“Well, perhaps I shall. I may not yet be of a fixed resolve.”
With those words they parted. Wyndham went, well content that the question of the machines had been put aside. For he had said definitely that he would not spend the rest of the week in acquiring knowledge of such doubtful value to the plans of Pilwin-C6P, and of less to him, and it was a decision which he had not been pressed to change. He thought also that he had suggested more doubt as to what his own decision would be than, in fact, he had.
Actually, Pilwin-C6P had been most impressed by a change of tone and manner which he had attributed to a wrong cause. “It is the savage ego that is exposing itself,” he thought, “more nakedly as the hours pass. I suppose he will elect to live as long as he can, his instincts lacking reason’s control. Well, let him go to death by his own road! It is nothing to us.”
He repeated this conversation to Munzo-D7D, who gave it more thought, and whose conclusions were not entirely the same as his.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next two days passed in ways that were momentous enough for some, including those of the processions that passed into five thousand furnaces of euthanasia, which, at the hour when the Council of the First Hundred met on the second day, were roaring hospitable reception to the fourth half-million reduction of the total of human lives, but to Wyndham and Vinetta they brought no change, except in themselves, though that might have been enough to engage their minds at a less critical time.
Wyndham had had two further talks with Avanah-F3B, and had added many more or less accurate facts to his previous knowledge of twentieth-century life, but they had increased his previous confusion rather than helped to elucidate the conditions from which his ego came, or supplied useful suggestions for the conduct of those which he was so near to experiencing. The facts might be comprehensible in themselves. Some of them were. But they would not coordinate. Each of them appeared to be contradicted or ridiculed by some other which was supported by historical evidence of an equal weight.
Discussing these difficulties with Vinetta, whom he continued to meet to the last limits of the hours which custom protected from observation, it had occurred to both of them that the explanation might lie in the difference which must divide a drugged from an undrugged world. They were already conscious of so much change in themselves, since they had ceased to use the mottled powder, that it seemed difficult to set a limit to its potentialities of explanation; but when Wyndham put this idea to the historian, he found that he had only increased the nightmare of improbabilities which he sought to probe.
He did not venture to mention that he had already commenced experience of a body from which the effects of stupefying and drowsing drugs were clearing away, for he had become too conscious of the vague suspicion with which he was regarded by his companions to disclose a deviation from that which was universal custom, and might be held to be compulsory law, so that he was debarred from making allusion to the resulting differences as he already knew them to be. But he suggested in general terms, “May not the absence of drugs of sufficient potency to control the actions and emotions of man account for the wild irregularities by which they destroyed each other’s comfort, often sacrificing the lives they professed to value, or even undermining the health which they could only risk at such fantastic costs of humiliation and pain?”
“That,” the historian replied, “like other suggestions which you have made, has a reasonable sound, nor can I say with entire assurance that it is less than true; but, in fact, the men of that time were takers of drugs to great amount, and in a variety by which it seemed that everyone should have been able to suit himself.
“There was one which they called alcohol, of a most potent kind, which was almost universally swallowed in the country from which you came. Its effects were admittedly bad, and their medical journals, while still advocating its use, commonly mention it as a principal cause of disease, insanity, and premature death, as well as being an incentive to violent crime.”
“And you say that they still advocated its use? It has an incredible sound.”
“They contended that it was harmless if taken in regular, limited quantities; or that it was actually beneficial as giving an illusion of geniality to the intolerable conditions of the existence which they endured.”
“But surely the correct dosage could have been ascertained?”
“So it must appear. But you will remember the disorders, both mental and physical, of a time when, as I have told you, men would escape, if they could, from a safe jail!
“Neither does it appear that, though this drug had been used for many centuries by countless millions of men, they had been able to arrive at any agreed opinion upon it. Some held that it was detrimental in any quantity, at any time; while most, as I have said, contended that it was beneficial if not taken in excessive quantities.
“But you must not suppose that the men of that time depended upon this alone. They took drugs far more largely than we, and with intentions alike to ours. The difference was in the variety of these, and in the clumsiness of what they did. Occasionally it appears that a law would intervene to restrain those who were addicted to one of a particularly poisonous kind. But even in these cases there efforts appear to have been too weak, the penalties too mild; for the evils are mentioned as going on side by side with the preventive legislation, as two men might lie in one bed (as, on occasion, they did!). And of a thousand other drugs which the whole nation swallowed constantly, in pills and draughts, there was little knowledge and no restraint. You may say that the human race at that time was drugged continually, though without coherent purpose, or any unity of practice or of result.”
“Well,” Wyndham concluded, in a despair which may be simple to understand, “it was my own time, and I would believe of it the best I can. But you have called it mad, and I do not see how you can get beyond that. It may be that this drugging supplies the explanation of what they were.”
“Even that,” Avanah-F3B replied patiently, “might not be safe to conclude. It appears that some of the wildest words were spoken, some of the most sinister actions performed, by the more abstemious men. It may be best to say that they were maddened by misery and disease, by their perpetual motion and frequent wars, and put attempt at further explanation aside. But,” he concluded kindly, “I need not say that our chemists would provide either alcohol, or any other of the drugs which their physicians prescribed, or which were used with less authority but even more generally, if you would like to be provided with them for the adventure you have in mind.”
Wyndham shook his head. “My troubles,” he said, “may not be so few that I shall need more.”
“I should say that it is wisely resolved, But, if you will take counsel from one who can have been of little assistance to you in other ways, you will apply for your share of our own powder in its euthanasia form to be reserved for your use, and keep it closely at hand, for, I suppose, a few hours of a lonely life will be the most that you will endure.”
“It will be mere prudence,” Wyndham agreed. But he did not speak from the heart. It was only what he thought it to be mere prudence to say. For in the last two days he had come to love life as he had not supposed that he ever could, and to regard death with an equal fear, so that he would have said that it was more dreadful than pain, which he knew that Avanah-F3B, broad of mind though he was, would not find it easy to understand. Only if he should fail to rescue Vinetta might he be disposed to consider death as a fearful friend, and that would be in no mood of resignation, but sheer despair. All which might be thought, but must not be said.
So he went, feeling, as he had done before, that he had learned little which it could be useful to know; and that the lack of sympathy that was evident in those around him isolated him, even before the appointed day. Even the more vivid sense of living which had come with the abandoning of that mottled-grey powder did not incline him at the moment to more than a passive inclination to wait the event—or rather to concentrate upon t
he saving of Vinetta’s life, and defer consideration of what must follow until they could breathe more freely in an empty world. He was waiting, with an impatience he must not show, for the rest of his kind to die. And so in this mood he came to take his place at the council table, to hear an event of the earlier day which stirred such emotion as he had not expected that his companions would ever show; and to learn that there could be an occurrence which would seem more dreadful, even more exciting, to themselves than it did to him.
It has been briefly mentioned already that the population of the earth, which had now been maintained for a prolonged period at a steady maximum of five millions, was settled in five thousand widely distributed centres, each consisting of ten separate mansions designed for the accommodation of one hundred inhabitants. Grouped with each of these centres were the technical buildings, museums, and libraries suitable to the tepid interests or activities of its population, the schools and nurseries which stirred into periodic activities, and, not least, the furnaces to which, one by one, at an average rate about six a year in each centre (but rising at some periods to a much higher level, owing to the fact that each quarter the population would be of approximately the same age) the older members of the community willingly went.
Originally there had been very beautiful gardens attached to these centres, but these, with one arbitrary and other necessary exceptions, had been destroyed as being too difficult to restrain within the standards of repression which policy and public opinion required.
The candidate for euthanasia would first partake of a pleasant meal, in which so large a portion of the daily drug would have been included, and of so potent a strength, that, as it penetrated his body, sensitiveness to pain, even in its severest form, would gradually cease, and a delicious, increasing languor would supervene.
Having partaken of this meal, he would enter the only place, in most settlements, where horticulture was still practiced—a hot-house of tropic flowers with overpowering odours, such as would drug the senses to pleasant dreams, even before the powder had had time to assert its power.
Here he would mount a couch, which would commence to move slowly, on smoothly grooved wheels, at a pace which he could either accelerate or retard, but which, if he should not interfere, would take him almost imperceptibly forward through corridors of increasing heat, which, as the drug worked, and he became more impervious, he would be unable to feel, until he would enter an antechamber of glowing metal, where he could watch the purple garment he wore catch fire, and wrap him in splendid flame.
Feeling no pain, though he might be aware of the scent of his roasting flesh, he could now, if consciousness still remained, touch the lever which would shoot him forward into the final furnace, where disintegration would be instantaneous, or he could continue to glide gently forward to meet his end.
It had been customary to keep these furnaces and their subordinate apparatus in constant readiness, so that there should be no risk that any applicants might be delayed who should resort to them at urgent need, but their actual use, averaging, as has been said, about once in eight weeks, had never risen beyond one or two daily, though their working capacity was much greater.
Now, however, they were required to provide accommodation beyond precedent, or anything which their designers had foreseen. At their maximum activity it had been calculated that it would be possible to deal with the present plethora of candidates at a rate of ten to the hour, thus allowing a two-hour interval between the semi-diurnal batches, which was utilized for the inspection and renovation of machinery and apparatus which were not subjected to so unprecedented a strain.
On the first day the reports from all centres had been satisfactory to the most critical requirements. A million men and women had been eliminated without fault of organization, or any instance of unseemly hesitation or foolish haste. And so—apart from one solitary incident—it had been on this second day. But that incident had been of an appalling character. At Station 78F, situated where the city of Lubeck had stood in a more barbarous age, a hundred candidates, composed mainly of young women, with a few older men such as were non-essential to the concluding duties of the community, had been allocated to the third release, and were passing inward at the appointed intervals, when it was observed through the transparent heat-proof walls of the antechamber to the final furnace that a young woman, Sinto-T9R, was showing signs of extreme perturbation at a time when she should have been reclining in languorous ecstasy, to the encouragement of those who watched, and who would go to the same fate in the following hours.
Perturbation, in the next minute, became panic fear. Her face became contorted with pain. She stopped her couch, and then drove it forward suddenly, having possibly intended a contrary motion and become confused by her condition. As she shot forward into a fiercer heat, her garment burst into flames. Her couch remained stationary for some long moments while she screamed and writhed and roasted in the sight of scores of appalled and impotent spectators. Then, freed from her own control, it moved forward again at its leisurely routine speed, and vanished into the white core of the ultimate furnace, from which, in due course, the metal frame would emerge, ice-cooled, and ready to be furnished anew.
The sight or hearing of this fearful agony had no effect upon those who were immediately following Sinto-T9R on the road to death, for her torment was not shared by them, nor, in their half-delirious, half-stupefied condition, did they show consciousness of what occurred. But to those who were destined to go the same way in later batches, and who had seen this disastrous sight, it was a different matter, as it was in five thousand centres when the incident had been broadcast throughout the world.
To the men of any age, it would be a disconcerting possibility that, where they sought euthanasia, they might encounter appalling anguish: but to these people, dreading pain as beyond endurance and outside the ordinary experiences of life, the possibility brought a horror not easily to be realized by earlier generations of men. The question of what had occurred, of responsibility for it, and most particularly whether it might occur again, stirred the world to a stronger ripple of life than it had experienced during the last fifty of its aimless, negative years.
The complement of the voluntary victims at Station 78F had been made up, it is true; but only after arrangements had been made for the instant reversal of the moving belt at the slightest sign of disquiet on the part of those who were approaching the final heat, and by calling for volunteers among those who had been intended for the immolations of later days.
It was one instance only of evident anguish, where there had been one and a half million painless deaths, but it had already caused a wild excitement sufficient to threaten the orderly termination of this supreme gesture of mankind’s rejection of the rule of a blundering Heaven; and this confusion might increase during the next twelve hours, as volunteers must be found, or persuasions urged, to make up the quotas which the night required.
An authoritative decision as to the cause of the incident, and an assurance that it would not recur, had become of the utmost urgency; and the First Hundred assembled with faces at once graver and more alive than Wyndham Smith’s adopted memory could equally recall. With his own mind released to increased alertness through freedom from the accustomed drugging, he regarded this unforeseeable development with satisfaction, as diverting attention from himself, but with a wary watchfulness for any threat to his own plans, or opportunity which it might bring.
But he saw that, for the moment, watching was all that he could do. He was the one man whom the event did not concern, who would not be considered to have the remotest interest in it. It was unlikely that his opinion would be asked. To tender it would be a gaucherie to which even his militant ego would not easily drive the settled habits of Colpeck-4XP. The chairman was speaking now.
“I am glad to say,” he began, with the slow gravity of one who knew that he spoke to a waiting world, “that, only a few minutes ago, the cause of this tragic accident has been ascertaine
d. It is an additional pleasure to be able to add that there is no reason to fear that it may happen again, nor to blame anyone who is alive for the blunder which has occurred.
“The necessity for producing exceptional quantities of the drug for which the occasion calls has resulted in a number of machines which were engaged in occupations for which they are no longer required being diverted to this purpose. Among these was one which had been designed for the manufacture of synthetic bacteria, by which it had been intended to supersede the uncleanly ferments which have been unnecessary hitherto for the fertilization of field and garden soils. This machine, though of exceptional intelligence and adaptability, has been found capable of error, and that error it is certain, by the result, that it did, in fact, on one occasion among three hundred and six, commit.
“The use of this machine for this purpose was authorized by Marceau-Z6B, who passed out of existence during the early hours of the present day. Orders, which I am sure you will approve, have been already issued for the destruction both of the delinquent machine, and for the whole of its products that remain unused. It has been ascertained that the use of this machine was no more than a needless precaution, the regular sources of supply, which are beyond suspicion, having proved themselves to be adequate to all requirements.
“The tragic horror which ended the existence of Sinto-T9R, terrible as it was, may be regarded as a demonstration of the basic equity of our protest against a form of sentient existence which is not divinely protected from such possibilities, and a justification of the course on which we are now agreed.”
As he ceased, the sense of an enormous relief and of profound agreement with what he said caused a low murmur of approval to pass round an assembly which was little addicted to such demonstrations; and after that there was a long pause of silence, which was not broken until the chairman spoke again. “After this explanation,” he said, “there can be little reason to doubt that the orderly procession which has faltered in the last hours will be resumed with the exactness which the occasion requires; but lest there should be any in whom a spirit of fear persists, it may be well that there should be some example among ourselves.
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