Читать книгу The Syren of the Skies (Sci-Fi Classic) - Griffith George Chetwynd - Страница 7

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On the day but one following the reading of Paul Romanoff’s secret will, Olga and Serge set out for St. Petersburg, to convey his ashes to their last resting-place in the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in the Fortress of Petropaulovski, where reposed the dust of the Tyrants of Russia, from Peter the Great to Alexander II. of Russia, now only remembered as the chief characters in the dark tragedy of the days before the Revolution.

The intense love of the Russians for their country had survived the tremendous change that had passed over the face of society, and it was still the custom to bring the ashes of those who claimed noble descent and deposit them in one of their national churches, even when they had died in distant countries.

The station from which they started was a splendid structure of marble, glass, and aluminium steel, standing in the midst of a vast, abundantly-wooded garden, which occupied the region that had once been made hideous by the slums and sweating-dens of Southwark. The ground floor was occupied by waiting-rooms, dining-saloons, conservatories, and winter-gardens, for the convenience and enjoyment of travellers; and from these lifts rose to the upper storey, where the platforms and lines lay under an immense crystal arch.

Twelve lines ran out of the station, divided into three sets of four each. Of these, the centre set was entirely devoted to continental traffic, and the lines of this system stretched without a break from London to Pekin.

The cars ran suspended on a single rail upheld by light, graceful arches of a practically unbreakable alloy of aluminium, steel, and zinc, while about a fifth of their weight was borne by another single insulating rail of forged glass,—the rediscovery of the lost art of making which had opened up immense possibilities to the engineers of the twenty-first century.

Along this lower line the train ran, not on wheels, but on lubricated bearings, which glided over it with no more friction than that of a steel skate on ice. On the upper rail ran double-flanged wheels with ball-bearings, and this line also conducted the electric current from which the motive-power was derived.

The two inner lines of each set were devoted to long-distance, express traffic, and the two outer to intermediate transit, corresponding to the ordinary trains of the present day. Thus, for example, the train by which Olga and Serge were about to travel, stopped only at Brussels, Berlin, Königsberg, Moscow, Nijni Novgorod, Tomsk, Tobolsk, Irkutsk, and Pekin, which was reached by a line running through the Salenga valley and across the great desert of Shamoo, while from Irkutsk another branch of the line ran north-eastward viâ Yakutsk to the East Cape, where the Behring Bridge united the systems of the Old World and the New.

The usual speed of the expresses was a hundred and fifty miles an hour, rising to two hundred on the long runs; and that of the ordinary trains, from a hundred to a hundred and fifty. Higher speeds could of course be attained on emergencies, but these had been found to be quite sufficient for all practical purposes.

The cars were not unlike the Pullmans of the present day, save that they were wider and roomier, and were built not of wood and iron, but of aluminium and forged glass. Their interiors were, of course, absolutely impervious to wind and dust, even at the highest speed of the train, although a perfect system of ventilation kept their atmosphere perfectly fresh.

The long-distance trains were fitted up exactly as moving hotels, and the traveller, from London to Pekin or Montreal, was not under the slightest necessity of leaving the train, unless he chose to do so, from end to end of the journey.

One more advantage of railway travelling in the twenty-first century may be mentioned here. It was entirely free, both for passengers and baggage. Easy and rapid transit being considered an absolute necessity of a high state of civilisation, just as armies and navies had once been thought to be, every self-supporting person paid a small travelling tax, in return for which he or she was entitled to the freedom of all the lines in the area of the Federation.

In addition to this tax, the municipality of every city or town through which the lines passed, set apart a portion of their rent-tax for the maintenance of the railways, in return for the advantages they derived from them.

Under this reasonable condition of affairs, therefore, all that an intending traveller had to do was to signify the date of his departure and his destination to the superintendent of the nearest station, and send his heavier baggage on in advance by one of the trains devoted to the carriage of freight. A place was then allotted to him, and all he had to do was to go and take possession of it.

The Continental Station was comfortably full of passengers when Olga and Serge reached it, about fifteen minutes before the departure of the Eastern express; for people were leaving the Capital of the World in thousands just then, to spend Christmas and New Year with friends in the other cities of Europe, and especially to attend the great Winter Festival that was held every year in St. Petersburg in celebration of the anniversary of Russian freedom.

Ten minutes before the express started, they ascended in one of the lifts to the platform, and went to find their seats. As they walked along the train, Olga suddenly stopped and said, almost with a gasp—

“Look, Serge! There are two Aerians, and one of them is”—

“Who?” said Serge, almost roughly. “I didn’t know you had any acquaintances among the Masters of the World.”

The son of the Romanoffs hated the very name of the Aerians, so bitterly that even the mere suspicion that his idolised betrothed should have so much as spoken to one of them was enough to rouse his anger.

“No, I haven’t,” she replied quietly, ignoring the sudden change in his manner; “but both you and I have very good reason for wishing to make their distinguished acquaintance. I recognise one of these because he sat beside Alan Arnold, the President of the Council, in St. Paul’s, when they were foolish enough to relinquish the throne of the world in obedience to an old man’s whim.

“The taller of the two standing there by the pillar is the younger counterpart of the President, and if his looks don’t belie him, he can be no one but the son of Alan Arnold, and therefore the future ruler of Aeria, and the present or future possessor of the Great Secret. Do you see now why it is necessary that we should—well, I will say, make friends of those two handsome lads?”

Olga spoke rapidly and in Russian, a tongue then scarcely ever heard and very little understood even among educated people, who, whatever their nationality, made English their language of general intercourse. The words “handsome lads” had grated harshly upon Serge’s ears, but he saw the force of Olga’s question at once, and strove hard to stifle the waking demon of jealousy that had been roused more by her tone and the quick bright flush on her cheek than by her words, as he answered—

“Forgive me, darling, for speaking roughly! Their hundred years of peace have not tamed my Russian blood enough to let me look upon my enemies without anger. Of course, you are right; and if they are going by the express, as they seem to be, we should be friendly enough by the time we reach Königsberg.”

“I am glad you agree with me,” said Olga, “for the destinies of the world may turn on the events of the next few hours. Ah, the Fates are kind! Look! There is Alderman2 Heatherstone talking to them. I suppose he has come to see them off, for no doubt they have been the guests of the City during the Festival. Come, he will very soon make us known to each other.”

A couple of minutes later the Alderman, who had been an old friend of Paul Ivanitch, the famous sculptor, had cordially greeted them and introduced them to the two Aerians, whose names he gave as Alan Arnoldson, the son of the President of the late Supreme Council, and Alexis Masarov, a descendant of the Alexis Mazanoff who had played such a conspicuous part in the war of the Terror. They were just starting on the tour of the world, and were bound for St. Petersburg to witness the Winter Festival.

Olga had been more than justified in speaking of them as she had done. Both in face and form, they were the very ideal of youthful manhood. Both of them stood over six feet in the long, soft, white leather boots which rose above their knees, meeting their close-fitting, grey tunics of silk-embroidered cloth, confined at the waist by belts curiously fashioned of flat links of several different metals, and fastened in front by heavy buckles of gold studded with great, flashing gems.

From their broad shoulders hung travelling-cloaks of fine, blue cloth, lined with silver fur and kept in place across the breast by silver chains and clasps of a strange, blue metal, whose lustre seemed to come from within like that of a diamond or a sapphire.

On their heads they wore no other covering than their own thick, curling hair, which they wore somewhat in the picturesque style of the fourteenth century, and a plain, broad band of the gleaming blue metal, from which rose above the temples a pair of marvellously-chased, golden wings about four inches high—the insignia of the Empire of the Air, and the sign which distinguished the Aerians from all the other peoples of the earth.

As Olga shook hands with Alan, she looked up into his dark-blue eyes, with a glance such as he had never received from a woman before—a glance in which he seemed instinctively to read at once love and hate, frank admiration and equally undisguised defiance. Their eyes held each other for a moment of mutual fascination which neither could resist, and then the dark-fringed lids fell over hers, and a faint flush rose to her cheeks as she replied to his words of salutation—

“Surely the pleasure will rather be on our side, with travelling companions from the other world! For my own part, I seem to remind myself somewhat of one of the daughters of men whom the Sons of the Gods”—

She stopped short in the middle of her daring speech, and looked up at him again as much as to say—

“So much for the present. Let the Fates finish it!” and then, appearing to correct herself, she went on, with a half-saucy, half-deprecating smile on her dangerously-mobile lips—

“You know what I mean; not exactly that, but something of the sort.”

“More true, I fancy, of the daughter of men than of the supposed Sons of the Gods,” retorted Alan, with a laugh, half startled by her words, and wholly charmed by the indescribable fascination of the way in which she said them; “for the daughters of men were so fair that the Sons of the Gods lost heaven itself for their sakes.”

“Even so!” said Olga, looking him full in the eyes, and at that moment the signal sounded for them to take their places in the cars.

A couple of minutes after they had taken their seats, the train drew out of the station with an imperceptible, gliding motion, so smooth and frictionless that it seemed rather as though the people standing on the platform were sliding backwards than that the train was moving forward. The speed increased rapidly, but so evenly that, almost before they were well aware of it, the passengers were flying over the snow-covered landscape, under the bright, heatless sun and pale, steel-blue sky of a perfect winter’s morning, at a hundred miles an hour, the speed ever increasing as they sped onward.

The line followed the general direction of the present route to Dover, which was reached in about half an hour. Without pausing for a moment in its rapid flight, the express swept out from the land over the Channel Bridge, which spanned the Straits from Dover to Calais at a height of 200 feet above the water.

Travelling at a speed of three miles a minute, seven minutes sufficed for the express to leap, as it were, from land to land. As they swept along in mid-air over the waves, Olga pointed down to them and said to Alan, who was sitting in the armchair next her own—

“Imagine the time when people had to take a couple of hours getting across here in a little, dirty, smoky steamboat, mingling their sorrows and their sea-sickness in one common misery! I really think this Channel Bridge is worthy even of your admiration. Come now, you have not admired anything yet”—

“Pardon me,” said Alan, with a look and a laugh that set Serge’s teeth gritting against each other, and brought the ready blood to Olga’s cheeks; “on the contrary, I have been absorbed in admiration ever since we started.”

“But not apparently of our engineering triumphs,” replied Olga frankly, taking the compliment to herself, and seeming in no way displeased with it. “It would seem that the polite art of flattery is studied to some purpose in Aeria.”

“There you are quite wrong,” returned Alan, still speaking in the same half-jocular, half-serious vein. “Before all things, we Aerians are taught to tell the absolute truth under all circumstances, no matter whether it pleases or offends; so, you see, what is usually known as flattery could hardly be one of our arts, since, as often as not, it is a lie told in the guise of truth, for the sake of serving some hidden and perhaps dishonest end.”

The blow so unconsciously delivered struck straight home, and the flush died from Olga’s cheek, leaving her for the moment so white that her companion anxiously asked if she was unwell.

“No,” she said, recovering her self-possession under the impulse of sudden anger at the weakness she had betrayed. “It is nothing. This is the first time for a year or so that I have travelled by one of these very fast trains, and the speed made me a little giddy just for the instant. I am quite well, really, so please go on.

“You know, that wonderful fairyland of yours is a subject of everlasting interest and curiosity to us poor outsiders who are denied a glimpse of its glories, and it is so very rarely that one of us enjoys the privilege that is mine just now, that I hope you will indulge my feminine curiosity as far as your good nature is able to temper your reserve.”

As she uttered her request, Alan’s smiling face suddenly became grave almost to sternness. The laughing light died out of his eyes, and she saw them darken in a fashion that at once convinced her that she had begun by making a serious mistake.

He looked up at her, with a shadow in his eyes and a slight frown on his brow. He spoke slowly and steadily, but with a manifest reluctance which he seemed to take little or no trouble to conceal.

“I am sorry that you have asked me to talk on what is a forbidden subject to every Aerian, save when he is speaking with one of his own nation. I see you have been looking at these two golden wings on the band round my head. I will tell you what they mean, and then you will understand why I cannot say all that I know you would like me to say.

“They are to us what the toga virilis was to the Romans of old, the insignia of manhood and responsibility. When a youth of Aeria reaches the age of twenty he is entitled to wear these wings as a sign that he is invested with all the rights and duties of a citizen of the nation which has conquered and commands the Empire of the Air.

“One of these duties is, that in all the more serious relations of life he shall remain apart from all the peoples of the world save his own, and shall say nothing that will do anything to lift the veil which it has pleased our forefathers in their wisdom to draw round the realm of Aeria. Before we assume the citizenship of which these wings are the symbol we never visit the outside world save to make air voyages, for the purpose of learning the physical facts of the earth’s shape and the geography of land and sea.

“Immediately after we have assumed it we do as Alexis and I are now doing—travel for a year or so through the different countries of the outside world, in order to get our knowledge of men and things as they exist beyond the limits of our own country.

“The fact that we do so,—under a pledge solemnly and publicly given, of never revealing anything which could lead even to a possibility of other peoples of the earth overtaking us in the progress which we have made in the arts and sciences,—is my excuse for refusing to tell you what your very natural curiosity has asked.”

Olga saw instantly that she had struck a false note, and was not slow to make good her mistake. She laid her hand upon his arm, with that pretty gesture which Serge knew so well, and watched now with much bitter feelings, and said, in a tone that betrayed no trace of the consuming passion within her—

“Forgive me! Of course, you will see that I did not know I was trenching on forbidden grounds. I can well understand why such secrets as yours must be, should be kept. You have been masters of the world for more than a century, and even now, although you have formally abdicated the throne of the world, it would be absurd to deny that you still hold the destinies of humanity in your hands.

“The secrets which guard so tremendous a power as that may well be religiously kept and held more sacred than anything else on earth. Still, you have mistaken me if you thought I asked for any of these. All I really wanted was, that you should tell me something that would give me just a glimpse of what human life is like in that enchanted land of yours”—

Alan laid his hands upon hers, which was still resting upon his arm, and interrupted her even more earnestly than before.

“Even that I cannot tell you. With us, the man who gives a pledge and breaks it, even in the spirit though not in the letter, is not considered worthy to live, and therefore I must be silent.”

Instead of answering with her lips, Olga turned her hand palm upwards, and clasped his with a pressure which he returned before he very well knew what he was doing; and while the magic of her clasp was still stealing along his nerves, Serge broke in, with a harsh ring in his voice—

“But pardon me for interrupting what seems a very pleasant conversation with my—my sister, I should like to ask, with all due deference to the infinitely superior wisdom of the rulers of Aeria, whether it is not rather a risky thing for you to travel thus about the world, possessing secrets which any man or woman would almost be willing to die even to know for a few minutes, when, after all, you are but human even as the rest of humanity are?

“You, for instance, are only two among millions; how would you protect yourselves against the superior force of numbers? Supposing you were taken unawares under circumstances which make your superior knowledge unavailing. You know, human nature is the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, despite the superficial varnish of civilisation.

“The passions of men are only curbed, not dead. There may be men on earth to-day who, to gain such knowledge as you possess, would even resort to the tortures used by the Inquisition in the sixteenth century. Suppose you found yourself in the power of such men as that, what then? Would you still preserve your secret intact, do you think?”

Alan heard him to the end without moving a muscle of his face, and without even withdrawing his hand from Olga’s clasp. But at the last sentence he snatched it suddenly away, half-turned in his seat, and faced him. Then, looking him straight in the eyes, he said in a tone as cold and measured as might have been used by a judge sentencing a criminal to death—

“We do not fear anything of the sort, simply because each one of us holds the power of life and death in his hands. If you laid a hand on me now in anger, or with an intent to do me harm, you would be struck dead before you could raise a finger in your own defence.

“Do you think that we, who are as far in advance of you as you are in advance of the men of a hundred years ago, would trust ourselves amongst those who might be our enemies were we not amply protected against you? Tell me, have you ever read a book, written nearly two hundred years ago in the Victorian Age, called The Coming Race?”

“Yes,” said Serge, thinking, as he spoke, of the possibilities contained in the secret will of Paul Romanoff, “I have read it, and so has Olga. What of it?”

“Well,” said Alan quietly, without moving his eyes from those of Serge. “I had better tell you at once that we have realised, to all intents and purposes, the dream that Lytton dreamt when he wrote that book. I can tell you so much without breaking the pledge of which I have spoken. All that the Vril-Ya did in his dream we have accomplished in reality, and more than that.

“Our empire is not bounded by the roofs of subterranean caverns, but only by the limits of the planet’s atmosphere. We can soar beyond the clouds and dive beneath the seas. We have realised what he called the Vril force as a sober, scientific fact; and if I thought that you, for instance, were my enemy, I could strike you dead without so much as laying a hand on you. And if a dozen like you tried to overcome me by superior brute force, they would all meet with the same fate.

“I’m afraid this sounds somewhat like boasting,” he continued in a more gentle tone, and dropping his eyes to the floor of the car, “but the turn the conversation has taken obliged me to say what I have done. Suppose we give it another turn and change the subject. We have unintentionally got upon rather uncomfortable ground.”

Serge and Olga were not slow to take the pointed hint, and so the talk drifted into general and more harmless channels.