The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume VI: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  But meantime[3] the war had gone on with all its concomitant horror, suffering, and loss of life, and the representatives of the nations assembled at Washington had been feverishly attempting to unite upon the terms of a universal treaty that should end militarism and war forever. And thereafter, also, although Professor Hooker was sublimely unconscious of the fact, the celebrated conclave, known as Conference No. 2, composed of the best-known scientific men from every laud, was sitting, perspiring, in the great lecture hall of the Smithsonian Institution, its members shouting at one another in a dozen different languages, telling each other what they did and didn't know, and becoming more and more confused and entangled in an underbrush of contradictory facts and observations and irreconcilable theories until they were making no progress whatever--which was precisely what the astute and plausible Count von Koenitz, the German Ambassador, had planned and intended.

  [Footnote 3: Up to the date of the armistice.]

  The Flying Ring did not again appear, and in spite of the uncontroverted testimony of Acting-Consul Quinn, Mohammed Ben Ali el Bad, and a thousand others who had actually seen the Lavender Ray, people began gradually, almost unconsciously, to assume that the destruction of the Atlas Mountains had been the work of an unsuspected volcano and that the presence of the Flying Ring had been a coincidence and not the cause of the disruption. So the incident passed by and public attention refocussed itself upon the conflict on the plains of Châlons-sur-Marne. Only Bill Hood, Thornton, and a few others in the secret, together with the President, the Cabinet, and the members of Conference No. 1 and of Conference No. 2, truly apprehended the significance of what had occurred, and realized that either war or the human race must pass away forever. And no one at all, save only the German Ambassador and the Imperial German Commissioners, suspected that one of the nations had conceived and was putting into execution a plan designed to result in the acquirement of the secret of how the earth could be rocked and in the capture of the discoverer. For the Sea Fox, bearing the German expeditionary force, had sailed from Amsterdam twelve days after the conference held at Mainz between Professor von Schwenitz and General von Helmuth, and having safely rounded the Orkneys was now already well on its course toward Labrador. Bennie Hooker, however, was ignorant of all these things. Like an immigrant with a tag on his arm, he sat on the train which bore him toward Quebec, his ticket stuck into the band on his hat, dreaming of a transformer that wouldn't--couldn't--melt at only six thousand degrees.

  When Professor Hooker awoke in his room at the hotel in Quebec the morning after his arrival there, he ate a leisurely breakfast, and having smoked a pipe on the terrace, strolled down to the wharves along the river front. Here to his disgust he learned that the Labrador steamer, the Druro, would not sail until the following Thursday--a three days' wait. Apparently Labrador was a less-frequented locality than he had supposed. He mastered his impatience, however, and discovering a library presided over by a highly intelligent graduate of Edinburgh, he became so interested in various profound treatises on physics which he discovered that he almost missed his boat.

  Assisted by the head porter, and staggering under the weight of his new rod cases and other impedimenta, Bennie boarded the Druro on Thursday morning, engaged a stateroom, and purchased a ticket for Seven Islands, which is the nearest harbour to the mouth of the River Moisie. She was a large and comfortable river steamer of about eight hundred and fifty tons, and from her appearance belied the fact that she was the connecting link between civilization and the desolate and ice-clad wastes of the Far North, as in fact she was. The captain regarded Bennie with indifference, if not disrespect, grunted, and ascending to the pilot house blew the whistle. Quebec, with its teeming wharves and crowded shipping, overlooked by the cliffs that made Wolfe famous, slowly fell behind. Off their leeward bow the Isle of Orléans swung nearer and swept past, its neat homesteads inviting the weary traveller to pastoral repose. The river cleared. Low, farm-clad shores began to slip by. The few tourists and returning habitans settled themselves in the bow and made ready for their voyage.

  There would have been much to interest the ordinary American traveller in this comparatively unfrequented corner of his native continent; but our salmon fisherman, having conveniently disposed of his baggage, immediately retired to his stateroom and, intent on saving time, proceeded, wholly oblivious of the Druro, to read passionately several exceedingly uninviting looking books which he produced from his valise. The Druro, quite as oblivious to Professor Hooker, proceeded on her accustomed way, passed by Tadousac, and made her first stop at the Godbout. Bennie, finding the boat no longer in motion, reappeared on deck under the mistaken impression that they had reached the end of the voyage, for he was unfamiliar with the topography of the St. Lawrence, and in fact had very vague ideas as to distances and the time required to traverse them by rail or boat.

  At the Godbout the Druro dropped a habitan or two, a few boatloads of steel rods, crates of crockery and tobacco, and then thrust her bow out into the stream and steered down river, rounding at length the Pointe des Monts and winding in behind the Isles des Oeufs to the River Pentecoute, where she deposited some more habitans, including a priest in a black soutane, who somewhat incongruously was smoking a large cigar. Then, nosing through a fog bank and breaking out at last into sunlight again, she steamed across and put in past the Carousel, that picturesque and rocky headland, into Seven Islands Bay. Here she anchored, and, having discharged cargo, steamed out by the Grand Boule, where eighteen miles beyond the islands Bennie saw the pilot house of the old St. Olaf, of unhappy memory, just lifting above the water.

  He had emerged from the retirement of his stateroom only on being asked by the steward for his ticket and learning that the Druro was nearing the end of her journey. For nearly two days he had been submerged in Soddy on The Interpretation of Radium. The Druro was running along a sandy, low-lying beach about half a mile offshore. They were nearing the mouth of a wide river. The volume of black fresh water from the Moisie rushed out into the St. Lawrence until it met the green sea water, causing a sharp demarcation of colour and a no less pronounced conflict of natural forces. For, owing to the pressure of the tide against the solid mass of the fresh stream, acres of water unexpectedly boiled on all sides, throwing geysers of foam twenty feet or more into the air, and then subsided. Off the point the engine bell rang twice, and the Druro came to a pause.

  Bennie, standing in the bow, in his sportsman's cap and waterproof, hugging his rod cases to his breast, watched while a heterogeneous fleet of canoes, skiffs, and sailboats came racing out from shore, for the steamer does not land here, but hangs in the offing and lighters its cargo ashore. Leading the lot was a sort of whaleboat propelled by two oars on one side and one on the other, and in the sternsheets sat a rosy-cheeked, good-natured looking man with a smooth-shaven face who Bennie knew must be Malcolm Holliday.

  "Hello, Cap!" shouted Holliday. "Any passengers?"

  The captain from the pilot house waved contemptuously in Bennie's general direction.

  "Howdy!" said Holliday. "What do you want? What can I do for you?"

  "I thought I'd try a little salmon fishing," shrieked Bennie back at him.

  Holliday shook his head. "Sorry," he bellowed, "river's leased. Besides, the officers[4] are here."

  [Footnote 4: Along the St. Lawrence and the Labrador coast a salmon fisherman is always spoken of by natives and local residents as an "officer," the reason being that most of the sportsmen who visit these waters are English army officers. Hence salmon fishermen are universally termed "officers," and a habitan will describe the sportsmen who have rented a certain river as "les officiers de la Moisie" or "les officiers de la Romaine."]

  "Oh!" answered Bennie ruefully. "I didn't know. I supposed I could fish anywhere."

  "Well, you can't!" snapped Holliday, puzzled by the little man's curious appearance.

  "I suppose I can go ashore, can't I?" insisted Bennie somewhat indignantly. "I'll just take a camping tr
ip then. I'd like to see the big salmon cache up at the forks if I can't do anything else."

  Instantly Holliday scented something. "Another fellow after gold," he muttered to himself.

  Just at that moment, the tide being at the ebb, a hundred acres of green water off the Druro's bow broke into whirling waves and jets of foam again. All about them, and a mile to seaward, these merry men danced by the score. Bennie thrilled at the beauty of it. The whaleboat containing Holliday was now right under the ship's bows.

  "I want to look round anyhow," expostulated Bennie. "I've come all the way from Boston." He felt himself treated like a criminal, felt the suspicion in Holliday's eye.

  The factor laughed. "In that case you certainly deserve sympathy." Then he hesitated. "Oh, well, come along," he said finally. "We'll see what we can do for you."

  A rope ladder had been thrown over the side and one of the sailors now lowered Bennie's luggage into the boat. The professor followed, avoiding with difficulty stepping on his mackintosh as he climbed down the slippery rounds. Holliday grasped his hand and yanked him to a seat in the stern.

  "Yes," he repeated, "if you've come all the way from Boston I guess we'll have to put you up for a few days anyway."

  A crate of canned goods, a parcel of mail, and a huge bundle of newspapers were deposited in the bow. Holliday waved his hand. The Druro churned the water and swung out into midstream again. Bennie looked curiously after her. To the north lay a sandy shore dotted by a scraggy forest of dwarf spruce and birch. A few fishing huts and a mass of wooden shanties fringed the forest. To the east, seaward, many miles down that great stretch of treacherous, sullen river waited a gray bank of fog. But overhead the air was crystalline with that sparkling, scratchy brilliance that is found only in northern climes. Nature seemed hard, relentless. With his feet entangled in rod cases Professor Hooker wondered for a moment what on earth he was there for, landing on this inhospitable coast. Then his eyes sought the genial face of Malcolm Holliday and hope sprang up anew. For there is that about this genial frontiersman that draws all men to him alike, be they Scotch or English, Canadian habitans or Montagnais, and he is the king of the coast, as his father was before him, or as was old Peter McKenzie, the head factor, who incidentally cast the best salmon fly ever thrown east of Montreal or south of Ungava. Bennie found comfort in Holliday's smile, and felt toward him as a child does toward its mother.

  They neared shore and ran alongside a ramshackle pier, up the slippery poles of which Bennie was instructed to clamber. Then, dodging rotten boards and treacherous places, he gained the sand of the beach and stood at last on Labrador. A group of Montagnais picked up the professor's luggage and, headed by Holliday, they started for the latter's house. It was a strange and amusing landing of an expedition the results of which have revolutionized the life of the inhabitants of the entire globe. No such inconspicuous event has ever had so momentous a conclusion. And now when Malcolm Holliday makes his yearly trip home to Quebec, to report to the firm of Holliday Brothers, who own all the nets far east of Anticosti, he spends hours at the Club des Voyageurs, recounting in detail all the circumstances surrounding the arrival of Professor Hooker and how he took him for a gold hunter.

  "Anyhow," he finishes, "I knew he wasn't a salmon fisherman in spite of his rods and cases, for he didn't know a Black Dose from a Thunder and Lightning or a Jock Scott, and he thought you could catch salmon with a worm!"

  It was true wholly. Bennie did suppose one killed the king of game fish as he had caught minnows in his childhood, and his geologic researches in the Harvard Library had not taught him otherwise. Neither had his tailor.

  "My dear fellow," said Holliday as they smoked their pipes on the narrow board piazza at the Post, "of course I'll help you all I can, but you've come at a bad season of the year all round. In the first place, you'll be eaten alive by black flies, gnats, and mosquitoes." He slapped vigorously as he spoke. "And you'll have the devil of a job getting canoe men. You see all the Montagnais are down here at the settlement 'making their mass.' Once a year they leave the hunting grounds up by the Divide and beyond and come down river to 'faire la messe'--it's a sacred duty with 'em. They're very religious, as you probably know--a fine lot, too, take 'em altogether, gentle, obedient, industrious, polite, cheerful, and fair to middling honest. They have a good deal of French blood--a bit diluted, but it's there."

  "Can't I get a few to go along with me?" asked Bennie anxiously.

  "That's a question," answered the factor meditatively. "You know how the birds--how caribou--migrate every year. Well, these Montagnais are just like them. They have a regular routine. Each man has a line of traps of his own, all the way up to the Height of Land. They all go up river in the autumn with their winter's supply of pork, flour, tea, powder, lead, axes, files, rosin to mend their canoes, and castoreum--made out of beaver glands, you know--to take away the smell of their hands from the baited traps. They go up in families, six or seven canoes together, and as each man reaches his own territory his canoe drops out of the procession and he makes a camp for his wife and babies. Then he spends the winter--six or seven months--in the woods following his line of traps. By and by the ice goes out and he begins to want some society. He hasn't seen a priest for ten months or so, and he's afraid of the loup-garou, for all I know. So he comes down river, takes his Newport season here at Moisie, and goes to mass and staves off the loup-garou. They're all here now. Maybe you can get a couple to go up river and maybe you can't."

  Then observing Bennie's crestfallen expression, he added:

  "But we'll see. Perhaps you can get Marc St. Ange and Edouard Moreau, both good fellows. They've made their mass and they know the country from here to Ungava. There's Marc now--Venez ici, Marc St. Ange." A swarthy, lithe Montagnais was coming down the road, and Holliday addressed him rapidly in habitan French: "This gentleman wishes to go up river to the forks to see the big cache. Will you go with him?"

  The Montagnais bowed to Professor Hooker and pondered the suggestion. Then he gesticulated toward the north and seemed to Bennie to be telling a long story.

  Holliday laughed again. "Marc says he will go," he commented shortly. "But he says also that if the Great Father of the Marionettes is angry he will come back."

  "What does he mean by that?" asked Bennie.

  "Why, when the aurora borealis--Northern Lights--plays in the sky the Indians always say that the 'marionettes are dancing.' About four weeks ago we had some electrical disturbances up here and a kind of an earthquake. It scared these Indians silly. There was a tremendous display, almost like a volcano. It beat anything I ever saw, and I've been here fifteen years. The Indians said the Father of the Marionettes was angry because they didn't dance enough to suit him, and that he was making them dance. Then some of them caught a glimpse of a shooting star, or a comet, or something, and called it the Father of the Marionettes. They had quite a time--held masses, and so on--and were really cut up. But the thing is over now, except for the regular, ordinary display."

  "When can they be ready?" inquired Bennie eagerly.

  "To-morrow morning," replied Holliday. "Marc will engage his uncle. They're all right. Now how about an outfit? But don't talk any more about salmon. I know what you're after--it's gold!"

  * * * * *

  The moon was still hanging low over the firs at four o'clock the next morning when three black and silent shadows emerged from the factor's house and made their way, cautiously and with difficulty, across the sand to where a canoe had been run into the riffles of the beach. Marc came first, carrying a sheet-iron stove with a collapsible funnel; then his Uncle Edouard, shouldering a bundle consisting of a tent and a couple of sacks of flour and pork; and lastly Professor Hooker with his mackintosh and rifle, entirely unaware of the fact that his careful guides had removed all the cartridges from his luggage lest he should shoot too many caribou and so spoil the winter's food supply. It was cold, almost frosty. In the black flood of the river the stars burned with a chill, wavering li
ght. Bennie put on his mackintosh with a shiver. The two guides quietly piled the luggage in the centre of the canoe, arranged a seat for their passenger, picked up their paddles, shoved off, and took their places in bow and stern.

  No lights gleamed in the windows of Moisie. The lap of the ripples against the birch side of the canoe, the gurgle of the water round the paddle blades, and the rush of the bow as, after it had paused on the withdraw, it leaped forward on the stroke, were the only sounds that broke the deathlike silence of the semi-arctic night. Bennie struck a match, and it flared red against the black water as he lit his pipe, but he felt a great stirring within his little breast, a great courage to dare, to do, for he was off, really off, on his great hunt, his search for the secret that would remake the world. With the current whispering against its sides the canoe swept in a wide circle to midstream. The moon was now partially obscured behind the treetops. To the east a faint glow made the horizon seem blacker than ever. Ahead the wide waste of the dark river seemed like an engulfing chasm. Drowsiness enwrapped Professor Hooker, a drowsiness intensified by the rythmic swinging of the paddles and the pile of bedding against which he reclined. He closed his eyes, content to be driven onward toward the region of his hopes, content almost to fall asleep.

  "Hi!" suddenly whispered Marc St. Ange. "Voilà! Le père des marionettes!"

  Bennie awoke with a start that almost upset the canoe. The blood rushed to his face and sang in his ears.

  "Where?" he cried. "Where?"

  "Au nord," answered Marc. "Mais il descend!"

  Professor Hooker stared in the direction of Marc's uplifted paddle. Was he deceived? Was the wish father to the thought? Or did he really see at an immeasurable distance upon the horizon a quickly dying trail of orange-yellow light? He rubbed his eyes--his heart beating wildly under his sportsman's suiting. But the north was black beyond the coming dawn.