“Why the devil do we have to wait for Ox’s orders?” shouted Hoyle. “I say let’s get to the Ark and be done with it!”
“He’s right, Val.”
“What are we waitin’ for?”
“Now just a minute, boys—” Val started to say, then he paused and looked up sharply as a new sound came above the rain. It was a roar like the coming of a mighty wind. The ground under the camp began to tremble: the downpour increased its drumming to a sudden shattering rattle.
“The Deluge! It’s coming!” screamed somebody.
“Cloudburst somewhere,” Val acknowledged quickly. “Come on— Outside!”
The men nearest the door tore it open and raced down the wooden steps. Out in the open air the roaring din sounded like a tempest-driven ocean smashing against distant cliffs…Then suddenly it was upon them. It came out of the moaning dark, a vast roaring tide of water vomited from the crumbling vapor heavens. Instantly a Niagara smashed into the midst of the camp, hurling the men over, tearing down fences, crushing in the tin huts like empty meat cans.
Val, caught in the raging tide, was slammed back into the crumbling camp. Water, cold and scum-laden, surged over his head. He came up gasping to find himself struggling amidst fallen timbers and wreckage.
“Help—please!” came a gasp from nearby. “Help!”
He struck out just in time to yank up a frantically struggling figure from under a heavy beam. It was Kang. The voice alone revealed it: to see anything was almost impossible.
“Th-thank you, my friend,” the Mongolian gasped. “You—you don’t know what you have done by saving me.”
“Saved your life, I guess,” Val panted back. He looked anxiously in the raging dark. Above the noise of bubbling water and whistle of descending rain was another sound—yelling voices of men and women. Rita! He had forgotten her.
“My wife!” he shouted frantically. “I’ve got to find her! Here, Kang, hang onto this.”
“The Ark!” Kang interrupted him. “Look—the lights of the Ark. Accept my suggestion and head for the Ark before looking for your wife. It will be simpler. It has searchlights, remember.”
“Yes.” Val frowned momentarily. “Yes, maybe you’re right.”
He began to swim strongly towards the bobbing lights of the monster as it floated on the tumbling water. Kang he dragged along beside him. It seemed obvious to Val that some of the men must have reached the Ark at a remarkable speed to get it under way so quickly. Its searchlights were blazing across the water now, picking out survivors. Everywhere there seemed to be bobbing heads and flailing arms. Men and women alike were battling desperately to reach the floating sanctuary.
It drew nearer, and the searchlights reflecting back from the water revealed a surprising sight. A giant figure stood in the main doorway, legs apart and revolver in hand, water pouring down his bristly head.
“Women first, I said!” he roared, crashing his fist into the jaw of a man as he strove to reach the doorway. “Get back and help the women, you damned skunk! Drag ’em aboard! Lively now!”
He kept his feet with difficulty and watched like an eagle as the men in the water worked desperately to lift up the women prisoners as they floated near enough.
“Ox,” Val panted. “He got there first. I never could figure if he was man or monster: now I know he’s got a spark of humanity somewhere under the armor-plate. Hey, Ox!”
Ox swung round at the shout. “Come in here before the women at your own peril!” he roared.
“Not me. What about Kang, here? He’s sinking…”
“O.K.—up with him!” Ox reached down and yanked the little Mongolian upwards. He stumbled into the Ark’s lighted interior.
“That doesn’t go for you, Turner,” Ox shouted. “You’ve got plenty of muscle. Lend a hand with the women.”
“You seem to have gotten yourself into a safe position, Ox!” one of the swimming men shouted sarcastically.
“One more crack from you and I’ll drill you!” Ox retorted. “I got here first to insure discipline! That was my duty. I saw the Flood coming and got things ready while you mugs were wondering what to do. Now it’s the women first. No time to lose!” he finished with a bellow as another vast rolling wave of water came thundering down on top of the first.
Val came up again gasping for air. This time all trace of the camp had gone. The world was a battering, roaring hell of rain, wind, and struggling bodies. The Ark still bobbed up and down, its portholes like watching eyes.
Time and again Val caught a struggling woman prisoner and lifted her to the door where Ox seized her quickly. Until at last Val grabbed the one woman he wanted most in the world— Rita, nearly at the point of exhaustion. With more care than before he raised her limp body.
“Easy with her,” he called up anxiously.
Ox dropped her inside. “What’s one woman more than another?” he asked sourly. “Because she’s your wife doesn’t make her extra special. Keep working!”
Val smiled twistedly. He toiled on again, until at last it seemed that all the women who had survived the Flood were aboard.
“O. K., you men,” Ox shouted, and stood aside without lending a hand’s turn as the men floundered up onto the steel flooring into the light and warmth. Val was the last. He stood up, dripping water and breathing hard.
Ox, his soaked uniform plastered to his mighty body, flipped his gun across to the silent Kang.
“Kang, I nominate you as my deputy for the time being,” he said briefly. “Guess you’ve got more sense than all these other boneheads put together. See to it that nobody starts the Ark moving until I get back…” He paused and glared around, hands on hips. “I want a man with strong muscles and no fear to come with me,” he snapped out. “I want a volunteer.”
“What for?” Val inquired.
For answer Ox pointed through the driving rain. “See that solitary light over there? Well, that’s headquarters on the rising ground overlooking the camp. Kronheim and Angorstine, my superiors, are there. It is my duty to get them and the Ark cannot get that close. It will take me and another strong man.” Ox paused, a sneering grin on his face. “I know only one strong man here,” he said significantly.
Val said coldly, “Kronheim and Angorstine caused all this between them. They can perish in it.”
“Whatever the causes I’ve my duty to do,” Ox retorted. “I swore allegiance to a regime until the end…I want a man,” he finished bitterly. “Maybe I got it wrong, Val Turner, but I always figured you were a man.”
Val hesitated, then he caught a glimpse of the slowly nodding head of Kang.
“All right,” Val said briefly, and tearing off what remained of his shirt he dived into the boiling scum outside. In another moment, likewise stripped to the waist, Ox followed him. They swam powerfully, neither of them speaking, covering the mile of roaring waters and blinding rain in fairly good time, stumbling at last up the sloping sides of the slowly vanishing island on which the headquarters building was situated.
Hardly had they both floundered through the doorway before Kronheim came rushing to meet them with Angorstine beside him. Both of them were white and shaken.
“The Deluge,” Kronheim panted. “It’s the Deluge, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir!” Ox saluted smartly. “If you can swim, there is safety a mile away. If you cannot swim I’ll help you,”
“Why the devil didn’t you bring a boat?” Kronheim shouted.
“Impossible, sir—sorry. Prisoner Turner and I will help you.”
“You?” Kronheim turned slowly to face the grim-faced Val. “All you want is an excuse to drown me, I guess…”
“I leave it to others to kill in cold blood, Kronheim,” Val said coldly.
Ox became suddenly urgent. “We’ve got to hurry, sir—”
“I’ll start right now,” Angorstine interrupted, tearing off his coat. “I can swim…” He leapt for the door and prepared to dive, but Ox swung around and caught his arm. With a terrific uppercut
he sent Angorstine reeling. He lost his balance, pitched into the roaring tide, and vanished.
“That was murder!” Kronheim screamed. “You drowned him!”
“Not murder, sir,” Ox corrected briefly. “He tried to seek safety before his superior. That was treason. Treason is punishable by death. I simply did my duty.”
Kronheim stared blankly for a moment and swallowed something. Val remained silent, inwardly admiring Ox’s notions on discipline. Then Kronheim seemed to make up his mind. He tore off his coat and lowered himself nervously into the water. Immediately Ox was on one side of him and Val on the other. Between them they got the shouting, raving dictator of a ruined world across that mile of thundering tempest, pushed him up at last into the Ark where he lay gasping heavily on the floor.
Ox turned and slammed the doors, snatched the gun from Kang and whirled around to face the grim faced people.
“Remember this!” he barked. “You too, Turner. Kronheim is still our master. I am his aide now and will follow out his orders to the letter. When the waters subside the regime will continue and as long as Kronheim lives we obey him. Understand?”
“With him shut up in here with us?” roared Hoyle. “Like hell! He’ll never live to see the waters subside, Ox. Somehow we’ll get him—and you!”
Ox’s eyes narrowed. “The slightest attempt on the master or on myself, by man or woman, will be answered with death,” he said slowly. “Let that sink into all your skulls…Now you men get to those oars and start rowing. You, Benson, get to the steering gear. You others pull the partitions over. Men in one end, women in the other. Step on it! Get yourselves dried! You keep them quiet, Turner—I hold you responsible.”
Val nodded slowly. “I’ll do my best, Ox. I’ll take orders from a man anytime…” He looked sourly at Kronheim’s big, dripping form, then turned away to get things to order.
Thanks to the prescience of Ox in forcing the prisoners to equip the Ark beforehand as fully as possible, there was no shortage of necessities, but just the same he rationed everything and for the first time in his life Kronheim was obliged to accept the rations with good grace. He was changed too. He was in danger of his life every hour and knew it, despite the relentless guard Ox maintained.
Val for his part was pretty sure after a while that the people would leave Kronheim unmolested as long as he kept quiet. But that they would never again consent to his rulership was a debatable point. In fact not even that. There was only one answer to the idea…Refusal.
*
Much of his spare time Val spent with Rita. Through the portholes of the Ark as it was rowed onwards day by day by relays of men, visible in the dim daylight which filtered through lowering clouds, there was nothing but a waste of water. It would have required a world trip to grasp the full extent of the catastrophe. The heavens in their disgorge of waters had refilled the seas and hammered their unimaginable weight and volume into the land as well. Coasts had eroded, hills slipped down, ravines burst asunder under mighty cataracts. And not even yet was the Deluge finished with. The clouds were so low they nearly touched the surface of the water. There was wind too, an incessant moaning gale which howled dismally over the grey waste.
“I wonder,” Rita said thoughtfully, towards the close of the fifth day, “where we are going to end this drifting?”
It was Kronheim who answered her. “Where we started,” he said curtly. “I gave orders for us to move constantly in a circle so we might still be in America when the waters go down.” He glared across at the helmsman and steadily rowing oarsmen on their seats. “That’s what you have done, isn’t it?”
The helmsman in particular looked uncomfortable.
“Answer, damn you!” roared Ox.
To everybody’s surprise it was Kang who spoke next, in his quiet modulated voice.
“Perhaps I can answer for him. He is obeying my orders for a course—not yours, Leader Kronheim.”
There was an astounded silence.
“What?” Ox rumbled. “You dared! You dared to give orders above Kronheim, the leader? By God Kang, that’s treason, and I—”
“It is not treason when I was concerned for the safety of everybody in this Ark, my well-disciplined friend,” Kang said. He turned and looked around on the others, then resumed, “Perhaps this is as good a time as any to explain one or two things…”
“What things?” Ox demanded.
“Patience, Captain, while I tell you…In the first place, I did not arrive in Camp 4 by accident. I was—or rather am—one of a hundred representatives sent from Tibet to gathers together the few survivors of the Deluge. We of Tibet have led a sheltered life of scientific achievement for many generations. We knew of but were not concerned by the wars of the outer world. Until we realized that war had resulted in the domination by force of the whole earth. That might ultimately present a danger to us…But far more than that were we aware that from the action of the Mane bombs and consequent evaporation of Earth’s moisture, that a Deluge was imminent. Our geographical prognosticators showed that all Tibet, and our sheltered kingdom included, would be inundated completely by the Deluge to come…
“It was clear to us that nearly the whole of the world’s inhabitants would be destroyed in the approaching cataclysm, but it might be possible to save a few—a few who could at least rebuild a better civilization with our assistance. We had no wish to live in the world alone: indeed such an occurrence would be detrimental since the human race might thus die out completely. Some had got to be saved and brought to safety until the floods should subside. So one hundred of us were chosen and sent out into the countries of the world to save those whom we considered worthy.”
Kang gave his wise old smile. “You, Turner, thought your idea of an Ark was spontaneous. It was not. I willed the idea to you by telepathy. Remarkably simple art once mastered. You found a means of making an Ark so easily it astonished you. In other parts of the world my fellows would give the same order for Arks and they, too, would be built—perhaps not in the same way, but they would be built just the same.”
“You—you mean there are other Arks drifting about the world somewhere?” Val asked in amazement.
“Another ninety-nine, I hope —all drifting to one spot. A hundred Arks all told containing the nucleus of a new civilization.”
“And yet Tibet is under water?” Kronheim sneered. “Not very effectual, my friend, is it?”
Kang turned to him. “Tibet is under water, yes, but not our civilization and scientific secrets. Tibet is within easy reach of Everest, the highest point in the world. We have complete knowledge of how to scale that mountain, know every inch of its surface. Once we knew the Deluge was coming we removed everything to a high point of Everest and utilized its natural caves as a temporary habitat. In there, shut out from the winds and waters, lies the oldest and the newest science in the world—Tibetan science! Upon it you can build a better empire once the waters have receded, an empire the better for knowing that the rule of force has vanished forever from the Earth.”
“Then you have been instructing this helmsman to drive towards Everest all the time?” Ox demanded. “To India?”
“To the second Ararat,” Kang conceded quietly.
“You shan’t do it!” Kronheim shouted, leaping to his feet. “I am still the master! There can be no new regime so long as I rule—and rule I shall, until the end! I’ll break you, Kang, and your science—just as I have broken everything else that stood in my way.”
“Except your neck,” growled Val.
The Mongolian was undisturbed. “The fly does not hurt the elephant no matter how hard it kicks,” he murmured. “You are the last of a regime that will soon lie rotting under the waters.”
“You forget me,” Ox said grimly. “I swore allegiance, and I have been—and still am—true to it!”
“For that all praise is due, my friend,” Kang smiled. “For the regime you worship you are to be pitied—deeply pitied. What is left of it beyond this warped, blusteri
ng specimen of useless vanity? You, Kronheim, will not stand one second against the might of Tibetan science. A man who could not even foresee the tragedy of the Mane bombs is foresworn to destruction.”
Kronheim sat down again slowly. There was a certain unshakeable calm about Kang, a conviction of infinite power. Without haste, without even a raised word, he had given an extraordinary promise.
“In other words,” Kronheim said at last, “I am being considered as ruler while we are on this Ark—only to be destroyed by your science when we reach this Everest Ararat?”
Kang said, “We do not take life, Kronheim. We are not murderers. We are not even avengers. You will enter with us to live your life quietly as long as your conscience will permit you. But you will no longer rule: be assured of that!”
Ox opened his mouth to speak, then he closed it again. Kronheim was staring in front of him as the full weight of Kang’s words sank in. By slow degrees the assembled people, Kronheim included, began to see what Kang proposed for the destroyer of a world. He proposed freedom—freedom in which to grapple with his own mind, freedom to remember but with power no longer in his grasp. A snake without its sting. It was calm, sober retribution—but it had the flavour of Eastern inhumanity.
*
For five more days the Ark traveled onwards under the power of the oars, carried too by tremendous wind force. The rain continued. Hardly anybody slept during the period. They were mainly at the ports staring out over the watery waste or else talking among themselves. Now and again they caught glimpses of distant lights bobbing on the waves—lights that could only belong to other Arks all moving to a common goal.
Until at last, days later, something loomed out of the drab, rain-lashed grayness perhaps three miles ahead. It was a titanic rocky spire, a mountain pushing up into the girdling clouds. There was an immediate rush to the window to study it.
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 93
