City of Endless Night

by Hastings , Milo M. ;

  ‘I began thirty,’ continued the workman, ‘I came up one almost every year, one year I came up two at once. Pretty good, yes? One more to come.’

  ‘What then?’ I asked.

  The big fellow smiled with a childish pride, and doubling up his arm, as huge as an average man’s thigh, he patted his biceps. ‘I get it all right. I pass examination, no flaws in me, never been to hospital, not one day. Yes, I get it.’

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘Paternity,’ said the man in a lower voice, as he glanced about to see if any of his fellows was listening. ‘Paternity, you know? Women!’

  I thought of many questions but feared to ask them. The worker waited for some men to pass, then he bent over me, grinning sardonically. ‘Did you see them? You have seen women, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I ventured, ‘I have seen women.’

  ‘Pretty good, beautiful, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I stammered, ‘they are very beautiful.’ But I was getting nervous and moved away. The workman, hesitating a little, then followed at my side.

  ‘But tell me,’ I said, ‘about these calories. What did you do to get the big meals? Why do some get more to eat than others?’

  ‘Better man,’ he replied without hesitation.

  ‘But what makes a better man?’

  ‘You don’t know; of course, you are an intellectual and don’t work. But we work hard. The harder we work the more we eat. I load aluminum pigs on the elevator. One pig is two calories, nineteen hundred pigs a day, pretty good, yes? All kind of work has its calories, so many for each thing to do.

  ‘More work, more food it takes to do it. They say all is alike, that no one can get fat. But all work calories are not alike because some men get fatter than others. I don’t get fat; my work is hard. I ought to get two and a half calories for each pig I load. Still I do not get thin, but I do not play hard in gymnasium, see? Those lathe men, they got it too easy and they play hard in gymnasium. I don’t care if you do report. I got it mad at them; they got it too easy. One got paternity last year already, and he is not as good a man as I am. I could throw him over my shoulder in wrestling. Do you not think they get it too easy?’

  ‘Do the men like this system,’ I asked; ‘the measuring of food by the amount of work one does? Do any of them talk about it and demand that all be fed alike?’

  ‘The skinny minimum eaters do,’ said the workman with a sneer, ‘when we let them talk, which isn’t often, but when they get a chance they talk Bellamism. But what if they do talk, it does them no good. We have a red flag, we have Imperial Socialism; we have the House of Hohenzollern. Well, then, I say, let them talk if they want to, every man must eat according to his work; that is socialism. We can’t have Bellamism when we have socialism.’

  This speech, so much more informative and evidencing a knowledge I had not anticipated, quite disturbed me. ‘You talk about these things,’ I ventured, ‘in your Free Speech Halls?’

  The hitherto pleasant face of the workingman altered to an ugly frown.

  ‘No you don’t,’ he growled, ‘you don’t think because I talk to you, that you can go asking me what is not your right to know, even if you are an officer?’

  I remained discreetly silent, but continued to walk at the side of the striding giant. Presently I asked:

  ‘What do you do now, are you going to work?’

  ‘No,’ he said, looking at me doubtfully, ‘that was dinner, not breakfast. I am going now to the picture hall.’

  ‘And then,’ I asked, ‘do you go to bed?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘we then go to the gymnasium or the gaming tables. Six hours’ work, six hours’ sleep, and four hours for amusement.’

  ‘And what do you do,’ I asked, ‘the remainder of the day?’

  He turned and stared at me. ‘That is all we get here, sixteen hours. This is the metal workers’ level. Some levels get twenty hours. It depends on the work.’

  ‘But,’ I said, ‘a real day has twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I’ve heard,’ he said, ‘that it does on the upper levels.’

  ‘But,’ I protested, ‘I mean a real day – a day of the sun. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘we see the pictures of the Place in the Sun. That’s a fine show.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘then you have pictures of the sun?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, ‘the sun that shines upon the throne. We all see that.’

  At the time I could not comprehend this reference, but I made bold to ask if it were forbidden me to go to his picture hall.

  ‘I can’t make out,’ he said, ‘why you want to see, but I never heard of any order forbidding it.

  ‘I go here,’ he remarked, as we came to a picture theatre.

  I let my Herculean companion enter alone, but followed him shortly and found a seat in a secluded corner. No one disputed my presence.

  The music that filled the hall from some hidden horn was loud and, in a rough way, joyous. The pictures – evidently carefully prepared for such an audience – were limited to the life that these men knew. The themes were chiefly of athletic contests, of boxing, wrestling and feats of strength. There were also pictures of working contests, always ending by the awarding of honors by some much bespangled official. But of love and romance, of intrigue and adventure, of pathos and mirth, these pictures were strangely devoid – there was, in fact, no woman’s likeness cast upon the screen and no pictures depicting emotion or sentiment.

  As I watched the sterile flittings of the picture screen I decided, despite the glimmering of intelligence that my talking Hercules had shown in reference to socialism and Bellamism and the secrets of the Free Speech Halls, that these men were merely great stupid beasts of burden.

  They worked, they fed, they drank, they played exuberantly in their gymnasiums and swimming pools, they played long and eagerly at games of chance. Beyond this their lives were essentially blank. Ambition and curiosity they had none beyond the narrow circle of their round of living. But for all that they were docile, contented and, within their limitations, not unhappy. To me they seemed more and more to be like well cared for domestic animals, and I found myself wondering, as I left the hall, why we of the outer world had not thought to produce pictures in similar vein to entertain our dogs and horses.

  V

  As I returned to my own quarters, I tried to recall the description I had read of the ‘Children of the Abyss’, the dwellers in ancient city slums. There was a certain kinship, no doubt, between those former submerged workers in the democratic world and this labor breed of Berlin. Yet the enslaved and sweated workers of the old regime were always depicted as suffering from poverty, as undersized, ill-nourished and afflicted with disease. The reformers of that day were always talking of sanitary housing, scientific diet and physical efficiency. But here was a race of laborers whose physical welfare was as well taken care of as if they had been prize swine or oxen. There was a paleness of countenance among these laborers of Berlin that to me seemed suggestive of ill health, but I knew that was merely due to lack of sun and did not signify a lack of physical vitality. Mere sun-darkened skin does not mean physiological efficiency, else the negro were the most efficient of races. Men can live without sun, without rain, without contact with the soil, without nature’s greenery and the brotherhood of fellow species in wild haunts. The whole climb of civilization had been away from these primitive things. It had merely been an artificial perfecting of the process of giving the living creature that which is needed for sustenance and propagation in the most concentrated and most economical form, the elimination of nature’s superfluities and wastes.

  As I thought of these things it came over me that this unholy imprisonment of a race was but the logical culmination of mechanical and material civilization. This development among the Germans had been hastened by the necessities of war and siege, yet it was what the whole world had been driving toward since man first used a tool and built a hut. Our own freer civilization o
f the outer world had been achieved only by compromises, by a stubborn resistance against the forces to which we ascribed our progress. We were merely not so completely civilized, because we had never been wholly domesticated.

  As I now record these thoughts on the true significance of the perfected civilization of the Germans I realize that I was even more right than I then knew, for the sunless city of Berlin is of a truth a civilization gone to seed, its people are a domesticated species, they are the logical outcome of science applied to human affairs, with them the prodigality and waste of nature have been eliminated, they have stamped out contagious diseases of every kind, they have substituted for the laws of nature the laws that man may pick by scientific theory and experiment from the multitude of possibilities. Yes, the Germans were civilized. And as I pondered these things I recalled those fairy tales that naturalists tell of the stagnant and fixed society of ants in their subterranean catacombs. These insect species credited for industry and intelligence, have in their lesser world reached a similar perfection of civilization. Ants have a royal house, they have a highly specialized and fixed system of caste, a completely socialized state – yes, a utopia – even as Berlin was a utopia, with the light of the sun and the light of the soul, the soul of the wild free man, forever shut out. Yes, I was walking in utopia, a nightmare at the end of man’s long dream – utopia – Black utopia – City of Endless Night – diabolically compounded of the three elements of civilization in which the Germans had always been supreme – imperialism, science and socialism.

  I Go Pleasuring on the Level of Free Women and Drink Synthetic Beer

  I

  I had returned from my adventure on the labor levels in a mood of somber depression. Alone again in my apartment I found difficulty in getting my mind back upon chemical books. With a sense of relief I reported to Holknecht that I thought myself sufficiently recovered to return to work.

  My laboratory I found to be almost as secluded as my living quarters. I was master there, and as a research worker I reported to no man until I had finished the problem assigned me. From my readings and from Holknecht’s endless talking I had fairly well grasped the problem on which I was supposed to be working, and I now had Holknecht go carefully over the work he had done in my absence and we prepared a report. This I sent to headquarters with a request for permission to start work on another problem, the idea for which I claimed to have conceived on my visit to the attacked potash mines.

  Permission to undertake the new problem was promptly granted. I now set to work to reproduce in a German laboratory the experiments by which I had originally conquered the German gas that had successfully defended those mines from the world for over a century. Though loath to make this revelation, I knew of no other ‘discovery’ wherewith to gain the stakes for which I was playing.

  Events shaped themselves most rapidly along the lines of my best hopes. The new research proved a blanket behind which to hide my ignorance. We needed new material, new apparatus, and new data and I encouraged Holknecht to advise me as to where to obtain these things and so gained requisite working knowledge.

  The experiments and demonstrations finished, I made my report. My immediate superior evidently quickly recognized it as a matter too important for his consideration and dutifully passed it up to his own superiors. In a few days I was notified to prepare for a demonstration before a committee of the Imperial Chemical Staff.

  They came to my small laboratory with much eager curiosity. From their manner of making themselves known to me I realized with joy that they were dealing with a stranger. Indeed it was improbable that it should have been otherwise for there were upwards of fifty thousand chemists of my rank in Berlin.

  The demonstration went off with a flourish and the committee were greatly impressed. Means were at once taken to alter the gas with which the Stassfurt mines were flooded, but I realized that meant nothing since I believed that my companions had abandoned the enterprise and the secret that had enabled me to invade mines had not been shared with anyone in the outer world.

  As I anticipated, my revelation was accepted by the Chemical Staff as evidence of profound scientific genius. It followed as a logical matter that I should be promoted to the highest rank of research chemists with the title of colonel. Because of my youth the more was made of the honor. This promotion entitled me to double my previous salary, to a larger laboratory and larger and better living quarters in a distant part of the city.

  My assistant would now be of the rank I had previously been and as Holknecht was not eligible to such promotion I was removed entirely from all previous acquaintances and surroundings and so greatly decreased the chance of discovery of my true identity.

  II

  After I had removed to my new quarters I was requested to call at the office of the Chemical Staff to discuss the line of research I should next take up. My adviser in this matter was the venerable Herr von Uhl, a white haired old patriarch whose jacket was a mass of decorations. The insignia on the left breast indicating the achievements in chemical science were already familiar to me, but those on the right breast were strange.

  Perhaps I stared at them a little, for the old man, noting my interest, remarked proudly, ‘Yes, I have contributed much glory to the race and our group – one hundred and forty-seven children, one hundred and four of them sons, fifty-eight already of a captain’s rank, and twenty-nine of them colonels – my children of the second and third generation number above two thousand. Only three men living in Berlin have more total descendants – and I am but seventy-eight years of age. If I live to be ninety I shall break all records of the Eugenic Office. It all comes of good breeding and good work. I won my paternity right when I was but twenty-eight, just about your age. If you pass the physical test, perhaps you can duplicate my record. For this early promotion you have won qualifies you mentally.’

  Astonished and alarmed beyond measure I could find no reply and sat staring dumbly, while Herr von Uhl, beginning to speak of chemical matters, inquired if I had any preference as to the problem I should now take up. Incapable of any clear thinking I could only ask if he had any to suggest.

  Immediately the old man’s face brightened. ‘A man of your genius,’ he said, ‘should be permitted to try his brain with the greatest problems on which the life of Germany depends. The Staff discussed this and has assigned you to original research for the finding of a better method of the extraction of protium from the ore. To work on this assignment you must of necessity share grave secrets, which, should they be disclosed, might create profound fears, but your professional honor is a sufficient guarantee of secrecy. In this research you will compete with some of the most distinguished chemists in Berlin. If you should be successful you will be decorated by His Majesty and you will receive a liberal pension commensurate with the value of your discovery.’

  I was profoundly impressed. Evidently I had stumbled upon something of vital importance, the real nature of which I did not in the least comprehend, and happily was not supposed to. The interview was ended by my being entrusted with voluminous unpublished documents which I was told to take home and study. Two armed men were ordered to accompany me and to stand alternate guard outside my apartment while I had the documents in my possession.

  III

  In the quiet of my new abode I unsealed the package. The first sheet contained the official offer of the rewards in store for success with the research. The further papers explained the occasion for the gravity and secrecy, and outlined the problem.

  The colossal consequence of the matter with which I was dealing gripped and thrilled me. Protium, it seemed, was the German name for a rare element of the radium group, which, from its atomic weight and other properties, I recognized as being known to the outside world only as a laboratory curiosity of no industrial significance.

  But, as used by the Germans, this element was the essence of life itself, for by the influence of its emanations, they had achieved the synthesis of protein capable of completely nour
ishing the human body – a thing that could be accomplished in the outside world only through the aid of natural protein derived from plants and animals.

  How I wished, as I read, that my uncle could have shared with me this revelation of a secret that he had spent his life in a fruitless effort to unravel. We had long since discovered how the Germans had synthesized the carbohydrate molecule from carbon dioxide and water and built therefrom the sugars, starches and fat needed for human nutrition. We knew quite as well how they had created the simpler nitrogen compounds, that this last step of synthesizing complete food proteins – a step absolutely essential to the support of human life wholly from synthetic foods – the chemists of the outer world had never mastered.

  But no less interesting than the mere chemistry of all this was the history of it all, and the light it threw on the larger story of how Germany had survived when the scientists of the world had predicted her speedy annihiliation. The original use of protium had, I found, been discovered late in the twentieth century when the protium ores of the Ural Mountains were still available to the German chemists. After Russia had been won by the World Armies, the Germans for a time suffered chronic nitrogen starvation, as they depended on the protium derived from what remained of their agriculture and from the fisheries in the Baltic. As the increasing bombardment from the air herded them within their fast-building armored city, and drove them beneath the soil in all other German territory and from the surface of the sea in the Baltic; they must have perished miserably but for the discovery of a new source of protium.

  This source they had found in the uninhabited islands of the Arctic, where the formation of the Ural Mountains extends beneath the sea. Sending their submarines thence in search of platinum ores they had not found platinum but a limited supply of ore containing the even more valuable protium. By this traffic Germany had survived for a century and a half. The quantity of the rare element needed was small, for its effect, like that of radium, was out of all proportion to its bulk. But this little they must have, and it seems that the supply of ore was failing.