it again,

defacing a hoarding, and as I paid off my driver I thought I caught

another glimpse of the nonsensical drawing on the side of a lorry going

by.

Perhaps my sensitivity perceived these signs before they were common

property, but in a few days they were spread all over Europe, through

what insane impulse I do not know. For whatever reason, symbols of the

Grass blossomed on the Arc de Triomphe, on the Brandenburger Tor, on the

pavement of the Ringstrasse and on the bridges spanning the Danube

between Buda and Pesth.

_88._ I find myself, in retrospect, involuntarily telescoping the time

of events. Looking backward, years become days, and months minutes. At

the time I saw the first reproductions of the Grass in London the thing

itself was continents away, busy absorbing the fringes of Asia. But its

heralds and victims went before it, changing the life of man as it had

itself changed the face of the world.

The breakdown of civilization beyond the Channel was almost complete.

Only Consolidated Pemmican and the World Government still maintained

communication facilities; and with the blocking of the normal ways of

commerce the World Government found it difficult to spread either news

or decrees to the general public. The most fantastic and contradictory

ideas about the Grass were held by the masses.

When the Grass was in the Deccan and still well below the Yangtze, the

Athenians were thrown into panic by the rumor it had appeared in

Salonika. At the same time there was wild rejoicing in the streets of

Marseilles based on the belief large stretches of North America had

become miraculously free. The cult of the Grass idolaters flourished

despite the strictest interdictions and great massmeetings were

frequently held during which the worshipers turned their faces toward

the southeast and prayed fervently for speedy immolation. It was quite

useless for the World Government to attempt to spread the actual facts;

the earlier censorship together with a public temper that preferred to

believe the extremes of good or bad rather than the truth of gradual yet

relentless approach, made people heedless of broadcasts rarely received

even by state operated publicaddress systems or of handbills which even

the still literate could not bother to decipher.

The idealization of the Socialist Union--once the Soviet Union--which

had risen and fallen through the years, was quickened among those not

enamored of the Grass. There must be some intrinsic virtue in this land

which had not only been immune to inoculation by the Metamorphizer, but

kept the encroaching weed from invading its borders in spite of its long

continued proximity across Bering Strait and the Aleutians. The Grass

had jumped gaps thousands of ocean miles and yet it had not bridged that

narrow strip of water. It would have been a shock to these people had

they known, as I knew and as the World Government had vainly tried to

tell them, what Moscow had recently and reluctantly admitted: the Grass

had long since crossed into Siberia and was now working its will from

Kamchatka to the Lena River.

The people of Japan, caught between the jaws of a closing vise,

responded in a manner peculiar to themselves. The Christians, now

forming a majority, declared the Grass a punishment for the sins of the

world and hoped, by their steadfastness in the face of certain death, to

earn a national martyr's crown and thus perhaps redeem those still

benighted. The Shintoists, on the other hand, agreed the Grass was a

punishment--but for a different crime. Had the doctrine of the Eight

Corners of the World never been abandoned the Japanese would never have

permitted the Grass to overwhelm the Yamato race. The new emperor's

reign name, Saiji, they argued, ought not to mean rule by the people as

it was usually interpreted, but rule of the people and they called for

an immediate Saiji Restoration, under which the subjects of the Mikado

would welcome death on the battlefield in a manner compatible with

bushido, thus redeeming previous aberrations for which they were now

being chastised. Both parties agreed that under no circumstances would

any Japanese demean himself by leaving Nippon and the world was

therefore spared an additional influx from these islands.

But the Japanese were the only ones who refused to join the westward

stampede plunging the world daily deeper into barbarism. We in England

had cause to congratulate ourselves on our unique position. The Channel

might have been a thousand miles wide instead of twenty. The turmoil of

the Continent and of Africa was but dimly reflected. There was still a

skeletal vestige of trade, the dole kept the lazy from starvation,

railways still functioned on greatly reduced schedules, and the wireless

continued to operate from, "Good morning, everybody, this is London," to

the last strains of _God Save the Queen_. Although I was constantly

rasped by inactivity and by the slowness of the researchworkers to find

a weapon against the Grass, I was happy to be able to wait out this

terrible period in so ameliorative a spot.

True, our depots in the Arabian and Sahara deserts were unthreatened by

either the Grass or the horde, but I should have found it uncomfortable

indeed to have lived in either place. In Hampshire or London I felt

myself the center of what was left of the world, ready to jump into

action the moment the great discovery was finally made and the Grass

began to recede.

Preblesham, my right hand, flew weekly to Africa and Asia Minor, weeding

out those workers who threatened to become useless to us because of

their reaction to the isolated and monotonous conditions at the depots;

keeping the heavily armed guards about our closed continental properties

alert and seeing our curtailed activities in Great Britain were

judiciously profitable. This period of quiescence suited his talents

perfectly, for it required of him little imagination, but great industry

and force.

I had noticed for some time a slight air of preoccupation and constraint

in his demeanor during his reports to me, but I put it down to his

engrossment with our affairs and resolved to make him take an extended

vacation as soon as he could be spared, never dreaming of disloyalty

from him.

I was shocked, then, and deeply wounded when at the close of one of our

conferences he announced, "Mr Weener, I'm leaving you."

I begged him to tell me what was wrong, what had caused him to come to

this decision. I knew, I said, that he was overworked and offered him

the badly needed vacation. He shook his head.

"It aint that. Overwork! I don't believe there is such a thing. At least

Ive never suffered from it. No, Mr Weener, my trouble is something no

amount of vacations can help, because I can't get away from a Voice."

"Voice, Tony?" Hallucinations were certainly a symptom of overwork. I

began mentally recalling names of prominent psychiatrists.

"A Voice within," he repeated firmly. "I am a sinful man, a miserable

backslider. Maybe Brother Paul was not treading a true path; I doubt if

he was or I would not have been led aside from following him so easily;

but when I was doing his work I was at least trying to do the will of

God and not the will of another man no better--spiritually, you

understand, Mr Weener, spiritually--than myself.

"But now His Voice has sought me out again and I must once more take up

the cross. I feel a call to go on a mission to the poor heathens and

urge on them submission to their Father's rod."

"Among those savages across the Channel! They will tear you limb from

limb."

"Christ will make me whole again."

"Tony, you are not yourself. Youre upset."

"I am not myself, Mr Weener, I have become as a little child again and

do my Father's bidding. I am upset, yes, turned upsidedown and insideout

by a Force not content to leave men in wrong attitudes or sinful

states. But upset, I stand upright and go about my Father's business.

God bless you, Mr Weener."

Miss Francis and Preblesham, at opposite ends of the intellectual scale,

both maundering on about doing the Will of God and General Thario

talking about marks on foreheads--what sort of feebleminded,

retrogressive world was I living in? All the outworn superstitions of

religion taking hold of people and intruding themselves into otherwise

normal conversation. A wave of madness, akin to the plague of the Grass,

must be sweeping over the earth, was my conclusion.

If General Thario's desertion had thrown an extra weight on my

shoulders, Preblesham's burdened me with all the petty details of

routine. It was now I who had to inspect our depots periodically and

make constant trips into the dangerous regions across the Channel to see

that the shutdown plants were being properly cared for. I resented

bitterly the trick of fate preventing me from finding for any length of

time subordinates to whom I could delegate authority.

Nor even on whom I could rely. What were Miss Francis and her wellpaid

staff doing all this time? Why had they produced nothing in return for

the fat living they got from me? The Grass was halfway across Asia,

lapping the High Pamirs from the south and from the north, digesting

Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, thrusting runners into Turkestan--and still

no progress made against it. It would be a matter of mere months now

until our Arabian depots would be in the danger zone. I could only

conclude these socalled scientists were little better than fakers,

completely incompetent when confronted by emergency.

They were ready enough to announce useless and inapplicable discoveries

and conclusions; byproducts of their research, they called them, with an

obviously selfconscious attempt to speak the language of industry. The

insects living in and below the Grass were growing ever larger and more

numerous. Expeditions had found worms the size of snakes and bugs big as

birds, happy in their environment. The oceans, they announced, were

drying up, due to the retention of moisture in the soil by the Grass,

and added complacently that in a million years or so, assuming the Grass

in the meantime covered the earth, there would be no bodies of water

left. Climates were equalizing themselves, the polar icecaps were

melting and spots previously too cold for _Cynodon dactylon_ were now

covered. I felt it to be a clear case of embezzlement that they had used

my money, paid for a specific purpose, to make these useless, if

possibly interesting, deductions.

For while they dawdled and read learned papers to each other, the Grass

touched the Persian Gulf and the Caspian, paused before Lake Balkash and

reached the Yenisei at the Arctic Circle. Far to the south it jumped

from India to the Maldives, from the Maldives to the Seychelles and from

the Seychelles on to the great island of Madagascar. I hammered the

theme of "Time, time" at Miss Francis, but her only response was a

helpless sneer at my impatience.

At intervals Burlet inquired of me what progress was being made with his

plan for cities of refuge. I could only answer him truthfully that as

far as I knew the World Government had it under consideration.

"But--if you will excuse my saying so, sir--in the meantime those people

are dying."

"Quite so, Burlet, but there is nothing you or I can do about it."

For the first time since he entered my service I caught him looking

almost impertinently at me. I faced him back and he dropped his eyes.

"Very good, sir. Thank you."

He had made an understatement when he talked about "those people" dying.

Europe was a madhouse. In selfdefense all strangers were instantly put

to death and in retaliation the invading throngs spared no native.

Peasants feared to stay their ground in terror of the oncoming Orientals

and equally dared not move westward where certain killing awaited them

at the hands of those who yesterday had been their neighbors. In an

effort to cling to life they formed small bands and fought impartially

both the static and dynamic forces. Farming was practically abandoned

and the swollen population lived entirely on wild growth or upon human

flesh.

In Africa the situation was little better. Internecine wars and slavery

made their reappearance; the South African whites mercilessly

slaughtered the blacks against a possible uprising and the Kaffirs,

fleeing northward, repeated the European pattern of overcrowding, famine

and pestilence.

_89._ The day our Arabian depots were abandoned before the oncoming

Grass I felt my heart would nearly break with anguish. All that labor,

all that forethought, all those precious goods gone. And all because

Miss Francis and those like her were too lazy or incompetent to do the

work for which they were paid. I flew to the spot, trying vainly to

salvage something, but lack of planes and fuel made it impossible.

During this trip I caught my first sight of the Grass for years.

I suppose no human eye sees anything abstractly, but only in relation to

other things known and observed. With more than half the world in its

grip, the towering wave of green bore no more resemblance to its

California prototype than a brontosaurus to the harmless lizard

scuttling over the sunny floor of an outhouse. Between the dirtysugar

sands of the desert and the oleograph sky it was a third band of

brilliant color, monstrously outofplace. A tidalwave would have seemed

less alien and awful.

The distance was great enough so that no individual part stood out

distinctly; instead, it presented itself as a flat belt of green,

menacing and obdurate. As my plane rose I looked back at it stretching

northward, southward and eastward to the horizon, a new invader in a

land weary of many invaders; and I thought of the dead civilizations it

covered: Bactria, Parthia, Babylon; the Empire of Lame Timur, Cathay,

Cambodia, and the dominions of the Great Mogul.

The refuge of mankind narrowed continually, an island diminished daily

by a lapping surf. Africa was thrice beset, in the south from

Madagascar; in the center from the steppingstones in the Indian Ocean,

and across the Red Sea where the Grass sucked renewed life from the

steaming jungles and grew with unbelievable rapidity; in the highlands

of Rhodesia and Abyssinia it crept slowly over the plateaus toward the

slopes of Kilimanjaro and the Drakensberg. Unless something were done

quickly our Sahara depots would go the way of the Arabian ones and we

would be left with only our limited British facilities until the day

when Africa and Asia would be reconquered.

The violence and murder which had gone before were tame compared with

the new fury that shook the feartortured people of Europe, helpless in

the nightmareridden days, dreaming through twitching nights of an escape

geographically nonexistent. Dismembered corpses in the streets, arenas

packed with dead bodies, fallow fields newly fertilized with human blood

added their stench to that of an unwashed, disease riddled continent. A

rumor was circulated that there were still Jews alive and those who but

yesterday had sought each other in mortal combat now happily united to

hunt down a common prey. And sure enough, in miserable caverns and

cellars hitherto overlooked, shunning daylight, a few men in skullcaps

and prayingshawls were found, dragged out into the disinterested

sunlight with their families and exterminated. It was at this time the

Grass crossed the Urals and leaped the Atlantic into Iceland.

In England, George Bernard Shaw, whose reported death some years before

had been mourned by those who had never read a word of his, rose

apparently from the grave to deliver himself of a last message:

"If any who wept over my senile and useless carcass had taken the

trouble to read _Back to Methuselah_, they could have reassured

themselves regarding my premature demise. If ever there was to be a

Longliver, that Longliver would have to be me. This was determined

by the Life Force in the middle of the XIX Century. That Life Force

could not afford to rob a squinting world of a man of perfect

vision.

"Like Haslam (I forget his first name--see my complete works if

you're interested) I gave myself out as dead in order to avoid the

gawking of a curious and idle multitude. I was recuperating from the

labors of my first century in order to throw myself into the more

arduous ones of the second.

"But as I have pointed out so many times, the race was between

maturity and the petulant self-destruction of protracted

adolescence. Mankind had either to take thought or to perish, and it

has chosen (perhaps sensibly after all) to perish. I am too old now

to protest against selfindulgence.

"Is it too late? Is it still possible to survive? The ship is now

indeed upon the rocks and the skipper in his bunk below drinking

bottled ditchwater. But perhaps a Captain Shotover, drunk on the

milk of human kindness rather than rum, will emerge upon the

quarterdeck and, blowing his whistle, call all hands on deck before

the last rending crash. In that unlikely event, one of those

emerging from the forecastle will be

G. Bernard Shaw."

_90._ In spite of the anarchic and unspeakable conditions on the

Continent, I could not refrain from making one last tour of inspection.

The thought of flooded mines, pillaged factories and gutted mills was

more than I could bear. The stocks of oil in England were running short,

but I commanded enough to fill my great transportplane. We flew low over

roads crawling with humanity as a sick animal crawls with vermin. Some

cities were empty, obscenely bereft of population; others choked with

wanderers.

The Ruhr was a valley filled with the dead, with men tearing each

other's throats in a frenzy of hunger, with the unburied and the soon to

be buried sleeping sidebyside through restless nights. Not a building

was still whole; what had not been torn down in pointless rage had been

razed by reasonless arson. Not one brick of the great openhearths had

been left in place, not one girder of the great sheds remained erect.

The Saar was in little better case and the mines of Alsace were useless

for the next quartercentury. The industrial district around Paris had

been leveled to the ground by the mobs and Belgium looked as it had

after the worst devastation of war. I had expected to find a shambles,

but my utmost anticipations were exceeded. I could bring myself to look

upon no more and my pilot informing me that our gas was low, I ordered

him to return.

We were in sight of the Channel, not far from Calais, when both

starboard engines developed trouble simultaneously and my pilot headed

for a landingfield below. "What are you about, you fool?" I shouted at

him.

"Gasline fouled. I think I can fix it in a few minutes, Mr Weener."

"Not down among those savages. We wouldnt have a chance."

"We wouldnt have a chance over the Channel, sir. I'd rather risk my neck

among fellow humans than in the water."

"Maybe you would, but I wouldnt. Straighten out the plane and go on."

"Sorry, Mr Weener; I'm going to have to land here."

And in spite of my protests he did so. I was instantly proved right, for

before we came to a stop we were surrounded by an assortment of filthy

and emaciated men and women bearing scythes and pitchforks, shouting,

yelling and gesticulating, making in fact, such an uproar that no

comprehension was possible. However, there was no misunderstanding their

brusque motions ordering us away from the plane or the threatening

noises which reinforced the command. No sooner had we reluctantly

complied than they proceeded methodically to puncture the tires and

smash the propellers.

My horror at this marooning among the degenerates was not lessened by

their ugly and illdisposed looks and I feared they would not be content

with smashing the plane, but would take out their animus against those

who had not sunk into their own bestial state by destroying us as well.

Since I do not speak much French, I could only say to the man nearest

me, a sinister fellow in a blue smock with a brown stockingcap on his

head, "C'est un disgrace, ça; je demandez le pourquoi."