The Depths

by John Creasey

  He raised his hand. A door opened. The drone of machinery, the movement of men and women, the sound of muted voices, all came clearly. Professor Corvell stared at Garri-Garri as he went through, and approached him almost as if he could not resist.

  Before he reached the Master, his eyes began to droop. The expression of despair faded. He looked quite blank, like a man who had been drugged. It was a case of instant hypnosis far quicker than Palfrey had ever seen.

  “Boris,” the Master said, “take him to the Room of Sleep. He is not to be brought out of coma for twenty-four hours. I am to see him myself before he is allowed to work again.”

  “I will take him,” Boris said.

  Julia cried: “No!” She flung herself between Boris and the Professor. The horror in her eyes was like the horror that had been in Corvell’s. Palfrey felt sure that he knew why; she had been subjected to the coma, she had spent some time in that Room of Sleep, with that insistent order throbbing through her head hour after hour, but she had not been a good subject; she had a deep core of resistance, like Corvell. “Don’t take him there! You’ll destroy him, you’ll destroy him utterly.” Garri-Garri said coldly: “And take the woman, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  SUBMIT?

  “So you see,” said Garri-Garri, “that I am the source of all strength as well as all life.”

  They were back in the room where he had received them. Chairs had been brought up, and Palfrey, sitting in one which had looked quite ordinary, felt its almost sensuous comfort. By his side was a glass of what Garri-Garri called wine; it was like nectar.

  Higgins was sitting with his head back, and his eyes closed. Shocked?

  “Yes, I see,” Palfrey admitted. “I think I have seen everything.”

  “I hoped you would feel like that,” said Garri-Garri. “Now you may return to the Upper World, and tell them what you know. Tell them that there is no known way of tracing this Citadel. It is protected by devices which no one beyond the Deep has yet discovered. Remind them that no matter where I meet resistance I can crush it within twelve hours. That is the maximum time it will ever take to place in position and detonate a bomb which will create one of the destructive waves. And tell them, Palfrey, that nothing I have yet shown to the Upper World is one hundredth part as powerful as what I can reveal. Do you understand that?”

  “Perfectly,” Palfrey said.

  He felt as if he were in a kind of prison the door of which would never unlock.

  “The difference between the bombs I have used and the bombs I have at my disposal is as great as the difference between the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima and one of a hundred megatons. In my hands there is a strength the Upper World cannot overcome.”

  Palfrey said: “It won’t be easy to convince them.”

  “You must convince them.”

  “Yes,” said Palfrey, as if speaking with an effort. “I must—” he broke off. “Will you forgive me if I make a suggestion?”

  “I am glad to hear you put it that way. Proceed.”

  “If Dr Higgins and I can stay here for a few days,” Palfrey said, “if he can make clinical and laboratory tests, without being – converted, as you say – if he can afterwards come back with me, that would help to convince a sceptical world. And—there is Corvell.”

  “What about Corvell?” Garri-Garri’s voice sharpened.

  “If he could be brought back to normal, and allowed to inspect some of the research establishments you showed on the films, he will acquire the scientific and technical knowledge to explain what he has seen to the technicians and the physicists above. They might believe that I am suffering under emotional stress or else that I am exaggerating with a layman’s ignorance. Men of the stature of Dr Higgins and Professor Corvell could convince them.”

  “It shall be as you say,” Garri-Garri decided. “You shall have precisely one week.”

  One week …

  In that week, Palfrey crowded more experiences than ever in his life. He went with Higgins and Corvell everywhere. He saw Corvell change from a man at first subdued, frightened and unsure of himself to a scientist who marvelled. He sensed the intellectual wonder of these two men, as well as their emotional and human horror at what was being done here. He saw the Hall of Creation, where the mating couples had their brief ecstasy, none knowing who had fathered any child.

  He saw how perfect bodies and perfect mechanical minds were gradually developed, at the expense only of freedom of thought and of independence of mind. He saw how this world of the Deep was a world of mindless men, robbed of emotion, de-humanised. He saw more and more how completely Garri-Garri had it under control, how the air channels to the Strongholds were operated. He saw, too, the communication system with the Strongholds – a communication system as complex and as effective as the one gradually being built up in space.

  He saw the untold riches beneath the sea, wealth so great that nations on earth would grovel for one thousandth part of it. He saw how the oceans could be controlled and commanded, how they could be used to provide power while atomic reactors were saved for other work. He saw how seaweed, plankton and other vegetable growth on the sea bed could be processed to make the gossamer-like cloth worn by the citizens of the Deep.

  Each day, he spent some time with Garri-Garri.

  He did not see Julia again, but he saw the man, Boris, who had been with her. Boris and two others were always with him and with Higgins and Corvell; they were never left alone, and by night they slept in a room with two of the men of the Deep.

  For six days, they laboured.

  On the seventh day, they were summoned to the Patriarch’s presence.

  This time, he was not alone; Leah was with him.

  She wore a gown, longer than most of those worn here. It shimmered and scintillated with precious stones, as if it were made of a kind of sequin. She wore a trident crown, like Garri-Garri’s. She sat at his right hand, smiling as she had once smiled at Palfrey from a bed in a hotel in Nice.

  “You see now why it was essential to have Leah back with me,” Garri-Garri said. “She is the most perfect of all the women here, and the one whom I knew would be absolutely proof against anything you could do. She alone has some share in the command of the Deep, she alone could reason with you, and talk for me, because she is my consort. No one else shares all my knowledge, no one else has the freedom of mind to act for me independently. And she carries my child, the one child whose parentage will be known to all. She will help me to create a dynasty that will last for ever.” He was sitting at the desk, handsome, impressive, arrogant – hateful. “I will admit one thing, Palfrey. I did not think it would be possible for you to hold her against my will. You do not know how distressed I was when I discovered what had happened.”

  “No,” Palfrey said. “No. I can believe that.”

  “Have you seen all you wish to see?”

  “Everything.”

  “Dr Higgins?”

  “More,” Higgins said, gruffly. “A damned sight more. Now that I’ve seen the cost, if I had my way I would let in the ocean, and wipe out this hell. You were right, Palfrey.”

  “I am not interested in your prejudices, Dr Higgins,” said Garri-Garri, superciliously. “Are you convinced that I have discovered this secret of longevity? Have you satisfied yourself that among the people moving about the Deep, people who appear to be in their early twenties, there are men fifty and sixty years old? Do you realise that—”

  “I’m convinced,” Higgins interrupted. “I wish to God I wasn’t, but I’m convinced.”

  “Professor?” said Garri-Garri.

  “Yes,” said Professor Corvell, heavily. “Yes, I have seen all I need to convince everyone I know that you have made a hundred years progress ahead of us. Yes, I know. I’ve seen your listening stations. I’m satisfied that there is no way of loca
ting your position. I’m also satisfied that you control all your stations from here and by submarines based here, and that there isn’t a coast line, a sea, a lake or an ocean in the world which you can’t operate in. Oh, I’m satisfied.”

  “That is all that matters,” Garri-Garri said. “And are you, Palfrey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go to the Upper World, and talk to your leaders. I will give you one week, just one more week, before I talk to you again. There is to be no argument. Whatever I want I must have, and the first thing I shall require is the destruction of all weapons of war. The second – the destruction of all the unfit, all the mentally sick, all the crippled people, men, women and children. It will be a slow process, and a painful one for some of you, but gradually you will be rewarded with the perfect world in which man shall never die.”

  Into the silence which followed, Corvell moved, his clothes rustling. He looked straight into the eyes of the Patriarch, saying:

  “Will you grant me one favour?”

  “What is it you desire?”

  “Will you release Julia Shawn with us?”

  Garri-Garri frowned, hesitated, shook his head ponderously, and said: “If you return with an undertaking that there will be no resistance to any of my campaigns, the assurance that the Upper World will not fight against me, then she may come with you, if she wishes.”

  Corvell closed his eyes.

  There was a great wave, a roaring and a seething. When the waters of the North Sea quietened, Palfrey, Higgins and Corvell were on a small boat not far from the white cliffs of England. Near them was the wreckage of a trawler, caught mercilessly in the great wave, and the bodies of the crew floated like a menacing forerunner of what could come. The Upper World had one more reason to know its danger.

  Higgins said: “There must be a weakness. My God, there must be a way of stopping him.”

  “Can you see it?” demanded Corvell.

  “There must be a way,” Higgins insisted, hoarsely. “I don’t believe we will have to submit—”

  “Submit?” echoed Corvell. “He might kill us off, but we can’t submit.”

  Submit, submit, submit, submit—

  The word seemed to be always on their tongues in a helicopter flight from Dover to London, and when they were whisked by car to the centre of the city, then into the headquarters of Z5 where the Assembly was to meet them. As they looked about them, and saw the people moving through the streets of London normally, as if they had forgotten the fear of a few days ago and had no idea of how the Thames could engulf them, they were silent. When they reached the crowded Assembly Room, Palfrey saw many different faces from those who had been here before; many different, and many more. Next to Smythe was the British Prime Minister; next to Mandell the President of the United States; next to Tarov, the Vice-Chairman of the Presidium. The room was crowded, silent, tense as it could only be.

  Le Blum said in a quiet voice, touched with great dignity:

  “We had messages from the Deep, Palfrey, to tell us what you know. We have taken a great deal of evidence in the past week, of the effect of the waves. Sitting in the well of the room you see Able Seaman Drabbick, the sole survivor of H.M.S. Worthy here to tell us exactly what happened. We have had witnesses from Nice. We have witnesses from resorts and from river mouths all over the world – and we want to know what we can do, Palfrey. I speak for us all.”

  Palfrey was sitting upright, pale, unmoving. He did not move even when Andromovitch came and sat next to him, gripped his arm for a moment, then looked about the big room.

  “Mr President,” said Mandell, “we would like first to hear witnesses tell us of the conditions in the—ah—Citadel of the Deep. Expert witnesses. If you please.”

  The Assembly listened in a stunned silence first to Higgins, then to Corvell. They heard exactly what was happening in the Citadel of the Deep, and judging from the expressions of these men, who had learned all their lives to hide their feelings, greater fear was being driven into them with nearly every sentence. Higgins and Corvell spoke in flat, unemotional tones which emphasised the vividness and the horror of what they had seen.

  Higgins finished by saying:

  “When I first heard of this longevity I thought it the secret of life. I was greatly excited at the prospect of learning more, as I have been excited throughout my life, at the prospect of giving life and health, through my work as a physician, to thousands of patients. I went with a tremendous buoyancy and with a determination at all costs to break down the resistance – the emotional resistance as I understood it – of Palfrey and those who worked with him.

  “I came away filled with repugnance at what I had seen. In order to prolong life, all that is worth living for, all the humanities, had been taken away.”

  He sat down, amid a hush so great that the slightest rustle of sound could be heard in every corner. It was broken by thin-faced, perky-looking Able Seaman Drabbick.

  “We’ve got to find the devil,” he declared. “We can’t stand by and take it.” He was next to Stefan Andromovitch, clutched Stefan’s arm, as he insisted in a louder voice: “You can see that, can’t you? We can’t just let him get away with it. We’ve got to find the bastard.”

  Corvell finished in much the same way as Higgins.

  “I saw, in the films and with my own eyes, developments in atomic and nuclear power research, in the manufacture of consumer goods, in the natural resources of the ocean bed, conditions which are far ahead of anything we have here. It is my considered opinion that with his fleet of midget submarines this man can create havoc anywhere he wishes on the high seas and in the coastal regions of all our countries. He can control his submarines from the Citadel – and he alone can do it. He commands life down there, even the air which feeds the Strongholds. He trusts no one but himself, and to some degree, his consort, Leah.

  “I do not believe there is any way of finding him. I do not believe that any developments in this world will give us the instruments we need to locate him, and even if we knew I do not believe that we could destroy him. The strength of the Citadel is greater than the strength of mountains.”

  “It’s sheer defeatism, that’s what it is,” Able Seaman Drabbick protested.

  “It may be possible to come to terms with this man,” said Khavi. “I think we should hesitate to accept the opinion of the witnesses on his character. What he has discovered can be of great benefit to mankind—”

  “We must attempt to find a meeting place,” said Meshnon.

  Palfrey stood up, slowly. The Indian fell silent, the Egyptian looked away. Tarov leaned towards his Vice-President and spoke. The Prime Minister put his hand up to his mouth to whisper to Smythe.

  “Dr Palfrey,” said the President of the Assembly.

  “We’ve got to put up a fight,” Drabbick shrilled.

  “Mr President,” said Palfrey, in a tense voice, “I do not think that we shall need to fight. I do not think that we shall be in any danger from now on. I believe that the war is over before it really began.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE WEAKNESS

  No one spoke; not even the little sailor. Several men sat back in their chairs, as if so startled that they did not yet understand the significance of what Palfrey was saying. Tarov raised his right hand, sharply, opened his lips, but kept silent. The President of the United States leaned forward and studied Palfrey closely.

  “Dr Palfrey, please explain,” Le Blum said.

  “There was one great weakness in the Citadel of the Deep,” Palfrey told them. “It arose out of its greatest strength. The man who called himself the Patriarch sought absolute perfection physically. He drove disease out of the Citadel. He created a community in which disease was completely eradicated. There have been plenty of cases in the world of small islands – even of large continental areas – where disease has hard
ly been known until viruses and bacteria have been introduced, when whole tribes have been wiped out.

  “The danger from the man was obviously so great that all I knew was this: someone must get down to him, in his hiding place. Someone had to find a way of taking disease down to him. Whether the messenger would ever return was unimportant – the important thing was to spread disease. I selected the bacteria of pneumonic plague in its highest development. There is no known antidote or cure in this acute form. It is virulent, the effect is almost instantaneous, the incubation period very short. The onset of the disease, as you know, is also very quick. I do not think there will be much life in the Citadel of the Deep after today, and because the Citadel controls the airflow to the Strongholds, little life in them either.” He turned to Corvell. “I had to leave Julia Shawn there. You know that. I had to leave great men who had been taken from our world down into the Deep, men who could lead mankind to greater achievements and distant horizons.

  They had to be sacrificed. The secret of the deep sleep, the hypnotic coma, had to be sacrificed. The fabulous treasures beneath the ocean also had to be sacrificed – for the time being,” he added in a whisper. “All for the time being.”

  He stopped.

  Then he went on in a voice filled with awful anguish:

  “I had to kill—to kill them all.”

  When he left the Assembly Room, half an hour afterwards, Palfrey felt no better. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw the beauty of Leah, the comeliness of Julia Shawn, the familiar faces of great men – and he hated himself for what he had done.

  There was just one consolation.

  No one in this room, no one in this world, would condemn him—yet.