Scientific Romance

by Brian Stableford

  By the kindly rule of the phalanstery, every mother had complete freedom from household duties for two years after the birth of her child; and Clarence, though he would not willingly have given up his own particular work in the grounds and garden, spent all the time he could spare from his short daily task (everyone worked five hours every lawful day, and few worked longer, save on special emergencies) by Olive’s side.

  At last, the eight decades passed slowly away, and the fatal day for the removal of little Rosebud arrived. Olive called her Rosebud because, she said, she was a sweet bud that could never be opened into a full-blown rose. All the community felt the solemnity of the painful occasion, and by common consent the day (Darwin, December 20) was held as an intra-phalansteric fast by the whole body of brothers and sisters.

  On that terrible morning Olive rose early, and dressed herself carefully in a long white stole with a broad black border of Greek key pattern. But she had not the heart to put any black upon dear little Rosebud, and so she put on her fine flannel wrapper, and decorated it instead with the pretty colored things that Vernia and Philomela had worked for her, to make her baby as beautiful as possible on this last day in a world of happiness.

  The other girls helped her and tried to sustain her, crying all together at the sad event.

  “She’s a sweet little thing,” they said to one another as they held her up to see how she looked. “If only it could have been her reception today instead of her removal!”

  But Olive moved through them all with stoical resignation—dry-eyed and parched in the throat, yet saying not a word save for necessary instructions and directions to the nursing sisters. The iron of her creed had entered into her very soul.

  After breakfast, brother Eustace and the hierarch came sadly in their official robs into the lesser infirmary. Olive was there already, pale and trembling, with little Rosebud sleeping peacefully in the hollow of her lap. What a picture she looked, the wee dear thing, with the hothouse flowers from the conservatory that Clarence had brought to adorn her fastened neatly on to her fine flannel robe!

  The physiologist took out a little phial from his pocket and began to open a sort of inhaler of white muslin. At the same moment, the grave, kind old hierarch stretched out his hands to take the sleeping baby from its mother’s arms. Olive shrank back in terror, and clasped the child softly to her heart. “No, no, let me hold her myself, dear hierarch,” she said, without flinching. “Grant me this one last favor. Let me hold her myself.”

  It was contrary to all fixed rules, but neither the hierarch nor anyone else there present had the heart to refuse that beseeching voice on so supreme and spirit-rending an occasion.

  Brother Eustace poured the chloroform solemnly and quietly on to the muslin inhaler.

  “By resolution of the phalanstery,” he said, in a voice husky with emotion, “I release you, Rosebud, from a life for which you are naturally unfitted. In pity for our hard fate, we save you from the misfortune you have never known, and will never now experience.”

  As he spoke, he held the inhaler to the baby’s face, and watched its breathing grow fainter and fainter, till at last, after a few minutes, it faded gradually and entirely away. The little one had slept from life into death, painlessly and happily, even as they looked.

  Clarence, tearful but silent, felt the baby’s pulse for a moment, and then, with a burst of tears, shook his head bitterly. “It is all over,” he cried, with a loud cry. “It is all over; and we hope and trust it is better so.”

  But Olive still said nothing.

  The physiologist turned to her with an anxious gaze. Her eyes were open, but they looked blank and staring into vacant space. He took her hand, and it felt limp and powerless. “Great heaven,” he cried, in evident alarm, “what is this? Olive, Olive, our dear Olive, why don’t you speak?”

  Clarence sprang up from the ground, where he had knelt to try the dead baby’s pulse, and took her unresisting wrist anxiously in his. “Oh, brother Eustace,” he cried, passionately, “help us, save us. What’s the matter with Olive? She’s fainting, she’s fainting! I can’t feel her heart beat, no, not ever so little.”

  Brother Eustace let the pale white hand drop listlessly from his grasp upon the pale white stole beneath, and answered slowly and distinctly: “She isn’t fainting, Clarence; not fainting, my dear brother. The shock and the fumes of the chloroform together have been too much for the action of her heart. She’s dead too, Clarence; our dear, dear sister; she’s dead too.”

  Clarence flung his arms wildly round Olive’s neck, and listened eagerly with his ear against her bosom to hear her heart beat. But no sound came from the folds of the simple black-bordered stole; no sound from anywhere save the suppressed sobs of the frightened women who huddled closely together in the corner, and gazed horror-stricken upon the two warm fresh corpses.

  “She was a brave girl,” brother Eustace said at last, wiping his eyes and composing her hands reverently. “Olive was a brave girl, and she died doing her duty, without one murmur against the sad necessity that fate had unhappily placed upon her. No sister on earth could wish to die more nobly than by thus sacrificing her own life and her own weak human affections on the altar of humanity for the sake of her child and of the world at large.”

  “And yet I sometimes almost fancy,” the hierarch murmured, with a violent effort to control his emotions, “when I see a scene like his, that even the unenlightened practices of the old era may not have been quite so bad as we usually think them, for all that. Surely an end such as Olive’s is a sad and terrible end to have forced upon us as the final outcome and natural close of all our modern phalansteric civilization.”

  “The ways of the Cosmos are wonderful,” said brother Eustace solemnly, “and we, who are no more than atoms and mites upon the surface of its meanest satellite, cannot hope so to order all things after our own fashion that all its minutest turns and chances may approve themselves to us as right in our own eyes.”

  The sisters all made instinctively the reverential genuflection. “The Cosmos is infinite,” they said together, in the fixed formula of their cherished religion. “The Cosmos is infinite, and man is but a parasite upon the face of the last among its satellite members. May we so act as to further all that is best within us, and to fulfill our own small place in the system of the Cosmos with all becoming reverence and humility! In the name of universal Humanity. So be it.”

  THE SALVATION OF NATURE

  JOHN DAVIDSON

  John Davidson (1857–1909) was a Scottish poet and playwright who made several ventures into humorous scientific romance, most extensively in A Full and True Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender (1895), a farce whose hero attempts in a cavalier fashion to take advantage of his conviction that he is a Nietzschean übermensch favored by evolution. Far more earnest are a series of long poetic “Testaments,” the last of which, The Testament of John Davidson (1908), published shortly before his death—presumed to be suicide—offers an extravagant cosmic vision.

  “The Salvation of Nature” was Davidson’s first scientific romance, reprinted in The Great Men; and A Practical Novelist (1891) and The Pilgrimage of Strongsoul and Other Stories (1896), and it remains the most interesting, although it is something of a patchwork; it anticipates the idea of “nature reserves” and also that of “theme parks,” while making a flippantly eccentric contribution to the subgenre of modern apocalyptic fantasies.

  On the day that Sir Wenyeve Westaway’s World’s Pleasance Bill became law, the happy baronet kissed his wife and said, “Lily, darling, it has taken twenty years, but we have saved Nature.”

  “Never mind, dear,” said Lady Westaway, who, though a true helpmeet, loved to quit her husband, “the time has not been wholly wasted.”

  “Wholly wasted!” cried Sir Wenyeve, too much in earnest for even the mildest persiflage. “The salvation of Nature is a task worthy of an antediluvian lifetime.”

  “In the longest life there is only one youth
,” sighed Lady Westaway, as she left the library.

  She was thirty-five years old, and her married life had been a continuous intrigue to bring about the fulfillment of her husband’s dream. Now that his object was gained, she felt that her youth and prime had passed like a rout at the close of the season—stale, unenjoyed, immemorable. But she dressed beautifully on the night of her husband’s triumph; and the subtler of her guests mistook the sadness in her eyes and voice for the melancholy which overcomes some natures when an arduous undertaking is accomplished.

  The day after Sir Wenyeve’s banquet celebrating the passage of his Bill, two thousand clerks and message boys posted two million copies of the following prospectus. The list of directors, financial agents, bankers, managers, and other uninteresting details are omitted:

  THE WORLD’S PLEASANCE COMPANY, LIMITED

  Incorporated under the Companies Acts

  Capital . . . £200,000,000

  Issue of 1,000,000 shares of £100 each, of which £50 is called up as follows: £5 on application. £5 on allotment. £20 on May 1, and £20 on July 1. The remaining £50 per share is to form security for debentures.

  The capital of the company is divided into 2,000,000 shares of £100 each, of which—

  1,650,000 shares will be issued as ordinary shares, entitled to a cumulative dividend of 15% before the deferred shares participate in profit.

  350,000 shares as deferred shares to be issued at £50 paid, which will not be entitled to participate in dividend until 15% has been paid on the paid up capital of the ordinary shareholders.

  The deferred shares and 600,000 of the ordinary shares will be taken by the promoters in part payment of the price.

  This company has been incorporated for the purpose of acquiring that part of Great Britain known as the kingdom of Scotland, with the outer and inner Hebrides and the Orkney and Shetland Isles.

  It is estimated that three-quarters of the capital of the company will be expended on the purchase of Scotland; the remainder to be devoted—

  1.To the demolition of all manufactories, foundries, building-yards, railways, tramways, walls, fences, and all unnatural divisions, and of all buildings, with some few exceptions, of a later date than 1700 A.D.

  2.To the purchase of a number of the Polynesian Islands.

  3.To the importation of these islands and the distribution of their soil over the razed cities, towns, villages, etc.

  When the land has thus been restored to the bosom of Nature, it will remain there unmolested for a year or two. At the end of this nursing-time, Scotland, having been in a manner born again, will be called by its new name, “The World’s Pleasance”; and visitors will be admitted during the six months of summer and autumn on payment of £50 for each individual per month. At the rate of 100,000 visitors per month, this will give an income of £30,000,000. Figures like these need no comment.

  Every species of tent, marquee, awning and canvas or waterproof erection; every species of rowing or sailing vessel; and every species of rational land conveyance will be permitted in the World’s Pleasance; but there must not be laid one stone upon another; nor shall steam, electricity or hydraulic power be used for any purpose, except for the working of Professor Penpergwyn’s dew-condensers. One of these machines will be erected at John o’Groat’s House, and another at Kirkmaiden. Professor Penpergwyn has recently, at the request of the promoters of this company, devoted all his time to perfecting his celebrated apparatus; and we are happy to be able to state that the cloud-compelling attachment for withholding rain from an area greater than half of Scotland, now works with the requisite power, regularity and delicacy; while the dew-condensers proper can, at a moment’s notice, fill the air with any degree of moisture, from the filmiest mist to a deluge.

  The promoters of the company congratulate themselves, and the people of every continent, on the salvation of a fragment of the Old World from the jaws of Civilization; and in conclusion they think they cannot do better than quote the peroration of Sir Wenyeve Westaway’s great speech on the motion for the third reading of the Bill with which his name will be associated to the end of time. The honorable baronet said in conclusion:

  “If you would loosen the shackles which bind the poetry and art of the day; if you would give a little ease to the voiceless, suffering earth, crushed in the iron shell of civilization, like the skull of a martyr in that Venetian head-screw which ground to a pulp bone and brain and flesh; if, in a word, you would provide a home, a second Academe, a new Arcadia for poetry and art, these illustrious outcasts; if you would save Nature, you will pass this Bill. Make Scotland the World’s Pleasance, and I venture to predict that the benefits springing from such a recreation-ground to Art and Morality will be so immense, that the world will bless, as long as the earth endures, the legislators who licensed the creation of a second Eden.”

  The demand for shares during the week in which the prospectus was published was more than double the supply. Ling-long, the perpetual president of the United States, applied for a thousand; but his Perpetuity had to be content with ten. All the kings and queens in the world took as many as could be allotted to them. The ancient list of the world’s seven wonders was cancelled, and the company’s palatial and labyrinthine offices on the English banks of the Tweed became the initial wonder of a new one. And Sir Wenyeve Westaway? He was made a peer of the realm, and the company, in the joy of success, voted him for two lives the sole right of visiting the island of Arran.

  Professor Penpergwyn superintended the destruction of civilized Scotland. Electrite was the explosive used, on account of the precision with which the upheaval produced by a given charge could be calculated. It was possible with this remarkable invention to destroy one half of a building, and leave the other undamaged; for the debris fell back, like an ill-thrown boomerang, exactly to the spot whence it had shot up. The Professor was truly a great man.

  When all the railways and tramways had been removed, and sold at great profit to the Chinese; when all the wires had been prepared, and half the known tar, and every tar-barrel beneath the sun had been duly distributed among the buildings to be deracinated, he let the world into the secret of the broad and lofty piers which he had erected on many parts of the Scottish coast, at various distances from the shore. From them the public could view the great fire, on payment to the Professor of three guineas per head. He provided no conveyance to or from the piers. He guaranteed nothing, either regarding their security or the width of view they commanded. You paid your money and took your chance. Two million people bought tickets. The Professor’s profit, deducting the cost of the piers, and of the huge army of ticket-collectors, was £2,000,000.

  On the last night of the year, Scotland was set on fire. The Professor had utilized the Scotch telegraph wires. By their means all his mines were connected with the battery at which he sat in London, waiting impatiently till ten should strike. In the moment of the last stroke he touched the machine; then he set off for Kamchatka with his wife and only daughter, a child of seven years.

  As will be surmised, this extraordinary man was not the only individual who waited with impatience till ten o’clock that night. All England, all the world, was en fête. Miniature explosions were prepared in every town and hamlet, in nearly every street and lane in the four quarters of the globe—each little mine surrounded by a restless mob. But the most impatient of all the inhabitants of the earth were the two millions of men and women who crowded the Professor’s piers.

  At a minute from ten, the human zone girdling Scotland was as silent as death. All the clocks in all the towers and steeples in the doomed country had been wound up for that night. There was no wind and the air was frosty. When the hour rang—the last hour that should ever ring in Scotland—pealing in many tones, but harmonized by the distance to the ears of the listeners, so that poets thought of swan-songs and the phoenix, and the most prosaic remembered the death-knell—a strong thrill passed through the multitude and a rustle went about from pier to pier, lik
e a wind wandering among the woods. Not a star could be seen. Scotland was only discerned as a more intense blackness in the bosom of the night. The silence after the striking of the hour was deeper than before—so deep that the people heard faintly the petty splash of the waves against the piers.

  Suddenly the Cheviots were tipped with fire, and two million faces grew pale. In the same breathless instant these faces, rank after rank, loomed out in the light of the burning country, as the land-wide flash sped over the mountains to Cape Wrath, and a sound as if the thunder of a century had been gathered into one terrific, long-rolling peal shook the whole sea, and forced every head to bend. Then again silence and blackness, uttermost, appalling. All the people trembled. A wife said to her husband in the lowest whisper ever breathed, “I am going mad.”

  “And I too,” he replied hoarsely.

  A sage old man beside them, who overheard their whispers, cried “Hurrah!”

  It broke the spell. From pier to pier the word ran until the shout became general.

  “Hurrah! Hurrah!”—the most voluminous cheer on record—and with that the people fell a-talking.

  “Has it failed?” was the universal question.

  The wise old fellow who had started the cheer thought not.

  “The explosions are over,” he said, “but the fires will soon break out.”

  And he was right. Even as he spoke tongues of flame were jetting up. It was then five minutes past ten. In another minute, Scotland looked like a huge leviathan, spotted and brindled with eyes and stripes of fire. Where the towns were thick these ran into each other, and soon the Lowlands were wrapped in one glowing sheet. The smoke wallowed on high, and dipped and writhed in and out among the flames. Description shrivels before such a scene.