Alarm bells and hoots roared on every street.
Utmost apprehension seized the city. The fire enveloped a few houses, its area expanding steadily. The entire district was wrapped in black pungent smoke. It crept along the streets, finding no other outlets. Many suffocated in the smoke.
Anguished cries and moans were coming from everywhere, drowned out by the sound of more and more explosions.
Who set fire to the houses? Who blew up the bridges?
There was no telling. Dark human figures dashed about in the flames like devils, running into sight and then disappearing again.
Lots of people were racing along the streets with screams of joy. Many cried with joy. Someone, shouting breathlessly, was commanding,
“Blow up bridges! Blow up houses! Burn! Burn as much as you can!”
A thunderous explosion rocked both cities. Screams were heard from many a hundred thousand voices. A sound came from someone blasting the park dominated by the royal palace. The white edifice went askew and collapsed. What a sound there was as the park trees began to break! How the iron lattices of bridges and fences bent and crumpled! Colossal pillars of fire and rocks alternated with each other.
The electricity went out in Principal City. The darkness and the riot turned it into a black seething chaos. The commotion spread over to Upper City as well.
Many a hundred thousand bullets and shells spattered down from above. Every crack was used to shoot into the darkness, every breach. But new explosions threw houses and streets up in the air along with shooters.
Flames, choking smoke, clouds of dust, glass, molten metal, and human bodies, thousands of bodies, all were eddying in a whirling mad pandemonium.
On a square, by the light of torches, to crackling of gunfire and the rumble of cave-ins, the Minister of Hopes made a plea to the crowd:
“Citizens! Poor, distraught citizens! Stop! Stop before it’s too late! There’s only death ahead of you! Was it this that I’ve been teaching you for so many years?! What have you traded the spirit of wise hope for?! For a blind, benighted riot?! Stop! Stop, you wretched folk! Take pity on yourself and our glorious Principal City! Stop before it’s too late!”
Poor fellow! He was stoned to death, and his ministry was blasted just like any building in Upper City.
The Efficient Philosophy Association tried to preach something by means of their machines but those were hurled back by a pillar of fire. The chairman, totally old and decrepit now, barely had time to escape on a single-seat airplane.
“Fools,” he shouted, wallowing all by himself in the cloudless blue sky. “You can never win! The backbone of the world is reasonable violence, not a wild self-confident riot! Blind rebellious worms! Despicable optimistic calves! What are you hoping for?!”
He was suffocating in the open air like in a noose; he spat downwards, where houses were collapsing and fire roiling, and he died of fear, spite, and grief. The machine carried his underweight, wrinkled corpse about for a long time.
Thousands of other airplanes took off from Upper City, a means of escape for children and women. Screams and sobs filled the air.
And down below, there were more and more cave-ins and explosions rumbling. Bright sunshine found its way into Principal City now. The sky was visible on many streets.
“Long live the sun!” thousands of smoke-poisoned people yelled in a gleeful frenzy. “Long live the sky! Hooraaay…”
In reply, shells were showering down, hot cement was raining from above with a sepulchral hiss, and the stifling, all-corroding, deadly powder was falling.
People died like flies but those alive retaliated with more deafening explosions, arson, and the accurate fire of the doomed.
There was fighting on every street. People battled in flats, upon roofs, beneath ruins, and out in the open.
“Blow up bridges!” shouts were coming from all sides. “Blast Upper City! Burn! Blast and burn as much as possible!”
“Citizens! Citizens! Flee from the market district! Call everyone! The railway station of Upper City’s about to collapse! Run for your lives, citizens!”
“Hoorraaay! Hoorraaaay!”
After a little while, the railway station did collapse. The terrible crash could not drown out people’s delighted screams. Long chains of cars were falling with a thunderous rattle, side by side with pieces of buildings, with bridges, platforms, and rails.
A fiery vortex, a whirlwind of flame, iron, and rocks, shot up into the sky.
“Hoorraaay!”
Large groups of rebels climbed up the ruins into Upper City. It was half empty. The residents were evacuating by the thousands in airplanes. Curses, fire, and bullets were sent after them. The troops had dispersed. All barracks had been blasted. Fire was raging in every quarter; buildings shook and tumbled down.
“Enough!” shouts were coming from below. “Enough! We are dying! Stop! Enough!”
Whole streets of those buried alive, fighting their way painfully through the ruins, begged for mercy.
But new cave-ins buried them again, killed them, wiped them out.
The great destruction went on all day and night, and in the morning tired explosions capped the doom of Principal City.
In such a manner, simple and spontaneous, it perished. Ways of oppression are intricate and varied—in this regard, there is no limit to human imagination—while the road to freedom is simple but bitter. Upper City was gone.
There was only a sea of smoldering and burning ruins, monstrous piles of palaces, squares, bridges, and streets, and amid that twisted chaos of iron, stone, and wood—occasional crowds of blackened, ragged, and bloodied people.
Many of them were wounded, many dying; many were dancing, bereft of their sanity; but the wounded and the dying and the mad alike were singing, joyously and loudly, songs in honor of the rising and dazzlingly indifferent sun.
* * *
* A verst (more precisely, versta) is an old Russian measure of length equal to 1.0668 kilometers or 0.6629 miles (3,500 feet).
The Comet
W. E. B. DU BOIS
William Edward Burghardt—W. E. B.—Du Bois (1868–1963) was a scientist, writer, and activist who helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As an advocate of Pan-Africanism, Du Bois was essential to the Pan-African Congresses of his day, which sought to remove European powers from African nations. He also worked tirelessly against racism in society and embedded in the law.
Although primarily known as a writer of nonfiction, including his influential essay collection The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois also wrote fiction, often of a fantastical and allegorical nature. This fiction was influenced by his views on religion, spirituality, and race relations. It has only recently become clear just how much fiction Du Bois wrote, and how much of it was speculative in nature. A collection of Du Bois’s short fiction is in the works, and unpublished stories still occasionally come to light, including “The Princess Steel,” which, according to an article by Jane Greenway Carr posted to Slate.com (December 1, 2015), was written between 1908 and 1910. This new story, which helps to enhance our understanding of Afrofuturism, features a black sociologist who demonstrates for a honeymooning couple a “megascope, a machine he created to see across time and space.” The story views technology through the lens of race and gender.
The classic story “The Comet” from 1920, reprinted here, was originally included in his volume of autobiography, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, and later reprinted in the 2000 anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. Like “The Princess Steel,” the story presents a rare early nonwhite science fiction perspective. How influential was “The Comet” when first published? Although it is difficult to tell, we doubt Du Bois’s work would have been well known within the closed, tight-knit science fiction pulp magazine community.
THE COMET
W. E. B. Du Bois
He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, w
atching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world—“nothing!” as he said bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him.
“The comet?”
“The comet—”
Everybody was talking of it. Even the president, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at him, and asked:
“Well, Jim, are you scared?”
“No,” said the messenger shortly.
“I thought we’d journeyed through the comet’s tail once,” broke in the junior clerk affably.
“Oh, that was Halley’s,” said the president; “this is a new comet, quite a stranger, they say—wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by the way, Jim,” he said, turning again to the messenger, “I want you to go down into the lower vaults today.”
The messenger followed the president silently. Of course, they wanted him to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened.
“Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep in,” said the president; “but we miss two volumes of old records. Suppose you nose around down there,—it isn’t very pleasant, I suppose.”
“Not very,” said the messenger, as he walked out.
“Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time,” said the vault clerk, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath Broadway, where the dim light filtered through the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the earth, under the world.
He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last was peace, and he groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. He peered in; it was evidently a secret vault—some hiding place of the old bank unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. On a high shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan laid bare its treasure—and he saw the dull sheen of gold!
“Boom!”
A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up and looked about. All was black and still. He groped for his light and swung it about him. Then he knew! The great stone door had swung to. He forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then with a sigh he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it, and then felt sick and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell fainting across the corpse.
He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep, with the gate swinging free. With one glance at him the messenger hurried up to the sub-vault. In vain he called to the guards. His voice echoed and re-echoed weirdly. Up into the great basement he rushed. Here another guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. A fear arose in the messenger’s heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank. The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced about. He was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling! “Robbery and murder,” he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his desk. Then a new thought seized him: If they found him here alone—with all this money and all these dead men—what would his life be worth? He glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked behind. Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street.
How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high noon—Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs. With a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight.
In the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway like refuse in a can—as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly the messenger crept along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend, stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. He met a businessman, silk-hatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too, along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the curb. A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a streetcar, silent, and within—but the messenger but glanced and hurried on. A grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the “last edition” in his uplifted hand: “Danger!” screamed its black headlines. “Warnings wired around the world. The Comet’s tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly gases expected. Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar.” The messenger read and staggered on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face and sleevelets on her arms. On a store step sat a little, sweet-faced girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her lay—but the messenger looked no longer. The cords gave way—the terror burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang desperately forward and ran,—ran as only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still.
When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the thing through: The comet had swept the earth and this was the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see.
He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go insane. First he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. He beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights.
“Yesterday, they would not have served me,” he whispered, as he forced the food down.
Then he started up the street,—looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent, silent all. Was nobody—nobody—he dared not think the thought and hurried on.
Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God! How could he have forgotten? He must rush to the subway—then he almost laughed. No—a car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its burden, and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips; on past
crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at Forty-Second Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He came back on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-Seventh and flew past the Plaza and by the park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past Seventy-Second Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of God.
“Hello—hello—help, in God’s name!” wailed the woman. “There’s a dead girl in here and a man and—and see yonder dead men lying in the street and dead horses—for the love of God go and bring the officers….” And the words trailed off into hysterical tears.
He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a child and leaping on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and tried the door and rang violently. There was a long pause, but at last the heavy door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was a woman of perhaps twenty-five—rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with darkly golden hair, and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness, she would scarcely have looked at him twice. He would have been dirt beneath her silken feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity and a poor man’s clothes and hands. His face was soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but not out.
So a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other.
“What has happened?” she cried. “Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence! I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of God,—and see…” She dragged him through great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery.
The Big Book of Science Fiction Page 14
