The Mouse That Roared (16 page)

Gloriana had considerable difficulty in controlling herself on hearing this news--a difficulty exceeded only by that of the Count of Mountjoy, who, to his credit, this being a public occasion, managed to keep his monocle in place though only by putting his hand swiftly to it. Both had expected news through the nearby American Consulate that the whole army had been captured and interned. Their only secret worry had been whether the United States would refuse to recognize that a state of war existed between the two countries and bill Grand Fenwick for the board, keep, and repatriation cost of its expeditionary force. That would indeed have been disastrous. To discover that far from this being the case, the army was back of its own accord, victorious, with prisoners and had captured also, if Tully was to be believed, America’s most powerful weapon, was next to incredible.

“What weapon is this?” Gloriana asked, in a carefully modulated voice.

“A bomb, Your Grace, which can destroy the whole of Europe,” said Tully. He rose to his feet and beckoned the soldiers who carried the Q-bomb on the plank. They brought it before Gloriana, who looked at the little box in disbelief and was about to pick it up.

“No! No!”
shouted Dr. Kokintz. “Don’t touch it. It will destroy everything.”

“Silence,” roared Tully, “and don’t faint on parade.” And then to Gloriana: “What he has to say, Your Grace, is true. He is the man who made this bomb, though he is as weak as a mouse himself. It is the only bomb of its kind in the world, and if he is to be believed, it will, on exploding, wipe out an area of two million square miles.”

There was a whisper around the courtyard among the people who had managed to crowd into it to view the ceremony, and they crouched back against the walls to be as far away from the little box as possible. Mothers held their children more closely and husbands pushed their wives behind them. All looked at the bomb on the plank and when the whispers died down there was only silence. The sun seemed for a moment to have lost its warmth and the castle looked old and weary beyond words.

“Take it inside,” Gloriana commanded, almost in a whisper. “And put it in the deep dungeon. It must not hurt our people.”

Tully bowed. “By your leave,” he said, “it will never hurt any people.”

The bomb was carried into the castle to be placed under guard in the deep dungeon, and the ceremony continued. Tully surrendered his prisoners to Gloriana, and spoke of the bravery of the man who had fallen during the war. “He spoke no word, Your Grace, when he died,” he said, “but when he was struck down, he rose again to fight with what little of life there was left in him.”

“Had he any family?” Gloriana asked.

“None,” replied Tully.

“But he was brother to us all,” said Gloriana, “and all of us his kin. He was of the common sort, yet more noble in his death than many who claim better blood are during their whole lives. He shall be laid to rest beside Sir Roger Fenwick, and the day of his death will be known as Cobley Day, so that the sacrifice he made for his nation will be remembered as long as his nation survives.”

The ceremony concluded with an address by Gloriana in which she paid tribute personally to Tully and generally to all who had accompanied him on the expedition. She capped it by announcing, to thunderous cheers which made Dr. Kokintz very nervous for the Q-bomb, that a feast would be held in the grand banqueting hall of the castle, to which all were invited. Then she took Tully aside and requested him to wait on her in the private audience chamber.

When they were alone Gloriana did not know precisely what to say. It aggravated her that this was the one man in the whole duchy in whose presence she was always at a loss on how to begin. She seated herself at a circular table and beckoned him to a chair opposite. He was, she noted, very bronzed and somehow seemed bigger and more male than he had before. When she looked at him, she felt a sort of lightness. Her heart seemed to beat faster and her voice was a little hard to control.

Tully looked at the fair hair like a cap of gold, the proud chin, the firm eyes, and then turned quickly to examine his hands placed on the table before him.

“Tell me all of your story,” said Gloriana, “and tell me particularly about this bomb.”

Tully did so, omitting no details and adding such facts as he had learned about the bomb from Dr. Kokintz during the return voyage.

“What are we to do with it?” Gloriana asked, when he was finished.

“The first thing which we must do,” said Tully, “is to guard our frontiers day and night. The Americans will try to get it back. Others may also try to steal it, for who has this bomb has mastery over all the nations, because of the threat the bomb represents. Both sides, the Americans and the Russians, may send agents to get the bomb. But we are fortunate in two respects. Our frontiers are easily patrolled and aliens can be readily excluded. And if one should manage to get past the border, he would be quickly recognized because, being as small as we are, everyone in Grand Fenwick knows the other by sight. A stranger would soon be discovered.

“The Americans or the Russians might try to drop someone here by parachute. But again, because we all know each other so well, a parachutist, even if dropped at night-time, would not have much chance. Side by side with guarding our borders, a guard must be placed around the castle to prevent anyone entering who has no official business. And a double guard must be put on the dungeon where the bomb is. That guard must be maintained twenty-four hours a day; and must be instructed to admit no one to the dungeon but yourself.”

“I am worried about this,” Gloriana said, frankly. “We may have made ourselves the most powerful nation in the world, as you say, but that’s not what we wanted to do at all. What we went to war for was just to get enough money by honourable means to be able to continue free as we have always been. All we get for being the most powerful nation in the world is that we have to live in a state of siege, with our frontiers patrolled, everybody eyeing his neighbour with suspicion, and all afraid of being exterminated at any moment if that beastly bomb explodes. We’re a lot less free now than we were before, and I can’t say that I like it.”

“Victory sometimes carries more responsibilities than gains,” replied Tully. “That is because it marks the return of conscience. In time of war, conscience is put aside, and it used to be kept aside, at least in so far as the conquered were concerned. It used to be a case of the spoils for the victors and woe for the conquered. War had some sense then. But nowadays we suffer from the mistake of being half civilized. We turn barbarian during war as a matter of patriotism, and civilized when the war is over as a matter of humanitarianism. We first kill off as many of the enemy as we can, by as efficient a method as we can devise, and then save as many of them as we are able with all the energy and wealth at our disposal. War, in fact, has become an atrocious waste of time. Unconditional surrender brings as its corollary, unrestricted rehabilitation. If it were possible to devise a method whereby each side could half win a war and no more, things, of course, would be different but, then, that cannot be done.”

Gloriana did not follow this very clearly. She was of a practical, rather than theoretical nature, and Tully’s talk of the responsibilities of victory disturbed her.

“I hope you’re not leading up to telling me that we’ll have to rehabilitate the United States,” she said, “because if so, we’ll have to borrow the money from them to do it.” Tully laughed.

“No,” he replied. “We of Grand Fenwick have achieved the military miracle of the twentieth century--a war in which the victor doesn’t have to give a penny to the vanquished. But we don’t get off quite free. Before we went to war, our responsibility was to ourselves alone. Now our responsibility extends to all mankind. We must keep the bomb out of the hands of those who might use it, because in the kind of warfare in which such a weapon would be employed all humanity, not just individual nations, is likely to be exterminated.

“It is not easy, I know, to be thrust into the role of world custodian in so short a time, after being as small a nation as we were. Much bigger nations have found the burden very heavy. The United States itself, after World War II, suddenly found that it had become the premier nation of the world, and was at a loss what to do about it. Many did not want to be the premier nation at all, but would have preferred to go back to the way they were. But that was impossible for them then, as it is for us now.”

“If the Americans offer us millions and millions of dollars for the bomb, don’t you think we ought to give it back to them?” Gloriana asked.

Tully stood up and braced his shoulders. He put his hand on the hilt of his broadsword and Gloriana was reminded once again of his odd likeness to the portrait of Sir Roger Fenwick.

“We are charged,” he said solemnly, “by the very possession of this bomb, with the duty of bringing the world back to sanity. You, Your Grace, are no longer merely the ruler of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. You are the most powerful woman in the world. The lives of millions hang upon your word. You have but to give me the command, and I will explode that bomb with one blow from my mace and destroy the whole of Europe. With such power, all nations are compelled to treat with you. Far-reaching agreements for world peace, effective because they can be enforced by the threat to detonate this bomb, can be achieved. Your ancestors never failed their nation. You are called upon now not to fail the whole world.”

“But surely other nations will in time be able to make such a bomb as this,” Gloriana said.

“True,” replied Tully, “and it is to the problem of preventing them that we must apply ourselves. I would suggest that you call a meeting of the Privy Council to examine the matter in all its aspects.”

It was after the private audience with Tully that the Count of Mountjoy urged that he be impeached and exiled for bringing the bomb into Grand Fenwick. When Gloriana had brushed aside his suggestion, the Privy Council meeting was summoned for the following day.

The meeting of the Privy Council of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick coincided to the day with a meeting of the Cabinet of the United Nations in the office of the President, and a meeting of the Presidium of the Soviet Union in the Kremlin. The topic on the agenda of all three meetings was the same--the Q-bomb.

Because of the difference in local times, the meeting of the Presidium was held first. It was a brief session and could hardly be called a meeting, in the sense of a convention for an exchange of views, so much as an address by one person to a number of others who were called upon to listen to it. A heavy-jowled man in a uniform so devoid of decorations as to be almost monastic, sat at the head of a long mahogany table with a sheet of paper before him. Perhaps a dozen others lined the two sides of the table. They bore a remarkable likeness to each other of which the similarity of their clothing was merely the reflection. Their faces had the same set look. Their eyes had the same unrevealing stare. Their mouths were set in the same straight line and their hands were all placed upon the table top, as if this was some kind of a drill.

The man at the head of the table looked them over, seeking as it were, to uncover any departure from the over-all uniformity--a handkerchief in a breast pocket, perhaps, or a mechanical pencil. Satisfied that no such deviation had been perpetrated, he commenced to read in a curiously high-pitched voice, quite at odds with his appearance.

“The proletariat of the independent state known as the Duchy of Grand Fenwick,” he piped, “subjected to intolerable economic warfare by the capitalist imperialists of Wall Street, have united with the workers of the world to throw off the bonds of serfdom imposed upon them by these bestial exploiters of humanity.

“The proletariat of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, placing themselves in the vanguard of the proletariat everywhere, which seeks to escape the chains of the capitalist masters, have declared war upon the United States of America. Hurling themselves like the heroes of our own glorious revolution, against the fortresses of the economic royalists, they have invaded the city of New York, and with losses amounting to twenty-five per cent of their total force, seized the Q-bomb with which the barbarous money worshippers sought to destroy the whole civilized world.”

“This Q-bomb is one which we, as a civilized people, refrained from making ourselves, although it was well within the skill of our comrade scientists.”

“It is proposed, therefore, that the people of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics join forces with the heroic proletariat of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick to protect them from reprisals from the capitalist imperialists and see that the Q-bomb is secured from falling into the hands of the enemies of the people.”

“It is proposed that the Commissar for Foreign Affairs visit the chief of the proletariat of the Grand Fenwick, who is a woman called Gloriana, and offer her on behalf of the Soviet Union, ten divisions of the Red Army for the protection of the people and the Q-bomb. He will propose that the Q-bomb be taken to Moscow for safe keeping and a treaty of eternal friendship and mutual protection be concluded between the place called Grand Fenwick and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

“Vote.”

Twelve hands around the table shot up. The heavy-jowled man nodded, picked up his papers and they all filed out of the room.

The meeting of the Cabinet of the United States was equally as serious though by no means as formal. The President wore a lightweight suit of a new synthetic material, for the late spring in Washington was unmercifully hot. The Secretary of Defence was more formally attired in a suit of blue serge. He wore a polka-dot tie, which by its neatness and its small-ness increased his marked likeness to a mouse. The Secretary of State leaned to formality too, though he permitted himself a suit of Oxford grey and a club tie of narrow black and white stripes.

Senator Griffin, who as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, had also been invited to attend, wore his unvarying uniform of light grey with a small rosebud in his lapel. His red choleric face showed signs of great strain. The Secretaries of the Treasury and Agriculture were not present, nor the Secretary of the Interior. But their places were taken by an admiral, a five-star general of the army, and an air force general. The army general wore a battle jacket with a pale-blue ribbon of the Congressional Medal on it, and a pair of G.I. pants were tucked into cowboy boots. He had paid $250 for the cowboy boots, which were handmade. He came from Texas and had a reputation for being a man of action, impatient of what he called “palaver.”