“Sea levels fall and rise,” Ciliax said. “When the ice comes, it locks up the world’s water. Perhaps that is true even of this monstrous world ocean. Perhaps the lower waters expose dry land now submerged, or archipelagos along which one can raft.”
“So in the Ice Age,” I said, “we hunted the mammoths and the giant sloths until we drove them off the continents. But they kept running, and a few of them made it to one island or another, and now they just continue fleeing, heading ever east.” And in this immense ocean, I thought, there was room to keep running and running and running. Nothing need ever go extinct.
“But there are people here,” Jack pointed out. “We saw fires.”
We buzzed along the beach. We dipped low over a kind of camp-site, a mean sort of affair centred on a scrappy hearth. The people, naked, came running out of the forest at our noise – and when they saw us, most of them went running back again. But we got a good look at them, and fired off photographs.
They were people, sort of. They had fat squat bodies, and big chests, and brows like bags of walnuts. I think it was obvious to us all what they were, even to Jack.
“Neanderthals.” Ciliax said it first; it is a German name.
“Another species of – well, animal – which we humans chased out of Africa and Europe and Asia.”
Jack said, “They don’t seem to be smart enough to wipe out the mammoths as we did.”
“Or maybe they’re too smart,” I murmured.
Ciliax said, “What a remarkable discovery: relics of the evolutionary past, even while the evolutionary destiny of mankind is being decided in the heart of Asia!”
Standing orders forbid landings. The chariot lifted us back to the steel safety of the Beast, and that was that.
It is now eight days since we crossed the coast of China. We have come thirty-five thousand miles since. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising to find such strange beasts below, mammoths and cave bears and low-browed savages.
And still we go on. What next? How thrilling it all is!
Day 23. Today, a monstrous electrical storm.
We flew under the worst of it, our banks of engines thrumming, as lightning crackled around the W/T masts. Perhaps in this unending ocean there are unending storms – nobody knows, our meteorologists cannot calculate it.
But we came out of it. Bold technicians crawled out to the wing roots to check over the Beast, to replace a mast or two, and to tend to the chariots. I wanted to check my Spitfire, but predictably was not allowed by Ciliax. Still, Klaus kindly looked over the old bird for me and assures me she is A-OK.
Last night both Ciliax and Jack Bovell made passes at me, the one with a steely resolve, the other rather desperately.
Day 25. A rather momentous day.
Our nominal food and water store is intended to last fifty days. Today, therefore, Day 25, is the turn-back point. And yet we are no nearer finding land, no nearer penetrating the great mysteries of the Pacific.
The Captain had us gather in the larger of the restaurants – we being the passengers and senior officers; the scullery maids were not represented, and nor were the helots, the lost souls of the atom-engine compartment. The Captain himself, on his flight deck, spoke to us by speaker tube; I have yet to see his face.
We discussed whether to continue the mission. We had a briefing by the quartermaster on the state of our supplies, then a debate, followed by a vote. A vote, held on a flying Nazi schlachtschiff. I have no doubt that Captain Fassbender had already made his own decision before we were gathered in the polished oak of the dining room. But he was trying to boost morale – even striving to stave off mutinies in the future. Christopher Columbus used the same tactics, Jack told me, when his crew too felt lost in the midst of another endless ocean.
And, like Columbus, Captain Fassbender won the day. For now we carry on, on half-rations. The movie-makers filmed it all, even though every last man of them, too fond of their grub, voted to turn back.
Day 28. Today we passed over yet another group of islands, quite a major cluster. Captain Fassbender ordered a few hours’ orbit while the chariots went down to explore. Of my little group only I was bothered to ride down, with my friend Klaus. Jack Bovell did not answer my knock on his cabin door; I have not seen him all day. I suspect he has been drinking heavily.
So Klaus and I flew low over forests and patches of grassland. We spooked exotic-looking animals: they were like elephants and buffalo and rhinoceroses. Perhaps they are archaic forms from an age even deeper than the era of ice. Living fossils! I snapped pictures merrily and took notes, and fantasised of presenting my observations to the Royal Geographical Society, as Darwin did on returning from his voyage on the Beagle.
Then I saw people. They were naked, tall, slim, upright. They looked more “modern”, if that is the right word, than the lumpybrowed Neanderthals we saw on the islands of mastodons, many days ago. Yet their heads receded from their foreheads; their shapely skulls can contain little in the way of grey matter, and their pretty brown eyes held only bewilderment. They fled from our approach like the other animals of the savannah.
Primitive they might be, but it appears they lead the march of the hominids, off to the east. I took more photos.
I have begun to develop a theory about the nature of the world, and the surface of the ocean over which we travel – or rather the geometric continuum in which it seems to be embedded. I think the Pacific is a challenge not merely to the cartographic mind but to the mathematical. (I just read those sentences over – how pompous – once a Girton girl, always a Girt on girl!) I’ve yet to talk it over with anybody. Only Wolfgang Ciliax has a hope of understanding me, I think. I prefer to be sure of my ground before I approach him.
Certainly a radical new theory of this ocean of ours is needed. Think of it! Since the coast of Asia we have already travelled far enough to circle the earth nearly five times, if it were not for this oddity, this Fold in the World.
The Pacific is defeating us, I think, crushing our minds with its sheer scale. After only three days on half tuck everybody is grumbling as loudly as their bellies. Yet we go on . . .
Day 33. It has taken me twenty-four hours to get around to this entry. After the events of yesterday the writing of it seemed futile. Courage, Bliss! However bad things are, one must behave as if they are not so, as my mother, a stoical woman, has always said.
It began when Jack Bovell, for the third day in a row, did not emerge from his cabin. One cannot have uncontrollable drunks at large on an aircraft, not even one as large as this. And no part of the Goering, not even passengers’ cabins, can be off-limits to the god-like surveillance of the Captain. So Wolfgang Ciliax led a party of hefty aircrew to Jack’s cabin. I went along at Ciliax’s request, as the nearest thing to a friend Jack has on this crate.
I watched as the Germans broke down Jack’s door. Jack was drunk, but coherent, and belligerent. He took on the Luftwaffe toughs, and as he was held back Ciliax ordered a thorough search of his cabin – “thorough” meaning the furniture was dismantled and the false ceiling broken into.
The flap that followed moved fast. I have since pieced it together.
The airmen found a small radio transceiver, a compact leather case full of valves and wiring. This, it turned out, had been used by Jack to attract the attention of that rocket-plane as we flew over the Ukraine. So Ciliax’s suspicions were proven correct. I am subtly disappointed in Jack; it seems such an obvious thing to have done. Anyhow this discovery led to a lot of shouting, and the thugs moved in on Jack. But as they did so he raised his right hand, which held what I thought at first was a grenade, and the thugs backed off.
Ciliax turned to me, his face like a thunderous sky. “Talk to this fool or he’ll kill us all.”
Jack huddled in the corner of his smashed-up room, his face bleeding, his gadget in his upraised right hand. “Bliss,” he panted. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
“I was in it from the moment I stepped aboard. If
you sober up – Wolfgang could fetch you some coffee—”
“Adrenaline and a beating-up are great hangover cures.”
“Then think about what you’re doing. If you set that thing off, whatever it is, do you expect to survive?”
“I didn’t expect to survive when I called up that Russkie rocket-plane. But it isn’t about me, Bliss. It’s about duty.”
Ciliax sneered. “Your President must be desperate if his only way of striking at the Reich is through suicide attacks.”
“This has nothing to do with Truman or his administration,” Jack said. “If he’s ever challenged about it he’ll deny any knowledge of this, and he’ll be telling the truth.”
Ciliax wasn’t impressed. “Plausible deniability. I thought that was an SS invention.”
“Tell me why, Jack,” I pressed him.
He eyed me. “Can’t you see it? Ciliax said it himself. It’s all about global strategies, Bliss. If the Pacific crossing is completed the Germans will be able to strike at us. And that’s what I’ve got to put a stop to.”
“But there will be other Goerings” Ciliax said.
“Yeah, but at least I’ll buy some time, if it ends here – if nobody knows – if the Mystery remains, a little longer. Somebody has to take down this damn Beast. A rocket-plane didn’t do it. But I’m Jonah, swallowed by the whale.” He laughed, and I saw he was still drunk after all.
I yelled, “Jack, no!” In the same instant half the German toughs fell on him, and the other half, including Ciliax, crowded out of the room.
I had been expecting an explosion in the cabin. I cowered. But there was only a distant crump, like far-off thunder. The deck, subtly, began to pitch . . .
Day 34. We aren’t dead yet.
The picture has become clearer. Jack sabotaged the Goering’s main control links; the switch he held was a radio trigger. But it didn’t quite work; we didn’t pitch into the sea. The technicians botched a fix to stabilize our attitude, and even keep us on our course, heading ever east. This whale of the sky still swims through her element. But the crew can’t tell yet if she remains dirigible – if we will ever be able to fly her home again.
Six people died, some crewmen on the flight deck, a couple of technicians wrestling with repairs outside. And Jack, of course. Already beaten half to death, he was presented to a summary court presided over by the Captain. Then Fassbender gave him to the crew. They hung him up in the hold, then while he still lived cut him down, and pitched him into the sea.
I don’t know what Ciliax made of all this. He said these common airmen lacked the inventiveness of the SS, to whom he was under pressure to hand over Jack. Ciliax has a core of human decency, I think.
So we fly on. The engineers toil in shifts on the Goering’s shattered innards. I have more faith in engineers than in gods or gargoyles, priests or politicians. But I no longer believe I will ever see England again. There. I’ve written it down, so it must be true. I wonder what strange creatures of the sea will feast on Jack’s flesh . . .
Day 50. Another round number, another pointless milestone.
I estimate we have travelled a distance that would span from the earth to the moon. Think of that! Perhaps in another universe the German genius for technology would have taken humans on just such an epic voyage, rather than this pointless slog.
We continue to pass over island groups and chains. On one island yesterday, covered by a crude-looking jungle of immense feathery ferns, I saw very exotic animals running in herds, or peering with suspicion at our passage. Think of flightless birds, muscular and upright and with an avian nerviness; and think of a crocodile’s massive reptilian patience; combine the two, and you have what I saw.
How did the dinosaurs die? Was it an immense volcanic episode, a comet or other fire from the sky, a deadly plague, some inherent weakness of the reptilian race? Whatever it was, it seems that no matter how dramatic the disaster that seeks to wipe you out, there is always room to run. Perhaps on this peculiar folded-up earth of ours there is no species that has ever gone extinct. What a marvellous thought!
But if they were dinosaurs, down on that island, we will never know. The plane no longer stops to orbit, for it cannot; the chariots no longer fly down to investigate thunder lizards. And we plough on ever east, ever further over the ocean, ever deeper into a past even beyond the dinosaurs.
My social life is a bit of a challenge these days.
As our food and water run out, our little aerial community is disintegrating into fiefdoms. The Water Barons trade with the Emperors of the Larder, or they will go to war over a tapped pipeline. Occasionally I hear pronouncements from the invisible Captain Fassbender, but I am not certain how far his word holds sway any longer. There have been rumours of a coup by the SS officers. The movie-makers are filming none of this. Their morale was the first to crumble, poor lambs.
I last saw Wolfgang Ciliax ten days ago. He was subtle and insidious; I had the distinct impression that he wanted me to join a sort of harem. Women are the scarcest commodity of all on this boat. Women, and cigarettes. You can imagine the shrift he got from me.
I sleep in barricaded rooms. In the guts of the Beast I have stashes of food and water, and cigarettes and booze to use as currency in an emergency. I keep out of the way of the petty wars, which will sort themselves out one way or another.
Once I had to bale out over Malaya, and I survived in the jungle for a week before reaching an army post. This is similar. It’s also rather like college life. What larks!
[Editor’s note: Many fragmentary entries follow. Some are undated, others contain only mathematical jottings or geometric sketches. The reader is referred to a more complete publication forthcoming in Annals of Psychiatry.7
Day 365. A year, by God! A full year, if I have counted correctly, though the calendar is meaningless given how many times we have spun around this watery earth – or appear to have. And if the poor gutted Beast is still keeping to her nominal speed, then I may have travelled two million miles. Two million. And still no America!
I believe I am alone now. Alone, save for the valve mind of Hans, and perhaps the odd rat.
The food ran out long ago, save for my stashes. The warfare between the Fuhrers of Spam and the Tsars of Dried Eggs became increasingly fragmented, until one man fell on the next for the sake of a cigarette stub. Others escaped, however, in chariots that went spinning down to one lost island or another. Klaus was one of them. I hope they survive; why not? Perhaps some future expedition, better equipped than ours, may retrieve their descendants.
And the Beast is hollowed out, much of her burned, depopulated save for me. I have explored her from one end to the other, seeking scraps of food and water, pitching the odd corpse into the drink. The only place I have not investigated is the sealed hold of the atom engine. Whatever survives in there has failed to break out.
However the engine continues to run. The blades of the Merlins turn still. Even the heating works. I should put on record that no matter how badly we frail humans have behaved, the Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches Hermann Goering has fulfilled her mission flawlessly.
This can’t go on forever, though. Therefore I have decided to set my affairs in order: to begin with, my geometrical maunderings. I have left a fuller account – that is, complete with equations
– in a separate locker. These journal notes are intended for the less mathematical reader; such as my mother (they’re for you, mummy! – I know you’ll want to know what became of me).
I have had to make a leap of faith, if you will. As we drive on and on, with no sight of an end to our journey, I have been forced to consider the possibility that there will be no end – that, just as it appears, the Pacific is not merely anomalously large, but, somehow, infinite. How can this be?
Our greatest geometer was Euclid. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you? He reduced all of the geometry you can do on a plane to just five axioms, from which can be derived that menagerie of theorems and corollaries
which have been used to bother schoolchildren ever since.
And even Euclid wasn’t happy with the fifth axiom, which can be expressed like this: parallel lines never meet. That seems so obvious it doesn’t need stating, that if you send off two lines at right angles to a third, like rail tracks, they will never meet. On a perfect, infinite plane they wouldn’t. But on the curved surface of the earth, they would: think of lines of longitude converging on a pole. And if space itself is curved^ again, “parallel” lines may meet
- or they may diverge, which is just as startling. Allowing Euclid’s axiom to be weakened in this way opens the door to a whole set of what are rather unimaginatively called “non-Eu-clidian geometries”. I will give you one name: Bernhard Riemann. Einstein plundered his work in developing relativity.
And in a non-Euclidean geometry, you can have all sorts of odd effects. A circle’s circumference may be more or less than “pi” times its diameter. You can even fit an infinite area into a finite circumference: for, you see, your measuring rods shrink as those parallel lines converge. Again I refer you to one name: Henri Poincare.
You can see where I am going with this, I think. It seems that our little globe is a non-Euclidean object. Its geometry is hyperbolic. It has a finite radius – as you can see if you look at its shadow on the moon – but an infinite surface area, as we of the Goering have discovered. The world has a Fold in it, in effect. As I drive into the Fold I grow smaller and ever more diminished, as seen from the outside – but I feel just as Bliss-sized as I always did, and there is plenty of room for me.
This seems strange – to put it mildly! But why should we imagine that the simple geometry of something like an orange should scale up to something as mighty as a planet?
Of course this is just one mathematical model which fits the observations; it may or may not be definitive. And many questions remain open, such as astronomical effects, and the nature of gravity on an infinite world. I leave these issues as an exercise for the reader.
One might question what difference this makes to us mere mortals. But surely geography determines our destiny. If the Pacific could have been spanned in the Stone Age, perhaps by a land bridge, the Americas’ first inhabitants might have been Asian, not Africans who crossed the Atlantic. And certainly in our own century if the Pacific were small enough for America and Japan to have rubbed against each other, the convulsion of war we have endured for the last decade would not have turned out the way it did.
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction Page 9
