The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (39 page)

Of course it was perfectly easy. The car approached and in
it she found arm-chairs exactly like her own. When she signalled, it stopped,
and she tottered into the lift. One other passenger was in the lift, the first
fellow creature she had seen face to face for months. Few travelled in these
days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all
over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilisation had hoped so
much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Pekin when
it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would be just
like Pekin? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the
soul.

The air-ship service was a relic from the former age. It was
kept up, because it was easier to keep it up than to stop it or to diminish it,
but it now far exceeded the wants of the population. Vessel after vessel would
rise from the vomitories of Rye or of Christchurch (I use the antique names),
would sail into the crowded sky, and would draw up at the wharves of the
south—empty. So nicely adjusted was the system, so independent of meteorology,
that the sky, weather calm or cloudy, resembled a vast kaleidoscope whereon the
same patterns periodically recurred. The ship on which Vashti sailed started
now at sunset, now at dawn. But always, as it passed above Rheims, it would
neighbour the ship that served between Helsingfors and the Brazils, and, every
third time it surmounted the Alps, the fleet of Palermo would cross its track
behind. Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no
longer. He had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature, with its praise of
Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of a child.

Yet as Vashti saw the vast flank of the ship, stained with
exposure to the outer air, her horror of direct experience returned. It was not
quite like the air-ship in the cinematophote. For one thing it smelt-not
strongly or unpleasantly, but it did smell, and with her eyes shut she should
have known that a new thing was close to her. Then she had to walk to it from
the lift, had to submit to glances from the other passengers. The man in front
dropped his Book—no great matter, but it disquieted them all. In the rooms, if
the Book was dropped, the floor raised it mechanically, but the gangway to the
air-ship was not so prepared, and the sacred volume lay motionless. They
stopped— the thing was unforeseen—and the man, instead of picking up his property,
felt the muscles of his arm to see how they had failed him. Then someone
actually said with direct utterance: "We shall be late" —and they
trooped on board, Vashti treading on the pages as she did so.

Inside, her anxiety increased. The arrangements were
old-fashioned and rough. There was even a female attendant, to whom she would
have to announce her wants during the voyage. Of course a revolving platform
ran the length of
the
boat, but she was expected to walk from it to her
cabin. Some cabins were better than others, and she did not get the best. She
thought the attendant had been unfair, and spasms of rage shook her. The glass
valves had closed, she could not go back. She saw, at the end of the vestibule,
the lift in which she had ascended going quietly up and down, empty. Beneath
those corridors of shining tiles were rooms, tier below tier, reaching far into
the earth, and in each room there sat a human being, eating, or sleeping, or
producing ideas. And buried deep in the hive was her own room. Vashti was
afraid.

"O Machine! O Machine!" she murmured, and caressed
her Book, and was comforted.

Then the sides of the vestibule seemed to melt together, as
do the passages that we see in dreams, the lift vanished, the Book that had
been dropped slid to the left and vanished, polished tiles rushed by like a
stream of water, there was a slight jar, and the air-ship, issuing from its
tunnel, soared above the waters of a tropical ocean.

It was night. For a moment she saw the coast of Sumatra
edged by the phosphorescence of waves, and crowned by lighthouses, still
sending forth their disregarded beams. These also vanished, and only the stars
distracted her. They were not motionless, but swayed to and fro above her head,
thronging out of one skylight into another, as if the universe and not the
air-ship was careening. And, as often happens on clear nights, they seemed now
to be in perspective, now on a plane; now piled tier beyond tier into the
infinite heavens, now concealing infinity, a roof limiting for ever the visions
of men. In either case they seemed intolerable. "Are we to travel in the
dark?" called the passengers angrily, and the attendant, who had been
careless, generated the light, and pulled down the blinds of pliable metal.
When the air-ships had been built, the desire to look direct at things still
lingered in the world. Hence the extraordinary number of skylights and windows,
and the proportionate discomfort to those who were civilised and refined. Even
in Vashti's cabin one star peeped through a flaw in the blind, and after a few
hours' uneasy slumber, she was disturbed by an unfamiliar glow, which was the
dawn.

Quick as the ship had sped westwards, the earth had rolled
eastwards quicker still, and had dragged back Vashti and her companions towards
the sun. Science could prolong the night, but only for a little, and those high
hopes of neutralising the earth's diurnal revolution had passed, together with
hopes that were possibly higher. To "keep pace with the sun," or even
to outstrip it, had been the aim of the civilisation preceding this. Racing
aeroplanes had been built for the purpose, capable of enormous speed, and
steered by the greatest intellects of the epoch. Round the globe they went,
round and round, westward, westward, round and round, amidst humanity's
applause. In vain. The globe went eastward quicker still, horrible accidents
occurred, and the Committee of the Machine, at the time rising into prominence,
declared the pursuit illegal, unmechanical, and punishable by Homelessness.

Of Homelessness more will be said later.

Doubtless the Committee was right. Yet the attempt to
"defeat the sun" aroused the last common interest that our race
experienced about the heavenly bodies, or indeed about anything. It was the
last time that men were compacted by thinking of a power outside the world. The
sun had conquered, yet it was the end of his spiritual dominion. Dawn, midday,
twilight, the zodiacal path, touched neither men's lives nor their hearts, and
science retreated into the ground, to concentrate herself upon problems that
she was certain of solving.

So when Vashti found her cabin invaded by a rosy finger of
light, she was annoyed, and tried to adjust the blind. But the blind flew up
altogether, and she saw through the skylight small pink clouds, swaying against
a background of blue, and as the sun crept higher, its radiance entered direct,
brimming down the wall, like a golden sea. It rose and fell with the air-ship's
motion, just as waves rise and fall, but it advanced steadily, as a tide advances.
Unless she was careful, it would strike her face. A spasm of horror shook her
and she rang for the attendant. The attendant too was horrified, but she could
do nothing; it was not her place to mend the blind. She could only suggest that
the lady should change her cabin, which she accordingly prepared to do.

People were almost exactly alike all over the world, but the
attendant of the air-ship, perhaps owing to her exceptional duties, had grown a
little out of the common. She had often to address passengers with direct
speech, and this had given her a certain roughness and originality of manner.
When Vashti swerved away from the sunbeams with a cry, she behaved
barbarically—she put out her hand to steady her.

"How dare you!" exclaimed the passenger. "You
forget yourself!"

The woman was confused, and apologised for not having let
her fall. People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete,
owing to the Machine.

"Where are we now?" asked Vashti haughtily.

"We are over Asia," said the attendant, anxious to
be polite.

"Asia?"

"You must excuse my common way of speaking. I have got
into the habit of calling places over which I pass by their unmechanical
names."

"Oh, I remember Asia. The Mongols came from it."

"Beneath us, in the open air, stood a city that was
once called Simla."

"Have you ever heard of the Mongols and of the Brisbane
school?"

"No."

"Brisbane also stood in the open air."

"Those mountains to the right—let me show you
them." She pushed back a metal blind. The main chain of the Himalayas was
revealed. "They were once called the Roof of the World, those
mountains."

"What a foolish name!"

"You must remember that, before the dawn of
civilisation, they seemed to be an impenetrable wall that touched the stars. It
was supposed that no one but the gods could exist above their summits. How we
have advanced, thanks to the Machine!"

"How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!"
said Vashti.

"How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!"
echoed the passenger who had dropped his Book the night before, and who was
standing in the passage.

"And that white stuff in the cracks?—what is it?"

"I have forgotten its name."

"Cover the window, please. These mountains give me no
ideas."

The northern aspect of the Himalayas was in deep shadow: on
the Indian slope the sun had just prevailed. The forests had been destroyed
during the literature epoch for the purpose of making newspaper-pulp, but the
snows were awakening to their morning glory, and clouds still hung on the
breasts of Kinchinjunga. In the plain were seen the ruins of cities, with
diminished rivers creeping by their walls, and by the sides of these were
sometimes the signs of vomitories, marking the cities of today. Over the whole
prospect airships rushed, crossing and intercrossing with incredible
aplomb,
and rising nonchalantly when they desired to escape the perturbations of
the lo\t;£r atmosphere and to traverse the Roof of the World.

"We have indeed advanced, thanks to the Machine,"
repeated the attendant, and hid the Himalayas behind a metal blind.

The day dragged wearily forward. The passengers sat each in
his cabin, avoiding one another with an almost physical repulsion and longing
to be once more under the surface of the earth. There were eight or ten of
them, mostly young males, sent out from the public nurseries to inhabit the
rooms of those who had died in various parts of the earth. The man who had
dropped his Book was on the homeward journey. He had been sent to Sumatra for
the purpose of propagating the race. Vashti alone was travelling by her private
will.

At midday she took a second glance at the earth. The
air-ship was crossing another range of mountains, but she could see little,
owing to clouds. Masses of black rock hovered below her, and merged
indistinctly into grey. Their shapes were fantastic; one of them resembled a
prostrate man.

"No ideas here," murmured Vashti, and hid the
Caucasus behind a metal blind.

In the evening she looked again. They were crossing a golden
sea, in which lay many small islands and one peninsula.

She repeated, "No ideas here," and hid Greece
behind a metal blind.

By a vestibule, by a lift, by a tubular railway, by a
platform, by a sliding door—by reversing all the steps of her departure did
Vashti arrive at her son's room, which exactly resembled her own. She might
well declare that the visit was superfluous. The buttons, the knobs, the
reading-desk with the Book, the temperature, the atmosphere, the
illumination—all were exactly the same. And if Kuno himself, flesh of her
flesh, stood close beside her at last, what profit was there in that? She was
too well-bred to shake him by the hand.

Averting her eyes, she spoke as follows:

"Here I am. I have had the most terrible journey and
greatly retarded the development of my soul. It is not worth it, Kuno, it is
not worth it. My time is too precious. The sunlight almost touched me, and I
have met with the rudest people. I can only stop a few minutes. Say what you
want to say, and then I must return."

"I have been threatened with Homelessness," said
Kuno.

She looked at him now.

"I have been threatened with Homelessness, and I could
not tell you such a thing through the Machine."

Homelessness means death. The victim is exposed to the air,
which kills him.

"1 have been outside since I spoke to you last. The
tremendous thing has happened, and they have discovered me."

"But why shouldn't you go outside!" she exclaimed.
"It is perfectly legal, perfectly mechanical, to visit the surface of the
earth. I have lately been to a lecture on the sea; there is no objection to
that; one simply summons a respirator and gets an Egression-permit. It is not
the kind of thing that spiritually-minded people do, and I begged you not to do
it, but there is no legal objection to it."

"I did not get an Egression-permit."

"Then how did you get out?"

"I found out a way of my own."

The phrase conveyed no meaning to her, and he had to repeat
it.

"A way of your own?" she whispered. "But that
would be wrong."

"Why?"

The question shocked her beyond measure.

"You are beginning to worship the Machine," he
said coldly. "You think it irreligious of me to have found out a way of my
own. It was just what the Committee thought, when they threatened me with
Homelessness."

At this she grew angry. "I worship nothing!" she
cried. "I am most advanced. I don't think you irreligious, for there is no
such thing as religion left. All the fear and the superstition that existed
once have been destroyed by the Machine. I only meant that to find out a way of
your own was— Besides, there is no new way out."