Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy (68 page)

‘But doesn’t it make any difference to you now?’ the nurse asked curiously. ‘Now that you’re rightfully a woman?’

Conroy, busy with his bag, had not heard. Miss Henschil stared across, and her beauty, freed from the shadow of any fear, blazed up within her. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But it hasn’t changed anything. I want Toots.
He
has never been out of his mind in his life – except over silly me.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Conroy, stooping under the lamp, Bradshaw in hand. ‘If I change at Templecombe – for Bristol (Bristol – Hereford – yes) – I can be with mother for breakfast in her room and find out.’

‘Quick, then,’ said Nurse Blaber. ‘We’ve passed Gillingham quite a while. You’d better take some of our sandwiches.’ She went out to get them. Conroy and Miss Henschil would have danced, but there is no room for giants in a South-Western compartment.

‘Good-bye, good luck, lad. Eh, but you’ve changed already– like me. Send a wire to our hotel as soon as you’re sure,’ said Miss Henschil. ‘What should I have done without you?’

‘Or I?’ said Conroy. ‘But it’s Nurse that’s saving us really.’

‘Then thank her,’ said Miss Henschil, looking straight at him. ‘Yes, I would. She’d like it.’

When Nurse Blaber came back after the parting at Templecombe her nose and her eyelids were red, but, for all that, her face reflected a great light even while she sniffed over
The Cloister and the Hearth.

Miss Henschil, deep in a house furnisher’s catalogue, did not speak for twenty minutes. Then she said, between adding totals of best, guest, and servants’ sheets, ‘But why should our times have been the same, Nursey?’

‘Because a child is born somewhere every second of the clock,’ Nurse Blaber answered.

‘And besides that, you probably set each other off by talking and thinking about it. You shouldn’t, you know.’

‘Ay, but you’ve never been in Hell,’ said Miss Henschil.

The telegram handed in at Hereford at 12.46 and delivered to Miss Henschil on the beach of a certain village at 2.7 ran thus:

‘“
Absolutely confirmed. She says she remembers hearing noise of accident in engine-room returning from India eighty-five.
”’

‘He means the year, not the thermometer,’ said Nurse Blaber, throwing pebbles at the cold sea.

‘“
And two men scalded thus explaining my hoots.
”(The idea of telling me that!)“
Subsequently silly clergyman passenger ran up behind her calling for joke, ‘Friend, all is lost,’ thus accounting very words.
”

Nurse Blaber purred audibly.

‘“
She says only remembers being upset minute or two. Unspeakable relief. Best love Nursey, who is jewel. Get out of her what she would like best.
” Oh, I oughtn’t to have read that,’ said Miss Henschil.

‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want anything,’ said Nurse Blaber, ‘and if I did I shouldn’t get it.’

AS EASY ASA. B.C.
ATALE OF 2150 AD

The ABC, that semi-elected semi-nominated body of a few score persons, controls the Planet. Transformation is Civilisation, our motto runs. Theoretically we do what we please, so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all it implies. Practically the ABC confirms or annuls all international arrangements, and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little Planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders.

With the Night Mail, 2000 AD

Isn’t it almost time our Planet took some interest in the proceedings of the Aerial Board of Control? One knows that easy communications nowadays, and lack of privacy in the past, have killed all curiosity among mankind, but as the Board’s Official Reporter I am bound to tell my tale.

At 9.30 a.m. on the 26th, the Board, sitting in London, was informed by De Forest (US) that the District of Northern Illinois had riotously cut itself out of all systems and would remain disconnected till the Board should take over and administer it direct.

Every Northern Illinois freight and passenger tower was, he reported, out of action; all District main, local and guiding lights had been extinguished; all General Communicators were dumb, and through traffic had been diverted. No reason had been given, but he gathered unofficially from the Mayor of Chicago that the District complained of ‘crowd-making and invasion of privacy.’

As a matter of fact, it is of no importance whether Northern Illinois stays in or out of planetary circuit; as a matter of policy any complaint of invasion of privacy needs immediate investigation, lest worse should follow.

By 9.45 a.m., De Forest, Dragomiroff (Russia), Takahira(Japan), and Pirolo (Italy) were empowered to visit Illinois and ‘to take such steps as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and
all that that implies.
By 10 a.m. the Hall was empty, and the four Members and I were aboard what Pirolo insisted on calling ‘My leetle godchild’ – that is to say, the new
Victor Pirolo.
Our Planet prefers to know Victor Pirolo as a gentle, grey-haired enthusiast who spends his time near Foggia, inventing or creating new breeds of Spanish-Italian olive-trees; but there is another side to his nature – the manufacture of quaint inventions, of which the
Victor Pirolo
is perhaps not the least surprising. She and a few score sister-craft of the same type embody his latest ideas. But she is not comfortable. An ABC boat does not take the air with the level-keeled lift of a liner, but shoots up rocket-fashion like the ‘aeroplane’ of our ancestors, and finds her level at top-speed from the first. That is why I found myself sitting suddenly on the large lap of Eustace Arnott, who commands the ABC Fleet. One knows vaguely that there is such a thing as a Fleet somewhere on the Planet, and that, theoretically, it exists for the purposes of what used to be known as ‘war.’ Only a week before, while visiting a glacier sanatorium behind Gothaven, I had seen some squadrons making false auroras far to the north while they manoeuvred round the Pole, but, naturally, it had never occurred to me that the things could be used in earnest.

Said Arnott to De Forest as I staggered to a seat on the chartroom divan: ‘We’re tremendously grateful to ’em in Illinois. We’ve never had a chance of exercising all the Fleet together. I’ve turned in a General Call, and I expect we’ll have at least two hundred keels aloft by evening.’

‘Well aloft?’ De Forest asked.

‘Of course, sir. Out of sight till they’re called for.’

Arnott laughed as he lolled over the transparent chart-table where the map of the summer-blue Atlantic slid along, degree by degree, in exact answer to our progress. Our dial already showed 320 m.p.h., and we were two thousand feet above the uppermost traffic lanes.

‘Now,whereisthisIllinoisDistrictof yours?’saidDragomiroff. ‘One travels so much, one sees so little. Oh, I remember! It is in North America!’

De Forest, whose business it is to know his own responsibilities, told us that it lay at the foot of Lake Michigan, on the road to nowhere in particular, was about an hour’s run from end to end, and, except in one corner, as flat as the sea. Like most flat countries nowadays, it was heavily guarded against invasion of privacy by forced timber – fifty-foot oak and tamarack, grown in five years. The population was close on two millions, largely migratory between Florida and California, with a backbone of small farms (they call a thousand acres a farm in Illinois), whose owners come into Chicago for amusements and society during the winter. They were, he said, noticeably kind, quiet folk, but a little exacting, as all flat countries must be, in their notions of privacy. There had, for instance, been no printed news-sheet in Illinois for twenty-seven years. Chicago argued that engines for printed news sooner or later developed into engines for invasion of privacy, which in turn might bring the old terror of crowds and blackmail back to the Planet. So news-sheets were not.

‘And that’s Illinois,’ De Forest concluded. ‘You see, in the Old Days, she was in the forefront of what they used to call “progress,” and Chicago—’

‘Chicago?’ said Takahira. ‘That’s the little place where there is Salati’s Statue of the Nigger in Flames? A fine bit of old work.’

‘When did you see it?’ asked De Forest quickly. ‘They only unveil it once a year.’

‘I know. At Thanksgiving. It was then,’ said Takahira, with a shudder. ‘And they sang MacDonough’s Song too.’

‘Whew!’ De Forest whistled. ‘I did not know that! I wish you’d told me before. MacDonough’s Song may have had its uses when it was composed, but it was an infernal legacy for any man to leave behind.’

‘It’s protective instinct, my dear fellows,’ said Pirolo, rolling a cigarette. ‘The Planet, she has had her dose of popular government. She suffers from inherited agoraphobia. She has no – ah – use for crowds.’

Dragomiroff leaned forward to give him a light, ‘Certainly,’said the white-bearded Russian, ‘the Planet has taken all precautions against crowds for the past hundred years. What is our total population to-day? Six hundred million, we hope; five hundred, we think, but – but if next year’s census shows more than four hundred and fifty I myself will eat all the extra little babies. We have cut the birth-rate out – right out! For a long time we have said to Almighty God: “Thank You, Sir, but we do not much like Your game of life. So we will not play.”’

‘Anyhow,’ said Arnott defiantly, ‘men live a century apiece on the average nowadays.’

‘Oh, that is quite well! I am rich – you are rich – we are all rich and happy because we are so few and we live so long. Only
I
think Almighty God He will remember what the Planet was like in the time of the Crowds and the Plague. Perhaps He will send us nerves. Eh, Pirolo?’

The Italian blinked into space. ‘Perhaps,’ said he, ‘he has sent them already. Anyhow, you cannot argue with the Planet. She does not forget the Old Days; and – what can you do?’

‘For sure we can’t remake the world.’ De Forest glanced at the map flowing smoothly across the table from west to east. ‘We ought to be over our ground by nine tonight. There won’t be much sleep afterwards.’

On which hint we dispersed, and I slept till Takahira waked me for dinner. Our ancestors thought nine hours’ sleep ample for their little lives. We, living thirty years longer, feel ourselves defrauded with less than eleven out of the twenty-four.

By ten o’clock we were over Lake Michigan. The west shore was lightless, except for a dull ground-glare at Chicago, and a single traffic-directing light – its leading beam pointing north – at Waukegan on our starboard bow. None of the Lake villages gave any sign of life; and inland, westward, so far as we could see, blackness lay unbroken on the level earth. We swooped down and skimmed low across the dark, throwing calls county by county. Now and again we picked up the faint glimmer of a house-light or heard the rasp and rend of a cultivator being played across the fields, but Northern Illinois as a whole wasone inky, apparently uninhabited waste of high forced woods. Only our illuminated map, with its little pointer switching from county to county, as we wheeled and twisted, gave us any idea of our position. Our calls, urgent, pleading, coaxing or commanding, through the General Communicator, brought no answer. Illinois strictly maintained her own privacy in the timber she grew for that purpose.

‘Oh, this is absurd!’ said De Forest. ‘We’re like an owl trying to work a wheat-field. Is this Bureau Creek? Let’s land, Arnott, and get hold of someone.’

We brushed over a belt of forced woodland – fifteen-year-old maple sixty feet high – grounded on a private meadow-dock, none too big, where we moored to our own grapnels, and hurried out through the warm, dark night towards a light in a verandah. As we neared the garden gate I could have sworn we had stepped knee-deep in quicksand, for we could scarcely drag our feet against the prickling currents that clogged them. After five paces we stopped, wiping our foreheads, as hopelessly stuck on dry, smooth turf as so many cows in a bog.

‘Pest!’ cried Pirolo angrily. ‘We are ground-circuited. And it is my own system of ground-circuits, too! I know the feeling!’

‘Good-evening,’ said a girl’s voice from the verandah. ‘Oh, I’m sorry! We’ve locked up. Wait a minute.’

We heard the click of a switch, and almost fell forward as the currents round our knees were withdrawn.

The girl laughed and laid aside her knitting. An old-fashioned Controller stood at her elbow, which she reversed from time to time, and we could hear the snort and clank of the obedient cultivator half a mile away, behind the guardian woods.

‘Come in and sit down,’ she said. ‘I’m only playing a plough. Dad’s gone to Chicago to— Ah! Then it was
your
call I heard just now.’

She had caught sight of Arnott’s Board uniform, leaped to the switch, and turned it full on.

We were checked, gasping, waist-deep in current this time, three yards from the verandah.

‘We only want to know what’s the matter with Illinois,’ said De Forest placidly.

‘Then hadn’t you better go to Chicago and find out?’ she answered. ‘There’s nothing wrong here. We own ourselves.’

‘How can we go anywhere if you won’t loose us?’ De Forest went on while Arnott scowled. Admirals of Fleets are still quite human when their dignity is touched.

‘Stop a minute – you don’t know how funny you look!’ She put her hands on her hips and laughed mercilessly.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Arnott, and whistled. A voice answered from the
Victor Pirolo
in the meadow.

‘Only a single-fuse ground-circuit!’ Arnott called. ‘Sort it out gently, please.’

We heard the ping of a breaking lamp; a fuse blew out somewhere in the verandah roof, frightening a nest full of birds. The ground-circuit was open. We stooped and rubbed our tingling ankles.

‘How rude – how very rude of you!’ the maiden cried.

‘Sorry, but we haven’t time to look funny,’ said Arnott. ‘We’ve got to go to Chicago; and if I were
you,
young lady, I’d go into the cellars for the next two hours, and take mother with me.’

Off he strode, with us at his heels, muttering indignantly, till the humour of the thing took and doubled him up with laughter at the foot of the gangway-ladder.

‘The Board hasn’t shown what you might call a fat spark on this occasion,’ said De Forest, wiping his eyes. ‘I hope I didn’t look as big a fool as you did, Arnott! Hullo! What on the earth is that? Dad coming home from Chicago?’

There was a rattle and a rush, and a five-plough cultivator, blades in air like so many teeth, trundled itself at us round the edge of the timber, fuming and sparking furiously.

‘Jump!’ said Arnott, as we bundled ourselves through the none-too-wide door. ‘Never mind about shutting it. Up!’

The
Victor Pirolo
lifted like a bubbly and the vicious machine shot just underneath us, clawing high as it passed.

‘There’s a nice little spit-kitten for you!’ said Arnott, dusting his knees. ‘We ask her a civil question. First she circuits us and then she plays a cultivator at us!’

‘And then we fly,’ said Dragomiroff. ‘If I were forty years more young I would go back and kiss her. Ho! Ho!’

‘I,’ said Pirolo, ‘would smack her! My pet ship has been chased by a dirty plough; a – how do you say? – agricultural implement!’

‘Oh, that is Illinois all over,’ said De Forest. ‘They don’t content themselves with talking about privacy. They arrange to have it. And now where’s your alleged fleet, Arnott? We must assert ourselves against this wench.’

Arnott pointed to the black heavens.

‘Waiting on – up there,’ said he. ‘Shall I give them the whole installation, sir?”

‘Oh, I don’t think the young lady is quite worth all that,’said De Forest. ‘Get over Chicago, and perhaps we’ll see something.’

In a few minutes, we were hanging at two thousand feet over an oblong block of incandescence in the centre of the little town.

‘That looks like the old City Hall. Yes, there is Salati’s Statue in front of it,’ said Takahira. ‘But what on earth are they doing to the place? I thought they used it for a market nowadays? Drop a little, please.’

We could hear the sputter and crackle of road-surfacing machines – the cheap Western type which fuse stone and rubbish into lava-like ribbed glass for their rough country roads. Three or four surfacers worked on each side of a square of ruins. The brick and stone wreckage crumbled, slid forward, and presently spread out into white-hot pools of sticky slag, which the levelling-rods smoothed more or less flat. Already a third of the big block had been so treated, and was cooling to dull red before our astonished eyes.

‘It is the Old Market,’ said De Forest. ‘Well, there’s nothing to prevent Illinois from making a road through a market. It doesn’t interfere with traffic, that I can see.’

‘Hsh!’ said Arnott, gripping me by the shoulder. ‘Listen! They’re singing. Why on the earth are they singing?’

We dropped again till we could see the black fringe of people at the edge of that glowing square.