by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER XII
OSTROG
Graham could now take a clearer view of his position. For a long time yethe wandered, but after the talk of the old man his discovery of thisOstrog was clear in his mind as the final inevitable decision. One thingwas evident, those who were at the headquarters of the revolt hadsucceeded very admirably in suppressing the fact of his disappearance.But every moment he expected to hear the report of his death or of hisrecapture by the Council.
Presently a man stopped before him. "Have you heard?" he said.
"No!" said Graham, starting.
"Near a dozand," said the man, "a dozand men!" and hurried on.
A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating andshouting: "Capitulated! Given up!" "A dozand of men." "Two dozand ofmen." "Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!" These cries receded, becameindistinct.
Other shouting men followed. For a time his attention was absorbed in thefragments of speech he heard. He had a doubt whether all were speakingEnglish. Scraps floated to him, scraps like Pigeon English, like "nigger"dialect, blurred and mangled distortions. He dared accost no one withquestions. The impression the people gave him jarred altogether with hispreconceptions of the struggle and confirmed the old man's faith inOstrog. It was only slowly he could bring himself to believe that allthese people were rejoicing at the defeat of the Council, that theCouncil which had pursued him with such power and vigour was after allthe weaker of the two sides in conflict. And if that was so, how did itaffect him? Several times he hesitated on the verge of fundamentalquestions. Once he turned and walked for a long way after a little man ofrotund inviting outline, but he was unable to master confidence toaddress him.
It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the"wind-vane offices" whatever the "wind-vane offices" might be. His firstenquiry simply resulted in a direction to go on towards Westminster. Hissecond led to the discovery of a short cut in which he was speedily lost.He was told to leave the ways to which he had hitherto confinedhimself--knowing no other means of transit--and to plunge down one of themiddle staircases into the blackness of a cross-way. Thereupon came sometrivial adventures; chief of these an ambiguous encounter with agruff-voiced invisible creature speaking in a strange dialect that seemedat first a strange tongue, a thick flow of speech with the driftingcorpses of English Words therein, the dialect of the latter-day vile.Then another voice drew near, a girl's voice singing, "tralala tralala."She spoke to Graham, her English touched with something of the samequality. She professed to have lost her sister, she blundered needlesslyinto him he thought, caught hold of him and laughed. But a word of vagueremonstrance sent her into the unseen again.
The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speakingexcitedly. "They have surrendered!" "The Council! Surely not theCouncil!" "They are saying so in the Ways." The passage seemed wider.Suddenly the wall fell away. He was in a great space and people werestirring remotely. He inquired his way of an indistinct figure. "Strikestraight across," said a woman's voice. He left his guiding wall, and ina moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils ofglass. Graham's eyes, now attuned to darkness, made out a long vista withtables on either side. He went down this. At one or two of the tables heheard a clang of glass and a sound of eating. There were people then coolenough to dine, or daring enough to steal a meal in spite of socialconvulsion and darkness. Far off and high up he presently saw a pallidlight of a semi-circular shape. As he approached this, a black edge cameup and hid it. He stumbled at steps and found himself in a gallery. Heheard a sobbing, and found two scared little girls crouched by a railing.These children became silent at the near sound of feet. He tried toconsole them, but they were very still until he left them. Then as hereceded he could hear them sobbing again.
Presently he found himself at the foot of a staircase and near a wideopening. He saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of theblackness into a street of moving ways again. Along this a disorderlyswarm of people marched shouting. They were singing snatches of the songof the revolt, most of them out of tune. Here and there torches flaredcreating brief hysterical shadows. He asked his way and was twice puzzledby that same thick dialect. His third attempt won an answer he couldunderstand. He was two miles from the wind-vane offices in Westminster,but the way was easy to follow.
When at last he did approach the district of the wind-vane offices itseemed to him, from the cheering processions that came marching along theWays, from the tumult of rejoicing, and finally from the restoration ofthe lighting of the city, that the overthrow of the Council must alreadybe accomplished. And still no news of his absence came to his ears.
The re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenlyhe stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world wasincandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of theexcited crowds that choked the ways near the wind-vane offices, and thesense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourlessintention of joining Ostrog to a keen anxiety.
For a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse andweary with cheering his name, some of them bandaged and bloody in hiscause. The frontage of the wind-vane offices was illuminated by somemoving picture, but what it was he could not see, because in spite of hisstrenuous attempts the density of the crowd prevented his approaching it.From the fragments of speech he caught, he judged it conveyed news of thefighting about the Council House. Ignorance and indecision made him slowand ineffective in his movements. For a time he could not conceive how hewas to get within the unbroken facade of this place. He made his wayslowly into the midst of this mass of people, until he realised that thedescending staircase of the central way led to the interior of thebuildings. This gave him a goal, but the crowding in the central pathwas so dense that it was long before he could reach it. And even then heencountered intricate obstruction, and had an hour of vivid argumentfirst in this guard room and then in that before he could get a notetaken to the one man of all men who was most eager to see him. His storywas laughed to scorn at one place, and wiser for that, when at last hereached a second stairway he professed simply to have news ofextraordinary importance for Ostrog. What it was he would not say. Theysent his note reluctantly. For a long time he waited in a little room atthe foot of the lift shaft, and thither at last came Lincoln, eager,apologetic, astonished. He stopped in the doorway scrutinising Graham,then rushed forward effusively.
"Yes," he cried. "It is you. And you are not dead!"
Graham made a brief explanation.
"My brother is waiting," explained Lincoln. "He is alone in the wind-vaneoffices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He doubted--andthings are very urgent still in spite of what we are telling them_there_--or he would have come to you."
They ascended a lift, passed along a narrow passage, crossed a greathall, empty save for two hurrying messengers, and entered a comparativelylittle room, whose only furniture was a long settee and a large oval discof cloudy, shifting grey, hung by cables from the wall. There Lincolnleft Graham for a space, and he remained alone without understanding thesmoky shapes that drove slowly across this disc.
His attention was arrested by a sound that began abruptly. It wascheering, the frantic cheering of a vast but very remote crowd, a roaringexultation. This ended as sharply as it had begun, like a sound heardbetween the opening and shutting of a door. In the outer room was a noiseof hurrying steps and a melodious clinking as if a loose chain wasrunning over the teeth of a wheel.
Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "It isOstrog!" he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and theneverything was still again.
Presently came voices, footsteps and movement without. The footsteps ofsome one person detached itself from the other sounds, and drew near,firm, evenly measured steps. The curtain lifted slowly. A tall,white-haired man, clad in garments of cream-coloured silk, appeared,regarding Graham from under his raised arm.
For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped itand stood before it. Graham's first impression was of a very broadforehead, very pale blue eyes deep sunken under white brows, an aquilinenose, and a heavily-lined resolute mouth. The folds of flesh over theeyes, the drooping of the corners of the mouth contradicted the uprightbearing, and said the man was old. Graham rose to his feet instinctively,and for a moment the two men stood in silence, regarding each other.
"You are Ostrog?" said Graham.
"I am Ostrog."
"The Boss?"
"So I am called."
Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. "I have to thank youchiefly, I understand, for my safety," he said presently.
"We were afraid you were killed," said Ostrog. "Or sent to sleepagain--for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our secret--thesecret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How did you get here?"
Graham told him briefly.
Ostrog listened in silence.
He smiled faintly. "Do you know what I was doing when they came to tellme you had come?"
"How can I guess?"
"Preparing your double."
"My double?"
"A man as like you as we could find. We were going to hypnotise him, tosave him the difficulty of acting. It was imperative. The whole of thisrevolt depends on the idea that you are awake, alive, and with us. Evennow a great multitude of people has gathered in the theatre clamouring tosee you. They do not trust.... You know, of course--something of yourposition?"
"Very little," said Graham.
"It is like this." Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned."You are absolute owner," he said, "of the world. You are King of theEarth. Your powers are limited in many intricate ways, but you are thefigure-head, the popular symbol of government. This White Council, theCouncil of Trustees as it is called--"
"I have heard the vague outline of these things."
"I wondered."
"I came upon a garrulous old man."
"I see.... Our masses--the word comes from your days--you know, ofcourse, that we still have masses--regard you as our actual ruler. Justas a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as theruler. They are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with therule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, theold quarrel of the common man with his commonness--the misery of work anddiscipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certainmatters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example, theyhave been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already we ofthe popular party were agitating for reforms--when your waking came.Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come moreopportunely." He smiled. "The public mind, making no allowance foryour years of quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking youand appealing to you, and--Flash!"
He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to showthat he understood.
"The Council muddled--quarrelled. They always do. They could not decidewhat to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?"
"I see. I see. And now--we win?"
"We win. Indeed we win. To-night, in five swift hours. Suddenly we struckeverywhere. The wind-vane people, the Labour Company and its millions,burst the bonds. We got the pull of the aeroplanes."
"Yes," said Graham.
"That was, of course, essential. Or they could have got away. All thecity rose, every third man almost was in it! All the blue, all the publicservices, save only just a few aeronauts and about half the red police.You were rescued, and their own police of the ways--not half of themcould be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmed orkilled. All London is ours--now. Only the Council House remains.
"Half of those who remain to them of the red police were lost in thatfoolish attempt to recapture you. They lost their heads when they lostyou. They flung all they had at the theatre. We cut them off from theCouncil House there. Truly to-night has been a night of victory.Everywhere your star has blazed. A day ago--the White Council ruled as ithas ruled for a gross of years, for a century and a half of years, andthen, with only a little whispering, a covert arming here and there,suddenly--So!"
"I am very ignorant," said Graham. "I suppose--I do not clearlyunderstand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Whereis the Council? Where is the fight?"
Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save foran oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was puzzled.
Then he saw that the cloudy grey disc had taken depth and colour, hadassumed the appearance of an oval window looking out upon a strangeunfamiliar scene.
At the first glance he was unable to guess what this scene might be. Itwas a daylight scene, the daylight of a wintry day, grey and clear.Across the picture, and halfway as it seemed between him and the remoterview, a stout cable of twisted white wire stretched vertically. Then heperceived that the rows of great wind-wheels he saw, the wide intervals,the occasional gulfs of darkness, were akin to those through which he hadfled from the Council House. He distinguished an orderly file of redfigures marching across an open space between files of men in black, andrealised before Ostrog spoke that he was looking down on the uppersurface of latter-day London. The overnight snows had gone. He judgedthat this mirror was some modern replacement of the camera obscura, butthat matter was not explained to him. He saw that though the file of redfigures was trotting from left to right, yet they were passing out of thepicture to the left. He wondered momentarily, and then saw that thepicture was passing slowly, panorama fashion, across the oval.
"In a moment you will see the fighting," said Ostrog at his elbow. "Thosefellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof space ofLondon--all the houses are practically continuous now. The streets andpublic squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time havedisappeared."
Something out of focus obliterated half the picture. Its form suggested aman. There was a gleam of metal, a flash, something that swept across theoval, as the eyelid of a bird sweeps across its eye, and the picture wasclear again. And now Graham beheld men running down among thewind-wheels, pointing weapons from which jetted out little smoky flashes.They swarmed thicker and thicker to the right, gesticulating--it might bethey were shouting, but of that the picture told nothing. They and thewind-wheels passed slowly and steadily across the field of the mirror.
"Now," said Ostrog, "comes the Council House," and slowly a black edgecrept into view and gathered Graham's attention. Soon it was no longer anedge but a cavity, a huge blackened space amidst the clustering edifices,and from it thin spires of smoke rose into the pallid winter sky. Gauntruinous masses of the building, mighty truncated piers and girders, rosedismally out of this cavernous darkness. And over these vestiges of somesplendid place, countless minute men were clambering, leaping, swarming.
"This is the Council House," said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. And thefools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up thebuildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash? Itshattered half the brittle glass in the city."
And while he spoke, Graham saw that beyond this area of ruins,overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of whitebuilding. This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction of itssurroundings. Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had torn apart;big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of their interiorsshowed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged walls hungfestoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallic rods.And amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, the red-clotheddefenders of the Council. Every now and then faint flashes illuminatedthe bleak shadows. At the first sight it seemed to Graham that an attackupon this isolated white building was in progress, but then he perceivedthat the party of the revolt was not advancing, but sheltered amidst thecolossal wreckage that encircled this last ragged stronghold of thered-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing.
And not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in alittle chamber within that remote building wondering what was happeningin the world!
Looking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently acrossthe centre of the mirror, Graham saw that the white building wassurrounded on every side by ruins, and Ostrog proceeded to describe inconcise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction toisolate themselves from a storm. He spoke of the loss of men that hugedownfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. He indicated an improvisedmortuary among the wreckage, showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mitesalong a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. He wasmore interested in pointing out the parts of the Council House, thedistribution of the besiegers. In a little while the civil contest thathad convulsed London was no longer a mystery to Graham. It was notumultuous revolt had occurred that night, no equal warfare, but asplendidly organised _coup d'etat_. Ostrog's grasp of details wasastonishing; he seemed to know the business of even the smallest knot ofblack and red specks that crawled amidst these places.
He stretched a huge black arm across the luminous picture, and showed theroom whence Graham had escaped, and across the chasm of ruins the courseof his flight. Graham recognised the gulf across which the gutter ran,and the wind-wheels where he had crouched from the flying machine. Therest of his path had succumbed to the explosion. He looked again at theCouncil House, and it was already half hidden, and on the right ahillside with a cluster of domes and pinnacles, hazy, dim and distant,was gliding into view.
"And the Council is really overthrown?" he said.
"Overthrown," said Ostrog.
"And I--. Is it indeed true that I--?"
"You are Master of the World."
"But that white flag--"
"That is the flag of the Council--the flag of the Rule of the World. Itwill fall. The fight is over. Their attack on the theatre was their lastfrantic struggle. They have only a thousand men or so, and some of thesemen will be disloyal. They have little ammunition. And we are revivingthe ancient arts. We are casting guns."
"But--help. Is this city the world?"
"Practically this is all they have left to them of their empire. Abroadthe cities have either revolted with us or wait the issue. Your awakeninghas perplexed them, paralysed them."
"But haven't the Council flying machines? Why is there no fightingwith them?"
"They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt withus. They wouldn't take the risk of fighting on our side, but they wouldnot stir against us. We _had_ to get a pull with the aeronauts. Quitehalf were with us, and the others knew it. Directly they knew you had gotaway, those looking for you dropped. We killed the man who shot atyou--an hour ago. And we occupied the flying stages at the outset inevery city we could, and so stopped and captured the greater aeroplanes,and as for the little flying machines that turned out--for some did--wekept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get near the CouncilHouse. If they dropped they couldn't rise again, because there's no clearspace about there for them to get up. Several we have smashed, severalothers have dropped and surrendered, the rest have gone off to theContinent to find a friendly city if they can before their fuel runs out.Most of these men were only too glad to be taken prisoner and kept out ofharm's way. Upsetting in a flying machine isn't a very attractiveprospect. There's no chance for the Council that way. Its days are done."
He laughed and turned to the oval reflection again to show Graham what hemeant by flying stages. Even the four nearer ones were remote andobscured by a thin morning haze. But Graham could perceive they were veryvast structures, judged even by the standard of the things about them.
And then as these dim shapes passed to the left there came again thesight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had beenmarching. And then the black ruins, and then again the beleaguered whitefastness of the Council. It appeared no longer a ghostly pile, butglowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. About itthe pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red defenders wereno longer firing.
So, in a dusky stillness, the man from the nineteenth century saw theclosing scene of the great revolt, the forcible establishment of hisrule. With a quality of startling discovery it came to him that this washis world, and not that other he had left behind; that this was nospectacle to culminate and cease; that in this world lay whatever lifewas still before him, lay all his duties and dangers andresponsibilities. He turned with fresh questions. Ostrog began to answerthem, and then broke off abruptly. "But these things I must explain morefully later. At present there are--duties. The people are coming by themoving ways towards this ward from every part of the city--the marketsand theatres are densely crowded. You are just in time for them. They areclamouring to see you. And abroad they want to see you. Paris, New York,Chicago, Denver, Capri--thousands of cities are up and in a tumult,undecided, and clamouring to see you. They have clamoured that you shouldbe awakened for years, and now it is done they will scarcely believe--"
"But surely--I can't go ..."
Ostrog answered from the other side of the room, and the picture on theoval disc paled and vanished as the light jerked back again. "There arekineto-telephoto-graphs," he said. "As you bow to the people here--allover the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and still in darkenedhalls, will see you also. In black and white, of course--not like this.And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting in the hall.
"And there is an optical contrivance we shall use," said Ostrog, "used bysome of the posturers and women dancers. It may be novel to you. Youstand in a very bright light, and they see not you but a magnified imageof you thrown on a screen--so that even the furtherest man in theremotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes."
Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. "What isthe population of London?" he said.
"Eight and twaindy myriads."
"Eight and what?"
"More than thirty-three millions."
These figures went beyond Graham's imagination.
"You will be expected to say something," said Ostrog. "Not what you usedto call a Speech, but what our people call a word--just one sentence, sixor seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest--'I have awakenedand my heart is with you.' That is the sort of thing they want."
"What was that?" asked Graham.
"'I am awakened and my heart is with you.' And bow--bow royally. Butfirst we must get you black robes--for black is your colour. Do you mind?And then they will disperse to their homes."
Graham hesitated. "I am in your hands," he said.
Ostrog was clearly of that opinion. He thought for a moment, turned tothe curtain and called brief directions to some unseen attendants. Almostimmediately a black robe, the very fellow of the black robe Graham hadworn in the theatre, was brought. And as he threw it about his shouldersthere came from the room without the shrilling of a high-pitched bell.Ostrog turned in interrogation to the attendant, then suddenly seemed tochange his mind, pulled the curtain aside and disappeared.
For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening toOstrog's retreating steps. There was a sound of quick question and answerand of men running. The curtain was snatched back and Ostrog reappeared,his massive face glowing with excitement. He crossed the room in astride, clicked the room into darkness, gripped Graham's arm and pointedto the mirror.
"Even as we turned away," he said.
Graham saw his index finger, black and colossal, above the mirroredCouncil House. For a moment he did not understand. And then he perceivedthat the flagstaff that had carried the white banner was bare.
"Do you mean--?" he began.
"The Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore."
"Look!" and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerksup the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.
The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.
"
They are clamorous," he said.
Ostrog kept his grip of Graham's arm.
"We have raised the people," he said. "We have given them arms. Forto-day at least their wishes must be law."
Lincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through....
On his way to the markets Graham had a transitory glance of a long narrowwhite-walled room in which men in the universal blue canvas were carryingcovered things like biers, and about which men in medical purple hurriedto and fro. From this room came groans and wailing. He had an impressionof an empty blood-stained couch, of men on other couches, bandaged andblood-stained. It was just a glimpse from a railed footway and then abuttress hid the place and they were going on towards the markets....
The roar of the multitude was near now: it leapt to thunder. And,arresting his attention, a fluttering of black banners, the waving ofblue canvas and brown rags, and the swarming vastness of the theatre nearthe public markets came into view down a long passage. The picture openedout. He perceived they were entering the great theatre of his firstappearance, the great theatre he had last seen as a chequer-work of glareand blackness in his flight from the red police. This time he entered italong a gallery at a level high above the stage. The place was nowbrilliantly lit again. His eyes sought the gangway up which he had fled,but he could not tell it from among its dozens of fellows; nor could hesee anything of the smashed seats, deflated cushions, and such liketraces of the fight because of the density of the people. Except thestage the whole place was closely packed. Looking down the effect was avast area of stippled pink, each dot a still upturned face regarding him.At his appearance with Ostrog the cheering died away, the singing diedaway, a common interest stilled and unified the disorder. It seemed asthough every individual of those myriads was watching him.
