The Mouse That Saved The West: ebook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 4)

by Leonard Wibberley

  "Let them sit and think about it," he said. "They've been long enough accepting the facts. Now let them stew for a while."

  But they didn't stew for long. They acted. Cabled orders began to pour into the Duchy for cheap oil from such giants as Mobil, Texaco, Shell, Exxon, British Petroleum and others offering twenty and twenty-five dollars a barrel, which vexed Mountjoy enormously.

  "This is the way big business is run?" he demanded. "We offer them oil at fifteen dollars a barrel or so, and they turn us down and offer twenty and twenty-five? In the world of business, it seems to me, nobody believes what anybody says."

  Then came offers equally high, from the OPEC nations themselves; offers sent in cablegrams and offers delivered by personal envoys who having carefully consulted the maps of Europe chartered helicopters to arrive in the Duchy. Some, whose staff work was not up to scratch, arrived in Liechtenstein and San Marino, only to be told coldly that they were in the wrong countries.

  But Mountjoy had at last gotten the attention of the world and with the cooperation of Birelli, who installed, staffed and personally paid for a hundred-line switchboard in the castle of Grand Fenwick, a conference of OPEC nations was finally arranged in the Duchy to last no more than a week and bring some order into what had now become a scene of economic chaos. Mountjoy insisted on a conference of but a week's duration. The problems of lodging and food supply would not permit longer debate and he quoted a saying of his father's that what cannot be settled in a week is probably beyond human agreement.

  The Great Hall of the castle, occupying the whole lower floor of the donjon keep, was eminently suitable for the conference. The acoustics were marvelous. Microphones were scarcely needed and there was plenty of room not only for the delegates themselves but for their staffs who sat at ample tables behind them, tables which were soon filled with the reports, analyses, prophecies and dicta of the oil experts of every nation in the world, who included no fewer than five Nobel Prize winners.

  Mountjoy insisted upon Gloriana presiding, and when she pleaded that she knew nothing whatever of the subject, he assured her that that was an enormous advantage which the others did not possess.

  "Far too much is known or thought to be known about the oil dilemma," he said. "We are in a completely new situation and we must put aside all the learned rubbish which has been collected in the past and serves now largely to mislead our thinking. It is extraordinary how even intelligent men, of highest education, will refuse to accept that the knowledge they have accumulated, or think they have accumulated, is out of date. Your Grace, I can assure you that there is no one in the whole world better qualified to preside at this meeting than yourself, who, happily, know nothing whatever about it." He paused and added, softly, "In the unlikely event that you should be required to know or pretend to know something of the subject, I am here to assist you."

  The first problem, of course, was to convince the delegates that the Grand Fenwick reservoir was of the extent of twenty billion barrels. Two days were spent on this, the geologists going over the echo soundings and the core samples and even asking for satellite surveys before, somewhat grumpily, they accepted the truth of the matter.

  It appeared that at the time of the formation of the European Alps, the pressure of the tectonic plates had swept upward from the floor of the ocean and subjected to tremendous forces vast reefs of such an extent that the Australian Great Barrier Reef was but a minor marine construction by comparison. Not only that. By what Mountjoy called an act of God, all these marine formations had been deposited directly under Grand Fenwick, where over the eons the marine animal life had slowly changed into petroleum.

  The whole deposit, then, lay under Grand Fenwick, and its center being in the area of Perne's Folly, the deposit itself extended downward for upwards of a mile and perhaps more.

  When all were convinced of this, Raoul de Verteuil, head of the French delegation, quietly mentioned that Perne's Folly belonged to a Frenchman, who had paid in full for the "possession, hold and use of the land and all things lying beneath it to be secured to him and his heirs and descendants in perpetuum." So the deed of sale read. The vast Grand Fenwick oil deposits, then, properly belonged to France, and Grand Fenwick had no right of any kind to their exploitation and use.

  This really stumped Gloriana. She didn't know what to say and thought all was lost. There were smiles of relief all about the table, and several of the Arabian delegates, who had been buying deeply into United States banks with the profits from their huge oil sales, relaxed. Their heavy penetration and potential control of much of the United States economy could continue in the future. Freddie the Sheik, who was seated among them, and who had been wondering whether a man were really better off with a billion dollars than with a couple of million, gave her a little smile of friendship and encouragement, but that was all he could offer.

  Birelli, after the French bombshell, dropped a glass of water on the table and although a silver stream of it poured onto his lap, he took no notice. He'd sold every asset he could to bring this scheme about. Now the whole plan was jeopardized by this damned Frenchman.

  But Mountjoy was equal to the occasion.

  He rose, adjusted his monocle, and looking directly at

  M. de Verteuil said, "Her Grace the Duchess is quite aware of the purchase in fourteen sixty-five of the area in question by Gustave de Perne and I can assure the delegate from France that there is no intention on the part of the Duchy to abrogate that purchase agreement despite the fact that it is now over five hundred years old.

  "The delegates present, from many nations of the world, will I think agree that any sovereign nation—and Grand Fenwick is a sovereign nation—is within its rights to seize foreign assets within its borders if this accords with national policy. Many examples can be produced to establish this right, and I think that a great many assets of Iran have recently been frozen by the United States of America, to quote but one example.

  "In the case of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, however, such a need is not present. Gustave de Perne was a man of eccentricity, brilliance and many gifts. Like Leonardo da Vinci, he never married and visited the Duchy only once in his lifetime, incognito and that for a period of two years. In that time he painted the ceiling of the room in which I sleep in a magnificent design of unicorns, lions and roses, and delegates may later wish to view that ceiling as one of the little-known treasures of Europe. I say he visited the Duchy incognito, having taken the name of Derek or Dennis of Pirenne. He died when that work was done in a scuffle with a knight of Vignon over a lady of quality (a married woman), by whom he had a child.

  "That lady was Her Grace, Gloriana the First of Grand Fenwick. The details have in the interests of discretion been kept quiet to this moment, but they are fully documented in the secret archives of the Duchy, which I will now lay open to delegates. In short, ladies and gentlemen, the only living heir to the place which became known as Perne's Folly rather than Pirenne's Folly and the vast oil deposits which lie beneath it, is Her Grace, Gloriana the Twelfth, now presiding at this meeting."

  He turned in the startled silence that followed and said in an aside to Gloriana, "I beg your pardon for making public intimate details of your ancestry on such an occasion, but I trust Your Grace will realize that I had no other alternative."

  "Bobo," whispered Gloriana, "is that another whopper?"

  Mountjoy did not answer directly but said, "I can produce the needed documents to substantiate what I have stated," leaving Gloriana to wonder whether Mountjoy had not had these documents expertly forged prior to the conference in anticipation of just such a challenge from the French. "I trust it will comfort Your Grace to know," he added, "that de Pirenne was in every respect an artist, a mystic and a gentleman."

  "What happened to the child?" asked Gloriana determined to press him on the subject. "Was it a boy or a girl?"

  "A boy. It was brought up quietly in the monastery and, the legitimate heir being killed while hunting, the boy's name was ch
anged to Fenwick at the age of ten, and he became the next duke." This accorded with Gloriana's knowledge of the history of Grand Fenwick, but with added details of which she had not been aware.

  That settled the matter of title, though of course there were demands for documentation, all of which Mountjoy supplied willingly.

  The conference went on for the week as planned. At the end, it was agreed by the OPEC nations (to whom Grand Fenwick was now added as a prominent member) that there would be an immediate reduction in crude oil prices to twenty dollars a barrel and continuing reductions thereafter as the Grand Fenwick supplies became increasingly available.

  The experts now took over again and within a week were prophesying that the price of oil would level out at fifteen dollars a barrel, delivered to the refinery.

  There was a curious, unlooked-for but very welcome side result. All over the world, people almost immediately became more cheerful. It wasn't just that the lines at the gas pumps had gone (people had gotten used to them anyway) and that oil for everything from heating homes to powering industry was assured in ample quantities. It was something deeper than that. It was a feeling that somehow or other even the greatest of problems could be solved and that humanity could trust itself both to get into enormous difficulties and get out of them again.

  "It's like God didn't really intend us to come a cropper, but just to teach us all a lesson and get us to think again," said the landlord of the Grey Goose to the patrons of his barroom.

  "I still got that bad pain in my head," said Ted Weathers. "I think I'd better have another glass of Pinot."

  CHAPTER XIX

  A few weeks later, the Count of Mountjoy, enjoying what was for him one of the greatest of pleasures of life—a hot bath—with a copy of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" propped on a special holder before him, was interrupted by his great-granddaughter Katherine strolling in upon him.

  "My dear girl," said Mountjoy, glancing quickly downward and reaching for a large sponge, "you really must learn not to come in here without knocking. Privacy is part of a gentleman's privilege, whatever the modern teachings may be."

  "I want you to come and watch my kite fly," said Katherine.

  "When I've had my bath and my tea," replied Mountjoy.

  "Could the tea wait? I'll scrub your back if you'll say yes."

  "Oh, all right," said Mountjoy. "I suppose you'll want gooseberry jam?"

  "Yes. You'll have to give me the sponge."

  "That is out of the question. Use the scrub brush."

  So she scrubbed his back—the Count loved that—and when he was properly dressed for kite-flying—he preferred a Donegal tweed and a shooting cap—he went out with her through the courtyard, she carrying the kite and he wondering why he could be coaxed into almost anything by a child of seven. He had a sharp need of a good cup of Grey's orange pekoe.

  The kite was a blue one. When they got to an appropriate meadow Mountjoy looked it over and his heart leaped.

  "You've forgotten the string," he said. "Let's go back and have tea. You shall have lots of toast with the gooseberry jam. Then we can fly the kite."

  "It doesn't need string," said Katherine. "It's a stringless kite. Dr. Kokintz made it. It flies on bird water."

  "It flies on what?"

  "Bird water. I'll show you."

  Attached to the bottom of the kite was a small plastic bottle with an opening at one end. The bottle contained a thick bluish liquid. Katherine held the kite in one hand and with the other put a whistle to her lips and blew a short blast. A note which Mountjoy recognized as that of a chaffinch was produced, and to his astonishment the kite slipped gently from Katherine's hand and mounted gracefully upward. It went up until it was just a tiny blue diamond against the sky and then glided down again, coming gently to rest in the long grass.

  "Good gracious," cried Mountjoy. "What makes that thing fly?"

  "I told you," said Katherine. "Bird water. Dr. Kokintz made it for me."

  Forgetful of his promise of tea, toast and gooseberry jam, Mountjoy set off immediately to find the physicist, who was on his hands and knees in his laboratory watching a toy train, with twenty loaded carriages behind it, going around several hundred feet of endless track at a good clip.

  "What the devil are you doing?" he demanded. And then, seeing no electrical hookup to the track, "How is that thing running?"

  "Bird water," said Kokintz mildly, peering at him over the top of his rimless glasses, which had octagonal lenses.

  This was too much for Mountjoy. He spotted a chair piled high with sheets of paper containing the eminent physicist's notes, swept them onto the floor and sat down.

  "What," he demanded, "is bird water?"

  "It's a new form of energy," said Kokintz. "Its basic components are ordinary water and glucose, which is a very common form of sugar. I got mine from a candy bar. But you can use fructose too. The atomic components are identical, though their arrangement isn't. And birdsong."

  Mountjoy took a great lungful of air and blew it out through bellowing cheeks.

  "You told me to work on a new form of energy. In view of the world oil crisis," said Kokintz. "And I did. It costs about ten dollars a hundred gallons. But with mass production the cost can be greatly lowered. In fact, it's an almost free form of energy. Like sunlight."

  "Perhaps you would be kind enough to explain," said Mountjoy, holding his head in his hands. "Gently," he added.

  He listened to the explanation but his mind was in a whirl and in any case he wasn't interested in scientific details. Those details had something to do with methods of penetrating the atomic nucleus—by bombardment, by acceleration and by supersonic vibration.

  "You understand that the forces which hold the nucleus together are immensely strong and when we are able to penetrate the nucleus by whatever means used, only a small portion of the force or mass is released. Also the results are random. Often we cannot accurately predict what particles of the nucleus are going to be expelled, or whether they are going to be split instead, forming new particles or portions only of the original particles," Kokintz said.

  "Supersonic vibration as a means of atomic nucleus penetration has scarcely been tried to my knowledge and I wouldn't have considered it feasible myself except that I had a piece of Katherine's candy bar and I got interested in the sugars it contained and dissolved it in water. I am not going to go through all the steps which I took afterwards—if you're interested you'll find them in those notes on the floor. But the end product, produced after many steps including exposure to my white laser, was a bluish liquid entirely resistant to electrolysis which I thought might be of some use as an insulator in specialized hydroelectric installations. Then, while I was examining a small quantity of this inert water in a test tube, my chaffinches got hungry."

  "Hang the chaffinches," said Mountjoy. "What happened next?"

  "They started to chirp and the test tube of electrically inert fluid flew out of my hand and crashed against the wall of the laboratory. It was plain then that the liquid, which I have called bird water, contained an energy field resistant to electrical bombardment—or bombardment of any kind, as I subsequently discovered—but not to bombardment by ultrasonic sound waves emitted by chaffinches—bobolinks too, I believe.

  "Subject to such a bombardment, not only do the molecules disintegrate but the atoms also, in a slow but steady release of energy. I can't claim all the credit. There's something about it in Tu-sin Yung's "Periods of Atomic Particles" and also Hazlitt's "Ultra-sonic Notes of European Wild Birds." I'll have to ensure that they get due credit when I put together my paper on the subject." He eyed the notes scattered over the floor ruefully. "I had a pretty good start right there," he said.

  "Listen," said Mountjoy, "and please listen carefully. While you have been boiling up candy bars and playing bird concerts into the result, I have been working on the whole problem of energy for the Western world and indeed for the whole world. It is now solved—or securely on its way to solut
ion. If you utter a single word about this wretched bird water, you will bring about the complete collapse of society as we know it today. You will produce mass unemployment. You will spread poverty throughout the earth. You will bring down the whole magnificent structure of capitalism in one terrible stroke. You will bring economic chaos to the whole of mankind."

  "With bird water—free energy?" said Kokintz, amazed.

  "Yes. With bird water. With free energy," said Mountjoy. "Free energy is the nightmare, the curse of the whole capitalistic system. Think, my good sir, for one moment, of the multitudes of people who are employed, directly or indirectly, in the gaining of oil from the earth. Think of the nations dependent upon it as their sole national asset. Think of the number employed in refining oil, in designing methods of refining and building refineries. Think of the multitudes building and manning ships to transport oil across the oceans of the world. Think of the people employed in factories manufacturing machines which will work off of oil energy—not just automobiles and farm equipment, but also airplanes and gas ranges and tires for automobiles, as well as gasoline stations and gasoline pumps—and horns and radios as well, I suppose. Think of all those people working away in what we blithely call the oil industry. Then abolish the oil industry and ask yourself what happens to them.

  "Ask yourself also what happens to people who have invested their money in oil shares and all the industrial derivatives (including much of the plastics industry) of oil. Think of all these things and then think of the huge collapse when these jobs, these profits, these industries and all the commodities such as steel, copper, brass and even houses built by people who work in the oil industry—when all these things are gone.

  "The world, in short, my dear doctor, would be destroyed by free energy. What the world needs is cheap energy but energy still affording a profit to the nations and people who produce, distribute and sell it.