by Don Wilcox
The audience fell deadly silent. This was unprecedented, for a new voter to speak up so boldly.
The sculptor came to his feet eagerly. “Yes, please let me explain—”
“Sit down!” the Empress snapped. “As for you, Miss Eudora, if you have any opinion to express, proceed.” Eudora started toward the platform, but a sharp gesture from the Empress told her to stay where she was.
She spoke calmly. “Fellow citizens, I think we should remember that Mr. Keith has worked faithfully ever since he came here. He has built the statues exactly as he has been told to build them. If he thinks they are bad, whose fault is it?”
The Empress went white with anger, and the wooden beads on her shoulders quivered;
“Miss Eudora, are you saying that our beautiful statues are not beautiful?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But do you think it?”
“I am not on trial,” Eudora replied quietly. “I am only concerned with the sincerity of Reginald Keith’s rebellion against his own work. He is the artist. If he is driven to escape this island because he can’t endure the sight of his works, I think he should have the right, to escape”
Eudora spoke with such conviction that a few women started to applaud. The frenzied sculptor sprang from his chair, speaking excitedly.
“That’s what I wanted to say; I can’t stand the sight of shabby art—”
Crack!
He stopped with an outcry. A whip had lashed out from the hand of a police woman and struck him across the forehead. White with pain, he sank down and bowed his head.
The Empress would listen to no more remarks. She cut the trial short in her own characteristic way.
“The evidence of high crime against our laws is so clear that I need not call for a vote. This man, by his words, has outraged the symbols of woman’s glory. I convict him of treason and sentence him to be hanged”
The sculptor’s head remained bowed.
CHAPTER IV
John Dennison, Guinea Pig
Dave worked at the factory every day during the two weeks that followed. The sunlamp above his machine showered healing rays over his back. The whip marks faded, a deep tan covered the upper half of his body.
He signed up as a regular and the factory authorities accepted him. They warned him to be ready to explain his presence to the Empress. She would get around to questioning him after the other excitement died down. But the police had established that his coming had nothing to do with the sculptor’s plot, so for the present he was left to his own devices.
At once this freedom, coupled with his spirit of adventure, carried him deeper and deeper into the mysteries of this curious world.
Not content; to see the Empress’ chained-up husband from a distance, he secured a pass through the palace lobby and climbed the tower to talk with that “lowest worm.”’
“Get away while you can,” was the one piece of advice that, the dome-polisher had to offer. “Get out of the factory before it gets you.”
“The work doesn’t tire me,” said. Dave, “and it gives me a right to stay here, apparently. Why should I get out?”
“You’ll go dopey, just like those other worms. Don’t ask me how or why. They were bright young fellows like you once.”
The visit was depressing. This small, bullet-headed man was a pitiful case. Once he had been a social theorist, willing to try any social order that might make people happier. Yes, he had hoped to make the world a brighter, shinier place, and here he was, with a polishing cloth in his hand.
In the factory Dave picked up very little gossip. No one seemed concerned about the approaching date of a hanging. These worms of men had lost all desire for human responsibility.
Only John Dennison became an exception to this rule.
“How are you feeling, Dennison?” Dave would ask each day at the lunch hour.
“Better . . . better.” The slender gray-haired man would move down the food line, taking each dish that was offered—for the factory dining room allowed no choice: But for some reason, he was showing a keener interest than other workers in what he ate, how it tasted, how it agreed with him.
“Sometimes I wonder if this factory food is the best thing for us,” he would say. Then he would eat in silence, and Dave, sitting across the table from him, would study his face and his manners.
“You use a lot of salt,” Dave observed.
“Salt—yes—of a sort. I carry my own supply.” Dennison sifted the small green salt shaker over his plate until the food looked frosted. Then he returned the shaker to his pocket. “I’m experimenting,” he said.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“For several months. They’ve had me try several different kinds of powders. Of all the things they give me—”
“They?”
Dave tried to pursue this hint, but John Dennison shook his head.
“I shouldn’t be talking so much.”
“I wish you’d tell me everything,” said Dave. “I’d like to help, to make up for that injury I did you when the steel flew out of my hands.”
Dennison removed his spectacles and knitted his gray eyebrows thoughtfully.
“I’ve been wondering, Silbert, if that bump didn’t do me some good. It seems to me I’ve been seeing things a little clearer ever since.”
Dave considered. He knew that this man had been living in a stupid, dreamy state, not alert to anything. If a bump on the head could actually restore him from such a tragedy, a lot of these drowsy worms could stand a bump on the head.
The handsome woman foreman in the gleaming white dress and red sash kept a suspicious eye on Dave. Under pressure he learned to feign the worm-like actions that were expected of him. But when she touched the electric switches and the whips zinged down to spur some lagging workman, Dave was always on nerve’s edge.
Occasionally he would overhear her telephone calls to the superintendent or to Miss Blanchard, secretary to the Empress.
“Miss Blanchard, will you please speak to the Empress, about this new worker? I don’t think he’s responding to treatment. What evidence? He’s too sensitive over other people’s whippings. Much too sensitive.
No, I’m not at all satisfied that our method is working on him.
Then she would lower her voice, and his curiosity would be left in the air.
Every day Dave awoke wondering if the factory fate had struck him. Somehow he had expected it to hit quickly, like a hypodermic. But toward the end of the second week it occurred to him that it might be enveloping him gradually. He noticed a few symptoms. A dull imagination. A craving for more sleep.
“Outside of working hours, I’m much too sleepy,” he confessed to Happy Maddox one evening. “Either this tropical air is getting me or else—
“You’d better get out of that factory.”
“But how does that account for it?”
“If you find out, tell the Underground. They’ve been working on it for months. They’re using-John Dennison for a guinea pig. I just heard about it recently. This girl named Eudora—Jane was telling me about her.”
Dave was suddenly alert. He had been trying for days to get in touch with her. He had repeatedly Written notes and slipped them to Jane at the factory. But it was risky for a factory attendant to get involved with porkers.
He guessed that his messages had gone to the wastebasket.
“All I know,” Happy went on, “is that there’s a powder keg under this island and I’d like to help explode it. It’s an explosion that has been slowly gathering, but just in the last few months has it become organized into a regular underground. Eudora is one of the leaders. I’m going to a meeting soon. I’ll take you along.”
CHAPTER V
The High Cost of Marriage
The first underground meeting that Dave attended was held on the southeast end of the island where the dim fires were hidden by the cliffs. In the glow of red coals, the eyes of these young men and women took on a weird, hau
nted look. There were thirty-five persons present, and most of them were under twenty-one.
But John Dennison was here, standing quietly at the edge of the crowd. Everyone was interested to know how his medicines were affecting him. The underground movement began to take on meaning for Dave. One of its purposes, at least, was to lift the curse that held over the factory workers.
The one person who was conspicuously absent was Happy’s girl friend, Jane.
“She’s never come to any of our meetings,” someone mentioned. “Haven’t you any influence with her, Happy?”
Happy smiled at this. The important question was whether she had any influence with the Empress.
“You see, Jane and I are about to ask the government for the supreme favor—passage to the United States.”
A chorus of ok’s greeted this announcement. It implied that he and Jane were planning to get married.
The group wished Happy all the luck in the world, but most of them realized his peril. Three bullet-riddled corpses had been buried recently. Happy was still alive and free only by the grace of good luck.
“You’d better take the first boat,” some of his friends advised. “In fact, you’d do well to follow Jane’s example and stay away from us. There’s no telling when the police will get wind of our meetings.”
Eudora concurred in this opinion. “It isn’t only your danger, but Jane’s as well. I’ve been talking with her. It’s an awful strain for any girl to pretend she and her sweetheart are loyal to the government, when they’re really not.”
“They can’t be loyal and be in love,” one of the girls said.
“That’s exactly the point,” Eudora declared. “To the Empress, love is a sham.”
“We realize that.” Happy spoke as if his wide-eyed little blonde were right with him. The mystery is that the Empress ever gives permission for any couples to leave the island to get married.”
“How do we know,” Eudora asked, “that she does give them safe passage? I don’t trust her any farther than the first wave on the water.”
This brought a deathly silence, for there was no answer. In the firelight, Dave saw many of the group glance at old John Dennison.
Dave was to learn the meaning of this in the course of the conversation. Of the twenty-odd couples who had gained passage to the United States in the last few years, none had. ever written letters back to the island. John Dennison’s own son and daughter-in-law-to-be had gone back two years ago. At the time, Dennison had thanked the Empress profusely. But with the passing months, he had grown heart-sick over the deal. For never did he receive one word of communication from the newlyweds.
That was what had led to Dennison’s slavery in the factory. He had been a patient and cooperative citizen. But after the silence of his departed son and bride, he began to air his suspicions. The Empress heard about it. Right away he found himself tending a. machine and turning into a “worm.”
Now around the firelight the beautiful Eudora fascinated the group with a little informal talk.
The red coals glowed within her reach, and with a stick of wood she separated three of them from the rest of the fire.
“Here, my lads and lassies, are the things that may happen to us young folks at the hands of our Empress when we want to get married.”
Her easy smile did not lessen her seriousness. Everyone watched her.
“At the first rumor that any of you are in love, you know what the Empress does. She sends you sharp warnings. She tries to crush the idea out-of your heart.”
With the stick Eudora tapped one of the coals until the red glow was gone out of it.
“If this succeeds, the young man may be bluffed out for life. He may bend his will henceforth to the government. The girl may become another champion of women’s rule. After that, their love is never revived.”
“But some of us are not going to be bluffed out,” said a young man at Dave’s elbow.
“In that case, the Empress spots you. And you know what usually happens as soon as you are twenty-one.” Eudora sifted a handful of earth over the second glowing coal. “You are ordered into the factory. You turn into a worm. Your social impulses fade away.”
One bright coal at the fire’s edge still glowed.
Eudora pointed to it.
“Here are the few couples who think themselves very fortunate. These beg the Empress to bless their marriage. And she seems to relent, and promises them passage across the sea, where their love ideals won’t contaminate her government.”
Here Eudora took a cup of water. “Tonight, as Happy and Jane are hoping for this favor, every one of us are wondering whether the other couples in the years past—twenty of them—ever got to the mainland. Or whether they may have been drowned on the way”
She poured the water over the remaining coal.
CHAPTER VI
David Becomes a Worm
For a long time nobody spoke. The low fire brightened as a wisp of sea breeze played over it, then dulled to a faint reddish gloom. Someone tossed a bit of paper into it. The flare-up showed the white ashes all around—about the color of old John Dennison’s thoughtful face.
“There are a few men who go along whenever the Empress sends the boat across,” Dennison commented. “We might learn something if we ever dared exchange confidences.”
This matter was discussed, but not hopefully. The Empress’ own husband usually made each trip, to keep the rails polished. Then there were certain engineers. The sculptor, too, had cruised with the boat as a matter of course. In fact, he was nearly always on it, whether it was docked, or voyaging, or skirting the farthest point of the island so that he could gather a certain quality of clay for his statues.
“We’ll never have a chance for a word with the sculptor now,” said John Dennison. “They’ll hang him in a few days. In the meantime they’ll watch him like a hawk.”
Happy spoke up. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the Empress would delay that hanging on some pretext.”
“Why?”
“Jane thinks that she had already planned two more statues for the north end of Center Street. Keith may get to live until he finishes them.”
This kindled new fires of hope. If the time came that Reginald. Keith was to mount two more statues in the street, there might be a chance to pull an escape act. The voices around the dying coals lowered to eager whispers. New schemes were in the mold.
And among the schemes, John Dennison, who had been a. stupid worm only a few days before, was making his contribution. It was amazing how swiftly he was improving all at once.
“If you need someone who looks like Keith,” Dennison said, “I’m about his size and build. I’m gray-haired. I could put on his sculptor’s smock. I could imitate his stoop. Anything to give them the slip.”
Happy shook his head slowly. “We’ll never get away with anything. Jane told me that they had a gun on him all the time he was on the stage for the trial.”
“Then he must know too much,” said Eudora.
When the meeting ended, Happy hurried away from the crowd. It was late. Jane would be waiting for him.
The walk back to the city through the darkness was a pleasant one for Dave. He fell into step with Eudora, remarking that he needed guidance over this strange territory and that she seemed to be a good leader.
“We’re glad to have you helping us, Mr. Silbert—”
“ ‘Dave’ if you don’t mind,” he said. “I saw you take that whipping.” Her voice touched on a note of compassion. “That was the first time I ever saw you. I couldn’t believe—” Her seriousness broke with a little laugh. “I couldn’t believe that any factory ‘worm’ would whistle at me. They’re just not interested, you know.”
“This factory malady is a hellish thing,” he said. “But if it comes over me—let it come. I want to know what’s happening.”
“It’ll get you if you keep working there.”
“I think it’s started to get me already.”
She took hi
s arm. It was friendly of her to walk along with him that way in the darkness. They came to a tiny brook at the edge of town. He picked her up gently and lifted her over.
“It hasn’t got you yet, Mr. Silbert,” she said, and he could see a mischievous twinkle in her keen dark eyes.
“When it gets me, I’ll be Mr. Silbert to you. Meanwhile, the name is Dave.” They watched their shadows as they passed under the streetlights. It was nearly two o’clock m the morning. The police cars weren’t cruising the streets at this sleepy hour. Eudora seemed much gayer and more girlish than Dave had seen her before. She led the way across to a statue in the center of the street.
“I wonder how I would look in that gold dress, David.”
“I’m sorry. It just wouldn’t become you. That imitation stuff is fit for nobody but the Empress.”
“Look, David, my shadow is almost the same size as the statue lady.”
“Shall I life you up on the pedestal?” He did so, and when he lifted her down again, he held her in his arms for a long moment. Somehow he forgot all about being a woman hater. Somehow he forgot that the smiles of several attractive girls in the past few months had repelled him. Somehow everything was different in this magic hour. He wanted to kiss Eudora, and he did,
She was looking at him then. Not angrily, but questioningly. He smiled at her.
“You see,” he said—as if any such halting explanation were necessary, “if this factory curse does get me, I’m curious to see whether I’ll remember any of the important things—like this.”
Within two weeks the factory curse was on him completely. When the quiet rains fell over Woman’s Island, he had to be reminded by Happy to take an umbrella.
When Eudora came over after his working day to talk to him, he paid no attention to her. He fell asleep in his chair.
On the morning of the hanging, he listened to a little of the talk among the people around him in the city square. He heard them say that the Empress had put a stop to the rumors. She was not postponing the execution. If she wanted more statues, she could find other sculptors beyond the sea.
