In all this time, Pierce Bascomb had been sitting quietly at the council table, quite untroubled by the accusations against his son or the impassioned defense by Dr. Kokintz of his position. A bird chirped in the courtyard outside and he cocked his head to listen to it. The bird burst into a melodic cadenza, running through a double octave and then ending on two comical little notes as if the whole thing were a joke. Dr. Kokintz listened to it and smiled. He turned to look at the guards on either side of him and noticed that they were smiling too, like pleased children.
“That is one of our Grand Fenwick sparrows,” one of them whispered. “In early summer I have been told they sing more bravely than sparrows anywhere else in the world.”
Pierce Bascomb rose, now that the tension was broken, and bowing to Gloriana, said, “Your Grace, I have a suggestion to make concerning Dr. Kokintz. He has been taken from his own country and brought on a long journey to a strange land. He is our prisoner, but this is really nothing new to him, for he has not been a free man for many, many years. He has been compelled to work at tasks against which his conscience as a man must frequently have rebelled. He has lived a life of doubt and anxiety with burdens weighing on him heavier than any others, perhaps, have had to shoulder.
“Let us adjourn this meeting for an hour or so, and let Dr. Kokintz come with me not as a prisoner, but as a free, fellow human being. I would like to take him to our National Forest, so that for the first time in many years, he can feel again what it is like to be a truly free man, relieved of all restrictions and burdens.”
“We must send a guard with him,” the Count of Mountjoy said. “He may escape. The forest is not too far from the border. We do not want to be left with this bomb and without the man who can control it.”
“I do not believe he will try to escape,” Pierce Bascomb said gently.
“Let him give his parole that he will not try,” Mountjoy rejoined.
“I do not believe that we should put any restriction upon him,” Pierce replied slowly. “We cannot force a man to help us with our problem. If he helps at all, it must be the result of his own free desire to do so. It must be because he recognizes a higher duty than that which he owes to his own nation. And he must discover this for himself. But he cannot discover it while he is our prisoner, or while he is tied by loyalties and patriotism to the service of his own nation. Let him, for an hour or so, be just a man without any ties or pressures—a free man, no more and no less.”
“Sir,” Tully said to his father, “I am not sure that this is a wise proposal. You have not been about the world as much as I. There is a lot in every man that is deceitful and selfish and treacherous. I do not believe that we can trust this scientist. He will try to escape, and you could not prevent him.”
Pierce looked at his son with mild reproof. “It is true that there is a great deal in man that is deceitful,” he said. “But the deepest force in any man is towards good. It is for that reason that the murderer will help a child across a fence, and the soldier secretly visit the cemeteries of his enemy. When a man denies the goodness in himself, that is when he really suffers. I believe Dr. Kokintz has been made to suffer a great deal in this way. There is good in him, but it has never had an opportunity of asserting itself. I believe it is time he was given a chance to review his work, and without pressure from one side or another, let his conscience decide whether he should continue to make more of these bombs or lend his training to prevent any more being made.”
Dr. Kokintz rose slowly and said to Gloriana, “I would like to go to the forest for a while.”
“You may go,” Gloriana replied, softly, “and if you wish to leave Grand Fenwick, you may do so. No one will try to stop you. The meeting will re-convene in an hour and we would like you to be with us to help us. But the choice is yours.”
Dr. Kokintz; and Pierce Bascomb walked slowly out of the council chamber together. The two men-at-arms were about to follow, but Gloriana signalled them to stay.
“Let him be free,” she said. “Even if it is only for a little while.”
CHAPTER XVII
The forest of Grand Fenwick, at this time, lay in all the loveliness of early summer. The bracken was so thick and tall that in places it covered the path, so that Dr. Kokintz and Pierce were compelled to tread upon it, and the broken fronds filled the air with the sweet smell of growth. The rhododendrons were in full bloom, forming heaping mounds of red at the base of the trees, some indeed growing so high that the rich blossoms made domes of flowers against the sky. Pine trees stood about like cathedral columns through which bright walls of sunlight slipped, and at times the two men had to bend low to get under the branches of spreading oaks; branches which had the appearance of a quiet strength under their growths of velvet moss.
There were innumerable voices to be heard, of birds, of insects, of moving leaves and twigs, of falling water and of squirrels, chattering between filling the pouches of their cheeks with sweet young hazel nuts.
Pierce Bascomb led the way up a slight hill and then down another. In a little dell at the bottom was a fallen tree and nearby a waterfall, no more than twenty feet or so high. Here a crystal liquid arc bridged the air to spill into a quiet pool below. At the edges of the pool were a few rocks and to one side some water plants over which a brilliant blue dragonfly with a scarlet head flashed and hovered.
They sat on a tree trunk and listened for a while to the splashing of the water into the pool.
“This is our only waterfall—a cherished possession,” Pierce said at length. “I have made an examination of the rocks and estimate that five hundred years ago it was a foot higher. On that basis we will have a waterfall in Grand Fenwick for five thousand years, though at the end of that time it will be only ten feet high. But it gives me a sense of great satisfaction to know that the waterfall will be here centuries after I and all my contemporaries are long forgotten. There is a kind of link with posterity to know that others will have the same pleasure from the waterfall as I. In a way I can live part of their lives and they part of mine. That is, of course, presuming that the world will still be here fifty centuries from now, and there will be life on it.”
Dr. Kokintz did not rise to the bait. “The land here must be very fertile,” he said. “Things grow in great profusion.”
“As long as we have been a nation, this has been a forest,” Pierce replied. “Our ancestors walked in these same woods five centuries ago and were shaded by many of the trees which still stand around us. Originally, the forest was set aside to provide wood for building, for bows and arrows, and for charcoal. There are still a few yews standing from which bows were made four centuries ago. In the course of time, the forest became denuded. But for the past two hundred years it has been forbidden to cut down any of the trees. My son, you know, is the chief ranger, and I his assistant. Sometimes we find it advisable to hew down an old tree which is interfering with the growth of younger ones, or is in danger of falling and destroying others around it. But whenever such an occasion arises, a meeting of the Council of Freemen is held, and a vote taken as to whether the tree shall be cut or not. Almost all the people in Grand Fenwick attend these meetings, because they know each tree in the forest. They have a deep sense of responsibility towards them.”
“What is done with the lumber when a tree is felled?”
“The smaller branches are made into charcoal. The heavier wood is used for repairing houses and, perhaps, building new ones. No charge is made for the wood. You would be surprised if you went into one of our homes, how the owner could identify every piece of timber in it, and tell you what tree it came from and where the tree had grown and how it came to be cut down and how old it was at the time. Even after the trees are felled, they still serve the people, sheltering them from the wind and keeping them warm. There is a feeling in Grand Fenwick about our trees as if they were living people.”
“I haven’t a great deal of patience with such sentiments,” Dr. Kokintz said. “Trees are trees. They are not
people. They are alive, to be sure, but theirs is a lower form of life.
Trees cannot feel anything. It is mere superstition to waste affection on them.”
Pierce did not reply directly to this. “I have noticed,” he said, “that when we cut down a tree a host of small branches burst out of the stump which is left. The life force in the tree insists upon continuing. Even mutilated and deformed, the tree strives to live on. Would you say that the tree had no feeling?”
Dr. Kokintz shrugged. He had not thought of the matter before. “It proves only that there is still life in the tree stump; that it is not yet dead,” he said.
“It proves also, surely, that it wants to continue to live,” said Pierce. “All things which have life seek to preserve it and because of this, one is always in doubt whether he has the right to destroy life when he cannot create it. When we fell a tree, my son and I, we know that we destroy not only the tree, but also all its associations with the past, all the pleasures which it might give, if allowed to live, in the future. That is a great deal. It is not an easy matter to cut a tree down. Because of this, I understood well enough what you meant when you said that scientists are compelled to play the role of god or devil by laymen to whose laws they are subject. I and my son must play god or devil to the trees, felling them or doctoring them according to what the people decide. The trees have no say in the matter; no right of appeal. Yet it sometimes seems to me that they should have.”
He picked up a chip of wood, threw it into the pool and watched it swirl around and then drift over to the bank.
“There is one difference between us, however,” he continued. “The scientist’s power of life and death is over his fellow human beings as well as over what you call the lower orders. Ours is only over plant life. The scientist’s work, when turned to war, enables one group of people to obtain the mastery over another. That is well enough, I suppose. But now the stage has been reached where not only the countries engaged in a war must go through its agonies, but also all the other countries who have no part in the war at all and all of nature as well. Like the trees, these other countries are condemned to death without any right of appeal.
“They are condemned not only to death, but to obliteration though they have no place in the quarrel. They neither start such wars nor end them. Their fate is only to suffer in the struggles of the giants. They are helpless to save themselves. With such weapons as this bomb of yours, war cannot be limited any longer. It must ruin all. And since it must ruin all, the responsibility of the scientist is extended from his own nation to the whole human race.”
“This is the same squirrel cage in which I have been running for the last ten years,” said Dr. Kokintz, bitterly. “If we did not make the bomb, the Russians would make it. The Russians would make it and we believe would use it. We make it in the hope that we will never use it. It is madness, but how are we to get back to sanity? It is, as I said, not the scientists who must lead the way back to sanity, but the people who control the scientists, and they are so filled with distrust of each other’s intentions, that an agreement even to ban so out-dated a weapon as the atom bomb cannot be achieved.
“There is fear and suspicion everywhere. The Communists fear, by the very nature of their own political philosophy, the capitalists. The capitalists see in Communism the ruination of their way of life. The Asiatics, exploited for centuries, distrust the Europeans. The Europeans, fearful of the enormous populations of Asia and the growth of nationalism and technology in India, in Africa, and even in China, fear the Asiatics.
“There is no trust anywhere, and the only safety for a people lies in having weapons of such terrible power that none dare attack them.”
“And where do the little nations fit in in all of this?” Pierce asked, quietly.
Dr. Kokintz shrugged. “I do not know,” he said.
“You do not know because you do not care about the little nations,” Pierce said. “You think that the people who live in them are peculiar and quaint and behind the times and not really important. You forget that they are your fellow beings. You think of them as being a kind of sub-strata of the human race, of no importance because they have no weight to make felt.”
“I suppose that is so,” Dr. Kokintz replied. “Whoever has the most weight in the world receives the most consideration. That is the one international law which is recognized by all. You must admit that it would be more disastrous for all free men if the United States were destroyed than if, say, Belgium, or Ireland, or Grand Fenwick were destroyed.”
“Perhaps. But a Belgian or an Irishman or one of our own people would not agree. And so long as the world can contemplate the destruction of a small nation without any deep pang of regret, so long will it be uncivilized. It is the same in the government of communities—the rights of the weakest and poorest citizen must receive the same support as those of the richest and the roost powerful. Otherwise civilization is merely a name and not a real force. But without civilization, no individual is safe, no nation is safe, and in these days even the world itself is not safe.”
Dr. Kokintz said nothing. He sat watching the water swirling in the pool, one wave riding over the other, only to be overtaken and merged in another bigger and more vigorous than itself.
“Tell me,” said Pierce, “if an agreement were achieved to abolish the Q-bomb and the atom bomb and these other weapons of mass destruction, would it be possible, by international inspection, to be sure that none were made?”
“Yes. That is if the inspecting scientists were given free access to the nuclear laboratories and installations of all the nations. As far as the Q-bomb is concerned, I believe I am the only man in the world who knows how to achieve it. Others may soon find out. But no other scientist, to my knowledge, would be able to discover whether it was being manufactured except myself.”
“If such a system of control was established, would you be willing to organize the inspection of nuclear plants and train others to do the work?”
“I would do it, I believe, provided it was not a betrayal of my own nation,” Dr. Kokintz replied.
“But this is a matter of all humanity and all living things—all their past, their present, and their future,” Pierce persisted. “It is not a question of loyalty to one group or one country, but to all living things everywhere from this time on.’ It affects the existence not only of man, whose worth may be debatable, but of all life upon the earth. You have a duty to the whole world, not merely to one segment of one species.”
“The question is hypothetical,” Dr. Kokintz said, shrugging. “No such agreement has been achieved and you and I, sitting here in this forest, cannot bring such an agreement about.”
“It is not hypothetical at all,” Pierce stated. “For I tell you that there will be such an international agreement and very soon. It will not come from the big nations where rivalries are strong. However much they desire such an agreement, they cannot trust each other. So the little nations must force them to enter into such a compact and see that they abide by it.”
Kokintz chuckled. “And how will these mice tame the lions?” he asked, half mockingly.
“The biggest of the lions, the United States, is already caught in a trap where all its strength is of no avail,” Pierce replied. “We of Grand Fenwick have the Q-bomb, the only one in the world. We are, therefore, suddenly, an overwhelmingly powerful nation. We have the means to make others do our will. We can without difficulty form a League of Little Nations, countries such as Finland, Belgium, Uruguay, and El Salvador, Ireland, Lichtenstein, San Marino, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Liberia, Egypt, Panama, Switzerland—all the small independent nations in the world. Such a League can solemnly demand that the big nations agree to cease the manufacture of nuclear weapons of all kinds and permit international inspection of their plants by teams of scientists from the neutral small nations to ensure that the agreement is adhered to. If they do not agree to do this under moral pressure, we can threaten a
s a last resource to explode the Q-bomb.”
“I do not put much faith in the power of moral pressure,” Dr. Kokintz said. “And as for using the Q-bomb, you would never dare to do that. If it were exploded, you would yourselves be destroyed either from the bomb or from the liberation of carbon fourteen, or from the winds and eruptions of the earth which I believe will follow the detonation of the bomb.”
“Do you think that the tree, doomed to fall anyway, would not as soon fall a little earlier and kill the woodsmen?” asked Pierce, quietly. “Unless the Q-bomb is banned effectively, we will all be destroyed anyway in someone else’s quarrel and by someone else’s weapons. We will have no say in the matter. Not even a warning of the date. This way, at least, we have a chance of bringing the world to its senses or facing destruction which we ourselves will imitate.”
“I do not believe you will find a man in Grand Fenwick or any other nation who would explode that bomb,” Kokintz said.
“I thought you knew my son better,” Pierce replied, with a touch of pride. “He would not hesitate to detonate it if told to do so.”
“Who would tell him, knowing they would perish themselves?” Kokintz persisted.
Pierce got up and looked down at him mildly. “I would,” he said.
For a little while neither spoke. Then Pierce said, “I will leave you now. You may go if you wish. The path past the waterfall leads over our border into France. It is only a matter of a hundred yards. There are guards, but they have been instructed to let you by. Once outside you can return to making your bombs.”
When Bascomb had gone, Dr. Kokintz stood up slowly and looked at the log he had been sitting upon. A green shoot was growing out of one end of it, strong and straight, and full of vigour. He listened for a second to the tinkling of the waterfall and noticed that the big blue dragon-fly had settled on a lily pad and was sunning its wings luxuriously.
The Mouse That Roared: eBook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 1) Page 15
