And Having Writ . . .

by Donald R. Bensen

  "Well, you come and have a look, Captain! It should work, but it don't."

  Captain Thatcher said something that had not been included in the vocabulary which the Communicator had instilled in me, and slammed the door. "Now, don't you get any ideas about running off," we heard him say. "So much as a head gets poked out the door, and there'll be a bullet in it."

  In the darkness of the enclosed car, we could hear the clinking sound of the two men examining the engine. "I don't think they're going to get it to go," Dark remarked after a while.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "Well. . . when I was having a look at it, I thought I spotted something loose. So I was just going to give it a little weld to hold it in place, d'you see?" He produced his combination writing instrument and portable tool. "And when our car ran off like that, it startled me, and I gave it more power than I'd meant to. I think it fused a couple of bits that are supposed to move."

  "That's nice," Oxford said. "Now, not only are we kidnapped, but we'll have to be walked to wherever Thatcher wants to take us instead of being driven there, unless he feels like plugging us right now to save the bother."

  "I am sure he wouldn't want to do that," I reassured him. "Mr. Edison seems to want us pretty badly, and I don't see that our cadavers would be much use to him."

  "Considering what Edison's likely to do to me, I might be better off if Thatcher gets it over with right now." Oxford sat back, lost in gloom, but presently he brightened and said, "Say, I think I hear—"

  The door was pulled open and Thatcher scrambled into the car with us, and shut it again, covering us with his weapon. "I can hear a car coming up the hill," he said. "Now, don't anybody get funny—no calling for help or such. Edison wants you alive, but I guess he can get along just as well if you're shy a finger or a kneecap. And you wouldn't want the blood of some poor Frenchman on your hands, would you? For if I've got to start loosing this off to keep you folks quiet, I don't mean to leave any witnesses behind."

  In silence we heard the approaching car grind its gears as it negotiated the turn below us, then the growing noise of its engine as it came near our vehicle. The three of us sat upright as the noise changed character, indicating that the new machine had stopped; Thatcher glared and flourished his weapon.

  A booming voice asked, "What seems to be the trouble, my good man? My chauffeur may be able to help; I'll send him over. Ponsonby, fetch me a campstool; I do love to watch people fixing cars."

  Dark and I turned to each other. "That's . . ."we said in unison.

  "Who?" Oxford asked, whispering in deference to a savage wave of Thatcher's weapon. "Oh, wait—you can't mean . . . ? You do, don't you?" Reading the expressions on our faces correctly, he turned to Thatcher.

  "Thanks for the ride, Captain, though it didn't get very far. We'll be taking our leave."

  "Will you, now?" the Marine demanded thoughtfully, sighting his weapon between Oxford's eyes. "I kind of doubt that. You make any moves, and you're going to get damaged some. Plus I might just help myself to that nosy jasper's car to get out of here with."

  "Captain," Oxford said, "the gentleman who is taking such an interest in your breakdown is Edward the Seventh, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain and Ireland, and all that. Further, I understand that he travels on these excursions with another car, loaded with French policemen, fully armed and alert—I may say nervously alert—to any possibility of violence in the immediate vicinity of His Majesty. Your program of plugging us and then stealing his car therefore seems to me impractical."

  Thatcher raised the blind on one window, looked out, and cursed. Before he snapped it down again, I caught a glimpse of two large red cars, the rear one crowded, as Oxford had predicted, with several tough-looking natives in blue uniforms and flat caps.

  Keeping his eyes on Thatcher, Oxford slowly reached for the door handle, then eased the door open. "We've played the King, Captain," he told him softly. "Unless you've got an ace, it looks like you'd better fold your hand."

  17

  The King very graciously invited our party to return to Biarritz with him, as the motorcar did not seem likely to be fixed at any time in the near future. Oxford contrived it so that he, Dark and I rode with His Majesty, and Thatcher in a following vehicle along with a number of French policemen; the unfortunate Olson was left behind to protect the disabled car until help could be sent from the town.

  Once we were under way, the King looked at Oxford shrewdly. "There was something about all that that didn't quite look like a spin in the countryside," he observed. "For one thing, it doesn't seem to me that you'd get much benefit from the view in a closed car—with drawn blinds." His aide, seated beside him—the three of us were ranged on a sort of padded bench opposite them, obliging us to ride backwards, which, it being his automobile, seemed reasonable enough—also gave us an inquiring look.

  "Well, it's an odd business all right, sir," Oxford admitted, and explained briefly the circumstances of our abduction.

  "Dear me," the King said, stroking his beard. "That won't do, will it? But it's deuced awkward—I can't very well cause a complaint to be made, I suppose—it's just not done to take official notice of these things—and yet those men will doubtless try to impede your travels if they're free to do so. And I'm beginning to feel that it's rather important that you go on with your plans to see the Kaiser and whatever else you might choose to do afterwards. . . ." He raised one eyebrow as he looked at me, from which I divined that he assumed we had not revealed the full truth about our intentions to Oxford and that he did not himself propose to enlighten the reporter.

  "If I understand the problem aright, Your Majesty," the aide said, "there need be no particular difficulty. The French legal system, unlike ours, is admirably designed to deal with inconveniences to important personages without undue formality."

  "Well, I wouldn't want those fellows guillotined or any such thing as that, you know," the King said.

  "No need for that, I'm sure," the aide replied. "But there's no reason the police couldn't manage a few days' detention, and nothing written down about it. They'd probably be pleased as Punch to do it; nobody's tried to assassinate you, and I expect they're getting a little bored."

  Upon our arrival back at the King's quarters, the occupants of both cars disembarked, and the aide went over and exchanged a few words with the police. These were in the French language, so I did not understand them; evidently, neither did Captain Thatcher, who ignored the conversation and stood glowering at us. The police seemed to take the meaning quite clearly, which was only to be expected, they being French and therefore adept at the tongue, for they seized Thatcher and bore him away, struggling and shouting.

  "I think you and your companions should have a clear track to Berlin, gentlemen," the King remarked.

  In this he was accurate, for we experienced no trouble on our train journey, and drew into the German capital about mid-morning of the next day but one and were swiftly conveyed to what we were informed was called the Old Palace, somewhat away from the center of the city.

  Our reception there was in marked contrast to the almost furtive way in which we had been brought in two closed cars from the railway station. We were ushered through gates into a large garden with a long path running through its center. On both sides of this stood a number of men in colorful uniforms holding cutting weapons upright—Wells relieved my mind considerably by claiming that these, in this setting at least, were purely decorative in function—and wearing metal hats with a spike on top of each, which it seemed to me might prove quite useful in warfare, as they would discourage an enemy from dropping onto you from above.

  As instructed by the persons who had met us, we walked slowly between the files of men toward where a flight of steps ended the path. At the top of this stood a tall figure dressed in white, fairly ablaze with bits of bright metal and cloth in the area of the chest. Like Roosevelt and King Edward, he wore an imposing moustache, differing from theirs in that the ends turned upw
ard to form sharp points, quite like those on his soldiers' metal hats, though it seemed to me they could hardly serve a similar purpose. He wore a highly ornamented cutting weapon hanging in a container from his belt, and his right hand rested on its handle. I noted with some surprise that his left arm was held close to his body in an awkward fashion, and appeared to be somewhat shorter than the other.

  "He's being cagey, you see," Wells muttered to me.

  "No public fuss about your arrival, in case he should decide that he doesn't want to acknowledge you, but just enough pomp here so that you'll feel well done-by if it turns out you're worth it. He's got a terrific sense for that sort of thing; I imagine he'd have done well as an actor-manager, probably better than he has as Kaiser."

  The Kaiser greeted us cordially, declaring that as we came recommended by his uncle and Mr. Roosevelt, whom he claimed to admire above all men, he would listen with great attention to what we had to say, although he felt obliged to point out that it was difficult to see any way in which Germany might benefit from intercourse with another Empire, as it already contained everything necessary to civilized life.

  He ushered us through some portions of the palace, pointing out with evident pride many pieces of furniture, woven wall hangings, paintings, and a profusion of smaller objects in cases or on tables; all these, he declared, were of the best quality, and furthermore, many were associated, in ways which would interest us remarkably, with his personal and family history.

  "Nice jar, this," Dark said, picking up a ceramic container adorned with representations of birds and flowers, which the Kaiser had informed us had been taken by his troops from a place called China during what I understood, perhaps incorrectly, to be an uprising of prize-fighters.

  "Put it down, man!" the Kaiser said. "It's worth thousands! Everything here is quite expensive, and I should be obliged if you would remember that. I don't come to your planet and fiddle about with your objets d'art, and I don't see why you should feel free to do so with mine!"

  Dark's action may have been fortunate for us, as the Kaiser, still somewhat nettled when we reached his study, made a point of excluding Oxford and Wells from our deliberations. "What the Emperor of Germany and these men from the stars have to say to each other is their affair, and not that of Great Britain or the United States," he said stiffly. "You gentlemen will be taken on a further tour of the palace, and mind you don't touch anything." We were thus enabled to continue avoiding revealing our true purpose to our friends, a course I preferred, as I still felt that they did not have the breadth of view that would allow them to perceive the necessity of hastening the destruction of their civilization.

  Nor was the Kaiser notably sympathetic to this notion when Ari laid it before him. King Edward had indicated, he said, that we had matters of grave consequence to discuss with him; he had not expected to be subjected to an inundation of pig-dog nonsense.

  "The peace of Europe is assured!" he told us, striding back and forth behind his desk. "I have the guarantees of my cousin the Czar; I have an understanding with the Turkish Sultan; the might of my Army and Navy is such that all must see the clear choice between the hand of German friendship and my Empire's mailed fist! I am called William the Peacemaker, and I assure you it is for good cause!"

  All the same, Ari's presentation of his thesis began to intrigue the Kaiser. Both Wells and the King had told us that William possessed an inquiring mind, and he was evidently caught up in spite of himself as Ari expounded on Metahistory, pointed out what the maps showed, and in the main brought up the same arguments that he had with King Edward.

  "I don't like this," the Kaiser commented after Ari had done. "I don't believe it, but I can't altogether dismiss it. I know what my blood tells me is the correct destiny for the German people, for Europe, for the world—but you turn everything on its head, and make me begin to doubt. . . ." He walked to the window and looked out, then turned back to us.

  "Gentlemen, we have been too long in this room, and my head is not so clear as it should be. Let us all take a turn in the fresh air and let it blow away some of the cobwebs you have spun about me. A few breaths of God's good ozone, and we shall all look at this differently, eh? We Germans are great believers in the doctrine that the healthy body houses the healthy mind!"

  I saw Dark glance sharply at the Kaiser's left arm, and I experienced a sinking feeling about my midsection. Our Captain, though a very capable man, was not so versed as Ari and myself in the ways of tactful association with persons of alien planets and was all too inclined to say things which, while perhaps true, produced alarming effects.

  And so it proved. We had scarcely walked past a bend in one of the graveled paths through the garden, which put us in the midst of a grove of trees, when he spoke up. "Look here," he said. "That healthy body business—how does that square with that arm of yours?"

  The Kaiser wheeled and glared at him—and, I was sorry to see, at the rest of us. "What!"

  "I've been noticing the way you hold it, and you don't use it at all, so it can't be good for much, can it?"

  The Kaiser's face contorted remarkably, which caused his moustache to assume a variety of configurations. "This is unheard of!" he gasped in a low, hoarse voice, as though something were blocking his throat. "Disgraceful! Barbaric! A piece of not-to-be-borne insolence!" He clapped his right hand to the hilt of the cutting weapon at his side and drew it partway from its container, at the same time taking a step toward Dark. The container somehow impeded his leg movement, and he stumbled and fell heavily to the path.

  "There, you see?" Dark said. "If you'd been able to use that arm properly, you'd have very likely kept your balance."

  The Kaiser gave a sort of low, wordless howl as he attempted to struggle to his knees. I exchanged an uneasy glance with Ari. It did seem that the monarchs we encountered were an excitable lot, and I found myself wondering if there were not some flaws in his theory about their greater-than-normal rationality.

  18

  "Here," Dark said, "let me give you a hand. As you've got only one that's any use to you," he added, in what struck me as an ill-advised attempt at relieving the situation with a touch of humor.

  The Kaiser gritted his teeth and muttered, "No—don't need it—lèse-majesté to touch the Emperor's person, anyhow, except under prescribed circumstances. . . ."

  When he regained his feet, his rage seemed to have subsided, and he looked at us in bewilderment, apparently careless of the gravel which clung to the knees of his uniform breeches. "I can't imagine what the devil made you say that," he said wonderingly. "It went past rudeness, past mere insult, past anything I have ever known or heard of. Old Bismarck had an edge to his tongue, especially when I had to sack him, and I've had some bluff conversations with honest peasants whilst inspecting my estates—who may well have been taking advantage of an opportunity to get in a safe dig at the All-Highest, though that's by the way—but I've never ever . . ." The Kaiser fell silent and looked at Dark as though he were for the first time truly realizing that he (and therefore the rest of us) were beings outside his experience.

  "Well, I'm sorry if I somehow seem to have hit a sore point," Dark said, "but I do think machinery ought to work properly—that's my craft, you see—and I suppose I do speak my mind when I see something out of order like that."

  "The human body," the Kaiser said, "is not a . . . a steam turbine or a railway train, as you appear to be suggesting."

  "Not at all," Dark said. "Different entirely—fuel, materials, control system, just about everything. But all the same, it's machinery, and it seems to me to be pretty slovenly to let it get out of whack like that. Don't people laugh at you about it?"

  "They do not, I assure you," the Kaiser answered grimly. "Not in my hearing, nor in that of any man who has pledged his sword to me. I may say that the rigors I have forced upon myself in order to make myself an accomplished horseman in spite of this"—he slapped his left arm with his good hand—"have won me much of the respect I command from m
y subjects. The greatest strength is the overcoming of weakness!"

  "If you say so," Dark responded. "But it seems to me that it'd have been simpler to have it put right."

  The Kaiser closed his eyes briefly. "I cannot imagine why the physicians who delivered me, not to mention their many successors who tormented my childhood with their remedial measures, never thought of that," he said.

  His tone did not seem to me to carry any appreciable degree of sincerity, but Dark replied indignantly, "Well, they darned well ought to have! It'd have been a lot easier to take care of it at the beginning than it would be now."

  "Take care of it? Do you mean to tell me . . ." The Kaiser stopped speaking and looked intently at Dark.

  "Are you saying, sir, that you consider that this . . . condition could have been corrected by some means you know of?"

  "Of course. It's a part that's not working, so what your technicians ought to have done was work out why, and fix it. It's all very well to talk about being strong by overcoming weakness and so on, but you've just now got your knees all dirty, and, I ask you, is it worth it?"

  The Kaiser took a long look about him. "I appear to be on the grounds of my Own palace, and not on the moon or in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, so I must behave as though what I have heard is what has in fact been said, and make some rational response to it. We Hohenzollerns are not subject to demented fancies, unlike some of the Habsburgs and others I could name not a thousand miles from here. . . . I have the impression, Herr Dark, that you somehow believe it is by choice—"

  "Say!" Dark cried. "I've got it! Of course; you people aren't onto a lot of things that we know about, so you get stuck with things like that you can't help. Dear me, what a pity. I don't suppose," he asked diffidently, "now you've grown up with it and all, that you'd care to get it working properly again? I don't want to be pushy, but I hate to see things not doing what they're meant to do."