View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction

by Rottensteiner, Franz(Author)

man who hid his eyes behind spectacles had explained that he himself

  didn’t know why. Each individual performs only a little piece of a

  whole job, but how the little pieces would fit together later on doesn’t

  interest them.

  Two days later a small fleet approached the island. A shallow-

  draught barge landed a bulldozer and a dredger. A crane with its

  muscular claw transferred bags of cement, pipes, beams and window

  frames to the beach. Then it summoned all its strength and carefully

  set a great tarpaulin-covered object on the sand, an object so heavy

  that it immediately sank several inches into the ground. Two motor-

  ized anti-tank guns rolled down a runway and came ashore under

  their own power.

  Soldiers with machines quickly dug trenches. The bulldozer toppled

  a grove of palms; the palms tilted and their thick fronds intermingled

  as they collapsed on the sand. Within ten hours the palms had been

  replaced by a barracks with a double roof, and a dugout with concrete

  walls was concealed in the sand.

  The Indians did not watch to the end. At midday the chief went

  down to the beach and looked at the heavens for a long time; to the

  south the sky had become a peculiar red. Then he returned to the

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  huts and spoke to two men. The villagers quickly loaded their

  possessions into two boats and sailed away to another island.

  In the evening a tall, thick-set man with a commander’s insignia on

  his collar spent a long time checking crates, which were piled near the

  barracks, against a list. Everything had to be ready before the next

  group came.

  The construction boss flicked the lights in the barracks on and off,

  and tested the water spigots. The dredger dug a final hole and, with

  the bulldozer, shoved all the debris from the building operation into

  it. Then the soldiers drove both machines to the water’s edge and the

  cranes lifted them aboard the lighter. The soldiers themselves boarded

  an armoured carrier and the whole flotilla sailed away.

  On the island there remained only a corporal with an automatic

  pistol, and a grey-haired civilian with sharp features and hollow

  cheeks. The corporal strolled around the tarpaulin-covered colossus.

  There seemed to be no one around who might be dangerous. He went

  down to the beach and flipped a stone over with his toe; a small crab

  sprang out.

  Then the corporal took his evening meal with the civilian. The

  civilian asked the corporal’s name, the corporal told him. The civilian

  asked where the corporal came from; again; the corporal told him.

  The civilian asked whether the corporal knew what he was guarding;

  the corporal said he didn’t know and wasn’t interested.

  After sunset the civilian strolled around for a while, then crossed

  the island and sat down on the sand near a dense, overgrown bamboo

  thicket. The sky was now filled with vivid blue and green patches, the

  colours mingling and never still; on the horizon there was an even

  brighter band of colour, but above the island itself if was already dark.

  In the northwest a storm was raging over the sea: lightning tore

  through clearly-defined areas of rain; behind the rain a gigantic blue

  cloud suddenly appeared, rising to cover a third of the sky and

  perhaps signalling a typhoon. In the south a chain of clouds, crimson

  below, violet above, filled the air down to the surface of the water.

  Strange, that only one man should be witness to such an extra-

  ordinary, immense, almost overpowering spectacle of light, colour

  and darkness! And it was to be seen only here in this one chosen spot

  in the universe, only once in the endless eternity of time!

  The civilian pulled a notebook from his pocket, thought for a while,

  and began to write. ‘Dear Miriam, I’m tired. I’ve been sleeping poorly

  these days, dozing for ten minutes, then waking with my mind full of

  what I had been thinking of when I went to sleep. I carry on an

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  endless dialogue with myself, as though my consciousness were split

  in two and the halves couldn’t agree. It’s painful. Victory for one side

  would mean defeat for the other, but I am the other, too. So defeat is

  inevitable, either way.

  ‘Let me take events in order. The general has now joined the group

  (not any general, but the one I was counting on). For a long time he

  was off somewhere, but everybody was so aware of his absence that it

  became a kind of presence. I waited for him as I would for a missing

  element in the periodic table, and now he’s here. He hasn’t aged since

  our last meeting, but he looks weathered, harder, and plays the part of

  the old warrior who still has more courage and energy than ten

  younger men. He didn’t recognize me, but I’m not surprised at that.

  People of his type remember only the people on whom their

  promotion depends; his promotion didn’t depend on me when we

  first met. In any case, he’s here. I should, of course, be glad of it, but I feel nothing.

  ‘Why? It’s a long story. A man lives and works and accomplishes

  something important (as I did from 1943 to 1945). He has a family:

  they need him and he needs them. But time passes and the situation

  slowly changes. He stops serving the cause that he still accepts

  intellectually. Then destiny begins to play with him. He finds that

  his wife is a stranger and wants no part of him. Even worse: his

  children are choosing the wrong path. The path had once been the

  right one, when he himself had deliberately travelled it. Now it leads

  to destruction, and the children will travel it to the end. Then the man

  is brought up short: who is responsible for all this? He finds them and

  wants to bring them to judgement.

  ‘All that is a first stage. Now the second. He’s involved in a great

  undertaking which he regards as reasonable and necessary. Men,

  materials and the necessary documents are gathered, and the ava-

  lanche he started rolls on by its own power. Then a moment comes

  when he begins to see that the whole business is false and unreal. But

  now he’s no longer master of what he started. The enterprise runs its

  course, even after he has realized how senseless it is.

  ‘You don’t understand what I’m talking about, dear Miriam? I

  realize that. Moreover, I’m convinced that my sons do not want me to

  avenge them: revenge changes nothing, for it doesn’t change the

  causes of further crimes. My sons look for something else: deeds. Of

  course—but I have no strength left. I’m building a house that’s

  already condemned; and the most terrible moment for me will be

  when the last beam is in place, when I have no further goal in life and

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  am filled with dull, anguished emptiness. Of course, you don’t

  understand. But even if you did, it would make no difference.

  ‘All this has come to me fairly late. The tragedy of life is that you

  become aware of a good many things when it’s too late to change

  them.’

 
The pen ran across the page. The corridors of the War Office, the

  countless ‘secret’, ‘strictly classified’ and ‘top secret’ council sessions, the private conversations, the semi-official meetings with ‘important

  people’, the official meetings with unimportant people, and, most of

  all, the things the civilian had busied himself with in these last years—

  it all flowed out into hasty lines on the paper.

  ‘Now everything is ready and the commission arrives tomorrow.

  Everything is so top secret that we’re not even allowed to use each

  other’s name. No single individual is master of the whole project, and

  if we were all suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, no one could

  ever figure out completely what had been going on.

  ‘I wonder how the commission members would feel it they knew

  what awaited them here?’

  The grey-haired civilian folded the pages neatly together and stuck

  them in his pocket. He couldn’t send them anywhere. Miriam didn’t

  exist. He had written down his thoughts simply in order to come to

  grips with what was going on inside him. For some time now he had

  believed that nothing in his life was as important as that.

  He smoked, gazing upward. The sky was now dark, but not black.

  The darkness was not a solid wall, but transparent and yielding, and

  drew the onlooker’s eyes into the distance.

  The civilian got up, went to the barracks, undressed in the room

  assigned to him, and took fins and diving gear from his suitcase. He

  wanted to see what the currents were like on the southern shore of

  the island.

  He returned to the beach. The wind had died down and there were

  few waves now. He could hear the sea splashing on the distant reef

  and smell the strong night scent of the flowers. He went down into

  the water: it was bitter cold at first but his body soon adapted to it. He put on his diving mask and opened the valve on the oxygen tank.

  A few more steps and he ducked his head under the water.

  Darkness closed about him: a living, transparent darkness, broken

  here and there by points of light which were constellations and

  galaxies of luminescent living things. The swimmer turned on his

  lamp; something iridescent flamed up near him and he shrank back.

  Then he had to laugh under his mask: it was only a sardine, dull grey

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  on land and in the shop window, but gleaming and sparkling here in

  its natural element. A second and third visitor were drawn by the

  light, and soon they were all whirling about him like festive fire-

  works, now blue, now green or brilliant red.

  Gradually the swimmer could distinguish swaying tendrils of solid

  matter. Long red worms came, then other fish, and soon the water

  around him was teeming with life. He drew aside and turned the

  golden beam of light downward to the uneven bottom. The sand

  moved under his feet, molluscs sat in their funnels and drew in

  oxygen, and two round mysterious eyes suddenly gazed at him from a

  small hole. He forgot for a moment why he was on the island.

  The next morning the cutter returned with the commission

  members and the gunners.

  2

  ‘Interesting’, remarked the general. He left the trench wall and

  smilingly brushed the damp sand from his uniform. ‘If this sort of

  thing goes much further, we soldiers will be out of a job, won’t we?’

  The colonel with the jutting jaw looked him in the eye and laughed

  loudly: ‘Probably before we even reach retirement age. Too bad!’

  Everybody in the trench began to move. Men brushed sand from

  their equipment and straightened their uniforms. The fat major took

  off his cap and wiped his perspiring neck and forehead. Then he asked

  the inventor: ‘How does the tank actually work? What’s the main

  principle of the thing?’

  The inventor looked at the major and began to answer, but the

  captain, who was ashamed of the slow-thinking major, broke in: ‘Oh,

  that’s been explained clearly enough. The principle behind it, if I

  understand it correctly, is that the real battle takes place in the mind

  before it breaks out in action. If one of us wants to destroy a tank, he

  thinks about it first, doesn’t he? Let’s suppose I’m a gunner sitting at

  my weapon like the corporal there. Before I shoot, I have to aim the

  gun; only then can I fire it. At this moment my brain sends out a

  special E-wave or ‘‘action wave’’. The instrument panel in the tank

  reacts to this wave, opens the necessary relays, and gives the tank the

  order to move.’

  ‘Maybe so’, insisted the major, ‘but then why doesn’t the tank

  move in reaction to any thought whatever? For example, I’m

  thinking right now that it would be good if the tank took a direct

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  hit on the turret. There’s my thought; but the tank doesn’t move! Yet

  they tell us that all of us, the whole island, will be within the

  machine’s range of action.’

  The inventor shrugged almost imperceptibly. ‘In that case the tank

  would be constantly receiving orders and constantly moving. I told

  you, however, that the mechanism reacts only to E-waves, not to

  normal alpha rhythms. The E-waves arises in the brain only at the

  moment when we are passing into action. In more scientific terms,

  the machine reacts to the charge which arises in the brain once the

  conditional stimulus is received and continues until the unconditional

  stimulus is formed.’

  ‘What the devil! I still don’t understand’, interrupted the colonel

  with the jutting jaw. ‘Why does the tank leave the exact spot the shell

  will hit? After all, I may think of the shell hitting one spot, but it may actually hit another. So, what serves as signal for the mechanism in

  the tank: the actual flight of the shell or my wish?’

  ‘The tank has a computer for that’, the inventor answered. ‘Before

  the gunner beings to fire, he reads the necessary information off his

  instruments: distance to target, speed of the target, direction. He reads it, it remains for a moment in his head, then he transmits it to the

  computer of his gun. But my mechanism in the tank also receives all

  these figures, determines the trajectory of the shell, and moves

  accordingly from the spot where it would be destroyed.’

  The general cleared his throat. He felt the conversation had been

  going on too long with no word from him. ‘But I still don’t think it’s

  the perfect weapon yet.’

  ‘When the perfect weapon is invented’, said the inventor coldly,

  ‘no one will need the professional soldier’s opinion of it.’

  There was silence for a moment, then the colonel laughed. ‘It looks

  as though we’re reaching that point!’ He looked at his superior: ‘What

  do you think, General? Machines will do everything. We’ll simply

  draw our pay.’

  The general smiled and nodded. Then his face grew serious. ‘Well,

  let’s get on with it. Major, give the order to fire.’

  He spoke in a formal tone, but with the throaty hoarseness of the

  supreme commander and father of h
is troops. As he did, he reflected

  that no machine could reproduce these fine distinctions with such

  precision.

  The tests went on. The target, a tank with reinforced armour and a

  short-barrelled gun, stood still until a shot was fired. But the flame of the shot had hardly appeared at the trench when the tank’s treads

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  were moving, the tank sped aside, the shell exploded, shrapnel rattled

  like peas against the armour, and the target was motionless again like

  a gigantic grey rock. At the general’s order the gunners began to fire

  two guns simultaneously at the tank. Clouds of dust mushroomed up

  and the tank disappeared into them, but when dust and sand had

  settled, the tank was still unharmed and waiting calmly and indiffer-

  ently for the next shots.

  By 2:00 p.m., everyone was weary from the heat and the cramped

  quarters of the dugout.

  ‘Splendid!’, said the general. ‘So much for defence. What about

  attack? Command the tank to shoot at the dugout.’

  ‘Of course’, answered the civilian. ‘Just a moment.’

  He was the only non-soldier there, set apart by his rumpled street-

  clothes and unsuitably coloured shirt as well as by polite verbal

  flourishes like ‘gladly’, ‘immediately’ and so on. He went over to an

  instrument that resembled a small radio set, lifted the cover, looked

  in, and touched a knob.

  ‘But I can’t give the order to shoot. The tank wastes no shots and

  does not fire as long as people are unafraid. It goes into action when it receives a signal of fear. That signal is its guide. Shall I switch on?’

  He looked at the general with a gleam in his blue eyes.

  ‘Yes, switch on’, said the general. He looked at his watch. ‘Let the

  tank fire for a while, then we’ll break for lunch.’

  The inventor turned the knob. The instrument squeaked and then

  was quiet again.

  ‘Ready.’

  Everyone looked at the tank. There was no sound from it.

  ‘Something wrong?’, asked the colonel with the jutting jaw.

  The inventor spun around to him. ‘Not at all. Nothing is wrong. The

  tank needs a signal. It doesn’t shoot now because to shoot would be

  pointless. It never wastes ammunition as even your expert gunners

  do. The soldiers are under cover and the shells wouldn’t reach them.

  If the tank is to destroy them, they must feel unprotected and become