The Science Fiction of Erle Stanley Gardner - The Human Zero

by Matin Greenberg

  And the rain seemed to have ceased over some considerable area. The patch of blue sky widened. The warm rays of the sun shone reassuringly.

  A man came rushing from a little penthouse on the top of the building. In his hand he carried an instrument that looked like a ship captain’s sextant. He stood at the side of the building, raised the instrument to his eyes.

  For a moment he stood so, the sunshine gilding him, a morsel of a man standing outlined against the rim of the lofty building. Then he lowered the instrument, took the magnifying glass on the reading arm to his eye, whipped a watch from his pocket, and apparently saw Phil and the girl standing there for the first time.

  He stared at them with eyes that were wide, seemed a little glassy.

  “Over five degrees out of the proper position in the plane of the ecliptic!” he shouted. “Do you hear me? Over five degrees!”

  Phil Bregg glanced at the woman, then stepped forward, interposing his bulk between her and the man.

  “That’s all right, brother,” he said in a soothing tone.

  “There’s been a dam broke somewhere, and the water’s coming up, but it’ll go down in a little while.”

  The man made an impatient gesture.

  “Fools!” he said. “Don’t you see what*s happening? The water won’t go down. It’ll come up and up. It’s the destruction of a race!”

  And he turned on his heel, strode rapidly toward the penthouse.

  “I’ve seen ’em get the same way when there’s been a stampede,” said Phil, smiling reassuringly at the girl. “It’s clearing up now. The water’ll be going down in a few minutes. These busted dams make the water come up fast, but it goes down just as fast.”

  Yet there was a vague disquiet in his soul which manifested itself in his voice.

  The girl nodded bravely, but there was a pallor about her lips.

  “Let’s go talk to that bird,” said Phil, suddenly. “I’m wondering what he was staring at the sun for with that sextant. I was on a hunting trip with a chap once that could look at the sun every noon and point out right where we were on the map, and he’d never been anywheres near the country we were hunting in before.”

  “Yes,” said the girl. “Sea captains use those instruments to check there . . . Oh, oh, look! Look! Look!”

  CHAPTER 2

  Beginning of the End

  Far down the street the towers of one of the great skyscrapers loomed, topped by a central dominant tower, the whole structure dotted with windows which showed as regular black oblongs, small and dark, contrasting with the white of the building.

  That tower which dominated the very sky itself was leaning over at a sharp angle. As the girl pointed the tower tilted again, checked itself, swayed, and then started to fall.

  It was slow, majestic in its fall, like the descent of a mighty giant of the forest under the ax of the woodsman. The building swung over, moving faster and faster, yet seeming to take an eternity in its collapse.

  When it had reached an angle where the central tower seemed to be almost at forty-five degrees, the top of the structure buckled. Masonry broke loose and crashed out as an independent shower of debris.

  That was the beginning of a sudden disintegration of the skyscraper. The frame seemed to buckle in a dozen places. The speed of descent increased. The building vanished amongst the smaller edifices which surrounded it.

  For an instant there was silence. The skyscraper had simply vanished. Then came a terrific cloud of fine rock dust, a great spray of water, and, after a second or two, a shivering roar that shook the consciousness, tore at the ear drums, seemed to reverberate alike through ground and air.

  And, as though that roar had been a signal, the clouds swallowed up the sun again, and the sheeted rain whipped down in torrents.

  The man came running out from the penthouse.

  “What was it?” he asked, impatiently.

  The girl’s white lips moved, but made no sound.

  “One of the buildings fell,” said Phil, and his own voice was high-pitched with excitement, as well as a recognition of their own danger.

  The man nodded.

  “Foundations undermined by the rush of water, ground giving way,” he said. “There’ll be earthquakes, too.”

  His own voice had lost its excitement, seemed calm and controlled now.

  “Look here,” yelled Phil, “we’re in danger here. Let’s get out of this building. It’s swaying right now!”

  And the building swayed, jarred, shivered, as though touched by an invisible giant hand.

  “Danger!” the man said; “there is no danger. Our fate is assured. I had hoped this might be a spot of high ground when the compensated stresses of balance should get to work, but apparently they are retarded, or else my calculations were in error.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Phil.

  The man shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s the end. Look here. I’ve got my complete observatory up there on the tower. I’ve been able to predict this for years. Not as to the time—except within a few years. The newspapers gave me a lot of publicity three years ago, then every one forgot about me. I wasn’t even a joke any more.

  “And now it’s happening, just as I said it would. Astronomically it’s been inevitable. Historically it’s authenticated. Yet man would never listen.”

  “What,” asked Phil, “are you talking about?”

  “The flood,” said the man. “Every savage tribe has an old legend of a great flood that swept over the earth. It rained and the waters rose. Everywhere we find geological evidences of such a flood. Yet the thing, as described, is obviously impossible. It couldn’t rain enough to raise the waters of the earth to the point described in the legends of the flood.

  “But there’s another factor. The earth has changed its poles. There’s abundant evidence that our north pole, so-called, was once the abode of tropical life, and that the climate changed overnight.

  “There are mastodons frozen into the solid ice. They’ve been there for thousands of years. Their stomachs are filled with bulbs and foliage which were tropical in character. Yet their flesh is sufficiently well preserved so that it can be cooked and eaten.

  “What does that mean? It means, that in the morning they were roaming about, eating their meal of tropical fruits. It means that by night they were dead and frozen stiff and have been frozen for thousands of years.

  “The earth changed its poles. That changed the tides, caused old continents to fall, new ones to arise, and water came rushing in from the ocean. It’s only logical that such a phenomenon was accompanied by terrific rains as the warmer air became condensed in the colder climates which were created. That led to the belief that the flood was caused by rain. It wasn’t. The rain was merely a factor.

  “The so-called flood was caused by a changing of the poles of the earth. The Biblical account, in the main, is entirely correct. Except that man, trusting to his limited powers of observation and the inadequate knowledge of the time, attributed the rise of water to the rain.

  “Its the same form of reasoning that made you seek to ascribe this beginning of the rise of waters to the breaking of a dam.”

  The man ceased speaking, looked from face to face.

  “But,” said the girl, “is this another flood? I thought there wouldn’t be any more . . .”

  The scientist laughed.

  “This isn’t a flood. It is merely a changing of the earth’s poles. You might as well be philosophic about it. Nature always progresses. She does that by a series of wave motions. She builds, she sustains, and she destroys, and she rebuilds upon the ruins of destruction. That is the law of progress.”

  The building gave another shiver.

  Phil took the girl’s arm.

  “At least,” he said, “we can fight for our lives. We’ll go down to the level of the flood. Then when the building starts to fall we can jump into the water.”

  The scientist laughed.

  “And when you’re
in the water, what then?”

  Phil Bregg clamped his bronzed jaw.

  “We’ll keep on fighting,” he said. “If Nature wants to destroy me she’s probably strong enough to win out in a fight, but nobody can ever say I was a quitter.”

  He became aware that the scientist was contemplating him with dreamy eyes, eyes that were filmed with thought.

  “Every time there’s been a destruction on a grand scale,” he said, “Nature has saved a few of the species. That’s the attitude that’s in harmony with evolution, young man, and I think I’ll just tag along with you, as long as I have the power to function on this plane of consciousness; it’ll be interesting to see just what Nature does to you.

  “Wait just a minute until I get an emergency package I’ve had prepared for just such a contingency.”

  And he jog-trotted into the penthouse.

  The girl shuddered.

  Phil Bregg looked at the girl, and grinned.

  “It seems too cruel . . . too awful. Think of it, a whole city!”

  Phil shook his head, solemnly.

  “Not a whole city,” he said, “a whole world!”

  Whatever else he might have said was checked by the arrival of the man, carrying a canvas sack, slung over his shoulder with a rope.

  Phil Bregg looked at the man’s slight figure, at the bulging sack, and grinned.

  “Pard,” he said, “you may be a shark on this scientific stuff but there’s a lot about packing things that you don’t know. Here, let me show you how we pack a bedroll on a shoulder pack when we’re out deer hunting, and have to leave the broncs and pack into a country where there ain’t any water.”

  He took it from the man’s shoulder, made a few swift motions, slung the ropes into a sort of harness, slipped the sack to his own broad back.

  “There you are,” he said. “See how she rides? Right close to the back. That keeps you from fighting balance all the time—”

  His words were swallowed in a terrific roar. The air seemed filled with noise, and the skyscraper upon whose summit they stood swayed drunkenly, like a reed in a breeze.

  They fought to keep their balance.

  “Another skyscraper down,” said Phil grimly.

  The scientist pointed.

  “The skyline,” he said, “is changing!”

  And it was obviously true. From where they stood they could see the older towers of the lofty buildings of the downtown section, and they were falling like trees before a giant gale. Here and there were buildings cocked over at a dangerous angle, yet apparently motionless. But even as they looked, their eyes beheld two buildings toppling over simultaneously.

  “The ones down on the lower ground are going first. The ocean’s sweeping away the foundations,” said the scientist. “It is all as I predicted. And do you know, they actually held me under observation in the psychopathic ward because I had the temerity to make such a prediction.

  “In the face of the unmistakable evidences that such a thing had happened in the past, the absolute assurance that it was bound to happen in the future, the indisputable evidence that Nature destroys the old before she starts to build the new, mere men, serene in their fancied security, contemplated imprisoning me because I dared to see the truth. They’d have done it, too, if they hadn’t finally decided I was ‘harmless,’ something to be laughed at.

  “Laughed at! And ^because I dared to read aright the printed page of the book of nature that was spread out where all might see it!

  “I talked to them of the procession of the equinoxes. I spoke to them of the gradual shifting of the poles, of the variation of Polaris. I spoke to them of changing stresses, of unstable equilibriums, and they laughed. Damn them, let them laugh now!”

  Phil tapped him on the shoulder.

  The man shook his shoulder free of Phil’s hand.

  “I know what’s going to happen. I’ll stay here and die contented, at least being privileged to watch a part of the destruction I predicted!”

  The girl spoke then.

  “No, we can’t leave you here, and my friend has all your emergency equipment. You’d better follow.”

  That clinched the argument. He came at their heels without further comment.

  CHAPTER 3

  Into the Water

  Phil Bregg led the way, setting a pace down the winding stairways that taxed them to keep up. From time to time, as they plunged downward, the building gave little premonitory shivers of a fate that could not long be delayed.

  “The beginning of earthquakes,” said the man in the rear. “As the new stresses and gravitational pulls start in, there will be increased disturbances. And it’s going to be interesting to see whether the orbit of the moon is going to be affected. If it isn’t, there’ll be cross tidal influences which’ll twist the very structure of the earth. In fact, there’s a law of tidal limits within which tides destroy the substance. Take, for instance, the question of the asteroids. There’s a very good chance that some tidal. . . .”

  The words were drowned out as the whole building swayed drunkenly upon its foundations, then swung gradually, but definitely out of the perpendicular, shivered, and remained stationary again.

  “Hurry!” screamed the girl.

  Phil Bregg, accustomed to dangers, having the ability to adjust himself rapidly to new emergencies, turned to grin at her reassuringly.

  “That’s all right. Going down’s faster than coming up. We’re making pretty fair progress right now. It won’t be long until we reach the water level.”

  It was hard to make any progress now. The stairways were smooth marble, and they were inclined at an angle. But the trio fought their way down, making the best speed they could, waiting momentarily for the building to come crashing down about them.

  Only once did they encounter any other people. That was a man who was running down one of the corridors. He cried out some unintelligible comment to them, but they could not understand, nor did they dare to wait.

  They had long since lost track of floors. Their knees ached with the effort of descending, keeping their balance on the slanting steps. They had no idea whether there were two floors or twenty below them, whether the water was rising or falling.

  And, abruptly, as they rounded a comer in the sloping stairway, emerged upon a slanting corridor, they came to the water level.

  Windows at the end of the hall were smashed in by the force of the water and the drifting debris which dotted the current. The water was muddy, turbulent, a sea of dancing objects. Here and there people drifted by, clinging to floating objects, or fighting their way in frantic strokes toward some building which seemed to offer a place of refuge.

  “What floor is it?” asked the man.

  “The eighth, I think,” said the girl.

  Suddenly Phil checked himself with an exclamation of astonishment.

  “Look!” he said.

  There was a door sagging open. The glass which composed the upper half had been broken. A big plate glass window in one side had cracked, and a big piece had dropped out of the center, which held a sign.

  That sign read:

  ALCO MOTORBOAT CORPORATION

  And back of the plate glass, held in position on wooden supports, looking neatly trim and seaworthy, was a big motor cruiser with a cabin and a flight of mahogany stairs leading up from the floor to the hull.

  “Let’s get in there!” said Phil.

  The girl shook her head.

  “We could never get it out.”

  “It weighs a terrific amount,” said the scientist, “but, wait a minute. There’s a chance! Look here!’’

  The building was leaning drunkenly. The water was rising steadily, and a part of the inclined floor was already slopping with little wavelets that were seeping in through the cracked partitions.

  “If we had that partition out of the way, and . . .”

  As he spoke, the building shivered again. The floor rocked. The cruiser slipped from its wooden supports. The mahogany stairway cra
shed into splinters. The cruiser careened over on its side, then began to slip down the wet floor.

  “Out of the way!” yelled Phil.

  They fought to one side.

  The cruiser skidded down the slope of the wet floor, hit the frosted glass and mahogany partition marked in gilt letters with the words:

  OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT

  PRIVATE

  Those partitions suddenly dissolved in a mass of splinters and a shower of broken glass. The sliding cruiser, moving majestically down the wet incline into deeper water, as though she were being launched down greased skids, came to rest against the far wall of the building, floating calmly upon a level keel, in water which was some six or eight feet deep.

  “Regular launching,” said Phil. “Personally, I consider that an omen. That’s the outer wall. If, we could only get her through there she’s ready for sea.”

  “Wait,” said the scientist. “There’s just a chance! If we could tow her over to that other end, and then had the partitions out between those two big windows, she’d just about go through. There’s some dynamite in that sack of emergency equipment. Here, let me have it. I may bring the building down about us, but I’ll make a hole right enough.”

  He tore at the sack with eager fingers.

  Once his feet slipped on the wet floor, and he fell, but he scrambled up, dragged an oiled silk container out of the sack, opened it.

  “Dynamite,” he said, “and there’s a bit of a more powerful explosive, something that’s the last word in scientific achievement. Here, let me get over there.”

  He fought his way toward the side of the building, busied himself there for a few moments, then gave an exclamation of disappointment.

  “Matches!” he said. “Of course I had to forget them. Those in my pocket are wet.”

  Phil laughed.

  “Well, that’s a habit of the cow country that’s hard to get away from. I’ve got a waterproof match box in my pocket. Here they are, catch!”