Читать книгу Slaves of Ijax - John Russell Fearn - Страница 5

CHAPTER TWO

TWENTY-EIGHTH CENTURY

To Peter Curzon there was no consciousness of intervening time. One moment he was shouting—

“You’ve got everything so—” to Michael Blane, and the next he was saying “—hopelessly wrong!” to a tall impassive figure standing near him, silhouetted by a mighty window.

Peter stopped talking abruptly. It came to him slowly that he was free of straps. though he was still on the same long table. He closed his eyes and then opened them again, staring at a high domed ceiling made of some glazed and exquisitely patterned metal.

Presently he dared to move his eyes sideways. The tall thin figure was still there, hands tucked Oriental-fashion in the wide cuffs in the single-piece black garment he was wearing. The light through the window was so bright that Peter could not immediately distinguish the outline of the man’s features; beyond him was a wilderness of machinery and complicated electrical equipment, technicians in close fitting overalls moving silently about appointed tasks....

Peter swallowed hard and peered at his watch. It was ticking steadily and said 12:22. Bewildered he looked back to the window. Outside tall buildings of glazed grey metal climbed into the blue brilliance of a summer sky.

He realised at length that the tall man had been studying him for he came forward slowly.

“You are to be congratulated, my friend,” he said. “At last we have succeeded in breaking into the mystical Ebon Sphere.”

Still Peter remained quiet—mentally stunned. If this was a dream it was a vivid one indeed. He remained with head slightly raised so that he could study the tall stranger thoroughly—and was not unduly impressed by what he saw.

The man’s face was as thin as his body. A fleshless nose curved with the sharpness of an eagle’s beak over a thin-lipped mouth and smooth, jutting chin. The cheeks were hollow under high bones, and utterly bloodless. From beneath very finely lined dark eyebrows two eyes of so light a grey they seemed transparent studied Peter with detached interest. His gaze went beyond them to the man’s extremely high forehead and the black hair flattened back from it. He was fifty, perhaps sixty, it was difficult to tell.

“Who...are you?” Peter found his throat hoarse as he asked the question.

“I fancy I might ask Your Excellence the same thing,” the man responded, with a slight shrug. “However, I am Mark Lanning, your Adviser-Elect and First Scientist of the Western Federation.”

“My Adviser-Elect?” Peter repeated, struggling into a sitting position and jabbing a troubled hand through his sandy hair. “But why? Who am I supposed to be?” Then he looked at the austere face in sudden sharpness. “Just a minute! You did call me ‘Excellence’, didn’t you? For what reason?”

Mark Lanning replied in his cold, unhurried voice;

“There is much to explain, Excellence, and permit me to suggest that this is neither the time nor the place. You have been through a long ordeal and are in need of rest and food and...er...clothes. Seven hundred years is a long time....”

Peter started violently. “Seven hun...what did you say?”

“According to the records which I have closely studied, the Ebon Sphere of Surrey was first discovered in Twenty-One Forty-Eight, some seven centuries ago—but still earlier records report the mysterious disappearance of a scientist by the name of Michael Blane, and his friend Peter Curzon, a bank manager, in the neighbourhood of the spot where the Ebon Sphere was found. These earlier records place the disappearance of Blane and Curzon about Twenty Eighteen.... I assume, Excellence,” Mark Lanning finished, “that you are either one man or the other.”

“I am Peter Curzon,” Peter answered shakenly.

Mark Lanning inclined his glossy head gravely.

“I am honoured to make the acquaintance of Your Excellence.... If you will pardon me?”

He turned aside and crossed to a control panel studded with buttons of different colours. He pressed one of them and stood waiting. Peter watched fixedly as two robots with three pairs of arms came walking silently into view,

“Place yourself in the care of the left hand robot, Excellence,” Lanning instructed. “He will carry you to your own personal suite. I will accompany you in the arms of the other robot.”

Peter didn’t argue. He submitted dazedly and relaxed into the comfortable metal arms of the thing. With superb ease he was borne out of the enormous room, down a glazed metal corridor—where to his amazement men and women, attired in similar garb to Mark Lanning, bowed to him respectfully—and so into a huge magnificently furnished room, which, Lanning explained, was only one in the suite assigned to him.

Questions by the hundred kept occurring to Peter but he got little chance to ask them for his breath was constantly being snatched away by the marvels he beheld. Everywhere there seemed to be robots. They stripped him of his robe, bathed him, shaved him, gave him attire similar to that of Mark Lanning, carried him into an immense room with broad windows catching brilliant sunshine, and set him down before an exquisitely prepared meal of choice foods. Then the robots retired to the polished wall and became motionless.

Over by one of the great windows, hands locked behind him and powerful face in profile, stood Mark Lanning, watching as Peter tackled his meal,

Peter was thankful that eating utensils had not changed too greatly. He selected a couple and began to eat hungrily. “I suppose I’ll wake up soon?” he asked, glancing up.

“In Twenty Eighteen?” Lanning answered, shaking his head. “No, Excellence, the past is gone and can never be recalled. You are now the first citizen of the world in Twenty-Seven Forty-Six. In that capacity all, from the highest to the lowest, must pay you homage and revere you.”

Peter had a level mind and the observation did not overbalance him. He thought it out while he continued his meal.

“What did I do to achieve such eminence?” he inquired at length, as he finished his meal.. “What really happened to me? Does it mean that Michael Blane’s plan to imprison me indefinitely in a non-time sphere succeed?”

Lanning turned. “So that is what happened, Excellence? Tell me more. I am deeply interested.”

He seated himself at the other end of the table. his pale eyes fixed on Peter’s face. Peter gave a shrug and went on eating, and as he did so he sketched the whole story, finishing with a puzzled grin.

“Don’t you see, Mr. Lanning, this has me completely at sea? You say seven centuries have gone by.... All right, I believe it. But to me hardly a split second seemed to pass in that globe, and my watch—which the robots took from me—still said only twenty-two minutes past twelve when I woke up. It was just twenty past when Michael Blane threw the switch. I recall a second or two of dizziness and I started talking. I woke up finishing my sentence with you standing by a window.... Naturally I find it hard to picture seven hundred years rolling past in the interval. I’m not a scientific man, really—just the manager of a small district bank and....” Peter sighed. “I mean I was a manager!”

“Now you are a Legend come to life,” Lanning said. “And it is because you are legend that you automatically become the head of the world’s population. You are a Messiah for whom many generations have waited.”

“I just don’t understand. Be hanged if I do!”

“Let me explain.” Lanning suggested. “Since Twenty Forty-Eight the globe containing you has excited public interest, but no scientist in preceding generations could find a way of unlocking it. It became a matter of mutual consent among nations, and particularly when the World Federation was formed, that should a living person be inside the Ebon Sphere he or she should become the figurehead of the world—a symbol. a first citizen, a ruler, insofar that his knowledge would be untouched by our own politics and science. As such he would be able to give valued opinions upon points of argument, and so forth. Then I found a way into the sphere, Excellence!”

For the first time a trace of animation came into the austere face of the First Scientist of the Western Federation.

“I knew that it was a sphere which had somehow achieved thermo-dynamic equilibrium, and that it was thereby proof against radiation of all kinds. I reasoned, however, that it could be rent asunder by the creation of a momentary warp in space. Gravitation is just that, as your scientist Einstein explained. In the laboratory where you awoke, twin gravitational stresses—opposing warps—had just ripped the sphere asunder. You did not instantly pass into unguessable age and become dust because your energy had not been dissipated: it had been held motionless, just as molecules are motionless in the infinite zero of space, yet come to life when radiation excites them. The imprisoned balanced energies escaped into the random energies in the laboratory. You understand?”

“It surprises me that the rupture didn’t kill me,” Peter mused. “I mean the sphere must have exploded with terrific force.”

“You were perfectly safe because the energy flowed outwards from the centre, in which you were situated unharmed.”

“Uh...huh....” Peter nodded slowly and then felt in the pockets of his robe with growing impatience. Mark Lanning watched him for a while then raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“Something you are seeking, Excellence?”

“Yes—a cigarette. I’m used to one after a meal.”

Lanning smiled and motioned to a robot. It went out of the room and, evidently instructed beforehand through telepathic command, returned presently with a single pellet in the centre of a blue metal tray. Peter contemplated it in surprise.

“Eat it,” Lanning «aid.

Peter picked it up and swallowed it. When the acid taste had gone from his mouth and the thing had dissolved the desire for a cigarette had vanished too.

“Nicotine counteractive,” Lanning explained. “You will never wish to smoke again. We use them for recessive units who are liable to appear now and then in any community. Some of them crave nicotine like their ancestors and are cured as you have been.”

Peter sighed and rubbed his intensely smooth chin pensively.

“So,” he said, sitting back in his chair, “I am by popular acclaim the head man in the world, eh? Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“Nothing,” Lanning answered quietly. “I am your Adviser-Elect. As in olden times a king too young to govern had a Regent, so I fill a similar position.”

“You mean that you really rule, and that I am just the figurehead?”

“In a sense, yes. But I am not the actual head of the Western Federation—that authority lies in the hands of President Valroy of the Governing Council. I am the leader of the scientists, hence my title. You are as a monarch is to Parliament—the head of the State, but not necessarily in a position to give orders that the Council does not approve. I would suggest, Excellence, that because a legend has deified you, you should accept the amenities of the position and...ask no questions.”

Peter grinned and scratched his eyebrow thoughtfully.

“The trouble is Mr. Lanning, I’m not that kind of person! I can’t take things for granted, and never could. I have to see for myself what makes things tick.”

“Indeed?” Lanning murmured, with obvious indifference. “I do hope we are not going to have differences so early in our acquaintanceship?”

Peter hesitated. “No, no reason why...only....”

“Excellence, circumstances—and the revenge of this Michael Blane you have spoken of—have placed you in a world as different from your own as anything you can conceive. You cannot hope to understand a fraction of it—its policy, its purpose, the great Task to which the people have dedicated themselves for the last three years. You cannot understand the complicated legal procedure that produced the Eastern and Western Federations and destroyed the threat of war forever. On the scientific side such things as advanced quantum-mechanics, time-and-space quadrants and similar researches are obviously beyond your knowledge. You have said yourself that you are not a scientific man.”

“Maybe so, but I lived in a pretty scientific age. The same scientific principles must still apply.”

Lanning shook his head. “I don’t think you realize how much science has changed. Take atomic power, for instance. Your era still clung to ideas of particle physics. That resulted in the release of dangerous radioactivity as an undesirable by-product. We do use atomic power extensively today, but it is not the primitive and limited usage of your Earth scientists. The atom itself is forever unknowable—all theories about it are merely analogies or models. Your era constructed a model based on the apparent duality of light—both particles and waves. This led your scientists up a blind alley of atom-smashing that almost destroyed humanity when atomic war broke out. It lasted six months with no side winning and civilization in ruins. The survivors picked themselves up and then formed a world government devoted to scientific pursuits without thought of further war. So scientists developed completely different ideas about what atoms are. Our research has been purely along the lines of electromagnetic force, of which we have made ourselves the masters. Every power we possess is derived from this basic force of the universe. But our atomic power is free from radioactivity, being derived from copper rather than uranium.”

“Copper?” Peter echoed, then he shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Well. I can still learn. After all, since I am the head—or at any rate the figurehead—of the world, I might as well make hay while the sun shines.”

“Hay?” Lanning repeated absently. Then he shrugged, “Some idiom of your own time, I presume? If you mean that you hope to institute certain ideas of your own, I can suggest that you refrain. It would not be considered...ethical.”

Peter got to his feet pensively, strolling over to one of the windows with hands clasped behind him. The robe he was wearing was softer than finest silk against his skin.

“Language and names haven’t altered much in seven centuries, Mr. Lanning,” he commented, staring out over the grey world he had come so mysteriously to rule.

“Great Britain and the United States of America spoke approximately the same language in your day,” Lanning responded. “It was decided that since their language was used by the majority of people it should become the world-language.... As to names, it takes many generations—far more than seven centuries—to change a patronymic, and even longer for a Christian name.”

“And people and customs?” Peter murmured, his eyes on a wingless airliner as it swept majestically down from the heights. “Have they changed much since my day?”

“The most changeless thing in the Universe is human nature, Excellence....” Peter was aware of the tall scientist standing near him, his hands hidden in his sleeve-ends once again. “The men and women of today still love each other, marry, and beget. They live longer than in your day—on the average a hundred and twenty years. Medical science has given them perfection; mechanical science does everything for them. They need not stir to do a thing with the robots always at hand, tireless, obedient.”

“Yet you said everybody was engaged on a great Task,” Peter remarked. “What Task?”

The eyes of the Twenty-First Century met those of the Twenty-Eighth and for a moment both of them seemed to sense the gulf between them. Then Lanning raised and lowered slender shoulders.

“It is simply an end to which all of us are working,” he said ambiguously. “If we didn’t—for everything else is done for us, remember, mental and physical torpor would paralyze us. We just have to have something to think about.”

Peter reflected that either Lanning didn’t want to explain the nature of the Task or else he was not really sure of its meaning himself. There was something about the Adviser-Elect he could not understand—an evasiveness, a coldly mechanical quality, yet despite these drawbacks he somehow liked the man.

“Have you any particular desire, Excellence?” Lanning asked presently. “If so., I will attend to it; then I am afraid I shall have to leave you for a while on urgent business.”

“By all means, you carry on,” Peter agreed. “I’ll look after myself—probably go for a walk and get orientated.”

“That,” Lanning said deliberately, “would hardly be a wise thing to do.”

“Why not? Somebody liable to take pot shots at me?”

A thin hand rose deprecatingly. “Certainly not—but in your high position you can learn here all that you need without mingling with the masses.”

“Sorry,” Peter said, shaking his head; “but as I told you I like to find things out for myself and the only way I can do that is to potter about on my own. Don’t you realise that I am in the same position as Alice in Wonderland when she found Wonderland?”

Lanning sighed, passed a hand uncertainly over his lofty brow, then made a gesture of resignation.

“As you wish, Excellence. Now I really must leave you. The control panel is perfectly understandable. Press whichever button you require—be it food, robot, secretary, and so forth. I shall call upon you again later.”

Peter nodded and watched the thin figure stride across the room and vanish behind twin doors that shone like polished gold as they closed....