Again the little man stopped, rested his voice for a few seconds and then finished his sermon. For the moment his interest had grown so great in what he was saying that he forgot what he was soon about to say; but now he prepared to wind up on the question in hand.
“I repeat that trust is the abiding foundation on which we may build our hopes. Not trust in blue-prints alone; not trust in the laboratory, or the sanctuaries of religion alone, but faith in God, without which we cannot attain to any faith in ourselves. Faith in all else is as evanescent as the cloud in the sky, or its shadow upon earth and sea, for our sole, eternal truth lies in the abounding evidence of the Divine Will; while such truth as men discover for themselves is too often yesterday’s fiction and to-morrow’s fallacy. We may not stabilize life into permanent and enduring patterns and the greatest that any single generation can hope to accomplish is to add a polish to some facet of human excellence and play a modest part in leaving earth better than they found it.”
He broke off abruptly and turned to the dock.
“For you, prisoner at the bar, your argument finds no place in these proceedings and the knowledge you claim to possess lies entirely outside the point at issue. Other tribunals may, or may not, be summoned to consider it; but this Court is convened to try you for the murder of Sir Hector Heron, and since we have heard you confess to it, and learned that no question exists as to your sanity, there remains nothing to determine. No choice confronts a jury as to their verdict and the covenant of the Law alone remains to follow.”
He ceased and, after the verdict was proclaimed, delivered the sentence of death. Then he gathered up his scarlet robe and bundled away; the prisoner departed; the people dispersed. A general instinct inspired them with the unreality of all they had seen and heard. They entertained the sensation of having left a play after a prologue. To them the Law and its procedure was no more than prelude to a drama — a shadowy pageant of little importance, to be forgotten when mightier interests assembled to stultify the trial and reverse the sentence.
“Shall a little, red spider like that doddering Judge, come between Faraday Heron and what he is going to do for us?” asked one excited spectator of another. “While that old pantaloon was telling everybody how they ought to behave, I’d like to have stood up and let him know the sort of house-cleaning wanted by his own job. Our laws properly scream for it.”
The prisoner now dwelt with his own thoughts for companionship. He was not surprised at the verdict or sentence, regarded the business of that day as inevitable and already considered what new matter must be introduced when his appeal came to be heard. But he was surprised at the Judge’s address. All else had seemed futile enough save that and he wondered whether the general trend of the old man’s remarks was common ground of opinion. The gravity of such an attitude occurred to him for the first time and he trusted that a petition and publicity, lifting his plea beyond this withered atmosphere of forensic precedent and outworn ethics, might soon alter the situation and justify his own confidence. His fate must surely call for the arbitrament of nations, before whom a conventional trial at law on a familiar count could mean nothing contrasted with the life of Faraday Heron. But not a whisper had arisen in that crowded court-room before the directions or aspersions of the Judge; no voice had deprecated his comments on the approaching age of pure science; not so much as a doubt could be detected in that sheep-like assembly, or any motion other than contentment before those antiquated opinions. To the condemned man they verged upon nonsense, for in his vision, the demand of Religion to claim any equality with Science had never occurred. He had marked the forces of evolution at work and believed that, in future time, this eternal element would operate for good and rational progress continue. Faith in something has never lacked from man’s quality: that he perceived clearly enough.
While fearless for the world’s future, he now knew that a fight for his own life had to be faced. At least he must soon learn the forces hastening to his side and he devoted thought and turned expectation to coming signals from the outer world.
CHAPTER XVI
FOR Greta Trensham the death of her husband had extinguished love and with it any desire to live. Only hatred was left her and even her dead love had been dimmed before his death by the unexpected evidence of Ernest’s corruption, his monstrous understanding with Faraday and his stupidity and false confidence in the hands of a man far more astute than himself. But hate continued to support her when she thought upon her father’s death or her elder brother’s destruction, and the passion extended beyond Faraday’s sentence to all that he might leave behind him. She desired that no shred of honour should attach to his name, no shadow of reverence or respect by which it might continue to be remembered in time to come. She accepted his approaching end with satisfaction even though she knew it as the herald of her own. Only self-destruction remained to her, for life held nothing more; but any desire to die was suspended until she should know her brother had sped. Then there rose a new challenge — not to live longer, but so to order her departure that it should crown her revenge and make good her remaining hope. She turned thought from the condemned to his laboratory, sealed now with all his secrets like a grave and guarded night and day until means for safe entry were devised, or some composition with the owner arrived at. A shade of fear in the latter direction occupied her growing attention until Faraday’s appeal should come to be heard.
Science united upon this problem and spoke with international voices against the execution of a genius whose past achievement amply justified his present pretentions. Savants maintained with one voice that, despite the abominations proved against him, Law would commit even a worse evil by cutting a thread upon which hung promise so prodigious. Many scientists contended that justice, employing archaic ordinances, destined ere long to become obsolete, would outrage the hopes of all humanity and probably confound progress for generations. Faraday’s fate appeared to waken far greater concern in other countries than his own and reveal in them more active evidence of support. But voices had also been raised throughout the British Empire and certain learned societies dispatched deputations to the Government. A public petition was in the course of signature throughout the country, although as yet nothing definite concerning its reception could be told. The Press implied that opinion appeared equally divided and no plea, winged by the nation’s will, would point to finality. The Latin countries proved most vociferous and indignant. France, Italy and Spain found time, amid their national concerns, to protest that the threatened execution would be an insufferable deed destined to set back the clock of progress farther than the war had already done. The Americas declared how logic and common sense demanded life for one who might be destined to stand among the world’s greatest; while Russia also protested that to hang Faraday Heron must be a barbaric imbecility. It might have been recorded that, where the writ of English law did not run, widespread protest and opposition turned against it; while as the capital sentence now approached fulfilment, no profound or universal consensus appeared on one side or the other. No wave of support for him swept the country; no storm of indignation against him was manifest. Although some journals pointed out that the coming General Election looked but a trivial issue compared with the scientist’s fate, others took an opposite view and could spare little interest for anything save politics. A poll might have revealed the weight of contending parties, but both sides found tongues active in argument for the condemned man’s life, or death. Science argued that research must no more be condemned for producing a wicked genius than creating an atomic bomb. Its votaries claimed to labour in the service of truth alone and therefore stand upon the side of morality, since its ideals opposed infidelity in any genuine sense; but the Church condemned without dissension and Bishops declared that the Omnipotent would not have chosen a vessel so foul to convey any blessings designed for the service of man.
The prisoner’s attitude became modified. He was permitted to read the newspapers and now grew conscious tha
t an international effort in his favour had yet to appear. Words poured in a deluge, but they promised no action. No propitious fighting spirit awakened. Little by little his gathering and unexpected peril came home to Faraday Heron. He concentrated upon his appeal, but still resolved to give not so much as a glimpse of his discoveries at a lesser price than his life, and when there came an official letter, he declined the suggestions it contained. The missive concerned his laboratory and invited him to consider the propriety of rendering the building safe, out of care for the neighbourhood in which it stood and thought for the innocent lives endangered should an unexpected explosion, such as he promised, take place. He was invited to rectify this risk that a formidable catastrophe might be avoided, and further pressed to enlarge his views and agree that the knowledge he professed might not be withheld from his fellow-men but imparted as evidence of the contrition that one, so greatly endowed by providence as himself, must be presumed to feel before his approaching end. It was a dry, uninspired and emotionless document, concocted by a Minister without imagination, not only anxious to avert needless disaster, but jealous to evade any concession, or hint of mercy, in exchange for agreement to pleasure the State. “To add another crime to those you have committed and confessed would be a crowning act of malevolence,” the letter concluded, “and the Cabinet prays that, in the name of God, you may be swiftly guided to rectify this dreadful threat before it is too late.” But the arid terms of the application decided Faraday against it. He considered whether instant compliance would create influence in his favour and even weighed the wisdom of conveying his discoveries to those who could understand them and rendering the laboratory safe. When that was done, surely a consensus of opinion would arise to spare his life, not as an act of humanity, but a matter of business and a vast contribution to industrial progress. A halter must already appeal to the intelligent world as poor payment for these privileges. But he could not trust such dreams. He became increasingly alive to the power of the Law, the herd acceptance of its authority and the disinclination to oppose it in average human minds. He wrote a guarded reply stating that the precise time of explosion was known to him, but that he had nothing to say until the hearing of his appeal and reconsideration of his sentence. To this he received no answer.
Any attention quickened his hope, for he felt a growing instinct that public indifference spelled doom. The lack of national support honestly mystified him, for he still failed to comprehend how subjects which had inspired and actuated his whole existence were, in legal eyes, but shadows before the substance of his crime. More than one letter that he read in the newspapers scorned all extenuation and held that his promises were the lying assurance of a charlatan to evade death. Again and again he reviewed his values in the light of possible and final defeat, but blank astonishment continued to be his keenest emotion. The wonder grew that a world, not lacking in intelligence and awake to its own industrial and social beggary, could at such a moment turn deaf ears on all he was ready to proclaim. Since no thought for himself had lightened the official application, he replied that those determined to take his life must face the consequences and, since he had no mind to succour a generation that flouted common sense and opposed reason, then forthcoming events must be upon their own heads.
That was the most human and personal attitude ever to be recorded of him; but himself he only regarded this brief bout with the Law as a matter of cause and effect, the result inevitably to be expected before such a futile challenge. The attitude of a wider humanity continued to bewilder Faraday, for that people should still profess reasons sufficiently potent to override his discoveries amazed him. He felt no fear of death in itself, but experienced a sort of hopeless impatience to realize what now loomed large between him and the abundance that life continued to offer. He found it incredible that all might be ended within brief weeks. He had devoted small thought to mankind, regarding his own species as a defective mammal scarce worthy to be trusted with consciousness; but now his contempt hardened into an active loathing, so acute that it fortified his indifference to the thought of death. For him, as for his sister, suicide occupied his mind and, when it did so, he woke to the discovery that such a possibility had been considered and every means carefully denied him. He suffered the strange torture of continued companionship, for he was never alone and his sleeping hours watched over.
Science meantime, on hearing all invitations to liberate the laboratory had been declined by its creator, set about how to save it against ultimate destruction from within. Any attempt represented unknown danger and though suggestions for entry abounded, as yet none received sanction, though volunteers did not lack for the adventure if a practical means to employ their courage could be suggested. The body of opinion now drifted against the condemned man, for his refusal to comply with the propositions set before him turned many from his cause. Such an action was counted malignant and indicative of his real nature. Compliance might, so people guessed, have been the first step to a life sentence, but refusal left no doubt that his approaching appeal would be dismissed. He was classed as a baleful portent and better dead. Newspapers exalted him to an eminence of wickedness comparable with the world figures soon to stand their trial. His refusal to save the countryside of Cliff left him no friends there and now, while scientists toiled to save the laboratory and confound what he had planned, public animus awakened against science and all its works.
Three High Court Judges heard the appeal and the Lord Chief Justice was one of them. Faraday, fortified by a few notes, had long committed his speech to memory and most of the new material concerned other angles of approach than those already followed by him.
“The nations,” he began, “are about to confer on this enormous challenge of atomic energy and as to whether a new control and command shall be created with all its machinery for international regulations and settlement. New departments will doubtless be established and new organizations, armed with world power, founded to watch over the universal interests involved. But, my Lords, I would stress and, through this tribunal, advertise to the whole earth, that what I have to bring must form the very nidus and core of all future conferences — the only sure foundation upon which the architects of betterment can build. My facts demand a new dispensation, for the reason that they banish the old one by legitimate progress of evolution and, through their radical nature, supersede much until now essential, but henceforward obsolete. As we approach our challenge: to guard the new-found power against evil application, so consider our need. It arises from the grip of opposed ideologies upon the mass instincts of the nations that profess them. One man’s meat is another man’s poison and advances, condemned by our own democratic principles, are held of first importance on other standards. Even a word is understood to signify totally different things in different languages. I bring a standard above all standards — a discovery above the question of any rules of conduct and depending rather upon eternal truths lying outside the domain of any ideology whatsoever. I am prepared directly to advance what may be regarded as fundamental progress. Right and wrong are not involved; no morality is violated, for I see nothing but swift and inevitable advance before us, which, once achieved, will hasten and assure that mental progress of which the world stands so much in need and lack of which creates this present, formidable time-lag between our knowledge and our wisdom.
“To consider concrete ideas of a nature that appeal to the multitude, let me dwell upon one vital demand above all argument — a matter of elemental fact,” continued Faraday. “The new energy will be responsible for unlimited heat, converted by us into electricity, thus solving not only the problem of coalmining and the difficulty of finding human beings who will devote their working lives to that purpose. For I also provide the obvious solution of how to operate other less essential services from which the educated generations of the future will shrink. Nor need we fear that, with enlarged brain power, must come diminished physical strength and deterioration of muscular power induced by the decreasing
need for it. Look after our brains and our bodies will look after themselves. Science has long since learned that man’s nervous system embraces his destiny, and not only will nuclear physics throw light into those mysteries, but prove capable of quickening at a thousand other points our stagnant knowledge of ourselves. And more than that: it represents a prodigious step towards cosmic territories yet sealed to our knowledge — illimitable regions concealing truths as yet unimagined but not beyond the reach of human attainment. To these I would seek to guide the pioneers of the future, for eternal change is the first rule of existence and what we find must for ever be a step only to what remains to find. Let us cease from finding and we join the fossils and perish.”
Faraday waited but a moment and returned to details.
“The terrestial stock of uranium, your Lordships,” he continued, “is computed at an amount of energy that one century of human requirement will demand. For myself I doubt whether, with our growing activities, it can last so long even as that; but my synthesis rests on no such meagre assets and does not depend upon Nature’s laboratories. It will come from our own. Once again, then, suffer me to urge your Lordships that, before we create the coming Atomic Energy Commission of United Nations, my knowledge, in right of its direct bearing on their enactments, shall be published to the world. By neglecting this opportunity you do grave disservice to human requirements — above all in the particular of future peace. When what I have to proclaim is heard, believe me peace will become an axiom established for ever; but deny me, then the Commission’s prime purpose fails and U.N.O. must join the lost causes already too familiar.
The Fall of the House of Heron (Prologue Science Fiction) Page 23
