Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911
Page 27
“A month, two months, three months passed and the places grew somewhat, and there had come others. Yet we fought so strenuously with the fear that its headway was but slow, comparatively speaking.
“Occasionally we ventured off to the ship for such stores as we needed. There we found that the fungus grew persistently. One of the nodules on the maindeck became soon as high as my head.
“We had now given up all thought or hope of leaving the island. We had realized that it would be unallowable to go among healthy humans, with the things from which we were suffering.
“With this determination and knowledge in our minds we knew that we should have to husband our food and water; for we did not know, at that time, but that we should possibly live for many years.
“This reminds me that I have told you that I am an old man. Judged by the years this is not so. But—but—”
He broke off; then continued somewhat abruptly:
“As I was saying, we knew that we should have to use care in the matter of food. But we had no idea then how little food there was left, of which to take care. It was a week later that I made the discovery that all the other bread tanks—which I had supposed full—were empty, and that (beyond odd tins of vegetables and meat, and some other matters) we had nothing on which to depend, but the bread in the tank which I had already opened.
“After learning this I bestirred myself to do what I could, and set to work at fishing in the lagoon; but with no success. At this I was somewhat inclined to feel desperate until the thought came to me to try outside the lagoon, in the open sea.
“Here, at times, I caught odd fish; but so infrequently that they proved of but little help in keeping us from the hunger which threatened. It seemed to me that our deaths were likely to come by hunger, and not by the growth of the thing which had seized upon our bodies.
“We were in this state of mind when the fourth month wore out. Then I made a very horrible discovery. One morning, a little before midday, I came off from the ship with a portion of the biscuits which were left. In the mouth of her tent I saw my sweetheart sitting, eating something.
“ ‘What is it, my dear?’ I called out as I leapt ashore. Yet, on hearing my voice, she seemed confused, and, turning, slyly threw something towards the edge of the little clearing. It fell short, and a vague suspicion having arisen within me, I walked across and picked it up. It was a piece of the grey fungus.
“As I went to her with it in my hand, she turned deadly pale; then a rose red.
“I felt strangely dazed and frightened.
“ ‘My dear! My dear!’ I said, and could say no more. Yet at my words she broke down and cried bitterly. Gradually, as she calmed, I got from her the news that she had tried it the preceding day, and— and liked it. I got her to promise on her knees not to touch it again, however great our hunger. After she had promised she told me that the desire for it had come suddenly, and that, until the moment of desire, she had experienced nothing towards it but the most extreme repulsion.
“Later in the day, feeling strangely restless, and much shaken with the thing which I had discovered, I made my way along one of the twisted paths—formed by the white, sand-like substance—which led among the fungoid growth. I had, once before, ventured along there; but not to any great distance. This time, being involved in perplexing thought, I went much further than hitherto.
“Suddenly I was called to myself by a queer hoarse sound on my left. Turning quickly I saw that there was movement among an extraordinarily shaped mass of fungus, close to my elbow. It was swaying uneasily, as though it possessed life of its own. Abruptly, as I stared, the thought came to me that the thing had a grotesque resemblance to the figure of a distorted human creature. Even as the fancy flashed into my brain, there was a slight, sickening noise of tearing, and I saw that one of the branch-like arms was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses, and coming towards me. The head of the thing—a shapeless grey ball, inclined in my direction. I stood stupidly, and the vile arm brushed across my face. I gave out a frightened cry, and ran back a few paces. There was a sweetish taste upon my lips where the thing had touched me. I licked them, and was immediately filled with an inhuman desire. I turned and seized a mass of the fungus. Then more, and—more. I was insatiable. In the midst of devouring, the remembrance of the morning’s discovery swept into my mazed brain. It was sent by God. I dashed the fragment I held to the ground. Then, utterly wretched and feeling a dreadful guiltiness, I made my way back to the little encampment.
“I think she knew, by some marvellous intuition which love must have given, so soon as she set eyes on me. Her quiet sympathy made it easier for me, and I told her of my sudden weakness; yet omitted to mention the extraordinary thing which had gone before. I desired to spare her all unnecessary terror.
“But, for myself, I had added an intolerable knowledge, to breed an incessant terror in my brain; for I doubted not but that I had seen the end of one of those men who had come to the island in the ship in the lagoon; and in that monstrous ending I had seen our own.
“Thereafter we kept from the abominable food, though the desire for it had entered into our blood. Yet our drear punishment was upon us; for, day by day, with monstrous rapidity, the fungoid growth took hold of our poor bodies. Nothing we could do would check it materially, and so—and so—we who had been human, became— Well, it matters less each day. Only—only we had been man and maid!
“And day by day the fight is more dreadful, to withstand the hunger-lust for the terrible lichen.
“A week ago we ate the last of the biscuit, and since that time I have caught three fish. I was out here fishing tonight when your schooner drifted upon me out of the mist. I hailed you. You know the rest, and may God, out of His great heart, bless you for your goodness to a—a couple of poor outcast souls.”
There was the dip of an oar—another. Then the voice came again, and for the last time, sounding through the slight surrounding mist, ghostly and mournful.
“God bless you! Good-bye!”
“Good-bye,” we shouted together, hoarsely, our hearts full of many emotions.
I glanced about me. I became aware that the dawn was upon us.
The sun flung a stray beam across the hidden sea; pierced the mist dully, and lit up the receding boat with a gloomy fire. Indistinctly I saw something nodding between the oars. I thought of a sponge—a great, grey nodding sponge— The oars continued to ply. They were grey—as was the boat—and my eyes searched a moment vainly for the conjunction of hand and oar. My gaze flashed back to the—head. It nodded forward as the oars went backward for the stroke. Then the oars were dipped, the boat shot out of the patch of light, and the—the thing went nodding into the mist.
Future War
Future warfare was possibly the single most frequent theme in science fiction between the years 1870 and 1914, and one of the most precise predictions concerning it was H. G. Wells’ anticipation of tanks for warfare. Wells described them accurately from their caterpillar treads to their metal turret. Shown is the interpretation of Claude A. Shepperson, R. L., of a tank from The Land Ironclads by H. G. Wells, The Strand Magazine, January, 1904.
The Strand Magazine
January, 1904
THE LAND IRONCLADS
by H. G. Wells
THE LAND IRONCLADS, published in The Strand for January 1904, represents that aspect of Wells’ writing in which he acts as a technical prophet of science as well as a storyteller and “educator.” This story deals with the use of tanks for warfare. In the years that followed Wells also suggested aircraft for bombing cities (The War in the Air, 1908) and atomic energy for the destruction of civilization (The World Set Free, 1914).
Most of his early successes, The Time Machine (1895); The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896); The Invisible Man (1897); The War of the Worlds (1898); and even The First Men in the Moon (1901), were not fundamentally stories of future invention. The major exception was When the Sleeper Wakes (1899), where some of the in
ventions of the future had to be described in order to supply background for the story.
Wells was far from the first to predict the use of tanks for warfare. Leonardo da Vinci drew sketches of such weapons, and the famed dime-novel writer, Luis P. Senarens, devised several dozen different models of tanks and armored cars as the basis for his stories (1878 to 1902) involving Frank Reade and Jack Wright. However, Wells better understood the tactical use of tanks in war than any of his predecessors and seems to have been the first to anticipate the need for caterpillar treads. In describing the tanks he wrote: “. . . it had lifted its skirt and displayed along the length of it— feet. They were thick, stumpy feet, between knobs and buttons in shape— flat, broad things, reminding one of the feet of elephants or the legs of caterpillars; and then, as the skirt rose higher, the war correspondent, scrutinising the thing through his glasses again, saw that these feet hung, as it were, on the rims of wheels.”
It has only recently been underscored that during the period from 1871 to the outbreak of Work! War I, Hngland was inordinately obsessed with future war stories. The Battle of Dorking by George T. Chesney (1871), in which Germany successfully invades England, was the popularizer, and after that tales continued to come off the presses by the hundreds, ranking easily among the best-selling literature in England during this time. Many well-known writers made their reputations with novels of future war, including George Griffith, Louis Tracy, M. P. Shiel, William Le Queux, Max Pemberton, as well as scores of names that would have no association for modern readers. German authors wrote some too, which were translated into English, and the vogue spread, with slightly less virulence, to the United States.
It was almost the manifestation of a war psychosis on the part of nations. The navies of the world could scarcely wait to try out their ironclads. There were many medium-size powers and the writers paired them off like prize-fighters. It was as though the world regarded war as an international sport, and could barely contain itself waiting to see if Germany or England had the best “team.”
It should be noted that although Wells might have sermonized harder on the evils of what he was writing about in The Land Ironclads, War in the Air, and The World Set Free than did other authors, he was still riding on the crest of popularity of stories of future carnage.
I
THE young lieutenant lay beside the war correspondent and admired the idyllic calm of the enemy’s lines through his field-glass.
“So far as I can see,” he said at last, “one man.”
“What’s he doing?” asked the war correspondent.
“Field-glass at us,” said the young lieutenant.
“And this is war?”
“No,” said the young lieutenant; “it’s Bloch.”
“The game’s a draw.”
“No! They’ve got to win or else they lose. A draw’s a win for our side.” They had discussed the political situation fifty times or so, and the war correspondent was weary of it. He stretched out his limbs. “Aaai s’pose it is!” he yawned.
Flut!
“What was that?”
“Shot at us.”
The war correspondent shifted to a slightly lower position. “No one shot at him,” he complained.
“I wonder if they think we shall get so bored we shall go home?” The war correspondent made no reply. “There’s the harvest, of course. . . .”
They had been there a month. Since the first brisk movements after the declaration of war things had gone slower and slower, until it seemed as though the whole machine of events must have run down. To begin with, they had had almost a scampering time; the invader had come across the frontier on the very dawn of the war in half-a-dozen parallel columns behind a cloud of cyclists and cavalry, with a general air of coming straight on the capital, and the defender horsemen had held him up, and peppered him and forced him to open out to outflank, and had then bolted to the next position in the most approved style, for a couple of days, until in the afternoon, bump! they had the invader against their prepared lines of defence. He did not suffer so much as had been hoped and expected: he was coming on, it seemed, with his eyes open, his scouts winded the guns, and down he sat at once without the shadow of an attack and began grubbing trenches for himself, as though he meant to sit down there to the very end of time. He was slow, but much more wary than the world had been led to expect, and he kept convoys tucked in and shielded his slow-marching infantry sufficiently well to prevent any heavy adverse scoring.
“But he ought to attack,” the young lieutenant had insisted.
“He’ll attack us at dawn, somewhere along the lines. You’ll get the bayonets coming into the trenches just about when you can see,” the war correspondent had held until a week ago.
The young lieutenant winked when he said that.
When one early morning the men the defenders sent to lie out five hundred yards before the trenches, with a view to the unexpected emptying of magazines into any night attack, gave way to causeless panic and blazed away at nothing for ten minutes, the war correspondent understood the meaning of that wink.
“What would you do if you were the enemy?” said the war correspondent, suddenly.
“If I had men like I’ve got now?”
“Yes.”
“Take those trenches.”
“How?”
“Oh—dodges! Crawl out half-way at night before moonrise and get into touch with the chaps we send out. Blaze at ‘em if they tried to shift, and so bag some of ‘em in the daylight. Learn that patch of ground by heart, lie all day in squatty holes, and come on nearer next night. There’s a bit over there, lumpy ground, where they could get across to rushing distance—easy. In a night or so. It would be a mere game for our fellows; it’s what they’re made for. . . . Guns? Shrapnel and stuff wouldn’t stop good men who meant business.”
“Why don’t they do that?”
“Their men aren’t brutes enough; that’s the trouble. They’re a crowd of devitalised townsmen, and that’s the truth of the matter. They’re clerks, they’re factory hands, they’re students, they’re civilised men. They can write, they can talk, they can make and do all sorts of things, but they’re poor amateurs at war. They’ve got no physical staying power, and that’s the whole thing. They’ve never slept in the open one night in their lives; they’ve never drunk anything but the purest water-company water; they’ve never gone short of three meals a day since they left their feeding-bottles. Half their cavalry never cocked leg over horse till it enlisted six months ago. They ride their horses as though they were bicycles—you watch ‘em! They’re fools at the game, and they know it. Our boys of fourteen can give their grown men points. . . . Very well—”
The war correspondent mused on his face with his nose between his knuckles.
“If a decent civilisation,” he said, “cannot produce better men for war than—”
He stopped with belated politeness. “I mean—”
“Than our open-air life,” said the young lieutenant.
“Exactly,” said the war correspondent. “Then civilisation has to stop.”
“It looks like it,” the young lieutenant admitted.
“Civilisation has science, you know,” said the war correspondent. “It invented and it made the rifles and guns and things you use.”
“Which our nice healthy hunters and stockmen and so on, rowdy-dowdy cowpunchers and nigger-whackers, can use ten times better than – What’s that?”
“What?” said the war correspondent, and then seeing his companion busy with his field-glass, he produced his own: “Where?” said the war correspondent, sweeping the enemy’s lines.
“It’s nothing,” said the young lieutenant, still looking.
“What’s nothing?”
The young lieutenant put down his glass and pointed. “I thought I saw something there, behind the stems of those trees. Something black. What it was I don’t know.”
The war correspondent tried to get even by intense scrutiny.
The war correspondent looked inquiry.
“They may get their stomachs wrong, or something—living without proper drains.”
A sound of bugles came from the tents behind. The war correspondent slid backwards down the sand and stood up. “Boom!” came from somewhere far away to the left. “Halloa!” he said, hesitated, and crawled back to peer again. “Firing at this time is jolly bad manners.”
The young lieutenant was uncommunicative for a space.
Then he pointed to the distant clump of trees again. “One of our big guns. They were firing at that,” he said.
“The thing that wasn’t anything?”
“Something over there, anyhow.”
Both men were silent, peering through their glasses for a space. “Just when it’s twilight,” the lieutenant complained. He stood up.
“I might stay here a bit,” said the war correspondent.
The lieutenant shook his head. “There’s nothing to see,” he apologised, and then went down to where his little squad of sun-brown, loose-limbed men had been yarning in the trench. The war correspondent stood up also, glanced for a moment at the businesslike bustle below him, gave perhaps twenty seconds to those enigmatical trees again, then turned his face towards the camp.
He found himself wondering whether his editor would consider the story of how somebody thought he saw something black behind a clump of trees, and how a gun was fired at this illusion by somebody else, too trivial for public consumption.
“It’s the only gleam of a shadow of interest,” said the war correspondent, “for ten whole days.
“No,” he said presently; “I’ll write that other article, ‘Is War Played Out?’“
He surveyed the darkling lines in perspective, the tangle of trenches one behind another, one commanding another, which the defender had made ready. The shadows and mists swallowed up their receding contours, and here and there a lantern gleamed, and here and there knots of men were busy about small fires. “No troops on earth could do it,” he said. . . .