The Classic Sci-Fi Collection
Page 90
When Mr. Smith to-day entered the sky-advertising department, he found the operators sitting with folded arms at their motionless projectors, and inquired as to the cause of their inaction. In response, the man addressed simply pointed to the sky, which was of a pure blue. “Yes,” muttered Mr. Smith, “a cloudless sky! That’s too bad, but what’s to be done? Shall we produce rain? That we might do, but is it of any use? What we need is clouds, not rain. Go,” said he, addressing the head engineer, “go see Mr. Samuel Mark, of the meteorological division of the scientific department, and tell him for me to go to work in earnest on the question of artificial clouds. It will never do for us to be always thus at the mercy of cloudless skies!”
Mr. Smith’s daily tour through the several departments of his newspaper is now finished. Next, from the advertisement hall he passes to the reception chamber, where the ambassadors accredited to the American government are awaiting him, desirous of having a word of counsel or advice from the all-powerful editor. A discussion was going on when he entered. “Your Excellency will pardon me,” the French Ambassador was saying to the Russian, “but I see nothing in the map of Europe that requires change. ‘The North for the Slavs?’ Why, yes, of course; but the South for the Matins. Our common frontier, the Rhine, it seems to me, serves very well. Besides, my government, as you must know, will firmly oppose every movement, not only against Paris, our capital, or our two great prefectures, Rome and Madrid, but also against the kingdom of Jerusalem, the dominion of Saint Peter, of which France means to be the trusty defender.”
“Well said!” exclaimed Mr. Smith. “How is it,” he asked, turning to the Russian ambassador, “that you Russians are not content with your vast empire, the most extensive in the world, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to the Celestial Mountains and the Kara-Korum, whose shores are washed by the Frozen Ocean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean? Then, what is the use of threats? Is war possible in view of modern inventions-asphyxiating shells capable of being projected a distance of 60 miles, an electric spark of 90 miles, that can at one stroke annihilate a battalion; to say nothing of the plague, the cholera, the yellow fever, that the belligerents might spread among their antagonists mutually, and which would in a few days destroy the greatest armies?”
“True,” answered the Russian; “but can we do all that we wish? As for us Russians, pressed on our eastern frontier by the Chinese, we must at any cost put forth our strength for an effort toward the west.”
“O, is that all? In that case,” said Mr. Smith, “the thing can be arranged. I will speak to the Secretary of State about it. The attention of the Chinese government shall be called to the matter. This is not the first time that the Chinese have bothered us.”
“Under these conditions, of course—” And the Russian ambassador declared himself satisfied.
“Ah, Sir John, what can I do for you?” asked Mr. Smith as he turned to the representative of the people of Great Britain, who till now had remained silent.
“A great deal,” was the reply. “If the Earth Chronicle would but open a campaign on our behalf—”
“And for what object?”
“Simply for the annulment of the Act of Congress annexing to the United States the British islands.”
Though, by a just turn-about of things here below, Great Britain has become a colony of the United States, the English are not yet reconciled to the situation. At regular intervals they are ever addressing to the American government vain complaints.
“A campaign against the annexation that has been an accomplished fact for 150 years!” exclaimed Mr. Smith. “How can your people suppose that I would do anything so unpatriotic?”
“We at home think that your people must now be sated. The Monroe doctrine is fully applied; the whole of America belongs to the Americans. What more do you want? Besides, we will pay for what we ask.”
“Indeed!” answered Mr. Smith, without manifesting the slightest irritation. “Well, you English will ever be the same. No, no, Sir John, do not count on me for help. Give up our fairest province, Britain? Why not ask France generously to renounce possession of Africa, that magnificent colony the complete conquest of which cost her the labor of 800 years? You will be well received!”
“You decline! All is over then!” murmured the British agent sadly. “The United Kingdom falls to the share of the Americans; the Indies to that of—”
“The Russians,” said Mr. Smith, completing the sentence.
“Australia—”
“Has an independent government.”
“Then nothing at all remains for us!” sighed Sir John, downcast.
“Nothing?” asked Mr. Smith, laughing. “Well, now, there’s Gibraltar!”
With this sally, the audience ended. The clock was striking twelve, the hour of breakfast. Mr. Smith returns to his chamber. Where the bed stood in the morning a table all spread comes up through the floor. For Mr. Smith, being above all a practical man; has reduced the problem of existence to its simplest terms. For him, instead of the endless suites of apartments of the olden time, one room fitted with ingenious mechanical contrivances is enough. Here he sleeps, takes his meals, in short, lives.
He seats himself. In the mirror of the phonotelephote is seen the same chamber at Paris which appeared in it this morning. A table furnished forth is likewise in readiness here, for notwithstanding the difference of hours, Mr. Smith and his wife have arranged to take their meals simultaneously. It is delightful thus to take breakfast tête-a-tête with one who is 3000 miles or so away. Just now, Mrs. Smith’s chamber has no occupant.
“She is late! Woman’s punctuality! Progress everywhere except there!” muttered Mr. Smith as he turned the tap for the first dish. For like all wealthy folk in our day, Mr. Smith has done away with the domestic kitchen and is a subscriber to the Grand Alimentation Company, which sends through a great network of tubes to subscribers’ residences all sorts of dishes, as a varied assortment is always in readiness. A subscription costs money, to be sure, but the cuisine is of the best, and the system has this advantage, that it, does away with the pestering race of the cordons-bleus. Mr. Smith received and ate, all alone, the hors-d’oeuvre, entrées, rôti and legumes that constituted the repast. He was just finishing the dessert when Mrs. Smith appeared in the mirror of the telephote.
“Why, where have you been?” asked Mr. Smith through the telephone.
“What! You are already at the dessert? Then I am late,” she exclaimed, with a winsome naïveté. “Where have I been, you ask? Why, at my dress-maker’s. The hats are just lovely this season! I suppose I forgot to note the time, and so am a little late.”
“Yes, a little,” growled Mr. Smith; “so little that I have already quite finished breakfast. Excuse me if I leave you now, but I must be going.”
“O certainly, my dear; good-by till evening.”
Smith stepped into his air-coach, which was in waiting for him at a window. “Where do you wish to go, sir?” inquired the coachman.
“Let me see; I have three hours,” Mr. Smith mused. “Jack, take me to my accumulator works at Niagara.”
For Mr. Smith has obtained a lease of the great falls of Niagara. For ages the energy developed by the falls went unutilized. Smith, applying Jackson’s invention, now collects this energy, and lets or sells it. His visit to the works took more time than he had anticipated. It was four o’clock when he returned home, just in time for the daily audience which he grants to callers.
One readily understands how a man situated as Smith is must be beset with requests of all kinds. Now it is an inventor needing capital; again it is some visionary who comes to advocate a brilliant scheme which must surely yield millions of profit. A choice has to be made between these projects, rejecting the worthless, examining the questionable ones, accepting the meritorious. To this work Mr. Smith devotes every day two full hours.
The callers were fewer to-day than usual—only twelve of them. Of these, eight had only impracticable sc
hemes to propose. In fact, one of them wanted to revive painting, an art fallen into desuetude owing to the progress made in color-photography. Another, a physician, boasted that he had discovered a cure for nasal catarrh! These impracticables were dismissed in short order. Of the four projects favorably received, the first was that of a young man whose broad forehead betokened his intellectual power.
“Sir, I am a chemist,” he began, “and as such I come to you.”
“Well!”
“Once the elementary bodies,” said the young chemist, “were held to be sixty-two in number; a hundred years ago they were reduced to ten; now only three remain irresolvable, as you are aware.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Well, sir, these also I will show to be composite. In a few months, a few weeks, I shall have succeeded in solving the problem. Indeed, it may take only a few days.”
“And then?”
“Then, sir, I shall simply have determined the absolute. All I want is money enough to carry my research to a successful issue.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Smith. “And what will be the practical outcome of your discovery?”
“The practical outcome? Why, that we shall be able to produce easily all bodies whatever—stone, wood, metal, fibers—”
“And flesh and blood?” queried Mr. Smith, interrupting him. “Do you pretend that you expect to manufacture a human being out and out?”
“Why not?”
Mr. Smith advanced $100,000 to the young chemist, and engaged his services for the Earth Chronicle laboratory.
The second of the four successful applicants, starting from experiments made so long ago as the nineteenth century and again and again repeated, had conceived the idea of removing an entire city all at once from one place to another. His special project had to do with the city of Granton, situated, as everybody knows, some fifteen miles inland. He proposes to transport the city on rails and to change it into a watering-place. The profit, of course, would be enormous. Mr. Smith, captivated by the scheme, bought a half-interest in it.
“As you are aware, sir,” began applicant No. 3, “by the aid of our solar and terrestrial accumulators and transformers, we are able to make all the seasons the same. I propose to do something better still. Transform into heat a portion of the surplus energy at our disposal; send this heat to the poles; then the polar regions, relieved of their snow-cap, will become a vast territory available for man’s use. What think you of the scheme?”
“Leave your plans with me, and come back in a week. I will have them examined in the meantime.”
Finally, the fourth announced the early solution of a weighty scientific problem. Every one will remember the bold experiment made a hundred years ago by Dr. Nathaniel Faithburn. The doctor, being a firm believer in human hibernation—in other words, in the possibility of our suspending our vital functions and of calling them into action again after a time—resolved to subject the theory to a practical test. To this end, having first made his last will and pointed out the proper method of awakening him; having also directed that his sleep was to continue a hundred years to a day from the date of his apparent death, he unhesitatingly put the theory to the proof in his own person.
Reduced to the condition of a mummy, Dr. Faithburn was coffined and laid in a tomb. Time went on. September 25th, 2889, being the day set for his resurrection, it was proposed to Mr. Smith that he should permit the second part of the experiment to be performed at his residence this evening.
“Agreed. Be here at ten o’clock,” answered Mr. Smith; and with that the day’s audience was closed.
Left to himself, feeling tired, he lay down on an extension chair. Then, touching a knob, he established communication with the Central Concert Hall, whence our greatest maestros send out to subscribers their delightful successions of accords determined by recondite algebraic formulas. Night was approaching. Entranced by the harmony, forgetful of the hour, Smith did not notice that it was growing dark. It was quite dark when he was aroused by the sound of a door opening. “Who is there?” he asked, touching a commutator.
Suddenly, in consequence of the vibrations produced, the air became luminous.
“Ah! you, Doctor?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “How are you?”
“I am feeling well.”
“Good! Let me see your tongue. All right! Your pulse. Regular! And your appetite?”
“Only passably good.”
“Yes, the stomach. There’s the rub. You are over-worked. If your stomach is out of repair, it must be mended. That requires study. We must think about it.”
“In the meantime,” said Mr. Smith, “you will dine with me.”
As in the morning, the table rose out of the floor. Again, as in the morning, the potage, rôti, ragoûts, and legumes were supplied through the food-pipes. Toward the close of the meal, phonotelephotic communication was made with Paris. Smith saw his wife, seated alone at the dinner-table, looking anything but pleased at her loneliness.
“Pardon me, my dear, for having left you alone,” he said through the telephone. “I was with Dr. Wilkins.”
“Ah, the good doctor!” remarked Mrs. Smith, her countenance lighting up.
“Yes. But, pray, when are you coming home?”
“This evening.”
“Very well. Do you come by tube or by air-train?”
“Oh, by tube.”
“Yes; and at what hour will you arrive?”
“About eleven, I suppose.”
“Eleven by Centropolis time, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Good-by, then, for a little while,” said Mr. Smith as he severed communication with Paris.
Dinner over, Dr. Wilkins wished to depart. “I shall expect you at ten,” said Mr Smith. “To-day, it seems, is the day for the return to life of the famous Dr. Faithburn. You did not think of it, I suppose. The awakening is to take place here in my house. You must come and see. I shall depend on your being here.”
“I will come back,” answered Dr. Wilkins.
Left alone, Mr. Smith busied himself with examining his accounts—a task of vast magnitude, having to do with transactions which involve a daily expenditure of upward of $800,000. Fortunately, indeed, the stupendous progress of mechanic art in modern times makes it comparatively easy. Thanks to the Piano Electro-Reckoner, the most complex calculations can be made in a few seconds. In two hours Mr. Smith completed his task. Just in time. Scarcely had he turned over the last page when Dr. Wilkins arrived. After him came the body of Dr. Faithburn, escorted by a numerous company of men of science. They commenced work at once. The casket being laid down in the middle of the room, the telephote was got in readiness. The outer world, already notified, was anxiously expectant, for the whole world could be eye-witnesses of the performance, a reporter meanwhile, like the chorus in the ancient drama, explaining it all viva voce through the telephone.
“They are opening the casket,” he explained. “Now they are taking Faithburn out of it—a veritable mummy, yellow, hard, and dry. Strike the body and it resounds like a block of wood. They are now applying heat; now electricity. No result. These experiments are suspended for a moment while Dr. Wilkins makes an examination of the body. Dr. Wilkins, rising, declares the man to be dead. ‘Dead! ‘exclaims every one present. ‘Yes,’ answers Dr. Wilkins, ‘dead!’ ‘And how long has he been dead?’ Dr. Wilkins makes another examination. ‘A hundred years,’ he replies.”
The case stood just as the reporter said. Faithburn was dead, quite certainly dead! “Here is a method that needs improvement,” remarked Mr. Smith to Dr. Wilkins, as the scientific committee on hibernation bore the casket out. “So much for that experiment. But if poor Faithburn is dead, at least he is sleeping,” he continued. “I wish I could get some sleep. I am tired out, Doctor, quite tired out! Do you not think that a bath would refresh me?”
“Certainly. But you must wrap yourself up well before you go out into the hall-way. You must not expose yourself to cold.”
Such, for this year of grace 2889, is the history of one day in the life of the editor of the Earth Chronicle. And the history of that one day is the history of 365 days every year, except leap-years, and then of 366 days—for as yet no means has been found of increasing the length of the terrestrial year.
THE PLANET OF DREAD
~
By R. F. Starzl
There was no use hiding from the truth. Somebody had blundered—a fatal blunder—and they were going to pay for it! Mark Forepaugh kicked the pile of hydrogen cylinders. Only a moment ago he had broken the seals—the mendacious seals that certified to the world that the flasks were fully charged. And the flasks were empty! The supply of this precious power gas, which in an emergency should have been sufficient for six years, simply did not exist.
He walked over to the integrating machine, which as early as the year 2031 had begun to replace the older atomic processes, due to the shortage of the radium series metals. It was bulky and heavy compared to the atomic disintegrators, but it was much more economical and very dependable. Dependable—provided some thick-headed stock clerk at a terrestrial supply station did not check in empty hydrogen cylinders instead of full ones. Forepaugh’s unwonted curses brought a smile to the stupid, good-natured face of his servant, Gunga—he who had been banished for life from his native Mars for his impiety in closing his single round eye during the sacred Ceremony of the Wells.
The Earth man was at this steaming hot, unhealthful trading station under the very shadow of the South Pole of the minor planet Inra for an entirely different reason. One of the most popular of his set on the Earth, an athletic hero, he had fallen in love, and the devoutly wished-for marriage was only prevented by lack of funds. The opportunity to take charge of this richly paid, though dangerous, outpost of civilization had been no sooner offered than taken. In another week or two the relief ship was due to take him and his valuable collection of exotic Inranian orchids back to the Earth, back to a fat bonus, Constance, and an assured future.