City of Endless Night
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Title: City of Endless Night
Author: Milo Hastings
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9862]
Most recently updated: December 27, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Susan Woodring, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT
By Milo Hastings
1920
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE RED AND BLACK AND GOLD STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY ON THE CHANGING
MAP OF THE WORLD
II. I EXPLORE THE POTASH MINES OF STASSFURT AND FIND A DIARY IN A DEAD
MAN'S POCKET
III. IN A BLACK UTOPIA THE BLOND BROOD BREEDS AND SWARMS
IV. I GO PLEASURING ON THE LEVEL OF FREE WOMEN AND DRINK SYNTHETIC BEER
V. I AM DRAFTED FOR PATERNITY AND MAKE EXTRAORDINARY PETITION TO THE
CHIEF OF THE EUGENIC STAFF
VI. IN WHICH I LEARN THAT COMPETITION IS STILL THE LIFE OF THE OLDEST
TRADE IN THE WORLD
VII. THE SUN SHINES UPON A KING AND A GIRL READS OF THE FALL OF BABYLON
VIII. FINDING THEREIN ONE RIGHTEOUS MAN, I HAVE COMPASSION ON BERLIN
IX. IN WHICH I SALUTE THE STATUE OF GOD, AND A PSYCHIC EXPERT EXPLORES
MY BRAIN AND FINDS NOTHING
X. A GODDESS WHO IS SUFFERING FROM OBESITY, AND A BRAVE MAN WHO IS
AFRAID OF THE LAW OF AVERAGES
XI. IN WHICH THE TALKING DELEGATE IS ANSWERED BY THE ROYAL VOICE AND I
LEARN THAT LABOR KNOWS NOT GOD
XII. THE DIVINE DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM THE GREAT GIVE A BENEFIT FOR THE
CANINE GARDENS AND PAY TRIBUTE TO THE PIGGERIES
XIII. IN WHICH A WOMAN ACCUSES ME OF MURDER AND I PLACE A RUBY NECKLACE
ABOUT HER THROAT
XIV. THE BLACK SPOT IS ERASED FROM THE MAP OF THE WORLD AND THERE IS
DANCING IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE ROOF OF BERLIN
CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT
CHAPTER I
THE RED AND BLACK AND GOLD STRUGGLE FOR
SUPREMACY ON THE CHANGING MAP OF THE WORLD
~1~
When but a child of seven my uncle placed me in a private school in
which one of the so-called redeemed sub-sailors was a teacher of the
German language. As I look back now, in the light of my present
knowledge, I better comprehend the docile humility and carefully
nurtured ignorance of this man. In his class rooms he used as a text a
description of German life, taken from the captured submarine. From this
book he had secured his own conception of a civilization of which he
really knew practically nothing. I recall how we used to ask Herr
Meineke if he had actually seen those strange things of which he taught
us. To this he always made answer, "The book is official, man's
observation errs."
~2~
"He can talk it," said my playmates who attended the public schools
where all teaching of the language of the outcast nation was prohibited.
They invariably elected me to be "the Germans," and locked me up in the
old garage while they rained a stock of sun-dried clay bombs upon the
roof and then came with a rush to "batter down the walls of Berlin" by
breaking in the door, while I, muttering strange guttural oaths, would
be led forth to be "exterminated."
On rainy days I would sometimes take my favoured playmates into my
uncle's library where five great maps hung in ordered sequence on the
panelled wall.
The first map was labelled "The Age of Nations--1914," and showed the
black spot of Germany, like in size to many of the surrounding
countries, the names of which one recited in the history class.
The second map--"Germany's Maximum Expansion of the First World
War--1918"--showed the black area trebled in size, crowding into the
pale gold of France, thrusting a hungry arm across the Hellespont
towards Bagdad, and, from the Balkans to the Baltic, blotting out all
else save the flaming red of Bolshevist Russia, which spread over the
Eastern half of Europe like a pool of fresh spilled blood.
Third came "The Age of the League of Nations, 1919--1983," with the gold
of democracy battling with the spreading red of socialism, for the black
of autocracy had erstwhile vanished.
The fourth map was the most fascinating and terrible. Again the black of
autocracy appeared, obliterating the red of the Brotherhood of Man,
spreading across half of Eurasia and thrusting a broad black shadow to
the Yellow Sea and a lesser one to the Persian Gulf. This map was
labelled "Maximum German Expansion of the Second World War, 1988," and
lines of dotted white retreated in concentric waves till the line
of 2041.
This same year was the first date of the fifth map, which was labelled
"A Century of the World State," and here, as all the sea was blue, so
all the land was gold, save one black blot that might have been made by
a single spattered drop of ink, for it was no bigger than the Irish
Island. The persistence of this remaining black on the map of the world
troubled my boyish mind, as it has troubled three generations of the
United World, and strive as I might, I could not comprehend why the
great blackness of the fourth map had been erased and this small blot
alone remained.
~3~
When I returned from school for my vacation, after I had my first year
of physical science, I sought out my uncle in his laboratory and asked
him to explain the mystery of the little black island standing adamant
in the golden sea of all the world.
"That spot," said my uncle, "would have been erased in two more years if
a Leipzig professor had not discovered The Ray. Yet we do not know his
name nor how he made his discovery."
"But just what is The Ray?" I asked.
"We do not know that either, nor how it is made. We only know that it
destroys the oxygen carrying power of living blood. If it were an
emanation from a substance like radium, they could have fired it in
projectiles and so conquered the earth. If it were ether waves like
electricity, we should have been able to have insulated against it, or
they should have been able to project it farther and destroy our
aircraft, but The Ray is not destructive beyond two thousand metres in
the air and hardly that far in the earth."
"Then why do we not fly over and land an army and great guns and batter
down the walls of Berlin and he done with it?"
"That, as you know if you studied your history, has been tried many
times and always with disaster. The bomb-torn soil of that black land is
speckled white with the bones of World armies who were sent on landing
invasions before you or I was born. But it was only heroic folly, one
gun popping out of a tunnel mouth can slay a thousand men. To pursue the
gunners into their catacombs meant to be gassed; and sometimes our
forces were left to land in peace and set up their batteries to fire
against Berlin, but the Germans would place Ray generators in the ground
beneath them and slay our forces in an hour, as the Angel of Jehovah
withered the hosts of the Assyrians."
"But why," I persisted, "do we not tunnel under the Ray generators and
dig our way to Berlin and blow it up?"
My uncle smiled indulgently. "And that has been tried too, but they can
hear our borings with microphones and cut us off, just as we cut them
off when they try to tunnel out and place new generators. It is too
slow, too difficult, either way; the line has wavered a little with the
years but to no practical avail; the war in our day has become merely a
watching game, we to keep the Germans from coming out, they to keep us
from penetrating within gunshot of Berlin; but to gain a mile of
worthless territory either way means too great a human waste to be worth
the price. Things must go on as they are till the Germans tire of their
sunless imprisonment or till they exhaust some essential element in
their soil. But wars such as you read of in your history, will never
happen again. The Germans cannot fight the world in the air, nor in the
sea, nor on the surface of the earth; and we cannot fight the Germans in
the ground; so the war has become a fixed state of standing guard; the
hope of victory, the fear of defeat have vanished; the romance of war
is dead."
"But why, then," I asked, "does the World Patrol continue to bomb the
roof of Berlin?"
"Politics," replied my uncle, "military politics, just futile display of
pyrotechnics to amuse the populace and give heroically inclined young
men a chance to strut in uniforms--but after the election this fall such
folly will cease."
~4~
My uncle had predicted correctly, for by the time I again came home on
my vacation, the newly elected Pacifist Council had reduced the aerial
activities to mere watchful patroling over the land of the enemy. Then
came the report of an attempt to launch an airplane from the roof of
Berlin. The people, in dire panic lest Ray generators were being carried
out by German aircraft, had clamoured for the recall of the Pacifist
Council, and the bombardment of Berlin was resumed.
During the lull of the bombing activities my uncle, who stood high with
the Pacifist Administration, had obtained permission to fly over Europe,
and I, most fortunate of boys, accompanied him. The plane in which we
travelled bore the emblem of the World Patrol. On a cloudless day we
sailed over the pock-marked desert that had once been Germany and came
within field-glass range of Berlin itself. On the wasted, bomb-torn land
lay the great grey disc--the city of mystery. Three hundred metres high
they said it stood, but so vast was its extent that it seemed as flat
and thin as a pancake on a griddle.
"More people live in that mass of concrete," said my uncle, "than in the
whole of America west of the Rocky Mountains." His statement, I have
since learned, fell short of half the truth, but then it seemed
appalling. I fancied the city a giant anthill, and searched with my
glass as if I expected to see the ants swarming out. But no sign of life
was visible upon the monotonous surface of the sand-blanketed roof, and
high above the range of naked vision hung the hawk-like watchers of the
World Patrol.
The lure of unravelled secrets, the ambition for discovery and
exploration stirred my boyish veins. Yes, I would know more of the
strange race, the unknown life that surged beneath that grey blanket of
mystery. But how? For over a century millions of men had felt that same
longing to know. Aviators, landing by accident or intent within the
lines, had either returned with nothing to report, or they had not
returned. Daring journalists, with baskets of carrier pigeons, had on
foggy nights dropped by parachute to the roof of the city; but neither
they nor the birds had brought back a single word of what lay beneath
the armed and armoured roof.
My own resolution was but a boy's dream and I returned to Chicago to
take up my chemical studies.
CHAPTER II
I EXPLORE THE POTASH MINES OF STASSFURT
AND FIND A DIARY IN A DEAD MAN'S POCKET
~1~
When I was twenty-four years old, my uncle was killed in a laboratory
explosion. He had been a scientist of renown and a chemical inventor who
had devoted his life to the unravelling of the secrets of the synthetic
foods of Germany. For some years I had been his trusted assistant. In
our Chicago laboratory were carefully preserved food samples that had
been taken from the captured submarines in years gone by; and what to me
was even more fascinating, a collection of German books of like origin,
which I had read with avidity. With the exception of those relating to
submarine navigation, I found them stupidly childish and decided that
they had been prepared to hide the truth and not reveal it.
My uncle had bequeathed me both his work and his fortune, but despairing
of my ability worthily to continue his own brilliant researches on
synthetic food, I turned my attention to the potash problem, in which I
had long been interested. My reading of early chemical works had given
me a particular interest in the reclamation of the abandoned potash
mines of Stassfurt. These mines, as any student of chemical history will
know, were one of the richest properties of the old German state in the
days before the endless war began and Germany became isolated from the
rest of the world. The mines were captured by the World in the year
2020, and were profitably operated for a couple of decades. Meanwhile
the German lines were forced many miles to the rear before the
impregnable barrier of the Ray had halted the progress of the
World Armies.
A few years after the coming of the Ray defences, occurred what history
records as "The Tragedy of the Mines." Six thousand workmen went down
into the potash mines of Stassfurt one morning and never came up again.
The miners' families in the neighbouring villages died like weevils in
fumigated grain. The region became a valley of pestilence and death, and
all life withered for miles around. Numerous governmental projects were
launched for the recovery of the potash mines but all failed, and for
one hundred and eleven years no man had penetrated those
accursed shafts.
Knowing these facts, I wasted no time in soliciting government aid for
my project, but was content to secure a permit to attempt the recovery
with private funds, with which my uncle's fortune supplied me in
abundance.
In April, 2151, I set up my laboratory on the edge of the area of death.
I had never accepted the orthodox view as to the composition of the gas
that issued from the Stassfurt mines. In a few months I was gratified to
find my doubts confirmed. A short time after this I made a more
unexpected and astonishing discovery. I found that this complex and
hitherto misunderstood gas could, under the influence of certain
high-frequency electrical discharges, be made to combine with explosive
violence with the nitrogen of the atmosphere, leaving only a harmless
residue. We wired the surrounding region for the electrical discharge
and, with a vast explosion of weird purple flame, cleared the whole area
of the century-old curse. Our laboratory was destroyed by the explosion.
It was rebuilt nearer the mine shafts from which the gas still slowly
issued. Again we set up our electrical machinery and dropped our cables
into the shafts, this time clearing the air of the mines.
A hasty exploration revealed the fact that but a single shaft had
remained intact. A third time we prepared our electrical machinery. We
let down a cable and succeeded in getting but a faint reaction at the
bottom of the shaft. After several repeated clearings we risked descent.
Upon arrival at the bottom we were surprised to find it free from water,
save for a trickling stream. The second thing we discovered was a pile
of huddled skeletons of the workmen who had perished over a century
previous. But our third and most important discovery was a boring from
which the poisonous gas was slowly issuing. It took but a few hours to
provide an apparatus to fire this gas as fast as it issued, and the
potash mines of Stassfurt were regained for the world.
My associates were for beginning mining operations at once, but I had
been granted a twenty years' franchise on the output of these mines, and
I was in no such haste. The boring from which this poisonous vapour
issued was clearly man-made; moreover I alone knew the formula of that
gas and had convinced myself once for all as to its man-made origin. I
sent for microphones and with their aid speedily detected the sound of
machinery in other workings beneath.
It is easy now to see that I erred in risking my own life as I did
without the precaution of confiding the secret of my discovery to
others. But those were days of feverish excitement. Impulsively I
decided to make the first attack on the Germans as a private enterprise
and then call for military aid. I had my own equipment of poisonous
bombs and my sapping and mining experts determined that the German
workings were but eighty metres beneath us. Hastily, among the crumbling
skeletons, we set up our electrical boring machinery and began sinking a
one-metre shaft towards the nearest sound.
After twenty hours of boring, the drill head suddenly came off and
rattled down into a cavern. We saw a light and heard guttural shouting
below and the cracking of a gun as a few bullets spattered against the
roof of our chamber. We heaved down our gas bombs and covered over our
shaft. Within a few hours the light below went out and our microphones
failed to detect any sound from the rocks beneath us. It was then
perhaps that I should have called for military aid, but the uncanny
silence of the lower workings proved too much for my eager curiosity. We
waited two days and still there was no evidence of life below. I knew
there had been ample time for the gas from our bombs to have been
dissipated, as it was decomposed by contact with moisture. A light was
lowered, but this brought forth no response.
I now called for a volunteer to descend the shaft. None was forthcoming
from among my men, and against their protest I insisted on being lowered
into the shaft. When I was a few metres from the bottom the cable parted
and I fell and lay stunned on the floor below.
~2~
When I recovered consciousness the light had gone out. There was no
sound about me. I shouted up the shaft above and could get no answer.
The chamber in which I lay was many times my height and I could make
nothing out in the dark hole above. For some hours I scarcely stirred
and feared to burn my pocket flash both because it might reveal my
presence to lurking enemies and because I wished to conserve my battery
against graver need.
But no rescue came from my men above. Only recently, after the lapse of
years, did I learn the cause of their deserting me. As I lay stunned
from my fall, my men, unable to get answer to their shoutings, had given
me up for dead. Meanwhile the apparatus which caused the destruction of
the German gas had gone wrong. My associates, unable to fix it, had fled
from the mine and abandoned the enterprise.
After some hours of waiting I stirred about and found means to erect a
rough scaffold and reach the mouth of the shaft above me. I attempted to
climb, but, unable to get a hold on the smooth wet rock, I gave up
exhausted and despairing. Entombed in the depths of the earth, I was
either a prisoner of the German potash miners, if any remained alive, or
a prisoner of the earth itself, with dead men for company.
Collecting my courage I set about to explore my surroundings. I found
some mining machinery evidently damaged by the explosion of our gas
bombs. There was no evidence of men about, living or dead. Stealthily I
set out along the little railway track that ran through a passage down a
steep incline. As I progressed I felt the air rapidly becoming colder.
Presently I stumbled upon the first victim of our gas bombs, fallen
headlong as he was fleeing. I hurried on. The air seemed to be blowing
in my face and the cold was becoming intense. This puzzled me for at
this depth the temperature should have been above that on the surface of
the earth.
After a hundred metres or so of going I came into a larger chamber. It
was intensely cold. From out another branching passage-way I could hear
a sizzling sound as of steam escaping. I started to turn into this
passage but was met with such a blast of cold air that I dared not face
it for fear of being frozen. Stamping my feet, which were fast becoming
numb, I made the rounds of the chamber, and examined the dead miners
that were tumbled about. The bodies were frozen.
One side of this chamber was partitioned off with some sort of metal
wall. The door stood blown open. It felt a little warmer in here and I
entered and closed the door. Exploring the room with my dim light I
found one side of it filled with a row of bunks--in each bunk a corpse.
Along the other side of the room was a table with eating utensils and
back of this were shelves with food packages.
I was in danger of freezing to death and, tumbling several bodies out of
the bunks, I took the mattresses and built of them a clumsy enclosure
and installed in their midst a battery heater which I found. In this
fashion I managed to get fairly warm again. After some hours of huddling
I observed that the temperature had moderated.
My fear of freezing abated, I made another survey of my surroundings and
discovered something that had escaped my first attention. In the far end
of the room was a desk, and seated before it with his head fallen
forward on his arms was the form of a man. The miners had all been
dressed in a coarse artificial leather, but this man was dressed in a
woven fabric of cellulose silk.
The body was frozen. As I tumbled it stiffly back it fell from the chair
exposing a ghastly face. I drew away in a creepy horror, for as I looked
at the face of the corpse I suffered a sort of waking nightmare in which
I imagined that I was gazing at my own dead countenance.
I concluded that my normal mind was slipping out of gear and proceeded
to back off and avail myself of a tube of stimulant which I carried in
my pocket.
This revived me somewhat, but again, when I tried to look upon the
frozen face, the conviction returned that I was looking at my own
dead self.
I glanced at my watch and figured out that I had been in the German mine
for thirty hours and had not tasted food or drink for nearly forty
hours. Clearly I had to get myself in shape to escape hallucinations. I
went back to the shelves and proceeded to look for food and drink.
Happily, due to my work in my uncle's laboratory, these synthetic foods
were not wholly strange to me. I drank copiously of a non-alcoholic
chemical liquor and warmed on the heater and partook of some nitrogenous
and some starchy porridges. It was an uncanny dining place, but hunger
soon conquers mere emotion, and I made out a meal. Then once more I
faced the task of confronting this dead likeness of myself.
This time I was clear-headed enough. I even went to the miners' lavatory
and, jerking down the metal mirror, scrutinized my own reflection and
reassured myself of the closeness of the resemblance. My purpose framed
in my mind as I did this. Clearly I was in German quarters and was
likely to remain there. Sooner or later there must be a rescuing party.
Without further ado, I set about changing my clothing for that of the
German. The fit of the dead man's clothes further emphasized the closeness
of the physical likeness. I recalled my excellent command of the German
language and began to wonder what manner of man I was supposed to be in
this assumed personality. But my most urgent task was speedily to make
way with the incriminating corpse. With the aid of the brighter
flashlight which I found in my new pockets, I set out to find a place to
hide the body.
The cold that had so frightened me had now given way to almost normal
temperature. There was no longer the sound of sizzling steam from the
unexplored passage-way. I followed this and presently came upon another
chamber filled with machinery. In one corner a huge engine, covered with
frost, gave off a chill greeting. On the floor was a steaming puddle of
liquid, but the breath of this steam cut like a blizzard. At once I
guessed it. This was a liquid air engine. The dead engineer in the
corner helped reveal the story. With his death from the penetrating gas,
something had gone wrong with the engine. The turbine head had blown
off, and the conveying pipe of liquid air had poured forth the icy blast
that had so nearly frozen me along with the corpses of the Germans. But
now the flow of liquid had ceased, and the last remnants were
evaporating from the floor. Evidently the supply pipe had been shut off
further back on the line, and I had little time to lose for rescuers
were probably on the way.
Along one of the corridors running from the engine room I found an open
water drain half choked with melting ice. Following this I came upon a
grating where the water disappeared. I jerked up the grating and dropped
a piece of ice down the well-like shaft. I hastily returned and dragged
forth the corpse of my double and with it everything I had myself
brought into the mine. Straightening out the stiffened body I plunged it
head foremost into the opening. The sound of a splash echoed within the
dismal depths.
I now hastened back to the chamber into which I had first fallen and
destroyed the scaffolding I had erected there. Returning to the desk
where I had found the man whose clothing I wore, I sat down and
proceeded to search my abundantly filled pockets. From one of them I
pulled out a bulky notebook and a number of loose papers. The freshest
of these was an official order from the Imperial Office of Chemical
Engineers. The order ran as follows:
Capt. Karl Armstadt
Laboratory 186, E. 58.
Report is received at this office of the sound of sapping
operations in potash mine D5. Go at once and verify the same
and report of condition of gas generators and make analyses
of output of the same.
Evidently I was Karl Armstadt and very happily a chemical engineer by
profession. My task of impersonation so far looked feasible--I could
talk chemical engineering.
The next paper I proceeded to examine was an identification folder done
up in oiled fabric. Thanks to German thoroughness it was amusingly
complete. On the first page appeared what I soon discovered to be __
pedigree for four generations back. The printed form on which all this
was minutely filled out made very clear statements from which I
determined that my father and mother were both dead.
I, Karl Armstadt, twenty-seven years of age, was the fourteenth child of
my mother and was born when she was forty-two years of age. According to
the record I was the ninety-seventh child of my father and born when he
was fifty-four. As I read this I thought there was something here that I
misunderstood, although subsequent discoveries made it plausible enough.
There was no further record of my plentiful fraternity, but I took heart
that the mere fact of their numerical abundance would make unlikely any
great show of brotherly interest, a presumption which proved
quite correct.
On the second page of this folder I read the number and location of my
living quarters, the sources from which my meals and clothing were
issued, as well as the sizes and qualities of my garments and numerous
other references to various details of living, all of which seemed
painstakingly ridiculous at the time.
I put this elaborate identification paper back into its receptacle and
opened the notebook. It proved to be a diary kept likewise in thorough
German fashion. I turned to the last pages and perused them hastily.
The notes in Armstadt's diary were concerned almost wholly with his
chemical investigations. All this I saw might be useful to me later but
what I needed more immediately was information as to his personal life.
I scanned back hastily through the pages for a time without finding any
such revelations. Then I discovered this entry made some months
previously:
"I cannot think of chemistry tonight, for the vision of Katrina dances
before me as in a dream. It must be a strange mixture of blood-lines
that could produce such wondrous beauty. In no other woman have I seen
such a blackness of hair and eyes combined with such a whiteness of
skin. I suppose I should not have danced with her--now I see all my
resolutions shattered. But I think it was most of all the blackness of
her eyes. Well, what care, we live but once!"
I read and re-read this entry and searched feverishly in Armstadt's
diary for further evidence of a personal life. But I only found tedious
notes on his chemical theories. Perhaps this single reference to a woman
was but a passing fancy of a man otherwise engrossed in his science. But
if rescuers came and I succeeded in passing for the German chemist the
presence of a woman in my new rôle of life would surely undo all my
effort. If no personal acquaintance of the dead man came with the
rescuing party I saw no reason why I could not for the time pass
successfully as Armstadt. I should at least make the effort and I
reasoned I could best do this by playing the malingerer and appearing
mentally incompetent. Such a ruse, I reasoned, would give me opportunity
to hear much and say little, and perhaps so get my bearings in the new
rôle that I could continue it successfully.
Then, as I was about to return the notebook to my pocket, my hopes sank
as I found this brief entry which I had at first scanning overlooked:
"It is twenty days now since Katrina and I have been united. She does
not interfere with my work as much as I feared. She even lets me talk
chemistry to her, though I am sure she understands not one word of what
I tell her. I think I have made a good selection and it is surely a
permanent one. Therefore I must work harder than ever or I shall not
get on."
This alarmed me. Yet, if Armstadt had married he made very little fuss
about it. Evidently it concerned him chiefly in relation to his work.
But whoever and whatever Katrina was, it was clear that her presence
would be disastrous to my plans of assuming his place in the
German world.
Pondering over the ultimate difficulty of my situation, but with a
growing faith in the plan I had evolved for avoiding immediate
explanations, I fell into a long-postponed sleep. The last thing I
remember was tumbling from my chair and sprawling out upon the floor
where I managed to snap out my light before the much needed sleep quite
overcame me.
~3~
I was awakened by voices, and opened my eyes to find the place brightly
lighted. I closed them again quickly as some one approached and prodded
me with the toe of his boot.
"Here is a man alive," said a voice above me.
"He is Captain Armstadt, the chemist," said another voice, approaching;
"this is good. We have special orders to search for him."
The newcomer bent over and felt my heart. I was quite aware that it was
functioning normally. He shook me and called me by name. After repeated
shakings I opened my eyes and stared at him blankly, but I said nothing.
Presently he left me and returned with a stretcher. I lay inertly as I
was placed thereon and borne out of the chamber. Other stretcher-bearers
were walking ahead. We passed through the engine room where mechanics
were at work on the damaged liquid air engine. My stretcher was placed
on a little car which moved swiftly along the tunnel.
We came into a large subterranean station and I was removed and brought
before a bevy of white garbed physicians. They looked at my
identification folder and then examined me. Through it all I lay limp
and as near lifeless as I could simulate, and they succeeded in getting
no speech out of me. The final orders were to forward me post haste to
the Imperial Hospital for Complex Gas Cases.
After an eventless journey of many hours I was again unloaded and
transferred to an elevator. For several hundred metres we sped upward
through a shaft, while about us whistled a blast of cold, crisp air. At
last the elevator stopped and I was carried out to an ambulance that
stood waiting in a brilliantly lighted passage arched over with grey
concrete. I was no longer beneath the surface of the earth but was
somewhere in the massive concrete structure of the City of Berlin.
After a short journey our ambulance stopped and attendants came out and
carried my litter through an open doorway and down a long hall into the
spacious ward of a hospital.
From half closed eyes I glanced about apprehensively for a black-haired
woman. With a sigh of relief I saw there were only doctors and male
attendants in the room. They treated me most professionally and gave no
sign that they suspected I was other than Capt. Karl Armstadt, which
fact my papers so eloquently testified. The conclusion of their
examination was voiced in my presence. "Physically he is normal," said
the head physician, "but his mind seems in a stupor. There is no remedy,
as the nature of the gas is unknown. All that can be done is to await
the wearing off of the effect."
I was then left alone for some hours and my appetite was troubling me.
At last an attendant approached with some savoury soup; he propped me up
and proceeded to feed me with a spoon.
I made out from the conversation about me that the other patients were
officers from the underground fighting forces. An atmosphere of military
discipline pervaded the hospital and I felt reassured in the conclusion
that all visiting was forbidden.
Yet my thoughts turned repeatedly to the black-eyed Katrina of
Armstadt's diary. No doubt she had been informed of the rescue and was
waiting in grief and anxiety to see him. So both she and I were awaiting
a tragic moment--she to learn that her husband or lover was dead, I for
the inevitable tearing off of my protecting disguise.
After some days the head physician came to my cot and questioned me. I
gazed at him and knit my brows as if struggling to think.
"You were gassed in the mine," he kept repeating, "can you remember?"
"Yes," I ventured, "I went to the mine, there was the sound of boring
overhead. I set men to watch; I was at the desk, I heard shouting, after
that I cannot remember."
"They were all dead but you," said the doctor.
"All dead," I repeated. I liked the sound of this and so kept on
mumbling "All dead, all dead."
~4~
My plan was working nicely. But I realized I could not keep up this rôle
for ever. Nor did I wish to, for the idleness and suspense were
intolerable and I knew that I would rather face whatever problems my
recovery involved than to continue in this monotonous and meaningless
existence. So I convalesced by degrees and got about the hospital, and
was permitted to wait on myself. But I cultivated a slowness and brevity
of speech.
One day as I sat reading the attendant announced, "A visitor to see you,
sir."
Trembling with excitement and fear I tensely waited the coming of the
visitor.
Presently a stolid-faced young man followed the attendant into the room.
"You remember Holknecht," said the nurse, "he is your assistant at the
laboratory."
I stared stupidly at the man, and cold fear crept over me as he, with
puzzled eyes, returned my gaze.
"You are much changed," he said at last. "I hardly recognize you."
"I have been very ill," I replied.
Just then the head physician came into the room and seeing me talking to
a stranger walked over to us. As I said nothing, Holknecht introduced
himself. The medical man began at once to enlarge upon the peculiarities
of my condition. "The unknown gas," he explained, "acted upon the whole
nervous system and left profound effects. Never in the records of the
hospital has there been so strange a case."
Holknecht seemed quite awed and completely credulous.
"His memory must be revived," continued the head physician, "and that
can best be done by recalling the dominating interest of his mind."
"Captain Armstadt was wholly absorbed in his research work in the
laboratory," offered Holknecht.
"Then," said the physician, "you must revive the activity of those
particular brain cells."
With that command the laboratory assistant was left in charge. He took
his new task quite seriously. Turning to me and raising his voice as if
to penetrate my dulled mentality, he began, "Do you not remember our
work in the laboratory?"
"Yes, the laboratory, the laboratory," I repeated vaguely.
Holknecht described the laboratory in detail and gradually his talk
drifted into an account of the chemical research. I listened eagerly to
get the threads of the work I must needs do if I were to maintain my
rôle as Armstadt.
Knowing now that visitors were permitted me, I again grew apprehensive
over the possible advent of Katrina. But no woman appeared, in fact I
had not yet seen a woman among the Germans. Always it was Holknecht and,
strictly according to his orders, he talked incessant chemistry.
~5~
The day I resumed my normal wearing apparel I was shown into a large
lounging room for convalescents. I seated myself a short distance apart
from a group of officers and sat eyeing another group of large, hulking
fellows at the far end of the room. These I concluded to be common
soldiers, for I heard the officers in my ward grumbling at the fact that
they were quartered in the same hospital with men of the ranks.
Presently an officer came over and took a seat beside me. "It is very
rarely that you men in the professional service are gassed," he said.
"You must have a dull life, I do not see how you can stand it."
"But certainly," I replied, "it is not so dangerous."
"And for that reason it must be stupid--I, for one, think that even in
the fighting forces there is no longer sufficient danger to keep up the
military morale. Danger makes men courageous--without danger courage
declines--and without courage what advantage would there be in the
military life?"
"Suppose," I suggested, "the war should come to an end?"
"But how can it?" he asked incredulously. "How can there be an end to
the war? We cannot prevent the enemy from fighting."
"But what," I ventured, "if the enemy should decide to quit fighting?"
"They have almost quit now," he remarked with apparent disgust; "they
are losing the fighting spirit--but no wonder--they say that the World
State population is so great that only two per cent of its men are in
the fighting forces. What I cannot see is how a people so peaceful can
keep from utter degeneration. And they say that the World State soldiers
are not even bred for soldiering but are picked from all classes. If
they should decide to quit fighting, as you suggest, we also would have
to quit--it would intolerable--it is bad enough now."
"But could you not return to industrial life and do something
productive?"
"Productive!" sneered the fighter. "I knew that you professional men had
no courage--it is not to be expected--but I never before heard even one
of your class suggest a thing like that--a military man do something
productive! Why don't you suggest that we be changed to women?" And with
that my fellow patient rose and, turning sharply on his metal heel,
walked away.
The officer's attitude towards his profession set me thinking, and I
found myself wondering how far it was shared by the common soldiers. The
next day when I came out into the convalescent corridor I walked past
the group of officers and went down among the men whose garments bore no
medals or insignia. They were unusually large men, evidently from some
specially selected regiment. Picking out the most intelligent looking
one of the group I sat down beside him.
"Is this the first time you have been gassed?" I inquired.
"Third time," replied the soldier.
"I should think you would have been discharged."
"Discharged," said the soldier, in a perplexed tone, "why I am only
forty-four years old, why should I be discharged unless I get in an
explosion and lose a leg or something?"
"But you have been gassed three times," I said, "I should think they
ought to let you return to civil life and your family."
The soldier looked hard at the insignia of my rank as captain. "You
professional officers don't know much, do you? A soldier quit and do
common labor, now that's a fine idea. And a family! Do you think I'm a
Hohenzollern?" At the thought the soldier chuckled. "Me with a family,"
he muttered to himself, "now that's a fine idea."
I saw that I was getting on dangerous ground but curiosity prompted a
further question: "Then, I suppose, you have nothing to hope for until
you reach the age of retirement, unless war should come to an end?"
Again the soldier eyed me carefully. "Now you do have some queer ideas.
There was a man in our company who used to talk like that when no
officers were around. This fellow, his name was Mannteufel, said he
could read books, that he was a forbidden love-child and his father was
an officer. I guess he was forbidden all right, for he certainly wasn't
right in his head. He said that we would go out on the top of the ground
and march over the enemy country and be shot at by the flying planes,
like the roof guards, if the officers had heard him they would surely
have sent him to the crazy ward--why he said that the war would be over
after that, and we would all go to the enemy country and go about as we
liked, and own houses and women and flying planes and animals. As if the
Royal House would ever let a soldier do things like that."
"Well," I said, "and why not, if the war were over?"
"Now there you go again--how do you mean the war was over, what would
all us soldiers do if there was no fighting?"
"You could work," I said, "in the shops."
"But if we worked in the shops, what would the workmen do?"
"They would work too," I suggested.
The soldier was silent for a time. "I think I get your idea," he said.
"The Eugenic Staff would cut down the birth rates so that there would
only be enough soldiers and workers to fill the working jobs."
"They might do that," I remarked, wishing to lead him on.
"Well," said the soldier, returning to the former thought, "I hope they
won't do that until I am dead. I don't care to go up on the ground to
get shot at by the fighting planes. At least now we have something over
our heads and if we are going to get gassed or blown up we can't see it
coming. At least--"
Just then the officer with whom I had talked the day before came up. He
stopped before us and scowled at the soldier who saluted in hasty
confusion.
"I wish, Captain," said the officer addressing me, "that you would not
take advantage of these absurd hospital conditions to disrupt discipline
by fraternizing with a private."
At this the soldier looked up and saluted again.
"Well?" said the officer.
"He's not to blame, sir," said the soldier, "he's off his head."
CHAPTER III
IN A BLACK UTOPIA THE BLOND BROOD BREEDS AND SWARMS
~1~
It was with a strange mixture of eagerness and fear that I received the
head physician's decision that I would henceforth recover my faculties
more rapidly in the familiar environment of my own home.
A wooden-faced male nurse accompanied me in a closed vehicle that ran
noiselessly through the vaulted interior streets of the completely
roofed-in city. Once our vehicle entered an elevator and was let down a
brief distance. We finally alighted in a street very like the one on
which the hospital was located, and filed down a narrow passage-way. My
companion asked for my keys, which I found in my clothing. I stood by
with a palpitating heart as he turned the lock and opened the door.
The place we entered was a comfortably furnished bachelor's apartment.
Books and papers were littered about giving evidence of no disturbance
since the sudden leaving of the occupant. Immensely relieved I sat down
in an upholstered chair while the nurse scurried about and put the
place in order.
"You feel quite at home?" he asked as he finished his task.
"Quite," I replied, "things are coming back to me now."
"You should have been sent home sooner," he said. "I wished to tell the
chief as much, but I am only a second year interne and it is forbidden
me to express an original opinion to him."
"I am sure I will be all right now," I replied.
He turned to go and then paused. "I think," he said, "that you should
have some notice on you that when you do go out, if you become confused
and make mistakes, the guards will understand. I will speak to Lieut.
Forrester, the Third Assistant, and ask that such a card be sent you."
With that he took his departure.
When he had gone I breathed joyfully and freely. The rigid face and
staring eye that I had cultivated relaxed into a natural smile and then
I broke into a laugh. Here I was in the heart of Berlin, unsuspected of
being other than a loyal German and free, for the time at least, from
problems of personal relations.
I now made an elaborate inspection of my surroundings. I found a
wardrobe full of men's clothing, all of a single shade of mauve like the
suit I wore. Some suits I guessed to be work clothes from their cheaper
texture and some, much finer, were evidently dress apparel.
Having reassured myself that Armstadt had been the only occupant of the
apartment, I turned to a pile of papers that the hospital attendant had
picked up from the floor where they had dropped from a mail chute. Most
of these proved to be the accumulated copies of a daily chemical news
bulletin. Others were technical chemical journals. Among the letters I
found an invitation to a meeting of a chemical society, and a note from
my tailor asking me to call; the third letter was written on a
typewriter, an instrument the like of which I had already discovered in
my study. This sheet bore a neatly engraved head reading "Katrina,
Permit 843 LX, Apartment 57, K Street, Level of the Free Women." The
letter ran:
"Dear Karl: For three weeks now you have failed to keep
your appointments and sent no explanation. You surely know
that I will not tolerate such rude neglect. I have reported
to the Supervisor that you are dropped from my list."
So this was Katrina! Here at last was the end of the fears that had
haunted me.
~2~
As I was scanning the chemical journal I heard a bell ring and turning
about I saw that a metal box had slid forth upon a side board from an
opening in the wall. In this box I found my dinner which I proceeded to
enjoy in solitude. The food was more varied than in the hospital. Some
was liquid and some gelatinous, and some firm like bread or biscuit. But
of natural food products there was nothing save a dish of mushrooms and
a single sprig of green no longer than my finger, and which, like a
feather in a boy's cap, was inserted conspicuously in the top of a
synthetic pudding. There was one food that puzzled me, for it was
sausage-like in form and sausage-like in flavour, and I was sure
contained some real substance of animal origin. Presuming, as I did at
that moment, that no animal life existed in Berlin, I ate this sausage
with doubts and misgivings.
The dinner finished, I looked for a way to dispose of the dishes.
Packing them back in the container I fumbled about and found a switch
which set something going in the wall, and my dishes departed to the
public dishwasher.
Having cleared the desk I next turned to Armstadt's book shelves. My
attention was caught by a ponderous volume. It proved to be an atlas and
directory of Berlin. In the front of this was a most revealing diagram
which showed Berlin to be a city of sixty levels. The five lowest levels
were underground and all were labelled "Mineral Industries." Above these
were eight levels of Food, Clothing and Miscellaneous industries. Then
came the seven workmen's residence levels, divided by trade groups.
Above this were the four "Intellectual Levels," on one of which I, as a
chemist had my abode. Directly above these was the "Level of Free
Women," and above that the residence level for military officers. The
next was the "Royal Level," double in height of the other levels of the
city. Then came the "Administrative Level," followed by eight maternity
levels, then four levels of female schools and nine levels of male
schools. Then, for six levels, and reaching to within five levels of the
roof of the city, were soldiers' barracks. Three of the remaining floors
were labelled "Swine Levels" and one "Green Gardens." Just beneath the
roof was the defence level and above that the open roof itself.
It was a city of some three hundred metres in height with mineral
industries at the bottom and the swine levels--I recalled the
sausage--at the top. Midway between, remote from possible attack through
mines or from the roof, Royalty was sheltered, while the other
privileged groups of society were stratified above and below it.
Following the diagram of levels was a most informing chart arranged like
a huge multiplication table. It gave after each level the words
"permitted," "forbidden," and "permitted as announced," arranged in
columns for each of the other levels. From this I traced out that as a
chemist I was permitted on all the industrial, workmen's and
intellectual levels, and on the Level of Free Women. I was permitted, as
announced, on the Administrative and Royal Levels; but forbidden on the
levels of military officers and soldiers' barracks, maternity and male
and female schools.
I found that as a chemist I was particularly fortunate for many other
groups were given even less liberty. As for common workmen and soldiers,
they were permitted on no levels except their own.
The most perplexing thing about this system was the apparent segregation
of such large groups of men from women. Family life in Germany was
evidently wonderfully altered and seemingly greatly restricted, a
condition inconsistent with the belief that I had always held--that the
German race was rapidly increasing.
Turning to my atlas index I looked up the population statistics of the
city, and found that by the last census it was near three hundred
million. And except for the few millions in the mines this huge mass of
humanity was quartered beneath a single roof. I was greatly surprised,
for this population figure was more than double the usual estimates
current in the outside world. Coming from a world in which the ancient
tendency to congest in cities had long since been overcome, I was
staggered by the fact that nearly as many people were living in this one
city as existed in the whole of North America.
Yet, when I figured the floor area of the city, which was roughly oval
in shape, being eight kilometres in breadth and eleven in length, I
found that the population on a given floor area was no greater than it
had been in the Island of Manhattan before the reform land laws were put
into effect in the latter part of the Twentieth Century. There was,
therefore, nothing incredible in these figures of total population, but
what I next discovered was a severe strain on credence. It was the
German population by sexes; the figures showed that there were nearly
two and a half males for every female! According to the usual estimate
of war losses the figure should have been at a ratio of six women living
to about five men, and here I found them recorded as only two women to
five men. Inspection of the birth rate showed an even higher proportion
of males. I consulted further tables that gave births by sexes and
groups. These varied somewhat but there was this great preponderance of
males in every class but one. Only among the seventeen thousand members
of Royalty did the proportion of the sexes approach the normal.
Apparently I had found an explanation of the careful segregation of
German women--there were not enough to go around!
Turning the further pages of my atlas I came upon an elaborately
illustrated directory of the uniforms and insignia of the various
military and civil ranks and classes. As I had already anticipated, I
found that any citizen in Berlin could immediately be placed in his
proper group and rank by his clothing, which was prescribed with
military exactness.
Various fabrics and shades indicated the occupational grouping while
trimmings and insignia distinguished the ranks within the groups. In all
there were many hundreds of distinct uniforms. Two groups alone proved
exceptions to this iron clad rule; Royalty and free women were permitted
to dress as they chose and were restricted only in that they were
forbidden to imitate the particular uniforms of other groups.
I next investigated the contents of Armstadt's desk. My most interesting
find was a checkbook, with receipts and expenditures carefully recorded
on the stubs. From this I learned that, as Armstadt, I was in receipt of
an income of five thousand marks, paid by the Government. I did not know
how much purchasing value that would amount to, but from the account
book I saw that the expenses had not equalled a third of it, which
explained why there was a bank balance of some twenty thousand marks.
Clearly I would need to master the signature of Karl Armstadt so I
searched among the papers until I found a bundle of returned decks. Many
of the larger checks had been made out to "Katrina," others to the
"Master of Games,"--evidently to cover gambling losses. The smaller
checks, I found by reference to the stubs, were for ornaments or
entertainment that might please a woman. The lack of the more ordinary
items of expenditure was presently made clear by the discovery of a
number of punch marked cards. For intermittent though necessary
expenses, such as tonsorial service, clothing and books. For the more
constant necessities of life, such as rent, food, laundry and
transportation, there was no record whatever; and I correctly assumed
that these were supplied without compensation and were therefore not a
matter of personal choice or permissible variation. Of money in its
ancient form of metal coins and paper, I found no evidence.
~3~
In my mail the next morning I found a card signed by Lieut. Forrester of
the hospital staff. It read:
"The bearer, Karl Armstadt, has recently suffered from gas poisoning
while defending the mines beneath enemy territory. This has affected his
memory. If he is therefore found disobeying any ruling or straying
beyond his permitted bounds, return him to his apartment and call the
Hospital for Complex Gas Cases."
It was evidently a very kindly effort to protect a man whose loss of
memory might lead him into infractions of the numerous rulings of German
life. With this help I became ambitious to try the streets of Berlin
alone. The notice from the tailor afforded an excuse.
Consulting my atlas to get my bearings I now ventured forth. The streets
were tunnel-like passage-ways closed over with a beamed ceiling of
whitish grey concrete studded with glowing light globes. In the
residence districts the smooth side walls were broken only by high
ventilating gratings and the narrow passage halls from which led the
doors of the apartments.
The uncanny quiet of the streets of this city with its three hundred
million inhabitants awed and oppressed me. Hurriedly I walked along
occasionally passing men dressed like myself. They were pale men, with
blanched or sallow faces. But nowhere were there faces of ruddy tan as
one sees in a world of sun. The men in the hospital had been pale, but
that had seemed less striking for one is used to pale faces in a
hospital. It came to me with a sense of something lost that my own
countenance blanched in the mine and hospital would so remain colourless
like the faces of the men who now stole by me in their felted footwear
with a cat-like tread.
At a cross street I turned and came upon a small group of shops with
monotonous panelled display windows inserted in the concrete walls. Here
I found my tailor and going in I promptly laid down his notice and my
clothing card. He glanced casually at the papers, punched the card and
then looking up he remarked that my new suit had been waiting some time.
I began explaining the incident in the mine and the stay in the
hospital; but the tailor was either disinterested or did not comprehend.
"Will you try on your new suit now?" he interrupted, holding forth the
garments. The suit proved a trifle tight about the hips, but I hastened
to assure the tailor that the fit was perfect. I removed it and watched
him do it up in a parcel, open a wall closet, call my house number, and
send my suit on its way through one of the numerous carriers that
interlaced the city.
As I walked more leisurely back to my apartment by a less direct way, I
found my analytical brain puzzling over the refreshing quality of the
breezes that blew through those tunnel-like streets. With bits of paper
I traced the air flow from the latticed faces of the elevator shafts to
the ventilating gratings of the enclosed apartments, and concluded that
there must be other shafts to the rear of the apartments for its exit.
It occurred to me that it must take an enormous system of ventilating
fans to keep this air in motion, and then I remembered the liquid air
engine I had seen in the mine, and a realization of the economy and
efficiency of the whole scheme dawned upon me. The Germans had solved
the power problem by using the heat of the deeper strata of the earth to
generate power through the agency of liquid air and the exhaust from
their engines had automatically solved their ventilating problem. I
recalled with a smile that I had seen no evidence of heating apparatus
anywhere except that which the miners had used to warm their food. In
this city cooling rather than heating facilities would evidently be
needed, even in the dead of winter, since the heat generated by the
inhabitants and the industrial processes would exceed the radiation from
the exterior walls and roof of the city. Sunshine and "fresh air" they
had not, but our own scientists had taught us for generations that heat
and humidity and not lack of oxygen or sunshine was the cause of the
depression experienced in indoor quarters. The air of Berlin was cool
and the excess of vapor had been frozen out of it. Yes, the "climate" of
Berlin should be more salubrious to the body, if not to the mind, than
the fickle environment of capricious nature. From my reasoning about
these ponderous problems of existence I was diverted to a trivial
matter. The men I observed on the streets all wore their hair clipped
short, while mine, with six weeks' growth, was getting rather long. I
had seen several barber's signs but I decided to walk on for quite a
distance beyond my apartment. I did not want to confront a barber who
had known Karl Armstadt, for barbers deal critically in the matter of
heads and faces. At last I picked out a shop. I entered and asked for
a haircut.
"But you are not on my list," said the barber, staring at me in a
puzzled way, "why do you not go to your own barber?"
Grasping the situation I replied that I did not like my barber.
"Then why do you not apply at the Tonsorial Administrative Office of the
level for permission to change?"
Returning to my apartment I looked up the office in my directory, went
thither and asked the clerk if I could exchange barbers. He asked for my
card and after a deal of clerical activities wrote thereon the name of a
new barber. With this official sanction I finally got my hair cut and my
card punched, thinking meanwhile that the soundness of my teeth would
obviate any amateur detective work on the part of a dentist.
Nothing, it seemed, was left for the individual to decide for himself.
His every want was supplied by orderly arrangement and for everything he
must have an authoritative permit. Had I not been classed as a research
chemist, and therefore a man of some importance, this simple business of
getting a hair-cut might have proved my undoing. Indeed, as I afterwards
learned, the exclusive privacy of my living quarters was a mark of
distinction. Had I been one of lower ranking I should have shared my
apartment with another man who would have slept in my bed while I was at
work, for in the sunless city was neither night nor day and the whole
population worked and slept in prescribed shifts--the vast machinery of
industry, like a blind giant in some Plutonic treadmill, toiled
ceaselessly.
The next morning I decided to extend my travels to the medical level,
which was located just above my own. There were stairs beside the
elevator shafts but these were evidently for emergency as they were
closed with locked gratings.
The elevator stopped at my ring. Not sure of the proper manner of
calling my floor I was carried past the medical level. As we shot up
through the three-hundred-metre shaft, the names of levels as I had read
them in my atlas flashed by on the blind doors. On the topmost defence
level we took on an officer of the roof guard--strangely swarthy of
skin--and now the car shot down while the rising air rushed by us with a
whistling roar.
On the return trip I called my floor as I had heard others do and was
let off at the medical level. It was even more monotonously quiet than
the chemical level, save for the hurrying passage of occasional
ambulances on their way between the elevators and the various hospitals.
The living quarters of the physicians were identical with those on the
chemists' level. So, too, were the quiet shops from which the physicians
supplied their personal needs.
Standing before one of these I saw in a window a new book entitled
"Diseases of Nutrition." I went in and asked to see a copy. The book
seller staring at my chemical uniform in amazement reached quickly under
the counter and pressed a button. I became alarmed and turned to go out
but found the door had been automatically closed and locked. Trying to
appear unconcerned I stood idly glancing over the book shelves, while
the book seller watched me from the corner of his eye.
In a few minutes the door opened from without and a man in the uniform
of the street guard appeared. The book seller motioned toward me.
"Your identification folder," said the guard.
Mechanically I withdrew it and handed it to him. He opened it and
discovered the card from the hospital. Smiling on me with an air of
condescension, he took me by the arm and led me forth and conducted me
to my own apartment on the chemical level. Arriving there he pushed me
gently into a chair and stepped toward the switch of the telephone.
"Just a minute," I said, "I remember now. I was not on my level--that
was not my book store."
"The card orders me to call up the hospital," said the guard.
"It is unnecessary," I said. "Do not call them."
The guard gazed first at me and then at the card. "It is signed by a
Lieutenant and you are a Captain--" his brows knitted as he wrestled
with the problem--"I do not know what to do. Does a Captain with an
affected memory outrank a Lieutenant?"
"He does," I solemnly assured him.
Still a little puzzled, he returned the card, saluted and was gone. It
had been a narrow escape. I got out my atlas and read again the rules
that set forth my right to be at large in the city. Clearly I had a
right to be found in the medical level--but in trying to buy a book
there I had evidently erred most seriously. So I carefully memorized the
list of shops set down in my identification folder and on my cards.
For the next few days I lived alone in my apartment unmolested except by
an occasional visit from Holknecht, the laboratory assistant, who knew
nothing but chemistry, talked nothing but chemistry, and seemed dead to
all human emotions and human curiosity. Applying myself diligently to
the study of Armstadt's books and notes, I was delighted to find that
the Germans, despite their great chemical progress, were ignorant of
many things I knew. I saw that my knowledge discreetly used, might
enable me to become a great man among them and so learn secrets that
would be of immense value to the outer world, should I later contrive to
escape from Berlin.
By my discoveries of the German workings in the potash mines I had
indeed opened a new road to Berlin. It was up to me by further
discoveries to open a road out again, not only for my own escape, but
perhaps also to find a way by which the World Armies might enter Berlin
as the Greeks entered Troy. Vague ambitious dreams were these that
filled and thrilled me, for I was young in years, and the romantic
spirit of heroic adventure surged in my blood.
These days of study were quite uneventful, except for a single
illuminating incident; a further example of the super-efficiency of the
Germans. I found the meals served me at my apartment rather less in
quantity than my appetite craved. While there was a reasonable variety,
the nutritive value was always the same to a point of scientific
exactness, and I had seen no shops where extra food was available. After
I had been in my apartment about a week, some one rang at the door. I
opened it and a man called out the single word, "Weigher." Just behind
him stood a platform scale on small wheels and with handles like a
go-cart. The weigher stood, notebook in hand, waiting for me to act. I
took the hint and stepped upon the scales. He read the weight and as he
recorded it, remarked:
"Three kilograms over."
Without further explanation he pushed the scales toward the next door.
The following day I noticed that the portions of food served me were a
trifle smaller than they had been previously. The original Karl Armstadt
had evidently been of such build that he carried slightly less weight
than I, which fact now condemned me to this light diet.
However, I reasoned that a light diet is conducive to good brain work,
and as I later learned, the object of this systematic weight control was
not alone to save food but to increase mental efficiency, for a fat man
is phlegmatic and a lean one too excitable for the best mental output.
It would also help my disguise by keeping me the exact weight and build
of the original Karl Armstadt.
After a fortnight of study, I felt that I was now ready to take up my
work in the laboratory, but I feared my lack of general knowledge of the
city and its ways might still betray me. Hence I began further
journeyings about the streets and shops of those levels where a man of
my class was permitted to go.
~4~
After exhausting the rather barren sport of walking about the monotonous
streets of the four professional levels I took a more exciting trip down
into the lower levels of the city where the vast mechanical industries
held sway. I did not know how much freedom might be allowed me, but I
reasoned that I would be out of my supposed normal environment and hence
my ignorance would be more excusable and in less danger of betraying me.
Alighting from the elevator, I hurried along past endless rows of heavy
columns. I peered into the workrooms, which had no enclosing walls, and
discovered with some misgiving that I seemed to have come upon a race of
giants. The men at the machines were great hulking fellows with thick,
heavy muscles such as one would expect to see in a professional wrestler
or weight-lifter. I paused and tried to gauge the size of these men: I
decided that they were not giants for I had seen taller men in the outer
world. Two officials of some sort, distinguishable by finer garb,
walking among them, appeared to be men of average size, and the tops of
their heads came about to the workers' chins. That there should be such
men among the Germans was not unbelievable, but the strange thing was
that there should be so many of them, and that they should be so
uniformly large, for there was not a workman in the whole vast factory
floor that did not over-top the officials by at least half a head.
"Of course," I reasoned, "this is part of German efficiency";--for the
men were feeding large plates through stamping mills--"they have
selected all the large men for this heavy work." Then as I continued to
gaze it occurred to me that this bright metal these Samsons were
handling was aluminum!
I went on and came to a different work hall where men were tending wire
winding machinery, making the coils for some light electrical
instruments. It was work that girls could easily have done, yet these
men were nearly, if not quite, as hulking as their mates in the stamping
mill. To select such men for light-fingered work was not efficiency but
stupidity,--and then it came to me that I had also thought the soldiers
I had seen in the hospital to be men picked for size, and that in a
normal population there could not be such an abundance of men of
abnormal size. The meaning of it all began to clear in my mind--the
pedigree in my own identification folder with the numerous fraternity,
the system of social castes which my atlas had revealed, the
inexplicable and unnatural proportion of the sexes. These gigantic men
were not the mere pick from individual variation in the species, but a
distinct breed within a race wherein the laws of nature, that had kept
men of equal stature for countless centuries, even as wild animals were
equal, had been replaced by the laws of scientific breeding. These heavy
and ponderous labourers were the Percherons and Clydesdales of a
domesticated and scientifically bred human species. The soldiers,
somewhat less bulky and more active, were, no doubt, another distinct
breed. The professional classes which had seemed quite normal in
physical appearance--were they bred for mental rather than physical
qualities? Otherwise why the pedigree, why the rigid castes, the
isolation of women? I shuddered as the whole logical, inevitable
explanation unfolded. It was uncanny, unearthly, yet perfectly
scientific; a thing the world had speculated about for centuries, a
thing that every school boy knew could be done, and yet which I, facing
the fact that it had been done, could only believe by a strained effort
at scientific coolness.
I walked on and on, absorbed, overwhelmed by these assaulting,
unbelievable conclusions, yet on either side as I walked was the ever
present evidence of the reality of these seemingly wild fancies. There
were miles upon miles of these endless workrooms and everywhere the same
gross breed of great blond beasts.
The endless shops of Berlin's industrial level were very like those
elsewhere in the world, except that they were more vast, more
concentrated, and the work more speeded up by super-machines and
excessive specialization. Millions upon millions of huge, drab-clad,
stolid-faced workmen stood at their posts of duty, performing over and
over again their routine movements as the material of their labors
shuttled by in endless streams.
Occasionally among the workmen I saw the uniforms of the petty officers
who acted as foremen, and still more rarely the administrative offices,
where, enclosed in glass panelled rooms, higher officials in more
bespangled uniforms poured over charts and plans.
In all this colossal business there was everywhere the atmosphere of
perfect order, perfect system, perfect discipline. Go as I might among
the electrical works, among the vast factories of chemicals and goods,
the lighter labor of the textile mills, or the heavier, noisier business
of the mineral works and machine shops the same system of colossal
coordinate mechanism of production throbbed ceaselessly. Materials
flowed in endless streams, feeding electric furnaces, mills, machines;
passing out to packing tables and thence to vast store rooms. Industry
here seemed endless and perfect. The bovine humanity fitted to the
machinery as the ox to the treadmill. Everywhere was the ceaseless
throbbing of the machine. Of the human variation and the free action of
man in labour, there was no evidence, and no opportunity for its
existence.
Turning from the mere monotonous endlessness of the workshops I made my
way to the levels above where the workers lived in those hours when they
ceased to be a part of the industrial mechanism of production; and
everywhere were drab-coloured men for these shifts of labour were
arranged so that no space at any time was wholly idle. I now passed by
miles of sleeping dormitories, and other miles of gymnasiums, picture
theatres and gaming tables, and, strikingly incongruous with the
atmosphere of the place, huge assembly rooms which were labelled "Free
Speech Halls." I started to enter one of these, where some kind of a
meeting was in progress, but I was thrust back by a great fellow who
grinned foolishly and said: "Pardon, Herr Captain, it is forbidden you."
Through half-darkened streets, I again passed by the bunk-shelved
sleeping chambers with their cavernous aisles walled with orderly rows
of lockers. Again I came to other barracks where the men were not yet
asleep but were straggling in and sitting about on the lowest bunks of
these sterile makeshift homes.
I then came into a district of mess halls where a meal was being served.
Here again was absolute economy and perfect system. The men dined at
endless tables and their food like the material for their labours, was
served to the workers by the highly efficient device of an endless
moving belt that rolled up out of a slot in the floor at the end of the
table after the manner of the chained steps of an escalator.
From the moving belts the men took their portions, and, as they finished
eating, they cleared away by setting the empty dishes back upon the
moving belt. The sight fascinated me, because of the adaptation of this
mechanical principle to so strange a use, for the principle is old and,
as every engineer knows, was instrumental in founding the house of
Detroit Vehicle Kings that once dominated the industrial world. The
founder of that illustrious line gave the poorest citizen a motor car
and disrupted the wage system of his day by paying his men double the
standard wage, yet he failed to realize the full possibilities of
efficiency for he permitted his men to eat at round tables and be served
by women! Truly we of the free world very narrowly escaped the fetish of
efficiency which finally completely enslaved the Germans.
Each of the long tables of this Berlin dining hall, the ends of which
faced me, was fenced off from its neighbours. At the entrance gates were
signs which read "2600 Calories," "2800 Calories," "3000 Calories"--I
followed down the line to the sign which read "Maximum Diet, 4000
Calories." The next one read, "Minimum Diet 2000 Calories," and thence
the series was repeated. Farther on I saw that men were assembling
before such gates in lines, for the meal there had not begun. Moving to
the other side of the street I walked by the lines which curved out and
swung down the street. Those before the sign of "Minimum Diet" were not
quite so tall as the average, although obviously of the same breed. But
they were all gaunt, many of them drooped and old, relatively the
inferior specimens and their faces bore a cowering look of fear and
shame, of men sullen and dull, beaten in life's battle. Following down
the line and noting the improvement in physique as I passed on, I came
to the farthest group just as they had begun to pass into the hall.
These men, entering the gate labelled "Maximum Diet, 4000 Calories,"
were obviously the pick of the breed, middle-aged, powerful,
Herculean,--and yet not exactly Herculean either, for many of them were
overfull of waistline, men better fed than is absolutely essential to
physical fitness. Evidently a different principle was at work here than
the strict economy of food that required the periodic weighing of the
professional classes.
Turning back I now encountered men coming out of the dining hall in
which I had first witnessed the meal in progress. I wanted to ask
questions and yet was a little afraid. But these big fellows were
seemingly quite respectful; except when I started to enter the Free
Speech Hall, they had humbly made way for me. Emboldened by their
deference I now approached a man whom I had seen come out of a "3800
Calories" gate, and who had crossed the street and stood there picking
his teeth with his finger nail.
He ceased this operation as I approached and was about to step aside.
But I paused and smiled at him, much, I fear, as one smiles at a dog of
unknown disposition, for I could hardly feel that this ungainly creature
was exactly human. He smiled back and stood waiting.
"Perhaps, I stammered," you will tell me about your system of eating; it
seems very interesting."
"I eat thirty-eight," he grinned, "pretty good, yes? I am twenty-five
years old and not so tall either."
I eyed him up--my eyes came just to the top button of his jacket.
"I began thirty," continued the workman, "I came up one almost every
year, one year I came up two at once. Pretty good, yes? One more
to come."
"What then?" I asked.
The big fellow smiled with a childish pride, and doubling up his arm, as
huge as an average man's thigh, he patted his biceps. "I get it all
right. I pass examination, no flaws in me, never been to hospital, not
one day. Yes, I get it."
"Get what?"
"Paternity," said the man in a lower voice, as he glanced about to see
if any of his fellows was listening. "Paternity, you know? Women!"
I thought of many questions but feared to ask them. The worker waited
for some men to pass, then he bent over me, grinning sardonically. "Did
you see them? You have seen women, yes?"
"Yes," I ventured, "I have seen women."
"Pretty good, beautiful, yes?"
"Yes," I stammered, "they are very beautiful." But I was getting nervous
and moved away. The workman, hesitating a little, then followed at
my side.
"But tell me," I said, "about these calories. What did you do to get the
big meals? Why do some get more to eat than others?"
"Better man," he replied without hesitation.
"But what makes a better man?"
"You don't know; of course, you are an intellectual and don't work. But
we work hard. The harder we work the more we eat. I load aluminum pigs
on the elevator. One pig is two calories, nineteen hundred pigs a day,
pretty good, yes? All kind of work has its calories, so many for each
thing to do.
"More work, more food it takes to do it. They say all is alike, that no
one can get fat. But all work calories are not alike because some men
get fatter than others. I don't get fat; my work is hard. I ought to get
two and a half calories for each pig I load. Still I do not get thin,
but I do not play hard in gymnasium, see? Those lathe men, they got it
too easy and they play hard in gymnasium. I don't care if you do report.
I got it mad at them; they got it too easy. One got paternity last year
already, and he is not as good a man as I am. I could throw him over my
shoulder in wrestling. Do you not think they get it too easy?"
"Do the men like this system," I asked; "the measuring of food by the
amount of work one does? Do any of them talk about it and demand that
all be fed alike?"
"The skinny minimum eaters do," said the workman with a sneer, "when we
let them talk, which isn't often, but when they get a chance they talk
Bellamism. But what if they do talk, it does them no good. We have a red
flag, we have Imperial Socialism; we have the House of Hohenzollern.
Well, then, I say, let them talk if they want to, every man must eat
according to his work; that is socialism. We can't have Bellamism when
we have socialism."
This speech, so much more informative and evidencing a knowledge I had
not anticipated, quite disturbed me. "You talk about these things," I
ventured, "in your Free Speech Halls?"
The hitherto pleasant face of the workingman altered to an ugly frown.
"No you don't," he growled, "you don't think because I talk to you, that
you can go asking me what is not your right to know, even if you are
an officer?"
I remained discreetly silent, but continued to walk at the side of the
striding giant. Presently I asked:
"What do you do now, are you going to work?"
"No," he said, looking at me doubtfully, "that was dinner, not
breakfast. I am going now to the picture hall."
"And then," I asked, "do you go to bed?"
"No," he said, "we then go to the gymnasium or the gaming tables. Six
hours' work, six hours' sleep, and four hours for amusement."
"And what do you do," I asked, "the remainder of the day?"
He turned and stared at me. "That is all we get here, sixteen hours.
This is the metal workers' level. Some levels get twenty hours. It
depends on the work."
"But," I said, "a real day has twenty-four hours."
"I've heard," he said, "that it does on the upper levels."
"But," I protested, "I mean a real day--a day of the sun. Do you
understand that?"
"Oh yes," he said, "we see the pictures of the Place in the Sun. That's
a fine show."
"Oh," I said, "then you have pictures of the sun?"
"Of course," he replied, "the sun that shines upon the throne. We all
see that."
At the time I could not comprehend this reference, but I made bold to
ask if it were forbidden me to go to his picture hall.
"I can't make out," he said, "why you want to see, but I never heard of
any order forbidding it.
"I go here," he remarked, as we came to a picture theatre.
I let my Herculean companion enter alone, but followed him shortly and
found a seat in a secluded corner. No one disputed my presence.
The music that filled the hall from some hidden horn was loud and, in a
rough way, joyous. The pictures--evidently carefully prepared for such
an audience--were limited to the life that these men knew. The themes
were chiefly of athletic contests, of boxing, wrestling and feats of
strength. There were also pictures of working contests, always ending by
the awarding of honours by some much bespangled official. But of love
and romance, of intrigue and adventure, of pathos and mirth, these
pictures were strangely devoid,--there was, in fact, no woman's likeness
cast upon the screen and no pictures depicting emotion or sentiment.
As I watched the sterile flittings of the picture screen I decided,
despite the glimmering of intelligence that my talking Hercules had
shown in reference to socialism and Bellamism and the secrets of the
Free Speech Halls, that these men were merely great stupid beasts
of burden.
They worked, they fed, they drank, they played exuberantly in their
gymnasiums and swimming pools, they played long and eagerly at games of
chance. Beyond this their lives were essentially blank. Ambition and
curiosity they had none beyond the narrow circle of their round of
living. But for all that they were docile, contented and, within their
limitations, not unhappy. To me they seemed more and more to be like
well cared for domestic animals, and I found myself wondering, as I left
the hall, why we of the outer world had not thought to produce pictures
in similar vein to entertain our dogs and horses.
~5~
As I returned to my own quarters, I tried to recall the description I
had read of the "Children of the Abyss," the dwellers in ancient city
slums. There was a certain kinship, no doubt, between those former
submerged workers in the democratic world and this labour breed of
Berlin. Yet the enslaved and sweated workers of the old regime were
always depicted as suffering from poverty, as undersized, ill-nourished
and afflicted with disease. The reformers of that day were always
talking of sanitary housing, scientific diet and physical efficiency.
But here was a race of labourers whose physical welfare was as well
taken care of as if they had been prize swine or oxen. There was a
paleness of countenance among these labourers of Berlin that to me
seemed suggestive of ill health, but I knew that was merely due to lack
of sun and did not signify a lack of physical vitality. Mere
sun-darkened skin does not mean physiological efficiency, else the negro
were the most efficient of races. Men can live without sun, without
rain, without contact with the soil, without nature's greenery and the
brotherhood of fellow species in wild haunts. The whole climb of
civilization had been away from these primitive things. It had merely
been an artificial perfecting of the process of giving the living
creature that which is needed for sustenance and propagation in the most
concentrated and most economical form, the elimination of Nature's
superfluities and wastes.
As I thought of these things it came over me that this unholy
imprisonment of a race was but the logical culmination of mechanical and
material civilization. This development among the Germans had been
hastened by the necessities of war and siege, yet it was what the whole
world had been driving toward since man first used a tool and built a
hut. Our own freer civilization of the outer world had been achieved
only by compromises, by a stubborn resistance against the forces to
which we ascribed our progress. We were merely not so completely
civilized, because we had never been wholly domesticated.
As I now record these thoughts on the true significance of the perfected
civilization of the Germans I realize that I was even more right than I
then knew, for the sunless city of Berlin is of a truth a civilization
gone to seed, its people are a domesticated species, they are the
logical outcome of science applied to human affairs, with them the
prodigality and waste of Nature have been eliminated, they have stamped
out contagious diseases of every kind, they have substituted for the
laws of Nature the laws that man may pick by scientific theory and
experiment from the multitude of possibilities. Yes, the Germans were
civilized. And as I pondered these things I recalled those fairy tales
that naturalists tell of the stagnant and fixed society of ants in their
subterranean catacombs. These insect species credited for industry and
intelligence, have in their lesser world reached a similar perfection of
civilization. Ants have a royal house, they have a highly specialized
and fixed system of caste, a completely socialized state--yes, a
Utopia--even as Berlin was a Utopia, with the light of the sun and the
light of the soul, the soul of the wild free man, forever shut out. Yes,
I was walking in Utopia, a nightmare at the end of man's long
dream--Utopia--Black Utopia--City of Endless Night--diabolically
compounded of the three elements of civilization in which the Germans
had always been supreme--imperialism, science and socialism.
CHAPTER IV
I GO PLEASURING ON THE LEVEL OF FREE WOMEN AND DRINK SYNTHETIC BEER
~1~
I had returned from my adventure on the labour levels in a mood of
sombre depression. Alone again in my apartment I found difficulty in
getting my mind back upon chemical books. With a sense of relief I
reported to Holknecht that I thought myself sufficiently recovered to
return to work.
My laboratory I found to be almost as secluded as my living quarters. I
was master there, and as a research worker I reported to no man until I
had finished the problem assigned me. From my readings and from
Holknecht's endless talking I had fairly well grasped the problem on
which I was supposed to be working, and I now had Holknecht go carefully
over the work he had done in my absence and we prepared a report. This I
sent to headquarters with a request for permission to start work on
another problem, the idea for which I claimed to have conceived on my
visit to the attacked potash mines.
Permission to undertake the new problem was promptly granted. I now set
to work to reproduce in a German laboratory the experiments by which I
had originally conquered the German gas that had successfully defended
those mines from the world for over a century. Though loath to make this
revelation, I knew of no other "Discovery" wherewith to gain the stakes
for which I was playing.
Events shaped themselves most rapidly along the lines of my best hopes.
The new research proved a blanket behind which to hide my ignorance. We
needed new material, new apparatus, and new data and I encouraged
Holknecht to advise me as to where to obtain these things and so gained
requisite working knowledge.
The experiments and demonstrations finished, I made my report. My
immediate superior evidently quickly recognized it as a matter too
important for his consideration and dutifully passed it up to his own
superiors. In a few days I was notified to prepare for a demonstration
before a committee of the Imperial Chemical Staff.
They came to my small laboratory with much eager curiosity. From their
manner of making themselves known to me I realized with joy that they
were dealing with a stranger. Indeed it was improbable that it should
have been otherwise for there were upwards of fifty thousand chemists of
my rank in Berlin.
The demonstration went off with a flourish and the committee were
greatly impressed. Means were at once taken to alter the gas with which
the Stassfurt mines were flooded, but I realized that meant nothing
since I believed that my companions had abandoned the enterprise and the
secret that had enabled me to invade mines had not been shared with any
one in the outer world.
As I anticipated, my revelation was accepted by the Chemical Staff as
evidence of profound scientific genius. It followed as a logical matter
that I should be promoted to the highest rank of research chemists with
the title of Colonel. Because of my youth the more was made of the
honour. This promotion entitled me to double my previous salary, to a
larger laboratory and larger and better living quarters in a distant
part of the city.
My assistant would now be of the rank I had previously been and as
Holknecht was not eligible to such promotion I was removed entirely from
all previous acquaintances and surroundings and so greatly decreased the
chance of discovery of my true identity.
~2~
After I had removed to my new quarters I was requested to call at the
office of the Chemical Staff to discuss the line of research I should
next take up. My adviser in this matter was the venerable Herr von Uhl,
a white haired old patriarch whose jacket was a mass of decorations. The
insignia on the left breast indicating the achievements in chemical
science were already familiar to me, but those on the right breast
were strange.
Perhaps I stared at them a little, for the old man, noting my interest,
remarked proudly, "Yes, I have contributed much glory to the race and
our group,--one hundred and forty-seven children,--one hundred and four
of them sons, fifty-eight already of a captain's rank, and twenty-nine
of them colonels--my children of the second and third generation number
above two thousand. Only three men living in Berlin have more total
descendants--and I am but seventy-eight years of age. If I live to be
ninety I shall break all records of the Eugenic Office. It all comes of
good breeding and good work. I won my paternity right, when I was but
twenty-eight, just about your age. If you pass the physical test,
perhaps you can duplicate my record. For this early promotion you have
won qualifies you mentally."
Astonished and alarmed beyond measure I could find no reply and sat
staring dumbly, while Herr von Uhl, beginning to speak of chemical
matters, inquired if I had any preference as to the problem I should now
take up. Incapable of any clear thinking I could only ask if he had any
to suggest.
Immediately the old man's face brightened. "A man of your genius," he
said, "should be permitted to try his brain with the greatest problems
on which the life of Germany depends. The Staff discussed this and has
assigned you to original research for the finding of a better method of
the extraction of protium from the ore. To work on this assignment you
must of necessity share grave secrets, which, should they be disclosed,
might create profound fears, but your professional honour is a sufficient
guarantee of secrecy. In this research you will compete with some of the
most distinguished chemists in Berlin. If you should be successful you
will be decorated by His Majesty and you will receive a liberal pension
commensurate with the value of your discovery."
I was profoundly impressed. Evidently I had stumbled upon something of
vital importance, the real nature of which I did not in the least
comprehend, and happily was not supposed to. The interview was ended by
my being entrusted with voluminous unpublished documents which I was
told to take home and study. Two armed men were ordered to accompany me
and to stand alternate guard outside my apartment while I had the
documents in my possession.
~3~
In the quiet of my new abode I unsealed the package. The first sheet
contained the official offer of the rewards in store for success with
the research. The further papers explained the occasion for the gravity
and secrecy, and outlined the problem.
The colossal consequence of the matter with which I was dealing gripped
and thrilled me. Protium, it seemed, was the German name for a rare
element of the radium group, which, from its atomic weight and other
properties, I recognized as being known to the outside world only as a
laboratory curiosity of no industrial significance.
But, as used by the Germans, this element was the essence of life
itself, for by the influence of its emanations, they had achieved the
synthesis of protein capable of completely nourishing the human body--a
thing that could be accomplished in the outside world only through the
aid of natural protein derived from plants and animals.
How I wished, as I read, that my uncle could have shared with me this
revelation of a secret that he had spent his life in a fruitless effort
to unravel. We had long since discovered how the Germans had synthesized
the carbohydrate molecule from carbon dioxide and water and built
therefrom the sugars, starches and fat needed for human nutrition. We
knew quite as well how they had created the simpler nitrogen compounds,
that this last step of synthesizing complete food proteins--a step
absolutely essential to the support of human life wholly from synthetic
foods--the chemists of the outer world had never mastered.
But no less interesting than the mere chemistry of all this was the
history of it all, and the light it threw on the larger story of how
Germany had survived when the scientists of the world had predicted her
speedy annihiliation. The original use of protium had, I found, been
discovered late in the Twentieth Century when the protium ores of the
Ural Mountains were still available to the German chemists. After Russia
had been won by the World Armies, the Germans for a time suffered
chronic nitrogen starvation, as they depended on the protium derived
from what remained of their agriculture and from the fisheries in the
Baltic. As the increasing bombardment from the air herded them within
their fast building armoured city, and drove them beneath the soil in
all other German territory and from the surface of the sea in the
Baltic; they must have perished miserably but for the discovery of a new
source of protium.
This source they had found in the uninhabited islands of the Arctic,
where the formation of the Ural Mountains extends beneath the sea.
Sending their submarines thence in search of platinum ores they had not
found platinum but a limited supply of ore containing the even more
valuable protium. By this traffic Germany had survived for a century and
a half. The quantity of the rare element needed was small, for its
effect, like that of radium, was out of all proportion to its bulk. But
this little they must have, and it seems that the supply of ore
was failing.
Nor was that all to interest me. How did the German submarine get to the
Arctic since the World State had succeeded, after half a century of
effort, in damming the Baltic by closing up several passes among the
Danish Islands and the main pass of the sound between Zealand and
Sweden? I remember, as a youngster, the great Jubilee that celebrated
the completion of that monumental task, and the joy that hailed from the
announcement that the world's shipping would at last be freed from an
ancient scourge.
But little had we of the world known the magnitude of the German fears
as the Baltic dam neared completion. We had thought merely to protect
our commerce from German piracy and perhaps to stop them from getting a
little copper and rubber in some remote corner of the earth. But we did
not realize that we were about to cut them off from an essential element
without which that conceited and defiant race must have speedily run up
the white flag of absolute surrender or have died to the last man, like
rats in a neglected trap.
But the completion of the Baltic dam evidently had not shut off the
supply of Arctic ore, for the annual importation of ore was given right
up to date though the Baltic had been closed for nearly a score of
years. Eagerly I searched my papers for an item that would give some
hint as to how the submarines got out of the dammed-up Baltic. But on
that point the documents before me were silent. They referred to the
Arctic ore, gave elaborate details as to mineralogy and geology of the
strata from which it came, but as to the ways of its coming into Berlin
there was not the slightest suggestion. That this ore must come by
submarine was obvious. If so, the submarine must be at large in the
Atlantic and Arctic seas, and those occasional reports of periscopes
sighted off the coast of Norway, which have never been credited, were
really true. The submarines, or at least their cargoes, must reach
Berlin by some secret passage. Here indeed was a master mystery, a
secret which, could I unravel it and escape to the outer world with the
knowledge, would put unconditionally within the power of the World State
the very life of the three hundred millions of this unholy race that was
bred and fed by science in the armoured City of Berlin, or that, working
like blind moles of the earth, held the world at bay from off the
sterile and pock-marked soil of all that was left of the one-time
German Empire.
That night I did not sleep till near the waking hour, and when the
breakfast container bumped into the receiving cupboard I was nodding
over the chemical papers amid strange and wonderful dreams.
~4~
Next day with three assistants, themselves chemists of no mean rank, I
set to work to prepare apparatus for repeating all the known processes
in the extraction and use of the rare and vital element. This work
absorbed me for many weeks, during which time I went nowhere and saw no
one and slept scarce one hour out of four.
But the steady application told upon me, and, by way of recreation, I
decided to spend an evening on the Level of Free Women, a place to
which, much though it fascinated me, I had not yet mustered the
courage to go.
My impression, as I stepped from the elevator, was much as that of a man
who alights from a train in a strange city on a carnival night. Before
me, instead of the narrow, quiet streets of the working and living
quarters of the city, there spread a broad and seemingly endless hall of
revelry, broken only by the massive grey pillars that held up the
multi-floored city. The place was thronged with men of varied ranks and
professions. But more numerous and conspicuous were the women, the first
and only women that I had seen among the Germans--the Free Women of
Berlin, dressed in gorgeous and daring costumes; women of whom but few
were beautiful, yet in whose tinted cheeks and sparkling eyes was all
the lure of parasitic love.
The multi-hued apparel of the throng dazzled and astonished me.
Elsewhere I had found a sterile monotony of dress and even of stature
and features. But here was resplendent variety and display. Men from all
the professional and military classes mingled indiscriminately, their
divers uniforms and decorations suggesting a dress ball in the capital
of the world. But the motley costumes of the women, who dressed with the
license of unrestrained individuality, were even more startling and
bizarre--a kaleidoscopic fantastic masquerade.
I wondered if the rule of convention and tyranny of style had lost all
hold upon these women. And yet I decided, as I watched more closely,
that there was not an absence of style but rather a warfare of styles.
The costumes varied from the veiled and beruffled displays, that left
one confounded as to what manner of creature dwelt therein, to the other
extreme of mere gaudily ornamented nudity. I smiled as I recalled the
world-old argument on the relative modesty of much or little clothing,
for here immodesty was competing side by side in both extremes, both
seemingly equally successful.
But it was not alone in the matter of dress that the women of the Free
Level varied. They differed even more strikingly in form and feature,
for, as I was later more fully to comprehend, these women were drawn
from all the artificially specialized breeds into which German science
had wrought the human species. Most striking and most numerous were
those whom I rightly guessed to be of the labour strain. Proportionally
not quite so large as the males of the breed, yet they were huge,
full-formed, fleshly creatures, with milky white skin for the most part
crudely painted with splashes of vermilion and with blued or blackened
brows. The garishness of their dress and ornament clearly bespoke the
poorer quality of their intellect, yet to my disgust they seemed fully
as popular with the men as the smaller and more refined types, evidently
from the intellectual strains of the race.
Happily these ungainly women of the labour strain were inclined to herd
by themselves and I hastened to direct my steps to avoid as much as
possible their overwhelming presence.
The smaller women, who seemed to be more nearly human, were even more
variegated in their features and make-up. They were not all blondes,
for some of them were distinctively dark of hair and skin, though
I was puzzled to tell how much of this was inborn and how much
the work of art. Another thing that astonished me was the wide
range of bodily form, as evidently determined by nutrition. Clearly
there was no weight-control here, for the figures varied from extreme
slenderness to waddling fatness. The most common type was that of mild
obesity which men call "plumpness," a quality so prized since the world
began that the women of all races by natural selection become relatively
fatter than men.
For the most part I found these women unattractive and even repellent,
and yet as I walked about the level I occasionally caught fleeting
glimpses of genuine beauty of face and form, and more rarely expressions
of a seeming high order of intelligence.
This revelling multitude of men and girls was uproariously engaged in
the obvious business of enjoying themselves by means of every art known
to appeal to the mind of man--when intelligence is abandoned and moral
restraint thrown to the winds.
I wended my way among the multitude, gay with colour, noisy with chatter
and mingled music, redolent with a hundred varieties of sensuous
perfume. I came upon a dancing floor. Whirling and twisting about the
columns, circling around a gorgeous scented and iridescent fountain,
officers and scientists, chemists and physicians, each clasping in his
arms a laughing girl, danced with abandon to languorous music.
As I watched the dance I overheard two girls commenting upon the
appearance of the dancers. Whirling by in the arms of a be-medalled
officer, was a girl whose frizzled yellow hair fell about a
dun-brown face.
"Did you see that, Fedora, tanned as a roof guard and with that hair!"
"Well, you know," said the other, "it's becoming quite the fashion
again."
"Why don't you try it? Three baths would tan you adorably and you do
have the proper hair."
"Oh, yes, I have the hair, all right, but my skin won't stand it. I
tried it three years ago and I blistered outrageously."
The talk drifted to less informing topics and I moved on and came to
other groups lounging at their ease on rugs and divans as they watched
more skilful girls squirming through some intricate ballet on an
exhibition platform.
Seeing me stand apart, a milk-white girl with hair dyed pink came
tugging at my arm. Her opalescent eyes looked from out her chalky
countenance; but they were not hard eyes, indeed they seemed the eyes of
innocence. As I shook my head and rebuffed her cordial advance I felt,
not that I was refusing the proffered love of a painted woman, but
rather that I was meanly declining a child's invitation to join her
play. In haste I edged away and wandered on past endless gaming tables
where men in feverish eagerness whirled wheels of chance, while garishly
dressed girls leaned on their shoulders and hung about their necks.
Announced by shouts and shrieking laughter I came upon a noisy jumble of
mechanical amusement devices where men and girls in whirling upholstered
boxes were being pitched and tumbled about.
Beyond the noise of the childish whirligigs I came into a space where
the white ceiling lights were dimmed by crimson globes and picture
screens were in operation. It did not take long for me to grasp the
essential difference between these pictured stories and those I had seen
in the workmen's level. There love of woman was entirely absent from the
screen. Here it was the sole substance of the pictures. But unlike the
love romances of the outer world, there were no engagement rings, no
wedding bells, and never once did the face or form of a child appear.
In seating myself to see the pictures I had carefully chosen a place
where there was only room for myself between a man and one of the
supporting columns. At an interlude the man arose to go. The girl who
had been with him arose also, but he pushed her back upon the bench,
saying that he had other engagements, and did not wish her company. The
moment he was gone the girl moved over and proceeded to crowd
caressingly against my shoulder. She was a huge girl, obviously of the
labour strain. She leaned over me as if I had been a lonely child and
she a lonelier woman. Crowded against the pillar I could not escape and
so tried to appear unconcerned.
"Did you like that story?" I asked, referring to the picture that had
just ended.
"No," she replied, "the girl was too timid. She could never have won a
roof guard captain in that fashion. They are very difficult men, those
roof guard officers."
"And what kind of pictures do you prefer?" I asked.
"Quartettes," she answered promptly. "Two men and two girls when both
girls want the other man, and both men want the girl they have. That
makes a jolly plot. Or else the ones where there are two perfect lovers
and the man is elected to paternity and leaves her. I had a man like
that once and it makes me sad to see such a picture."
"Perhaps," I said, speaking in a timorous voice, "you wanted to go with
him and be the mother of his children?"
She turned her face toward me in the dim light. "He talked like that,"
she said, "and then, I hated him. I knew then that he wanted to go and
leave me. That he hadn't tried to avoid the paternity draft. Yes, he
wanted to sire children. And he knew that he would have to leave me. And
so I hated him for ever loving me."
A strange thrill crept over me at the girl's words. I tried to fathom
her nature, to separate the tangle of reality from the artificial ideas
ingrained by deliberate mis-education. "Did you ever see children? Here,
I mean. Pictures of them, perhaps, on the screen?"
"Never," said the girl, drawing away from me and straightening up till
my head scarce reached her shoulder. "And I never want to. I hate the
thought of them. I wish I never had been one. Why can't
we--forget them?"
I did not answer, and the labour girl, who, for some technical flaw in
her physique had been rejected for motherhood, arose and walked
ponderously away.
After this baffling revelation of the struggle of human souls caught in
the maw of machine-made science, I found the picture screen a dull dead
thing, and I left the hall and wandered for miles, it seemed, past
endless confusion of meaningless revelry. Everywhere was music and
gaming and laughter. Men and girls lounged and danced, or spun the
wheels of fortune or sat at tables drinking from massive steins, a
highly flavoured variety of rather ineffectual synthetic beer. Older
women served and waited on the men and girls, and for every man was at
least one girl and sometimes as many as could crowd about him. And so
they sang, and banged their mugs and sloshed their frothy beverage.
A lonely stranger amidst the jostling throngs, I wandered on through the
carnival of Berlin's Level of Free Women. Despite my longing for human
companionship I found it difficult to join in this strange recrudescent
paganism with any ease or grace.
Girls, alone or in groups, fluttered about me with many a covert or open
invitation to join in their merry-making, but something in my halting
manner and constrained speech seemed to repulse them, for they would
soon turn away as if condemning me as a man without appreciation of the
value of human enjoyment.
My constraint and embarrassment were increased by a certain sense of
guilt, a feeling which no one in this vast throng, either man or woman,
seemed to share. The place had its own standard of ethics, and they were
shocking enough to a man nurtured in a human society founded on the
sanctification of monogamous marriage. But merely to condemn this
recreational life of Germany, by likening it to the licentious freedom
that exists in occasional unrestrained amusement places in the outer
world, would be to give a very incorrect interpretation of Berlin's
Level of Free Women. As we know such places elsewhere in the world there
is always about them some tacit confession of moral delinquency, some
pretence of apology on the part of the participants. The women who so
revel in the outer world consider themselves under a ban of social
disapproval, while the men are either of a type who have no sense of
moral restraint or men who have for the time abandoned it.
But for this life in Berlin no guilt was felt, no apology offered. The
men considered it as quite a normal and proper part of their life, while
the women looked upon it as their whole life, to which they had been
trained and educated and set apart by the Government; they accepted the
rôle quite as did the scientist, labourer, soldier, or professional
mother. The state had decreed it to be. They did not question its
morality. Hence the life here was licentious and yet unashamed, much, as
I fancy was the life in the groves of Athens or the baths of
ancient Rome.
CHAPTER V
I AM DRAFTED FOR PATERNITY AND MAKE EXTRAORDINARY
PETITION TO THE CHIEF OF THE EUGENIC STAFF
~1~
My research was progressing nicely and I had discovered that in this
field of chemistry also my knowledge of the outer world would give me
tremendous advantages over all competitors. Eagerly I worked at the
laboratory, spending most of my evenings in study. Occasionally I
attended the educational pictures or dined on the Level of Free Women
with my chemical associates and spent an hour or so at dancing or at
cards. My life had settled into routine unbroken by adventure. Then I
received a notice to report for the annual examination at the Physical
Efficiency Laboratory. I went with some misgivings, but the ordeal
proved uneventful. A week later I received a most disturbing
communication, a bulky and official looking packet bearing the imprint
of the Eugenic Office. I nervously slit the envelope and drew forth
a letter:
"You are hereby notified that you have reached a stage of advancement in
your professional work that marks you a man of superior gifts, and,
having been reported as physically perfect you are hereby honoured with
the high privilege and sacred duties of election to paternity. Full
instructions for your conduct in this duty to the State will be found in
the enclosed folder."
In nervous haste I scanned the printed folder:
"Your first duty will be to visit the boys' school for which passport is
here enclosed. The purpose of this is to awaken the paternal instincts
that you may better appreciate and feel the holy obligation and
privilege conferred upon you. You will also find enclosed cards of
introduction to three women whom the Eugenic Office finds to be fitted
as mothers of your children. That natural selection may have a limited
play you are permitted to select only one woman from each three
assigned. Such selection must be made and reported within thirty days,
after which a second trio will be assigned you. Until such final
selection has been recorded you are expressly forbidden to conduct
yourself toward these women in an amorous manner."
Next followed a set of exacting rules for the proper deportment, in the
carrying out of these duties to which the State had assigned me.
A crushing sense of revulsion, a feeling of loathing and uncleanliness
overwhelmed me as I pushed aside the papers. Coming from a world where
the right of the individual to freedom and privacy in the matrimonial
and paternal relations was recognized as a fundamental right of man, I
found this officious communication, with its detailed instruction,
appalling and revolting.
A man cravenly clings to life and yet there are instincts in his soul
which will cause him to sell life defiantly for a mere conception of a
moral principle. To become by official mandate a father of a numerous
German progeny was a thing to which I could not and would not submit.
Many times that day as I automatically pursued my work, I resolved to go
to some one in authority and give myself up to be sent to the mines as a
prisoner of war, or more likely to be executed as a spy. Cold reason
showed me the futility of neglecting or attempting to avoid an assigned
duty. It was a military civilization and I had already seen enough of
this ordered life of Berlin to know that there was no middle ground of
choice between explicit obedience and open rebellion. Nor need I concern
myself with what punishment might be provided for this particular
disobedience for I saw that rebellion for me would mean an investigation
that would result in complete tearing away of the protecting mask of my
German identity.
But after my first tumultuous feeling subsided I realized that something
more than my own life was at stake. Already possessed of much intimate
knowledge of the life within Berlin I believed that I was in a way to
come into possession of secrets of vast and vital importance to the
world. To gain these secrets, to escape from the walls of Berlin, was a
more than personal ambition; it was an ambition for mankind.
After a day or two of deliberation I therefore decided against any rash
rebellion. Moreover, as nothing compromising was immediately required of
me, I detached and mailed the four coupons provided, having duly filled
in the time at which I should make the preliminary calls.
~2~
On the day and hour appointed I presented the school card to the
elevator operator, who punched it after the manner of his kind, and duly
deposited me on the level of schools for boys of the professional
groups. A lad of about sixteen met me at the elevator and conducted me
to the school designated.
The master greeted me with obsequious gravity, and waved me to the
visitor's seat on a raised platform. "You will be asked to speak," he
said, "and I beg that you will tell the boys of the wonderful chemical
discoveries that won you the honours of election to paternity."
"But," I protested, as I glanced at the boys who were being put through
their morning drill in the gymnasium, "I fear the boys of such age will
not comprehend the nature of my work."
"Certainly not," he replied, "and I would rather you did not try to
simplify it for their undeveloped minds, merely speak learnedly of your
work as if you were addressing a body of your colleagues. The less the
boys understand of it the more they will be impressed with its
importance, and the more ambitious they will be to become great
chemists."
This strange philosophy of education annoyed me, but I did not have time
to argue further for the bell had rung and the boys were filing in with
strict military precision. There were about fifty of them, all in their
twelfth year, and of remarkable uniformity in size and development. The
blanched skin, which marked the adult faces of Berlin, was, in the pasty
countenance of those German boys, a more horrifying spectacle. Yet they
stood erect and, despite their lack of colour, were evidently a well
nourished, well exercised group of youngsters.
As the last boy reached his place the master motioned with his hand and
fifty arms moved in unison in a mechanical salute.
"We have with us this morning," said the master, "a chemist who has won
the honours of paternity with his original thought. He will tell you
about his work which you cannot understand--you should therefore listen
attentively."
After a few more sentences of these paradoxical axioms on education, the
master nodded, and, as I had been instructed, I proceeded to talk of the
chemical lore of poison gases.
"And now," said the master, when I resumed my seat, "we will have a
review lesson. You will first recite in unison the creed of your caste."
"We are youth of the super-race," began the boys in a sing-song and well
timed chorus. "We belong to the chemical group of the intellectual
levels, being born of sires who were great chemists, born of great
chemists for many generations. It is our duty to learn while we are yet
young all that we may ever need to know, to keep our minds free from
forbidden knowledge and to resist the temptation to think on unnecessary
things. So we may be good Germans, loyal to the House of Hohenzollern
and to the worship of the old German God and the divine blood of William
the Great."
The schoolmaster, who had nodded his head in unison with the rhythm of
the recitation, now smiled in satisfaction. "That was very good," he
said. "I did not hear one faltering voice. Now you may recite
individually in your alphabetical order.
"Anton, you may describe the stages in the evolution of the super-man."
Anton, a flaxen-haired youngster, arose, saluted like a wooden soldier,
and intoned the following monologue:
"Man is an animal in the process of evolving into a god. The method of
this evolution is a struggle in which the weak perish and the strong
survive. First in this process of man's evolution came the savage, who
lived with the lions and the apes. In the second stage came the dark
races who built the so-called ancient civilizations, and fought among
themselves to possess private property and women and children. Third
came the barbarian Blond Brutes, who were destined to sire the
super-race, but the day had not yet come, and they mixed with the dark
races and produced the mongrel peoples, which make the fourth. The fifth
stage is the pure bred Blond Brutes, uncontaminated by inferior races,
which are the men, who under God's direction, built the Armoured City of
Berlin in which to breed the Supermen who are to conquer the mongrel
peoples. The sixth, last and culminating stage of the evolution of man
is the Divinity in human form which is our noble House of Hohenzollern,
descended physically from William the Great, and spiritually from the
soul of God Himself, whose statue stands with that of the Mighty William
at the portals of the Emperor's palace."
It had been a noble effort for so young a memory and as the proud master
looked at me expectantly I could do nothing less than nod my
appreciation.
The master now gave Bruno the following cue:
"Name the four kinds of government and explain each."
From the sad-eyed youth of twelve came this flow of wisdom:
"The first form of government is monarchy, in which the people are ruled
by a man who calls himself a king but who has no divine authority so
that the people sometimes failed to respect him and made revolutions and
tried to govern themselves. The second form of government is a republic,
sometimes called a democracy. It is usually co-existent with the lawyer,
the priest, the family and the greed for gold. But in reality this
government is by the rich men, who let the poor men vote and think they
have a share in the government, thus to keep them contented with their
poverty. The third form of government is proletariat socialism in which
the people, having abolished kings and rich men, attempt to govern
themselves; but this they cannot do for the same reason that a man
cannot lift himself by his shoestraps--"
At this point Bruno faltered and his face went chalky white. The teacher
being directly in front of the standing pupil did not see what had
happened, while I, with fleeting memory of my own school days,
suppressed my mirth behind a formal countenance, as the stoic Bruno
resumed his seat.
The master marked zero on the roll and called upon Conrad, next in line,
to finish the recitation.
"The fourth and last form of government," recited Conrad, "is autocratic
socialism, the perfect government that we Germans have evolved from
proletariat socialism which had destroyed the greed for private property
and private family life, so that the people ceased to struggle
individually and were ready to accept the Royal House, divinely
appointed by God to govern them perfectly and prepare them to make war
for the conquest of the world."
The recitations now turned to repetitions of the pedigree and ranking of
the various branches of the Royal House. But it was a mere list of names
like the begats of Genesis and I was not able to profit much by this
opportunity to improve my own neglected education. As the morning wore
on the parrot-like monologues shifted to elementary chemistry.
The master had gone entirely through the alphabet of names and now
called again the apt Anton for a more brilliant demonstration of his
system of teaching. "Since we have with us a chemist who has achieved
powers of original thought, I will permit you, Anton, to demonstrate
that even at the tender age of twelve you are capable of
original thought."
Anton rose gravely and stood at attention. "And what shall I think
about?" he asked.
"About anything you like," responded the liberal minded schoolmaster,
"provided it is limited to your permitted field of psychic activity."
Anton tilted back his head and gazed raptly at a portrait of the Mighty
William. "I think," he said, "that the water molecule is made of two
atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen."
A number of the boys shook their heads in disapproval, evidently
recognizing the thought as not being original, but the teacher waited in
respectful silence for the founts of originality to burst forth in
Anton's mind.
"And I think," continued Anton, "that if the water molecule were made of
four atoms of nitrogen and one of oxygen, it would be a great economy,
for after we had bathed in the water we could evaporate it and make air
and breath it, and after we had breathed it we could condense it again
and use it to drink--"
"But that would be unsanitary," piped a voice from the back of the room.
To this interruption Anton, without taking his gaze from the face of
William, replied, "Of course it would if we didn't sterilize it, but I
was coming to that. We would sterilize it each time."
The master now designated two boys to take to the guardhouse of the
school the lad who had spoken without permission. He then produced a red
cardboard cross adorned with the imperial eagle and crossed test-tubes
of the chemists' insignia and I was honoured by being asked to decorate
Anton for his brilliant exploit in original thought.
"Our intellectual work of the day is over," resumed the master, "but in
honour of our guest we will have, a day in advance, our weekly exercises
in emotion. Heinrich, you may recite for us the category of emotions."
"The permitted emotions," said Heinrich, "are: First, anger, which we
should feel when a weak enemy offends us. Second, hate, which is a
higher form of anger, which we should feel when a powerful enemy offends
us. Third, sadness, which we should feel when we suffer. Fourth, mirth,
which we should feel when our enemy suffers. Fifth, courage, which we
feel at all times because we believe in our strength. Sixth, humility,
which we should feel only before our superiors. Seventh, and greatest,
is pride, which we should feel at all times because we are Germans.
"The forbidden emotions are very numerous. The chief ones which we must
guard against are: First, pity, which is a sadness when our enemy
suffers; to feel this is exceedingly wicked. Second, envy, which is a
feeling that some one else is better than we are, which we must not feel
at all because it is destructive of pride. Third, fear, which is a lack
of courage. Fourth, love, which is a confession of weakness, and is
permissible only to women and dogs."
"Very good," said the master, "I will now grant you permission to feel
some of the permitted emotions. We will first conduct a chemical
experiment. I have in this bottle a dangerous explosive and as I
drop in this pellet it may explode and kill us all, but you must
show courage and not fear." He held the pellet above the mouth of
the bottle, but his eyes were on his pupils. As he dropped the
pellet into the bottle, he knocked over with his foot a slab
of concrete, which fell to the floor with a resounding crash. A
few of the boys jumped in their seats, and the master gravely marked
them as deficient in courage.
"You now imagine that you are adult chemists and that the enemy has
produced a new form of gas bomb, a gas against which we have no
protection. They are dropping the gas bombs into our ventilating shafts
and are killing our soldiers in the mines. You hate the enemy--hate
hard--make your faces black with hate and rage. Adolph, you are
expressing mere anger. There, that is better. You never can be a good
German until you learn to hate.
"And now we will have a permitted emotion that you all enjoy; the
privilege to feel mirth is a thing for which you should be grateful.
"An enemy came flying over Berlin--and this is a true story. I can
remember when it happened. The roof guard shot at him and winged his
plane, and he came down in his parachute, which missed the roof of the
city and fell to the earth outside the walls but within the first ring
of the ray defences. He knew that he could not pass beyond this and he
wandered about for many days within range of the glasses of the roof
guards. When he was nearly starved he came near the wall and waved his
white kerchief, which meant he wished to surrender and be taken into
the city."
At this point one of the boys tittered, and the master stopped his story
long enough to mark a credit for this first laugh.
"As the enemy aviator continued to walk about waving his cowardly flag
another enemy plane saw him and let down a line, but the roof guards
shelled and destroyed the plane. Then other planes came and attempted to
pick up the man with lines. In all seven planes were destroyed in
attempting to rescue one man. It was very foolish and very comical. At
last the eighth plane came and succeeded in reaching the man a line
without being winged. The roof batteries shot at the plane in vain--then
the roof gunners became filled with good German hate, and one of them
aimed, not at the plane, but at the man swinging on the unstable wire
line two thousand metres beneath. The shell exploded so near that the
man disappeared as by magic, and the plane flew off with the empty
dangling line."
As the story was finished the boys who had listened with varying degrees
of mechanical smiles now broke out into a chorus of raucous laughter. It
was a forced unnatural laughter such as one hears from a bad actor
attempting to express mirth he does not feel.
When the boys had ceased their crude guffaws the master asked, "Why did
you laugh?"
"Because," answered Conrad, "the enemy were so stupid as to waste seven
planes trying to save one man."
"That is fine," said the master; "we should always laugh when our enemy
is stupid, because then he suffers without knowing why he suffers. If
the enemy were not stupid they would cease fighting and permit us to
rule them and breed the stupidity out of them, as it has been bred out
of the Germans by our good old God and the divine mind of the House of
Hohenzollern."
The boys were now dismissed for a recess and went into the gymnasium to
play leap frog. But the sad-eyed Bruno promptly returned and saluted.
"You may speak," said the master.
"I wish, Herr Teacher," said Bruno, "to petition you for permission to
fight with Conrad."
"But you must not begin a fight," admonished the master, "unless you can
attach to your opponent the odium of causing the strife."
"But he did cause the odium," said Bruno; "he stuck it into my leg with
a pin while I was reciting. The Herr Father saw him do it, "--and the
boy turned his eyes towards me in sad and serious appeal.
The schoolmaster glanced at me inquiringly and I corroborated the lad's
accusation.
"Then," said the master, "you have a _casus belli_ that is actually
true, and if you can make Conrad admit his guilt I will exchange your
mark for his."
Bruno saluted again and started to leave. Then he turned back and said,
"But Conrad is two kilograms heavier than I am, and he may not
admit it."
"Then," said the teacher, "you must know that I cannot exchange the
marks, for victory in a fight compensates for the fault that caused it.
But if you wish I will change the marks now, but then you cannot fight."
"But I wish to fight," said Bruno, "and so does Conrad. We arranged it
before recitation that he was to stick me with the pin."
"Such diplomacy!" exulted the master when the lad had gone, "and to
think that they can only be chemists!"
~3~
As the evening hour drew near which I had set for my call on the first
of the potential mothers assigned me by the Eugenic Staff, I re-read the
rules for my conduct:
"On the occasion of this visit you must wear a full dress uniform,
including all orders, decorations and badges of rank and service to
which you are entitled. This is very important and you should call
attention thereto and explain the full dignity and importance of your
rank and decorations.
"When you call you will first present the card of authorization. You
will then present your identification folder and extol the worth and
character of your pedigree.
"Then you will ask to see the pedigree of the woman, and will not fail
to comment favourably thereon. If she be already a mother you will
inquire in regard to her children. If she be not a mother, you will
supplicate her to speak of her potential children. You will extol the
virtue of her offspring--or her visions thereof,--and will not fail to
speak favourably of their promise of becoming great chemists whose
service will redound to the honour of the German race and the
Royal House.
"After the above mentioned matters have been properly spoken of, you may
compliment the mother upon her own intelligence and fitness as a mother
of scientists. But you will refrain from all reference to her beauty of
person, lest her thoughts be diverted from her higher purpose to matters
of personal amours.
"You will not prolong your call beyond the hours consistent with dignity
and propriety, nor permit the mother to perceive your disposition
toward her."
Surely nothing in such formal procedure could be incompatible with my
own ideals of propriety. Taking with me my card of authorization bearing
the name "Frau Karoline, daughter of Ernest Pfeiffer, Director of the
Perfume Works," I now ventured to the Level of Maternity.
Countless women passed me as I walked along. They were erect of form and
plain of feature, with expressions devoid of either intelligence or
passion. Garbed in formless robes of sombre grey, like saints
of song and story, they went their way with solemn resignation. Some of
them led small children by the hand; others pushed perambulators
containing white robed infants being taken to or from the nurseries for
their scheduled stays in the mothers' individual apartments.
The actions of the mothers were as methodical as well trained nurses. In
their faces was the cold, pallid light of the mother love of the
madonnas of art, uncontaminated by the fretful excitement of the mother
love in a freer and more uncertain world.
Even the children seemed wooden cherubim. They were physically healthy
beyond all blemish, but they cooed and smiled in a subdued manner.
Already the ever present "_verboten_" of an ordered life seemed to have
crept into the small souls and repressed the instincts of anarchy and
the aspirations of individualism. As I walked among these madonnas of
science and their angelic offspring, I felt as I imagined a man of
earthly passions would feel if suddenly loosed in a mediaeval and
orthodox heaven; for everything about me breathed peace, goodness,
and coldness.
At the door of her apartment Frau Karoline greeted me with formal
gravity. She was a young woman of twenty years, with a high forehead and
piercing eyes. Her face was mobile but her manner possessed the dignity
of the matron assured of her importance in the world. Her only child was
at the nursery at the time, in accordance with the rules of the level
that forbids a man to see his step-children. But a large photograph,
aided by Frau Karoline's fulsome description and eulogies, gave me a
very clear picture of the high order of the young chemist's intelligence
though that worthy had but recently passed his first birthday.
The necessary matters of the inspection of pedigrees and the signing of
my card of authorization had been conducted by the young mother with the
cool self-possession of a well disciplined school-mistress. Her attitude
and manner revealed the thoroughness of her education and training for
her duties and functions in life. And yet, though she relieved me so
skilfully of what I feared would be an embarrassing situation, I
conceived an intense dislike for this most exemplary young mother, for
she made me feel that a man was a most useless and insignificant
creature to be tolerated as a necessary evil in this maternal world.
"Surely," said Frau Karoline, as I returned her pedigree, "you could not
do better for your first born child than to honour me with his
motherhood. Not only is my pedigree of the purest of chemical lines,
reaching back to the establishment of the eugenic control, but I myself
have taken the highest honours in the training for motherhood."
"Yes," I acknowledged, "you seem very well trained."
"I am particularly well versed," she continued, "in maternal psychology;
and I have successfully cultivated calmness. In the final tests before
my confirmation for maternity I was found to be entirely free from
erotic and sentimental emotions."
"But," I ventured, "is not maternal love a sentimental emotion?"
"By no means," replied Frau Karoline. "Maternal love of the highest
order, such as I possess, is purely intellectual; it recognizes only the
passions for the greatness of race and the glory of the Royal House.
Such love must be born of the intellect; that is why we women of the
scientific group are the best of all mothers. Thus, were I not wholly
free from weak sentimentality, I might desire that my second child be
sired by the father of my first, but the Eugenic Office has determined
that I would bear a stronger child from a younger father, therefore I
acquiesced to their change of assignment without emotion, as becomes a
proper mother of our well bred race. My first child is extremely
intellectual but he is not quite perfect physically, and a mother such
as I should bear only perfect children. That alone is the supreme purpose
of motherhood. Do you not see that I am fitted for perfect motherhood?"
"Yes," I replied, as I recalled that my instructions were to pay
compliments, "you seem to be a perfect mother."
But the cold and logical perfection of Frau Karoline dampened my
curiosity and oppressed my spirit of adventure, and I closed the
interview with all possible speed and fled headlong to the nearest
elevator that would carry me from the level.
~4~
In my first experience I had suffered nothing worse than an embarrassing
half hour, so, with more confidence I pressed the bell the second
evening, at the apartment of Frau Augusta, daughter of Gustave Schnorr,
Authority on Synthetic Nicotine.
Frau Augusta was a woman of thirty-five. She was well-preserved, more
handsome and less coldly inhuman than the younger woman.
"We will get the formalities over since you have been told they are
necessary," said Frau Augusta, as she reached for my card and folder
and, at the same time, handing me her own pedigree.
Peering over the top of the chart that recorded the antecedents of
Gustave Schnorr, I saw his daughter going through my own folder with the
business-like dispatch of a society dowager examining the "character" of
a new housemaid.
"Ah, yes," she said, raising her brows. "I thought I knew the family.
Your Uncle Otto was my second mate. He is the father of my third son and
my twin girls. I have no more promising children. Have you ever met him?
He is in the aluminum tempering laboratories."
I could only stare stupidly, struck dumb with embarrassment.
"No, I suppose not," went on Frau Augusta, "it is hardly to be expected
since you have upwards of a hundred uncles." She arose and, going toward
a shelf where half a dozen pictures of half a dozen men reposed in an
orderly row, took the second one of the group and handed it to me.
"He is a fine man," she said, with a very full degree of pride for a
past and partial possession. "I fear the Staff erred in transferring
him, but then of course the twin girls were most unexpected and
unfortunate since the Armstadt line is supposed to sire seventy-five per
cent, male offspring.
"What do you think? Isn't the Eugenic Office a little unfair at times?
My fifth man thought so. He said it was a case of politics. I don't
know. I thought politics was something ancient that they had in old
books like churches and families."
"I am sure I do not know," I murmured, as I fumbled the portrait of my
putative uncle.
"Of course," continued the voluble Fran Augusta, "you must not think I
am criticizing the authorities. It is all very necessary. And for the
most part I think they have done very well by me. My ten children have
six fathers. All of them but the first were men of most gracious manner
and superior intelligence. The first one had his paternity right
revoked, so I feel satisfied on that score, even if his son is not
gifted--and yet the boy has beautiful hair--I think he would make an
excellent violinist. But then perhaps he wouldn't have been able to
play, so maybe it is all right, though I would think music would be more
easily learned than chemistry. But then since I cannot read either I
ought not to judge. I will show you his picture. I may as well show you
all their pictures. I don't see why you elected fathers should not see
our children--but then I suppose it might produce quarrels. Some women
are so foolish and insist on talking about the children they have
already borne in a way that makes a man feel that his own children could
never come up to them. Now I never do that. Why should one? The future
is always more interesting than the past. I haven't a single child that
has not won the porcelain cross for obedience. Even my youngest--he is
only fourteen months--obeys as if he were a full grown man. Some say
mental and physical excellence are not correlated--but that is a
prejudice because of those great labour beasts. There isn't one of my
children that has fallen below the minimum growth standards, except my
third daughter, and her father was undersized, so it is no fault
of mine."
As the loquacious mother chattered on, she produced an album, through
which I now turned, inspecting the annual photographs of her blond
brood, each of which was labelled with the statistics of physical growth
and the tests of psychic development.
Strive as I might I could think of no comments to make, but the mother
came to the rescue. Unfastening the binding of the loose leaf album she
hastily shuffled the sheets and brought into an orderly array on the
table before me ten photographs all taken at the age of one year. "That
is the only fair way to view them," she said, "for of course one cannot
compare the picture of a boy of fifteen with an infant of one year. But
at an equal age the comparison is fair to all and now you can surely
tell me which is the most intelligent."
I gazed hopelessly at the infantile portraits which, despite their
varied paternity, looked as alike as a row of peas in a pod.
"Oh, well," said Frau Augusta, "after all is it fair to ask you, since
the twins are your cousins?"
Desperately I wondered which were the twins.
"They resemble you quite remarkably, don't you think so? Except that
your hair is quite dark for an Armstadt." Frau Augusta turned and
glanced furtively at my identification folder. "Of course! your mother.
I had almost forgotten who your mother was, but now I remember, she had
most remarkably dark hair. It will probably prove a dominant
characteristic and your children will also be dark haired. Now I should
like that by way of a change."
I became alarmed at this turn of the conversation toward the more
specific function of my visit, and resolved to make my exit with all
possible speed "consistent with dignity and propriety."
Meanwhile, as she reassembled the scattered sheets of the portrait
album, the official mother chattered on concerning her children's
attributes, while I shifted uneasily in my chair and looked about the
room for my hat--forgetting in my embarrassment that I was dwelling in a
sunless, rainless city and possessed no hat.
At last there was a lull in the monologue and I arose and said I must be
going.
Frau Augusta looked pained and I recalled that I had not yet
complimented her upon her intelligence and fitness to be the mother of
coming generations of chemical scientists, but I stubbornly resolved not
to resume my seat.
"You are young," said Frau Augusta, who had risen and shifted her
position till she stood between me and the door. "Surely you have not
yet made many calls on the maternity level." Then she sighed, "I do not
see why they assign a man only three names to select from. Surely they
could be more liberal." She paused and her face hardened. "And to think
that you men are permitted to call as often as you like upon those
degenerate hussies who have been forbidden the sacred duties of
motherhood. It is a very wicked institution, that level of lust--some
day we women--we mothers of Berlin--will rise in our wrath and see that
they are banished to the mines, for they produce nothing but sin and
misery in this man-made world."
"Yes," I said, "the system is very wrong, but--"
"But the authorities, you need not say it, I have heard it all before,
the authorities, always the authorities. Why should men always be the
authorities? Why do we mothers of Berlin have no rights? Why are we not
consulted in these matters? Why must we always submit?"
Then suddenly, and very much to my surprise, she placed her hands upon
my shoulders and said hoarsely: "Tell me about the Free Level. Are the
women there more beautiful than I?"
"No," I said, "very few of them are beautiful, and those of the labour
groups are most gross and stupid."
"Then why," wailed Frau Augusta, "was I not allowed to go? Why was I
penned up here and made to bear children when others revel in the
delights of love and song and laughter?"
"But," I said, shocked at this unexpected revelation of character,
"yours is the more honourable, more virtuous life. You were chosen for
motherhood because you are a woman of superior intelligence."
"It's a lie," cried Frau Augusta. "I have no intelligence. I want none.
But I am as beautiful as they. But no, they would not let me go. They
penned me up here with these saintly mothers and these angelic children.
Children, children everywhere, millions and millions of them, and not a
man but doctors, and you elected fathers who are sent here to bring us
pain and sorrow. You say nothing of love--your eyes are cold. The last
one said he loved me--the brute! He came but thrice, when my child was
born he sent me a flower. But that is the official rule. And I hate him,
and hate his child that has his lying eyes."
The distraught woman covered her face with her hands and burst into
violent weeping.
When she had ceased her sobs I tried to explain to her the philosophy of
contentment with life's lot. I told her of the seamy side of the gown
that cloaks licentiousness and of the sorrows and bitterness of the
ashes of burned out love. With the most iridescent words at my command I
painted for her the halo of the madonna's glory, and translated for her
the English verse that informs us that there is not a flower in any
land, nor a pearl in any sea, that is as beautiful and lovely as any
child on any mother's knee.
But I do not think I altogether consoled Frau Augusta for my German
vocabulary was essentially scientific, not poetic. But I made a noble
effort and when I left her I felt very much the preacher, for the
function of the preacher, not unlike death, is to make us cling to those
ills we have when we would fly to others that we know not of.
~5~
There remained but one card unsigned of the three given me.
Frau Matilda, daughter of Siegfried Oberwinder, Analine Analyst, was
registered as eighteen and evidently an inexperienced mother-elect as I
was a father-elect. The nature of the man is to hold the virgin above
the madonna, and in starting on my third journey to the maternity level,
I found hitherto inexperienced feelings tugging at my heartstrings and
resolved that whatever she might be, I would be dignified and formal yet
most courteous and kind.
My ring was answered by a slender, frightened girl. She was so shy that
she could only nod for me to enter. I offered my card and folder,
smiling to reassure her, but she retreated precipitously into a far
corner and sat staring at me beseechingly with big grey eyes that seemed
the only striking feature of her small pinched face.
"I am sorry if I frighten you," I said, "but of course you know that I
am sent by the eugenic authorities. I will not detain you long. All that
is really necessary is for you to sign this card."
She timidly signed the card and returned it to the corner of the table.
I felt extremely sorry for the fluttering creature; and, knowing that I
could not alter her lot, I sought to speak words of encouragement. "If
you find it hard now," I said, "it is only because you are young and a
stranger to life, but you will be recompensed when you know the joys of
motherhood."
At my words a look of consecrated purpose glowed in the girl's white
face. "Oh, yes," she said eagerly. "I wish very much to be a mother. I
have studied so hard to learn. I wish only to give myself to the holy
duties of maternity. But I am so afraid."
"But you need not be afraid of me," I said. "This is only a formal call
which I have made because the Eugenic Staff ordered it so. But it seems
to me that some better plan might be made for these meetings. Some
social life might be arranged so that you would become acquainted with
the men who are to be the fathers of your children under less
embarrassing circumstances."
"I try so hard not to be afraid of men, for I know they are necessary to
eugenics."
"Yes," I said dryly, "I suppose they are, though I think I would prefer
to put it that the love of man and woman is necessary to parenthood."
"Oh, no," she said in a frightened voice, "not that, that is very
wicked."
"So you were taught that you should not love men? No wonder you are
afraid of them."
"I was taught to respect men for they are the fathers of children," she
replied.
"Then," I asked, deciding to probe the philosophy of the education for
maternity, "why are not the fathers permitted to enjoy their fatherhood
and live with the mother and the children?"
Frau Matilda now gazed at me with open-mouthed astonishment. "What a
beautiful idea!" she exclaimed with rapture.
"Yes, I rather like it myself--the family--"
"The family!" cried the girl in horror.
"That is what we were talking about."
"But the family is forbidden. It is very wrong, very uneugenic. You must
be a wicked man to speak to me of that."
"You have been taught some very foolish ideas," I replied.
"How dare you!" she cried, in alarm. "I have been taught what is right,
and I want to do what is right and loyal. I passed all my examinations.
I am a good mother-elect, and you say these forbidden things to me. You
talk of love and families. You insult me. And if you select me, I
shall--I shall claim exemption,--" and with that she rose and darted
through the inner door.
I waited for a time and then gently approached the door, which I saw had
swung to with springs and had neither latch nor lock. My gentle rap upon
the hollow panel was answered by a muffled sob. I realized the
hopelessness of further words and silently turned from the door and left
the apartment.
The streets of the level were almost deserted for the curfew had rung
and the lights glowed dim as in a hospital ward at night. I hurried
silently along, shut in by enclosing walls and the lowering ceiling of
the street. From everywhere I seemed to feel upon me the beseeching,
haunting grey eyes of Frau Matilda. My soul was troubled, for it seemed
to stagger beneath the burden of its realization of a lost humanity. And
with me walked grey shadows of other men, felt-footed through the gloom,
and they walked hurriedly as men fleeing from a house of death.
~6~
My next duty as a German father-elect was to report to the Eugenic
Office. There at least I could deal with men; and there I went, nursing
rebellion yet trying my utmost to appear outwardly calm.
To the clerk I offered my three signed cards by way of introduction.
"And which do you select?" asked the oldish man over his rimless
glasses.
"None."
"Ah, but you must."
"But what if I refuse to do so?"
"That is most unusual."
"But does it ever happen?"
"Well, yes," admitted the clerk, "but only by Petition Extraordinary to
the Chief of the Staff. But it is most unusual, and if he refuses to
grant it you may be dishonoured even to the extent of having your
election to paternity suspended, may be even permanently cancelled."
"You mean"--I stammered.
"Exactly--you refuse to accept any one of the three women when all are
most scientifically selected for you. Does it not throw some doubts upon
your own psychic fitness for mating at all? If I may suggest, Herr
Colonel--it would be wiser for you to select some one of the three--you
have yet plenty of time."
"No," I said, trying to hide my elation. "I will not do so. I will make
the Petition Extraordinary to your chief."
"Now?" stammered the clerk.
"Yes, now; how do I go about it?"
"You must first consult the Investigator."
After a few formalities I was conducted to that official.
"You refuse to make selection?" inquired the Investigator.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because," I replied, "I am engaged upon some chemical research of most
unusual nature--"
"Yes," nodded the Investigator, "I have just looked that up. The more
reason you should be honoured with paternity."
"Perhaps," I said, "you are not informed of the grave importance of the
research. If you will consult Herr von Uhl of the Chemical Staff--"
"Entirely unnecessary," he retorted; "paternity is also important.
Besides it takes but little time. No more than you need for recreation."
"But I do not find it recreation. I have not been able to concentrate my
mind on my work since I received notice of my election to paternity."
"But you were warned against this," he said; "you have no right to
permit the development of disturbing romantic emotions. They may be bad
for your work, but they are worse for eugenics. So, if you have made
romantic love to the mothers of Berlin, your case must be investigated."
"But I have not."
"Then why has this disturbed you?"
"Because," I replied, "this system of scientific paternity offends my
instincts."
The investigator ogled me craftily. "What system would you prefer
instead?" he asked.
I saw he was trying to trap me into disloyal admissions. "I have nothing
to propose," I stated. "I only know that I find the paternity system
offensive to me, and that the position I am placed in incapacitates me
for my work."
The investigator made some notes on a pad.
"That is all for the present," he said. "I will refer your case to the
Chief."
Two days later I received an order to report at once to Dr. Ludwig
Zimmern, Chief of the Eugenic Staff.
The Chief, with whom I was soon cloistered, was a man of about sixty
years. His face revealed a greater degree of intelligence than I had yet
observed among the Germans, nor was his demeanour that of haughty
officiousness, for a kindly warmth glowed in his soft dark eyes.
"I have a report here," said Dr. Zimmern, "from my Investigator. He
recommends that your rights of paternity be revoked on the grounds that
he believes yours to be a case of atavistic radicalism. In short he
thinks you are rebellious by instinct, and that you are therefore unsafe
to father the coming generation. It is part of the function of this
office to breed the rebellious instinct out of the German race. What
have you to say in answer to these charges?"
"I do not want to seem rebellious," I stammered, "but I wish to be
relieved of this duty."
"Very well," said Zimmern, "you may be relieved. If you have no
objection I will sign the recommendation as it stands."
Surely, I thought, this man does not seem very bitter toward my
traitorous instincts.
Zimmern smiled and eyed me curiously. "You know," he said, "that to
possess a thought and to speak of it indiscreetly are two
different things."
"Certainly," I replied, emboldened by his words. "A man cannot do
original work in science if he possesses a mind that never thinks
contrary to the established order of things."
The clerks in the outer office must have thought my case a grievous one
for I was closeted with their chief for nearly an hour. Though our
conversation was vague and guarded, I knew that I had discovered in Dr.
Ludwig Zimmern, Chief of the Eugenic Staff, a man guilty himself of the
very crime of possessing rebellious instincts for which he had decided
me unfit to sire German children. And when I finally took my leave I
carried with me his private card and an invitation to call at his
apartment to continue our conversation.
~7~
In the weeks that followed, my acquaintance with the Chief of the
Eugenic Staff ripened rapidly into a warm friendship. The frank manner
in which he revealed his dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in
Germany pleased me greatly. Zimmern was interested in my chemical
researches and quickly comprehended their importance.
"I know so little of chemistry," he deplored, "yet on it our whole life
hangs. That is why I am so glad of an opportunity to talk to you. I do
not approve of so much ignorance of each other's work on the part of our
scientists. Our old university system was better. Then a scientist in
any field knew something of the science in all fields. But now we are
specialized from childhood. Take, for example, yourself. You are at work
on a great problem by which all of our labour stands to be undone if you
chemists do not solve it, and yet you do not understand how we will all
be undone. I think you should know more of what it means, then you will
work better. Is it not so?"
"Perhaps," I said, "but I have little time. I am working too hard now."
"Then," said Zimmern, "you should spend more time in pleasure on the
Free Level. Two days ago I conferred with the Emperor's Advisory Staff,
and I learned that grave changes are threatened. That is one reason I am
so interested in this protium on which you chemists are working. If you
do not solve this problem and replenish the food supply, the Emperor has
decided that the whole Free Level with its five million women must be
abolished. His Majesty will have no half-way measures. He is afraid to
take part of these women away, lest the intellectual workers rebel like
the labourers did in the last century when their women were taken away
piecemeal."
"But what will His Majesty do with these five million women?" I
inquired, eagerly desirous to learn more.
"Do? What can he do with the women?" exclaimed Dr. Zimmern in a low
pitched but vibrant voice. "He thinks he will make workers of them. He
does not seem to appreciate how specialized they are for pleasure. He
will make machine tenders of them to relieve the workmen, who are to be
made soldiers. He would make surface soldiers out of these blind moles
of the earth, put amber glasses on them and train them to run on the
open ground and carry the war again into the sunlight. It is folly,
sheer folly, and madness. His Majesty, I fear, reads too much of old
books. He always was historically inclined."
On a later occasion Zimmern gave me the broad outlines of the history of
German Eugenics.
"Our science of applied Eugenics," he said, "began during the Second
World War. Our scientists had long known that the same laws of heredity
by which plants and animals had been bred held true with man, but they
had been afraid to apply those laws to man because the religion of that
day taught that men had souls and that human life was something too
sacred to be supervised by science. But William III was a very fearless
man, and he called the scientists together and asked them to outline a
plan for the perfection of the German race.
"At first all they advocated was that paternity be restricted to the
superior men. This broke up the old-fashioned family where every man
chose his own wife and sired as many children as he liked. There were
great mutterings about that, and if we had not been at war, there would
have been rebellion. The Emperor told the people it was a military
necessity. The death toll of war then was great and there was urgent
need to increase the birth rate, so the people submitted and women soon
ceased to complain because they could no longer have individual
husbands. The children were supported by the state, and if they had
legitimate fathers of the approved class they were left in the mothers'
care. As all women who were normal and healthy were encouraged to bear
children, there was a great increase in the birth rate, which came near
resulting in the destruction of the race by starvation.
"As soon as a sufficient number of the older generation that had
believed in the religious significance of the family and marriage system
had died out, the ambitious eugenists set about to make other reforms.
The birth rate was cut down by restricting the privilege of motherhood
to a selected class of women. The other women were instructed in the
arts of pleasing man and avoiding maternity, and that is where we have
the origin of our free women. In those days they were free to associate
with men of all classes. Indeed any other plan would at first have been
impossible.
"A second fault was that the superior men for whom paternity was
permitted were selected from the official and intellectual classes. The
result was that the quality of the labourers deteriorated. So two
strains were established, the one for the production of the intellectual
workers, and the other for producing manual workers. From time to time
this specialization has increased until now we have as many strains of
inheritance as there are groups of useful characteristics known to be
hereditary.
"We have produced some effects," mused Zimmern, "which were not
anticipated, and which have been calling forth considerable criticism.
His Majesty sends me memorandums nearly every year, after he reviews the
maternity levels, insisting that the feminine beauty of the race is, as
a whole, deteriorating. And yet this is logical enough. With the
exception of our small actor-model strain, the characteristics for which
we breed have only the most incidental relation to feminine beauty. The
type of the labour female is, as you have seen, a buxom, fleshly beauty;
youth and full nutrition are essential to its display, and it soon fades.
In the scientific strains it seems that the power of original thought
correlates with a feminine type that is certainly not beautiful.
Doubtless not understanding this you may have felt that you were
discriminated against in your assignment. But the clerical mind
with its passion for monotonous repetition of petty mental processes
seems to correlate with the most exquisite and refined feminine
features. Those scintillating beauties on the Free Level who have
ever at their beck our wisest men are from our clerical strain,--but
of course they are only the rejects. It is unfortunate that you cannot
see the more privileged specimens in the clerical maternity level.
"But I digress to that which is of no consequence. The beauty of women is
unimportant but the number of women is very important. When some women
were specialized for motherhood then there were surplus women. At first
they made workers of them. The war was then conducted on a larger scale
than now. We had not yet fully specialized the soldier class. All the
young men went to war; and, when they came back and went to work, they
became bitterly jealous of the women workers and made an outcry that
those who could not fight should not work. The men workers drove the women
from industry, hoping thereby each to possess a mistress. As a result the
great number of unproductive women was a drain upon the state. All sorts
of schemes were proposed to reduce the number of female births but most of
these were unscientific. In studying the records it was found that the
offspring of certain men were predominantly males. By applying this
principle of selection we have, with successive generations, been able to
reduce the proportion of female births to less than half the old rate.
"But the sexual impulse of the labourers made them restless and
rebellious, and the support of the free women for these millions of
workers was a great economic waste. When animals had been bred to large
size and great strength their sexuality had decreased, while their power
as beasts of burden increased. The same principle applied to man has
resulted in more docile workers. By beginning with the soldiers and mine
workers, who were kept away from women, and by combining proper training
with the hereditary selection, we solved that problem and removed all
knowledge of women from the minds of the workmen."
"But how about paternity among the workers?" I asked.
"Those who are selected are removed to special isolated quarters. They
are told they are being taken to serve as His Majesty's body guard; and
they never go back to mingle with their fellows."
I then related for the doctor my conversation with the workman who asked
me about women.
"So," said Zimmern, "there has been a leak somewhere; knowledge is hard
to bottle. Still we have bottled most of it and the labourer accepts his
loveless lot. But it could not be done with the intellectual worker."
Dr. Zimmern smiled cynically. "At least," he added, "we don't propose to
admit that it can be done. And that, Col. Armstadt, is what I was
remarking about the other evening. Unless you chemists can solve the
protium problem, Germany must cut her population swiftly, if we do not
starve out altogether. His Majesty's plan to turn the workmen into
soldiers and make workers of the free women will not solve it. It is too
serious for that. The Emperor's talk about the day being at hand is all
nonsense. He knows and we know that these mongrel herds, as he calls the
outside enemy, are not so degenerate.
"We may have improved the German stock in some ways by our scientific
breeding, but science cannot do much in six generations, and what we
have accomplished, I as a member of the Eugenist Staff, can assure you
has really been attained as much by training as by breeding, though the
breeding is given the credit. Our men are highly specialized, and once
outside the walls of Berlin they will find things so different that this
very specialization will prove a handicap. The mongrel peoples are more
adaptable. Our workmen and soldiers are large in physique, but dwarfed
of intellect. The enemy will beat us in open war, and, even if we should
be victorious in war, we could not rule them. Either we solve this food
business or we all turn soldiers and go out into the blinding sunlight
and die fighting."
I ventured as a wild remark: "At least, if we get outside there will be
plenty of women."
The older man looked at me with the superiority of age towards youth.
"Young man," he said, "you have not read history; you do not understand
this love and family doctrine; it exists in the outside world today just
as it did two centuries ago. The Germans in the days of the old surface
wars made too free with the enemy's women, and that is why they ran us
into cover here and penned us up. These mongrel people will fight for
their women when they will fight for nothing else. We have not bred all
the lust out of our workmen either. It is merely dormant. Once they are
loosed in the outer world they will not understand this thing and they
will again make free with the enemy's women, and then we shall all be
exterminated."
Dr. Zimmern got up and filled a pipe with synthetic tobacco and puffed
energetically as he walked about the room. "What do you say about this
protium ore?" he asked; "will you be able to solve the problem?"
"Yes," I said, "I think I shall."
"I hope so," replied my host, "and yet sometimes I do not care; somehow
I want this thing to come to an end. I want to see what is outside there.
I think, perhaps, I would like to fly.
"What troubles me is that I do not see how we can ever do it. We have
bred and trained our race into specialization and stupidity. We wouldn't
know how to go out and join this World State if they would let us."
Dr. Zimmern paced the room in silence for a time. "Do you know," he
said, "I should like to see a negro, a black man with kinky hair--it
must be queer."
"Yes," I answered, "there must be many queer things out there."
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH I LEARN THAT COMPETITION IS STILL
THE LIFE OF THE OLDEST TRADE IN THE WORLD
~1~
When I told Dr. Zimmern that I should solve the problem of the increase
of the supply of protium I may have been guilty of speaking of hopes as
if they were certainties. My optimism was based on the discovery that
the exact chemical state of the protium in the ore was unknown, and that
it did not exist equally in all samples of the ore.
After some further months of labour I succeeded in determining the exact
chemical ingredients of the ore, and from this I worked rapidly toward a
new process of extraction that would greatly increase the total yield of
the precious element. But this fact I kept from my assistants whose work
I directed to futile researches while I worked alone after hours in
following up the lead I had discovered.
During the progress of this work I was not always in the laboratory. I
had become a not infrequent visitor to the Level of the Free Women. The
continuous carnival of amusement had an attraction for me, as it must
have had for any tired and lonely man. But it was not merely the lure of
sensuous pleasures that appealed to me, for I was also fascinated with
the deeper and more tragic aspect of life beneath the gaudy surface of
hectic joy.
Some generalities I had picked up from observation and chance
conversations. As a primary essential to life on the level I had quickly
learned that money was needed, and my check book was in frequent demand.
The bank provided an aluminum currency for the pettier needs of the
recreational life, but neither the checks nor the currency had had value
on other levels, since there all necessities were supplied without cost
and luxuries were unobtainable. This strange retention of money
circulation and general freedom of personal conduct exclusively on the
Free Level puzzled me. Thus I found that food and drink were here
available for a price, a seeming contradiction to the strict limitations
of the diet served me at my own quarters. At first it seemed I had
discovered a way to defeat that limitation--but there was the weigher to
be considered.
It was a queer ensemble, this life in the Black Utopia of Berlin, a
combination of a world of rigid mechanistic automatism in the regular
routine of living with rioting individual license in recreational
pleasure. The Free Level seemed some ancient Bagdad, some Bourbon Court,
some Monte Carlo set here, an oasis of flourishing vice in a desert of
sterile law-made, machine-executed efficiency and puritanically ordered
life. Aided by a hundred ingenious wheels and games of chance, men and
women gambled with the coin and credit of the level. These games were
presided over by crafty women whose years were too advanced to permit of
a more personal means of extracting a living from the grosser passions
of man. Some of these aged dames were, I found, quite highly regarded
and their establishments had become the rendezvous for many younger
women who by some arrangement that I could not fathom plied their
traffic in commercialized love under the guidance of these subtler women
who had graduated from the school of long experience in preying
upon man.
But only the more brilliant women could so establish themselves for the
years of their decline. There were others, many others, whose beauty had
faded without an increase in wit, and these seemed to be serving their
more fortunate sisters, both old and young, in various menial
capacities. It was a strange anachronism in this world where men's more
weighty affairs had been so perfectly socialized, to find woman
retaining, evidently by men's permission, the individualistic right to
exploit her weaker sister.
The thing confounded me, and yet I recalled the well known views of our
sociological historians who held that it was woman's greater
individualism that had checked the socialistic tendencies of the world.
Had the Germans then achieved and maintained their rigid socialistic
order by retaining this incongruous vestige of feminine commercialism as
a safety valve for the individualistic instincts of the race?
They called it the Free Level, and I marvelled at the nature of this
freedom. Freedom for licentiousness, for the getting and losing of money
at the wheels of fortune, freedom for temporary gluttony and the mild
intoxication of their flat, ill-flavoured synthetic beer. A tragic
symbol it seemed to me of the ignobility of man's nature, that he will
be a slave in all the loftier aspects of living if he can but retain his
freedom for his vices and corruptions. Had the Germans then, like the
villain of the moral play, a necessary part in the tragedy of man; did
they exist to show the other races of the earth the way they
should not go? But the philosophy of this conception collapsed when I
recalled that for more than a century the world had lost all sight of
the villain and yet had not in the least deteriorated from a lack of the
horrible example.
From these vaguer speculations concerning the Free Level of Berlin that
existed like a malformed vestigial organ in the body of that socialized
state, my mind came back to the more human, more personal side of the
problem thus presented me. I wanted to know more of the lives of these
women who maintained Germany's remnant of individualism.
To what extent, I asked myself, have the true instincts of womanhood and
the normal love of man and child been smothered out of the lives of
these girls? What secret rebellions are they nursing in their hearts? I
wondered, too, from what source they came, and why they were selected
for this life, for Zimmern had not adequately enlightened me on
this point.
Pondering thus on the secret workings in the hearts of these girls, I
sat one evening amid the sensuous beauty of the Hall of Flowers. I
marvelled at how little the Germans seemed to appreciate it, for it was
far less crowded than were the more tawdry places of revelry. Here
within glass encircling walls, preserved through centuries of artificial
existence, feeding from pots of synthetic soil and stimulated by
perpetual light, marvellous botanical creations flourished and flowered
in prodigal profusion. Ponderous warm-hued lilies floated on the
sprinkled surface of the fountain pool. Orchids, dangling from the metal
lattice, hung their sensuous blossoms in vapour-laden air. Luxurious
vines, climatized to this unreal world, clambered over cosy arbours, or
clung with gripping fingers to the mossy concrete pillars.
~2~
I was sitting thus in moody silence watching the play of the fountain,
when, through the mist, I saw the lonely figure of a girl standing in
the shadows of a viny bower. She was toying idly with the swaying
tendrils. Her hair was the unfaded gold of youth. Her pale dress of
silvery grey, unmarred by any clash of colour, hung closely about a form
of wraith-like slenderness.
I arose and walked slowly toward her. As I approached she turned toward
me a face of flawless girlish beauty, and then as quickly turned away as
if seeking a means of escape.
"I did not mean to intrude," I said.
She did not answer, but when I turned to go, to my surprise, she stepped
forward and walked at my side.
"Why do you come here alone?" she asked shyly, lifting a pensive
questioning face.
"Because I am tired of all this tawdry noise. But you," I said, "surely
you are not tired of it? You cannot have been here long."
"No," she replied, "I have not. Only thirty days"; and her blue eyes
gleamed with childish pride.
"And that is why you seem so different from them all?"
Timidly she placed her hand upon my arm. "So you," she said gratefully,
"you understand that I am not like them-that is, not yet."
"You do not act like them," I replied, "and what is more, you act as if
you did not want to be like them. It surely cannot be merely that you
are new here. The other girls when they come seem so eager for this
life, to which they have long been trained. Were you not trained for
it also?"
"Yes," she admitted, "they tried to train me for it, but they could not
kill my artist's soul, for I was not like these others, born of a strain
wherein women can only be mothers, or, if rejected for that, come here.
I was born to be a musician, a group where women may be something more
than mere females."
"Then why are you here?" I asked.
"Because," she faltered, "my voice was imperfect. I have, you see, the
soul of an artist but lack the physical means to give that soul
expression. And so they transferred me to the school for free women,
where I have been courted by the young men of the Royal House. But of
course you understand all that."
"Yes," I said, "I know something of it; but my work has always so
absorbed me that I have not had time to think of these matters. In fact,
I come to the Free Level much less than most men."
For a moment, it seemed, her eyes hardened in cunning suspicion, but as
I returned her intent gaze I could fathom only the doubts and fears of
childish innocence.
"Please let us sit down," I said; "it is so beautiful here; and then
tell me all about yourself, how you have lived your childhood, and what
your problems are. It may be that I can help you."
"There is not much to tell," she sighed, as she seated herself beside
me. "I was only eight years old when the musical examiners condemned my
voice and so I do not remember much about the music school. In the other
school where they train girls for the life on the Free Level, they
taught us dancing, and how to be beautiful, and always they told us that
we must learn these things so that the men would love us. But the only
men we ever saw were the doctors. They were always old and serious and I
could not understand how I could ever love men. But our teachers would
tell us that the other men would be different. They would be handsome
and young and would dance with us and bring us fine presents. If we were
pleasing in their sight they would take us away, and we should each have
an apartment of our own, and many dresses with beautiful colours, and
there would be a whole level full of wonderful things and we could go
about as we pleased, and dance and feast and all life would be love and
joy and laughter.
"Then, on the 'Great Day,' when we had our first individual dresses--for
before we had always worn uniforms--the men came. They were young
military officers and members of the Royal House who are permitted to
select girls for their own exclusive love. We were all very shy at
first, but many of the girls made friends with the men and some of them
went away that first day. And after that the men came as often as they
liked and I learned to dance with them, and they made love to me and
told me I was very beautiful. Yet somehow I did not want to go with
them. We had been told that we would love the men who loved us. I don't
know why, but I didn't love any of them. And so the two years passed and
they told me I must come here alone. And so here I am."
"And now that you are here," I said, "have you not, among all these men
found one that you could love?"
"No," she said, with a tremor in her voice, "but they say I must."
"And how," I asked, "do they enforce that rule? Does any one require
you--to accept the men?"
"Yes," she replied. "I must do that--or starve."
"And how do you live now?" I asked.
"They gave me money when I came here, a hundred marks. And they make me
pay to eat and when my money is gone I cannot eat unless I get more. And
the men have all the money, and they pay. They have offered to pay me,
but I refused to take their checks, and they think me stupid."
The child-like explanation of her lot touched the strings of my heart.
"And how long," I asked, "is this money that is given you when you come
here supposed to last?"
"Not more than twenty days," she answered.
"But you," I said, "have been here thirty days!"
She looked at me and smiled proudly. "But I," she said, "only eat one
meal a day. Do you not see how thin I am?"
The realization that any one in this scientifically fed city could be
hungry was to me appalling. Yet here was a girl living amidst luxurious
beauty, upon whom society was using the old argument of hunger to force
her acceptance of the love of man.
I rose and held out my hand. "You shall eat again today," I said.
"I would rather not," she demurred. "I have not yet accepted favours
from any man."
"But you must. You are hungry," I protested. "The problem of your
existence here cannot be put off much longer. We will go eat and then we
will try and find some solution."
Without further objection she walked with me. We found a secluded booth
in a dining hall. I ordered the best dinner that Berlin had to offer.
During the intervals of silence in our rather halting dinner
conversation, I wrestled with the situation. I had desired to gain
insight into the lives of these girls. Yet now that the opportunity was
presented I did not altogether relish the rôle in which it placed me.
The apparent innocence of the confiding girl seemed to open an easy way
for a personal conquest--and yet, perhaps because it was so obvious and
easy, I rebelled at the unfairness of it. To rescue her, to aid her to
escape--in a free world one might have considered these more obvious
moves, but here there was no place for her to escape to, no higher
social justice to which appeal could be made. Either I must accept her
as a personal responsibility, with what that might involve, or desert
her to her fate. Both seemed cowardly--yet such were the horns of the
dilemma and a choice must be made. Here at least was an opportunity to
make use of the funds that lay in the bank to the credit of the name I
bore, and for which I had found so little use. So I decided to offer her
money, and to insist that it was not offered as the purchase price
of love.
"You must let me help you," I said, "you must let me give you money."
"But I do not want your money," she replied. "It would only postpone my
troubles. Even if I do accept your money, I would have to accept money
from other men also, for you cannot pay for the whole of a
woman's living."
"Why not," I asked, "does any rule forbid it?"
"No rule, but can so young a man as you afford it?"
"How much does it take for you to live here?"
"About five marks a day."
I glanced rather proudly at my insignia as a research chemist of the
first rank. "Do you know," I asked, "how much income that
insignia carries?"
"Well, no," she admitted, "I know the income of military officers, but
there are so many of the professional ranks and classes that I get all
mixed up."
"That means," I said, "ten thousand marks a year."
"So much as that!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "And I can live here
on two hundred a month, but no, I did not mean that--you wouldn't,--I
couldn't--let you give me so much."
"Much!" I exclaimed; "you may have five hundred if you need it."
"You make love very nicely," she replied with aloofness.
"But I am not making love," I protested.
"Then why do you say these things? Do you prefer some one else? If so
why waste your funds on me?"
"No, no!" I cried, "it is not that; but you see I want to tell you
things; many things that you do not know. I want to see you often and
talk to you. I want to bring you books to read. And as for money, that
is so you will not starve while you read my books and listen to me talk.
But you are to remain mistress of your own heart and your own person.
You see, I believe there are ways to win a woman's love far better than
buying her cheap when she is starved into selling in this
brutal fashion."
She looked at me dubiously. "You are either very queer," she said, "or
else a very great liar."
"But I am neither," I protested, piqued that the girl in her innocence
should yet brand me either mentally deficient or deceitful. "It is
impossible to make you understand me," I went on, "and yet you must
trust me. These other men, they approve the system under which you live,
but I do not. I offer you money, I insist on your taking it because
there is no other way, but it is not to force you to accept me but only
to make it unnecessary for you to accept some one else. You have been
very brave, to stand out so long. You must accept my money now, but you
need never accept me at all--unless you really want me. If I am to make
love to you I want to make love to a woman who is really free; a woman
free to accept or reject love, not starved into accepting it in this
so-called freedom."
"It is all very wonderful," she repeated; "a minute ago I thought you
deceitful, and now I want to believe you. I can not stand out much
longer and what would be the use for just a few more days?"
"There will be no need," I said gently, "your courage has done its work
well--it has saved you for yourself. And now," I continued, "we will
bind this bargain before you again decide me crazy."
Taking out my check book I filled in a check for two hundred marks
payable to--"To whom shall I make it payable?" I asked.
"To Bertha, 34 R 6," she said, and thus I wrote it, cursing the
prostituted science and the devils of autocracy that should give an
innocent girl a number like a convict in a jail or a mare in a breeder's
herd book.
And so I bought a German girl with a German check--bought her because I
saw no other way to save her from being lashed by starvation to the
slave block and sold piecemeal to men in whom honour had not even died,
but had been strangled before it was born.
With my check neatly tucked in her bosom, Bertha walked out of the café
clinging to my arm, and so, passing unheeding through the throng of
indifferent revellers, we came to her apartment.
At the door I said, "Tomorrow night I come again. Shall it be at the
café or here?"
"Here," she whispered, "away from them all."
I stooped and kissed her hand and then fled into the multitude.
~3~
I had promised Bertha that I would bring her books, but the narrow range
of technical books permitted me were obviously unsuitable, nor did I
feel that the unspeakably morbid novels available on the Level of Free
Women would serve my purpose of awakening the girl to more wholesome
aspirations. In this emergency I decided to appeal to my
friend, Zimmern.
Leaving the laboratory early, I made my way toward his apartment,
puzzling my brain as to what kind of a book I could ask for that would
be at once suitable to Bertha's child-like mind and also be a volume
which I could logically appear to wish to read myself. As I walked
along the answer flashed into my mind--I would ask for a geography
of the outer world.
Happily I found Zimmern in. "I have come to ask," I said, "if you could
loan me a book of description of the outer world, one with maps, one
that tells all that is known of the land and seas and people."
"Oh, yes," smiled Zimmern, "you mean a geography. Your request," he
continued, "does me great honour. Books telling the truth about the
world without are very carefully guarded. I shall be pleased to get the
geography for you at once. In fact I had already decided that when you
came again I would take you with me to our little secret library.
Germany is facing a great crisis, and I know no better way I can serve
her than doing my part to help prepare as many as possible of our
scientists to cope with the impending problems. Unless you chemists
avert it, we shall all live to see this outer world, or die that
others may."
Dr. Zimmern led the way to the elevator. We alighted on the Level of Free
Women. Instead of turning towards the halls of revelry we took our
course in the opposite direction along the quiet streets among the
apartments of the women. We turned into a narrow passage-way and Dr.
Zimmern rang the bell at an apartment door. But after waiting a moment
for an answer he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.
"I am sorry Marguerite is out," he said, as he conducted me into a
reception room. The walls were hung with seal-brown draperies. There
were richly upholstered chairs and a divan piled high with fluffy
pillows. In one corner stood a bookcase of burnished metal filigree.
Zimmern waved his hand at the case with an expression of disdain. "Only
the conventional literature of the level, to keep up appearances," he
said; "our serious books are in here"; and he thrust open the door of a
room which was evidently a young lady's boudoir.
Conscious of a profane intrusion, I followed Dr. Zimmern into the dainty
dressing chamber. Stepping across the room he pushed open a spacious
wardrobe, and thrusting aside a cleverly arranged shield of feminine
apparel he revealed, upon some improvised shelves, a library of perhaps
a hundred volumes. He ran his hand fondly along the bindings. "No other
man of your age in Berlin," he said, "has ever had access to such a
complete fund of knowledge as is in this library."
I hope the old doctor took for appreciation the smile that played upon
my face as I contrasted his pitiful offering with the endless miles of
book stacks in the libraries of the outer world where I had spent so
many of my earlier days.
"Our books are safer here," said Zimmern, "for no one would suspect a
girl on this level of being interested in serious reading. If perchance
some inspector did think to perform his neglected duties we trust to him
being content to glance over the few novels in the case outside and not
to pry into her wardrobe closet. There is still some risk, but that we
must take, since there is no absolute privacy anywhere. We must trust to
chance to hide them in the place least likely to be searched."
"And how," I asked, "are these books accumulated?"
"It is the result of years of effort," explained Zimmern. "There are
only a few of us who are in this secret group but all have contributed
to the collection, and we come here to secure the books that the others
bring. We prefer to read them here, and so avoid the chance of being
detected carrying forbidden books. There is no restriction on the
callers a girl may have at her apartment; the authorities of the level
are content to keep records only of her monetary transactions, and that
fact we take advantage of. Should a man's apartment on another level be
so frequently visited by a group of men an inquiry would be made."
All this was interesting, but I inferred that I would again have
opportunity to visit the library and now I was impatient to keep my
appointment with Bertha. Making an excuse for haste, I asked Zimmern to
get the geography for me. The stiff back of the book had been removed,
and Zimmern helped me adjust the limp volume beneath my waistcoat.
"I am sorry you cannot remain and meet Marguerite tonight," he said as I
stepped toward the door. "But tomorrow evening I will arrange for you to
meet Colonel Hellar of the Information Staff, and Marguerite can be with
us then. You may go directly to my booth in the café where you last
dined with me."
~4~
After a brief walk I came to Bertha's apartment, and nervously pressed
the bell. She opened the door stealthily and peered out, then
recognizing me, she flung it wide.
"I have brought you a book," I said as I entered; and, not knowing what
else to do, I went through the ridiculous operation of removing the
geography from beneath my waistcoat.
"What a big book," exclaimed Bertha in amazement. However, she did not
open the geography but laid it on the table, and stood staring at me
with her child-like blue eyes.
"Do you know," she said, "that you are the first visitor I ever had in
my apartment? May I show you about?"
As I followed her through the cosy rooms, I chafed to see the dainty
luxury in which she was permitted to live while being left to starve.
The place was as well adapted to love-making as any other product
of German science is adapted to its end. The walls were adorned
with sensual prints; but happily I recalled that Bertha, having
no education in the matter, was immune to the insult.
Anticipating my coming she had ordered dinner, and this was presently
delivered by a deaf-and-dumb mechanical servant, and we set it forth on
the dainty dining table. Since the world was young, I mused, woman and
man had eaten a first meal together with all the world shut out, and so
we dined amid shy love and laughter in a tiny apartment in the heart of
a city where millions of men never saw the face of woman--and where
millions of babies were born out of love by the cold degree of science.
And this same science, bartering with licentious iniquity, had provided
this refuge and permitted us to bar the door, and so we accepted our
refuge and sanctified it with the purity that was within our own
hearts--such at least was my feeling at the time.
And so we dined and cleared away, and talked joyfully of nothing. As the
evening wore on Bertha, beside me upon the divan, snuggled contentedly
against my shoulder. The nearness and warmth of her, and the innocence
of her eyes thrilled yet maddened me.
With fast beating heart, I realized that I as well as Bertha was in the
grip of circumstances against which rebellion was as futile as were
thoughts of escape. There was no one to aid and no one to forbid or
criticize. Whatever I might do to save her from the fate ordained for
her would of necessity be worked out between us, unaided and unhampered
by the ethics of civilization as I had known it in a freer, saner world.
In offering Bertha money and coming to her apartment I had thrust myself
between her and the crass venality of the men of her race, but I had now
to wrestle with the problem that such action had involved. If, I
reasoned, I could only reveal to her my true identity the situation
would be easier, for I could then tell her of the rules of the game of
love in the world I had known. Until she knew of that world and its
ideals, how could I expect her to understand my motives? How else could
I strengthen her in the battle against our own impulses?
And yet, did I dare to confess to her that I was not a German? Would not
deep-seated ideals of patriotism drilled into the mind of a child place
me in danger of betrayal at her hands? Such a move might place my own
life in jeopardy and also destroy my opportunity of being of service to
the world, could I contrive the means of escape from Berlin with the
knowledge I had gained. Small though the possibilities of such escape
might be, it was too great a hope for me to risk for sentimental
reasons. And could she be expected to believe so strange a tale?
And so the temptation to confess that I was not Karl Armstadt passed,
and with its passing, I recalled the geography that I had gone to so
much trouble to secure, and which still lay unopened upon the table.
Here at least was something to get us away from the tumultuous
consciousness of ourselves and I reached for the volume and spread it
open upon my knees.
"What a funny book!" exclaimed Bertha, as she gazed at the round maps of
the two hemispheres. "Of what is that a picture?"
"The world," I answered.
She stared at me blankly. "The Royal World?" she asked.
"No, no," I replied. "The world outside the walls of Berlin."
"The world in the sun," exclaimed Bertha, "on the roof where they fight
the airplanes? A roof-guard officer" she paused and bit her lip--
"The world of the inferior races," I suggested, trying to find some
common footing with her pitifully scant knowledge.
"The world underground," she said, "where the soldiers fight in the
mines?"
Baffled in my efforts to define this world to her, I began turning the
pages of the geography, while Bertha looked at the pictures in
child-like wonder, and I tried as best I could to find simple
explanations.
Between the lines of my teaching, I scanned, as it were, the true state
of German ignorance. Despite the evident intended authoritativeness of
the book--for it was marked "Permitted to military staff officers"--I
found it amusingly full of erroneous conceptions of the true state of
affairs in the outer world.
This teaching of a child-like mind the rudiments of knowledge was an
amusing recreation, and so an hour passed pleasantly. Yet I realized
that this was an occupation of which I would soon tire, for it was not
the amusement of teaching a child that I craved, but the companionship
of a woman of intelligence.
As we turned the last page I arose to take my departure. "If I leave the
book with you," I said, "will you read it all, very carefully? And then
when I come again I will explain those things you can not understand."
"But it is so big, I couldn't read it in a day," replied Bertha, as she
looked at me appealingly.
I steeled myself against that appeal. I wanted very much to get my mind
back on my chemistry, and I wanted also to give her time to read and
ponder over the wonders of the great unknown world. Moreover, I no
longer felt so grievously concerned, for the calamity which had
overshadowed her had been for the while removed. And I had, too, my own
struggle to cherish her innocence, and that without the usual help
extended by conventional society. So I made brave resolutions and
explained the urgency of my work and insisted that I could not see her
for five days.
Hungrily she pleaded for a quicker return; and I stubbornly resisted the
temptation. "No," I insisted, "not tomorrow, nor the next day, but I
will come back in three days at the same hour that I came tonight."
Then taking her in my arms, I kissed her in feverish haste and tore
myself from the enthralling lure of her presence.
~5~
When I reached the café the following evening to keep my appointment
with Zimmern, the waiter directed me to one of the small enclosed
booths. As I entered, closing the door after me, I found myself
confronting a young woman.
"Are you Col. Armstadt?" she asked with a clear, vibrant voice. She
smiled cordially as she gave me her hand. "I am Marguerite. Dr. Zimmern
has gone to bring Col. Hellar, and he asked me to entertain you until
his return."
The friendly candour of this greeting swept away the grey walls of
Berlin, and I seemed again face to face with a woman of my own people.
She was a young woman of distinctive personality. Her features, though
delicately moulded, bespoke intelligence and strength of character that
I had not hitherto seen in the women of Berlin. Framing her face was a
luxuriant mass of wavy brown hair, which fell loosely about her
shoulders. Her slender figure was draped in a cape of deep blue
cellulose velvet.
"Dr. Zimmern tells me," I said as I seated myself across the table from
her, "that you are a dear friend of his."
A swift light gleamed in her deep brown eyes. "A very dear friend," she
said feelingly, and then a shadow flitted across her face as she added,
"Without him life for me would be unbearable here."
"And how long, if I may ask, have you been here?"
"About four years. Four years and six days, to be exact. I can keep
count you know," and she smiled whimsically, "for I came on the day of
my birth, the day I was sixteen."
"That is the same for all, is it not?"
"No one can come here before she is sixteen," replied Marguerite, "and
all must come before they are eighteen."
"But why did you come at the first opportunity?" I asked, as I mentally
compared her confession with that of Bertha who had so courageously
postponed as long as she could the day of surrender to this life of
shamefully commercialized love.
"And why should I not come?" returned Marguerite. "I had a chance to
come, and I accepted it. Do you think life in the school for girls of
forbidden birth is an enjoyable one?"
I wanted to press home the point of my argument, to proclaim my pride in
Bertha's more heroic struggle with the system, for this girl with whom I
now conversed was obviously a woman of superior intelligence, and it
angered me to know that she had so easily surrendered to the life for
which German society had ordained her. But I restrained my speech, for I
realized that in criticizing her way of life I would be criticizing her
obvious relation to Zimmern, and like all men I found myself inclined to
be indulgent with the personal life of a man who was my friend.
Moreover, I perceived the presumptuousness of assuming a superior air
towards an established and accepted institution. Yet, strive as I might
to be tolerant, I felt a growing antagonism towards this attractive and
cultured girl who had surrendered without a struggle to a life that to
me was a career of shame--and who seemed quite content with her
surrender.
"Do you like it here?" I asked, knowing that my question was stupid, but
anxious to avoid a painful gap in what was becoming, for me, a difficult
conversation.
Marguerite looked at me with a queer penetrating gaze. "Do I like it
here?" she repeated. "Why should you ask, and how can I answer? Can I
like it or not like it, when there was no choice for me? Can I push out
the walls of Berlin?"--and she thrust mockingly into the air with a
delicately chiselled hand--"It is a prison. All life is a prison."
"Yes," I said, "it is a prison, but life on this level is more joyful
than on many others."
Her lip curled in delicate scorn. "For you men--of course--and I suppose
it is for these women too--perhaps that is why I hate it so, because
they do enjoy it, they do accept it. They sell their love for food and
raiment, and not one in all these millions seems to mind it."
"In that," I remarked, "perhaps you are mistaken. I have not come here
often as most men do, but I have found one other who, like you, rebels
at the system--who in fact, was starving because she would not sell
her love."
Marguerite flashed on me a look of pitying suspicion as she asked: "Have
you gone to the Place of Records to look up this rebel against the
sale of love?"
A fire of resentment blazed up in me at this question. I did not know
just what she meant by the Place of Records, but I felt that this woman
who spoke cynically of rebellion against the sale of love, and yet who
had obviously sold her love to an old man, was in no position to
discredit a weaker woman's nobler fight.
"What right," I asked coldly, "have you to criticize another whom you do
not know?"
"I am sorry," replied Marguerite, "if I seem to quarrel with you when
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