Saturn Over the Water

by J. B. Priestley

  To understand the peculiar session that followed, one or two things have to be made clear. To begin with, I was almost reeling inside, not from any drinks I had but because one surprise after another had hit me – bang bang bang! Then, what’s more important, Steglitz was in such a curious mood, altogether unexpected. He wasn’t tight, though he’d certainly had his share of drink, but he was bung full of delight with himself, felt charged with power, ready to defy the gods. I ought to add here and now that I don’t think this reckless intoxication, this floodlit idea of himself, came from anything so small as any arrangements he may have made to dispose of me. It came from elsewhere, and now that I know more than I did then, I think I could guess what influences and powers might have been at work on him. But anyhow, as he could have said all too easily, that is how it was.

  After motioning us to sit down, while he remained standing, he began talking. ‘I had to break off my talk – why? Because Mr Bedford had arrived to visit us. This could not be better – and this is how things are sometimes. I was about to offer you some examples of wrong method that might not have interested you very much. You would not have known the persons in question. But here is Mr Bedford – a good example – a nice hamster – guinea pig – for us. I am not trying to be rude to you, Mr Bedford – ’

  ‘You’re out of luck then, Dr Steglitz,’ I told him sourly. I took a poor view of this guinea pig line, with Rosalia Arnaldos sitting there. But I didn’t know the half of it.

  ‘Now, Miss Arnaldos please. You know Mr Bedford. I saw you together at Uramba. What is your opinion of him?’

  ‘A stuffy painter, too pleased with himself,’ she replied at once, cool and detached. ‘Partly because of his pictures, partly because he thinks he is successful with women.’

  ‘I’ve had my failures. All right, Dr Steglitz,’ I went on. ‘I won’t interrupt again. You didn’t ask for a talking guinea pig.’

  He ignored this and turned to Mitchell. ‘You knew him in London, Mr Mitchell, I think. Your impression, please.’

  ‘I guessed he’d be no trouble to us. Said so. He dithers in the wrong part of the field. A bit too clever in one way, not clever enough in another. Says too much or too little. Told him so.’ Mitchell flashed a grin across at me. I felt like flashing a boot at him.

  ‘So this is how it is,’ cried Steglitz, a radiant Humpty-Dumpty. ‘Now what happens? He is looking for an Arnaldos Institute research man named Farne – the husband of a cousin, I think you told me, Mr Mitchell. Farne would have been one of my examples of wrong method. But Mr Bedford is better. He arrives at the Institute. True, he is the guest of Mr Arnaldos – but this is only a further argument for using my method. My colleagues at the Institute know why he is there. They have been warned. He is suspicious, he is curious. This is how it is. Everything that is done, everything that is said, only makes him more suspicious, more curious. The closed method, as I said before. So now he goes to Osparas. Von Emmerick, with his chemists and their products, knows how to handle so crude närrisch a fellow – oh yes – it is all very easy. The same method, only with chemical variations. What happens? He loses Bedford and with him his best chemist, Rother. I had asked to handle Rother when he was at the Institute, but in vain. No, they knew better. Where is he now, Rother? You can speak this time please, Mr Bedford.’

  ‘All right, I will,’ I said harshly. I looked at Steglitz, then at Rosalia and Mitchell. The other six men there were stooges, as far as I was concerned, and I never really had any clear impression of them. ‘Rother’s dead. I watched him die in the back room of a little Chilean farm. He’d been wounded in two places but he might have recovered if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t. The bad luck ran on too long, too far. He was a good little man. He just wanted to live a reasonable decent life, and as a young man he thought he saw it stretching out in front of him, for him, for everybody. Then, as he told me, the rest of his life seemed to be at the mercy of madmen. You’re probably one of them,’ I ended, looking at Steglitz. He could like it or lump it, I thought bitterly. I didn’t look at Rosalia Arnaldos. Let her enjoy herself as the only girl in the game.

  None of this had any effect on Steglitz, who looked as pleased as ever. His first remark was addressed to the others, not to me. ‘Now we will see.’ He smiled and nodded to me. ‘So Rother died. But before that you must have had some talk with him about this organisation that made you both so suspicious, so curious. What did you decide between you? You can be frank with me, Mr Bedford. I shall be frank with you.’

  ‘You’re anti-Communist and pro-Communist, both at the same time,’ I told him. ‘You’re hotting up the cold war. General Giddings on one side, for instance, Melnikov on the other. Both your men – and you’ve probably plenty of others.’ I remembered then what Rother had said. ‘We live in a very small world now, packed with people who don’t believe in anything very much, haven’t really any minds of their own. A group of men, closely organised, quite unscrupulous, men who understood about power, influence, propaganda techniques, who knew how to dominate other key men, could choose any programme they liked and begin carrying it through – in a world like the one we have now. But I don’t pretend to know what you really think you’re doing – you Wavy Eight people.’

  ‘So that is how it is.’ He beamed approval at me. ‘And you call us Wavy Eight also. Not bad – not bad at all. Bravo, Mr Bedford. But you say you don’t know what we think we are doing. Then I will tell you. What you think, when you dare to think, we may be doing is exactly what we are doing. The end is quite simple, though some of the means we employ would be difficult for you to understand. So this is how it is. There are now in the world hundreds and hundreds of millions of sheep people – that is all one can call them. They are led by foolish vain men who make speeches and do not know what they are saying, who go from Moscow to New York to London to Paris and do not know what they are doing. All of them – the idiot masses, their foolish leaders – have now half a wish to destroy themselves. We will make it a whole wish, Mr Bedford. They shall destroy themselves and all the human ant-hills they live in. We will help this whole civilisation that went wrong to commit suicide, to wipe itself off the map. This is how it is.’

  ‘But why are you telling me, Dr Steglitz? You’re not expecting me to join this healthy little movement, are you?’

  ‘Not at all. I am doing what my colleagues refused to do, when they offered your suspicion, your curiosity, only a blank wall. I am taking you into my confidence. I am allowing you to have a glimpse of the greatest and most audacious design in all history. Think of it – a plan using all the resources of this huge idiot civilisation to bring it to an end – then to begin again, no longer multiplying imbeciles by the million. Other men – prophetic men – Nietzsche, for example – have dreamt of it. But we are doing it, Mr Bedford. This is how it is.’

  ‘And this is what you told Semple, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course. He became suspicious after he and another physicist, Barsac, had worked on fall-out at the Institute. When he asked me why we wanted to know if the Southern Hemisphere would still be habitable after a total nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere, I told him. He killed himself in a mental hospital in London. Barsac went to Osparas – another of von Emmerick’s failures – and is now teaching physics in Sydney. He is already regarded with disapproval and suspicion by the educational authorities there, and will soon be asked to leave. Here in Australia’ – and Steglitz paused to produce a huge derisive grin – ‘we do not like these doubtful unsound European characters. But this is how it is, Mr Bedford. We are using some wonderful new techniques – I am sorry that Mr Alstir will not be able to show you what we are doing with subliminal messages in films now, as one instance – but you must remember one thing. We are like the Judo experts. We do not create force but make use of existing force. We hurry the mind along the way it is going. We stir the unconscious, which these people do not believe exists and so cannot control. I saw you look at me as if I was a murderer, when I said that
Semple killed himself. But they are all going to kill themselves, to murder half the earth itself. That is how it is. Poor good Semple – broken by the bad Steglitz – that is how you think. But Semple helped to make the hydrogen bomb – and I have never even seen one – ’

  ‘You’re madder than he could ever have been,’ I cried harshly.

  His smile had gone. ‘We are the servants of the great design,’ he began shouting.

  ‘Who are your masters?’ I cut in, shouting too. I didn’t know what I meant. It just came.

  ‘Our masters – ’

  He stopped because he couldn’t go on. Somebody, something, outside his own will and control, shut him up. I hadn’t the least doubt about it. For the first time, during all the tangle and runaround there’d been ever since I’d left Isabel Farne’s bedside at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, somebody or something moved into the scene from an unknown direction, as if we were open and vulnerable on a side we didn’t know was there. At that moment, in a sense, the whole story changed, taking on another dimension. I felt then what I’ve never stopped feeling since. I knew the action was being worked out on more than one level.

  ‘I have talked too much,’ said Steglitz, recovering. ‘I am forgetting we must eat.’ He went to ring a bell. Everybody stirred and then got up, as people do at the end of any session that has kept them still and quiet. I tried to move across to say something either lofty or plain nasty to Rosalia, but I found Mitchell in my way. Two of the other men listened in, curious about me.

  ‘Drive here, Bedford?’ Mitchell asked, still with that glimmer of amusement in his eye.

  ‘Does it matter?’ I didn’t feel I had to take Mitchell any longer. A lot too much had happened since he sat in my studio and gave me some of his mystery-man advice.

  ‘It might,’ he said.

  ‘Well, then, if it’ll make you happy, I hired an oldish black Buick in Melbourne – I’ll tell you from what garage if it’ll make you any happier – ’

  ‘Why not? What garage?’

  I told him, in a tone of obvious disgust. ‘And I left the Buick just outside the entrance, not knowing how long I’d be here.’

  ‘D’you like Australia?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know yet.’

  ‘Good answer.’ He gave me a slow wink but all he got from me in return was a blank stare. Then I turned to give Miss Arnaldos that verbal slap across the jaw she seemed to be in need of, but by this time two women had spread a lot of cold food between us. And Steglitz, with two stooges for chorus, was entertaining her. Also, I realised that I was hungry. I helped myself to some fish, then to meat and salad, without talking to anybody. The only sketch of a plan I had for myself now was to get the hell out of the place – though not before making at least one remark to Miss Arnaldos, our cool observer from Peru, our spokesman for the arts and personal life – and this might mean driving a long time, though I didn’t know where, so I made the best of what wasn’t a bad cold supper.

  I was just washing away the memory of a poor cheese with some South Australian red wine that had nothing wrong with it at all, when Major Jorvis marched in, followed by Long Neck, my Melbourne follower. Major Jorvis, his eyes, cheeks, moustache, in Technicolor, shook hands enthusiastically with Steglitz, who was giving a performance as an anxious and keenly anti-Communist New Australian. Long Neck recognised me at once and without hesitation, out of at least eight people, and began moving in my direction even before Major Jorvis spoke.

  ‘I’m placing you under arrest, Bedford,’ said Major Jorvis. ‘And you know why. But there’s a warrant coming, if you want to be technical.’

  What was wrong with Major Jorvis that night, as I realised afterwards, was that he was dazzled and dazed by his own splendour. He’d been given a helicopter, to fly here from Melbourne and then on to somewhere else, and what with that, and a lot of short wave transmission, and people and places being warned he was on his way, he was living the life of a Security Officer in a TV serial, and was half out of his mind. As Long Neck took me out of the room, I overheard the major assuring that rich good-looking Miss Arnaldos that she needn’t be anxious about the Commies while he was looking after Australia. As I passed Steglitz, he gave me a last smile. It said that he knew and I knew, that he knew I knew he knew, that I knew he knew and the rest of it, that Major Jorvis and Long Neck were a pair of zombies and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I felt he was right.

  The arrangements were better than those at Osparas. At least I wasn’t knocked out and then dumped into what was more or less a concrete cell. Under the guidance of one of Steglitz’s assistants, and with some support by another police type, probably the helicopter pilot, Long Neck marched me to the opposite end of the main building, into a room that contained two single beds, two small chests of drawers, two chairs, one rug, and looked as if it had been borrowed from a Y.M.C.A. hostel. Before the other two left us, Long Neck had me tied to the chair I sat in, the idea – and I could see no flaw in it – being that long before I’d hopped across the room still in the chair, or had wrestled successfully with the knots at the back, Long Neck would have his gun out, ready to blow half my foot off or something of that sort.

  An hour crawled by, one of the most tedious I ever remember. The trouble was that not only did Long Neck dislike me, but that he refused to engage in any talk at all. Perhaps he was afraid I might convert him to whatever brand of Communism I was supposed to be representing. Moreover, it became increasingly irksome, in fact downright unpleasant, being tied to that damned chair. But the idiotic silence, which Long Neck insisted upon, even to the point of threatening to shut me up very violently, was the worst feature. I might have been sharing a room with a sick kangaroo. It was desperately boring, and I felt a fool.

  At a guess it was getting on for nine o’clock when somebody knocked. Long Neck unlocked and opened the door. The man who came in, before Long Neck could stop him, looked half a joke and half something out of a nightmare. He was wearing one of those old-fashioned masks, completely hiding the face, that are shiny and coloured the flesh pink that no living flesh has ever been. In his left hand, which he held up, a similar mask was dandling from its elastic. It must have been this mask business that confused Long Neck and slowed him up. He’d only time to ask what the idea was and begin reaching for his gun before he was neatly knocked out by whatever the masked caller was holding in his right hand, the one poor Long Neck wasn’t looking at. A minute later we’d turned the key on him from the outside and were walking along the corridor, two shiny pink-faced monsters now.

  ‘Keep moving,’ I was told, ‘but don’t rush it. There’s a dance on tonight – and the lads are wearing these things. The girls come from outside – and this is a joke on them.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘Not to the dance, I hope.’

  ‘A car’s waiting. And don’t worry about your gear. I moved it from the Buick. And I’ll see the Buick gets back to Melbourne. That’s why I asked you those questions.’

  ‘You’re very sharp, Mitchell.’ I thought I’d recognised his build and his clothes, and of course when he spoke I was sure who it was. ‘But I thought you were on their side.’

  ‘You thought wrong. That’s what they think. And thanks to this false face, I haven’t given myself away yet, though I’ve got you out. I’m not coming with you. I’ve still something to do here. But this car has a driver. Now let’s stop talking.’

  We threaded our way between the cars all round the entrance, cars that must have brought girls to the dance, until we finally came to one standing alone, well placed for getting away. There wasn’t much light out there but enough to show me that I wouldn’t be rattling through the night in any small tinny job. This looked a solid and powerful car, probably a Mercedes. I got in while Mitchell, after whipping off his mask, talked through the driver’s window.

  ‘You won’t make Albury now,’ he was saying. ‘Not unless you drive most of the night. And I don’t advise that. Make good time for the next hour and a half. T
hen put up wherever you can. Tomorrow night, stay somewhere outside Sydney, then ring Barsac and fix a meeting. Don’t use your own names anywhere. And keep out of Sydney. I may see you in the north. All the best.’

  ‘And thanks, Mitchell,’ I cried across the driver. ‘Sorry I had the wrong idea about you.’

  ‘That’s not important,’ said the driver severely. Then she changed her tone. ‘Thank you, Mr Mitchell. Be seeing you. Hasta la vista.’

  But of course I’d known for the last two minutes it was Rosalia Arnoldos.

  16

  Believe it or not, we didn’t exchange a single word for half an hour. But then she was driving very fast – first for some miles down the road I’d come on, then, after a left turn, along a minor road, narrow and with a poor surface – and I didn’t want to disturb her concentration. If we ran into any trouble, I might find myself listening to Major Jorvis and looking at Long Neck again. Not that I was worried. That road between Uramba and Lima had given her plenty of practice in this sort of driving, and the car – I’d guessed right, a Mercedes – was a beauty. We must have put at least thirty miles between us and Charoke before we said anything.

  It was map business that started us talking. It wasn’t real talk then, only stiff unnatural stuff, like the dialogue in foreign conversation books. She said she wasn’t sure of the best way from now on so that I’d better hold the road map. I said I would be glad to hold the road map. She said we ought to aim at reaching a town of some kind within the next hour. I said that if she thought it safe to stop and turn on the lights I would try to find some such town on the map. She said she would slow down and then I could examine the map. I said that was all right.