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CHAPTER THREE

Wyndham Smith looked around the spacious, low-ceilinged room which he knew so well. In its midst was a table, long and large, around which were a hundred seats. His acquaintance of the previous night sat at the head, and his own seat was third away on the left.

He looked at that which he scarcely saw, for his mind was occupied with the question which brought him there, and his eyes encountered familiar things. Had he still occupied the body in which he came, he would have been intrigued and puzzled by many strange and some inexplicable experiences which had been his since he had left his own room less than an hour before, but which he had not regarded at all, as he would have been baffled by the sounds of a strange tongue. For the language which he now heard was not that in which Wyndham Smith had been first addressed, which had been that of his own tongue and his own time.

He would have been puzzled even by such details as that he was not aware of any freshness or staleness of air, which was alike in an unroofed space, or in the crowd of that shallow room; but, as it was, his mind could work oblivious of surrounding sights, and only negatively aware of the familiar faces around him now. Faces that had differences of type and colour, and yet would have seemed strangely, bafflingly, even terribly alike to the wonder of his previous eyes.

They were faces of some difference, in that they showed faint traces of various races, but they were alike in an impression of intellectual power of a passive sort, and still more so in a lack of animation, of physical character, which left them passionless and serene as death. It was, indeed, to the serenity of the newly dead, before corruption has seized its prey, that they may be most accurately compared, although it was clear enough that they possessed a vigour of physical life which was too constant for their regard.

Wyndham was aware—it was a routine fact, which did not need to be said—that, though they sat without visible audience, all that was spoken there would be heard by the five million population of the whole world, and would be decisive and final, if—as there could be little reason to doubt—it should approve the plan which had already received the support of all the lesser intellects of the human race.

The chairman, three seats away, commenced without rising, and without preamble or any form of address. His visible audience turned faces towards him which were gravely, unemotionally, attentive, and controlled even a faint tremor of excitement, not at the near prospect of their own extinction, but of the intellect only, at the thought of an event unprecedented, when it had seemed that all novelty must have left the world.

“We have met,” he said, “to record our votes upon a resolution which has been adopted unanimously by those of lower intelligence, and which may have been discussed sufficiently by themselves, of which discussions we are all more or less completely aware. The resolution is that we shall release ourselves from the aimless burden of life by a general euthanasia which is to be arranged for the seventh noon after today. It is a course which, if it be adopted, must be unanimous, for if there be exceptions, however few, its central purpose will be upset, which is to rebuke the Creative Power by the complete self-ending of human life.

“Expressing no opinion myself, from which my position requires me to abstain until yours be known, I will ask each of you in turn whether the resolution has your support, that our verdict may be known to all those who hear.”

Having said this, he addressed those who sat round the table, one by one, calling them by their distinctive numerals, and by the names of their houses, “Do you agree or dissent?” And the replies came in a steady, toneless monotony, “I agree…” “I agree…”—only the voices of the women, who were about equally numerous, being slightly softer than those of the men.

It was indeed by their voices that an alien onlooker would most readily have decided which were the women, for the dresses of all—a single garment of purple—were alike, and the hair of all was trimmed in the same way.

As the chairman commenced on his right, it followed that ninety-six of the hundred names had been called before it came to Wyndham’s turn to reply. He sat listening to that monotonous chorus, of assents, and he was unsure, even then, what he would say when his time should come. His reason told him that the human race had served whatever purpose it had, and that there was an absurdity in continuing it perpetually through succeeding generations with the endless iteration of a recurring decimal.

This perception was not complicated by any theory of there being a permanent value in the individual life, or a survival from death, for such beliefs had long left the world. They had no place in the brain which he now controlled, and, even in that which his ego had ruled before, they had been regarded as too unsubstantial to affect the actual conduct of life. They had been rejected finally by implication fifteen hundred years later, when it had been resolved to limit the human race to five million selected lives.

In that resolution, which had sought no more than to limit births to a number which could realize (it had been supposed) the maximum comforts and pleasures of human existence, there had been the seed of that which was put forward today.

But though the new brain of Wyndham Smith might be fecund of arguments in support of the resolution, which it seemed, as the names were called, that all others approved, his ego, fresh from the strifes and discords of a different world, was still half unwilling to own their weight—would indeed have been resolved to reject them, but for a dreadful doubt which had arisen to confuse feeling and tend to enlist it in reason’s cause. If he should dissent from the resolution, and it should thus founder for lack of the unanimity which it required, would he be allowed to continue in this life, which, with all its futile negation, was the only one that he now knew? Or would he be sent back to the unimaginable horrors and barbarisms from which he had been made aware, however feeling might revolt, that his ego came?

And then, diversely, against this instinctive revulsion that was clamorous in the pain-free body, his new-found intellect asked: if that life to those who lived it was less endurable than is yours today, why was not self-destruction then a more general thing? But yet—cold, misery, pain (his body had once felt pain, in his early days, and it was an experience he would not forget), perhaps hunger and thirst, perhaps even compulsory uncongenial toil—would they not change the present dreariness of existence to more active hell? And it would soon be his turn to speak, for the voices of those who answered were near him now.

He became aware that all eyes were upon him, with a stir of interest, of expectation, which had not been evident as the question had been asked and answered till now; and he understood that they must all be aware that though they looked at a familiar form, and knew that it was controlled by a Colpeck brain, they knew also that its ego was of a distant age. He was the last insurance against mistake which the chairman had thought it prudent to introduce. And it was to him that the chairman was speaking now—“Do you agree or dissent?”

He heard his voice, and seemed to learn from it for the first time what his answer would be. “I dissent.”

The stir of interest, of expectation, was more pronounced. His memory told him that the assembly had not been equally moved—slight as its emotion might now be—by any previous event that it had considered within his time. But the chairman showed no emotion, no surprise, at this reply which might deny the will of almost the whole of the human race. He asked quietly, “Do you dissent from a settled mind, or do you desire that the question be more discussed?”

“I would have it further discussed.”

“Then it is so it shall be.”

The chairman went on with the formal questions, taking the replies of the remaining two, and when it had been heard that they also agreed, so that Wyndham Smith was the sole dissenting voice in the world of men, he turned his attention to him again, with a question which was the routine of such a position.

“By what argument do you dissent?”

Wyndham did not find it easy to answer that. He might have said that he felt an instinctive antipathy to self-destruction, that his was a fighting ego which was not willing to own defeat; but he knew that his feelings had not been asked. It was reason he was invited to give.

There was a pause of silence before he said, “It is that which should be done completely, if it be attempted at all. From most evil conditions man has struggled free at the last, and has found—as you are agreed—that there is nothing better beyond, that he has come by a hard road to a house where no treasure lies. If we are so certain of that, should we not end all life, and not only ourselves? Should we not sterilize the land and sea so that life, which, there is sound reason to think, is a peculiarity of this planet alone, will come to its final end? For else, may not life assert itself in a new form which will be akin to that which we have destroyed, and our protest be a Creator’s jest?”

It was not what he intended to urge. It was merely the first criticism which could be supplied by a brain which did not respond to the feeling which called upon it. In the long minutes of silence that followed—which were no more than the customary courtesy which all speakers received at that assembly, where haste was a forgotten word, and it would have been thought unmannerly to answer without a pause of consideration—he had a better thought, which he also spoke:

“Also, if it be allowed that we have come by a bad road to no better end, there is yet a choice which we might prefer to take rather than that which is so nearly agreed. We can go back by the way we came, to find, perhaps, a somewhat different advance to a fairer goal.”

His words fell into the same silence, which they prolonged. He was not surprised at that, his brain being familiar with the ways of his fellow-men. He became aware that this silence was shared by five millions beyond those walls, who had supposed few moments before, that their own voices had sealed their doom.

Pilwin-C6P was the first to speak. He said, “It could be done. It might be the better way. Nor need it long defer that on which we are already resolved.”

He thought only of the first proposal that Wyndham made. Being the one who had originated the idea of the cessation of human life, he would have been likely to support the resolution with more than average decision, but Wyndham’s argument recalled the proposal his ancestor had made for the sterilization of the oceans, which had been rejected at that time for reasons which would have lost their force if it should be preceded by the extinction of human life. He saw his ancestor justified at the last; and though any feeling of pride or satisfaction in the prestige or achievements of his clan, or of an individual ancestor, would have been esteemed a barbaric indecency, such as he would not have admitted, even to himself, that he could be degraded to feel, yet the atavistic instinct stirred faintly beneath his mind, rendering him more tolerant of Wyndham’s argument than he would otherwise have become.

It was a point on which he spoke with authority, and the chairman, after a pause of a few minutes to give opportunity for any further comment, and seeing that all were silent in acceptance of the statement that Pilwin-C6P had made, gave his ruling thereon.

“The first amendment,” he said, “which has been proposed, is no more than a point of detail, such as may be resolved here without the delay which a general reference would require. On the assurance which we have received that the elimination of life in non-human forms could be completed without complicating the major proposition, I am prepared to rule that we may authorize that such steps be taken immediately that the resolution itself be accepted with the unanimity which it requires.”

He addressed Wyndham directly as he concluded, “If you can accept the resolution on that condition being agreed, your second argument will not arise.”

But Wyndham had also had time for thought. He was clear now as to his own will, and his arguments were gaining order and strength in a mind that must respond to a new control. “But,” he replied, “it is the second which I prefer.”

The chairman regarded him with a gravity which approached rebuke. If the removal of the first objection would leave him unsatisfied, what point had there been in considering it at all? But he saw that, by a fine distinction of logic, this objection might be repulsed. For Wyndham had allowed that he was open to argument on the main proposal, and it might be that, if he should be persuaded that his second proposition was of an impossible quality, he might then accept the resolution with the newly accepted condition attached thereto, which he would otherwise have declined.

He asked, “You propose that men should go back to the barbarism from which they came?”

“I propose that men might revert to conditions of less settled security.”

Had Wyndham Smith been, in his previous body, in control of the brain it held, he would doubtless have surprised the assembly by following this statement with a speech in its support, which might have lengthened into thousands of randomly chosen words; but he knew that the custom here was of a more orderly kind.

The debate which went on for the next two hours was a matter of grave and silent consideration, frequently punctuated by brief, pregnant, carefully worded remarks, many of which were of such a nature as to give no indication of the side to which the speaker’s mind was disposed to lean. The members of the assembly appeared to be too absolute in self-control, or too deficient in emotional vitality, to be stirred to any mental excitement, or emphasis of expression, by the momentous nature of the question with which they dealt. Only the ego of Wyndham Smith, accustomed to the urgencies of more strenuous days, was restrained with effort to the same outward placidity by the traditions of the brain of which he had so recently gained control.

But from the pregnant silence, these occasional observations, an opinion gradually emerged that there would be a probably insuperable difficulty in obtaining any general measure of agreement as to the extent or nature of the retrogression to be undertaken; an almost invincible reluctance to face once more the pains and dangers from which mankind had escaped by so bitter and long a way. The unanimity which had accepted its own defeat, which had agreed upon the fulfilment, if not the frustration, of human destiny, could not be anticipated even for the abstract principle of an alternative which must be repulsive to the finer instincts of every sensitive and civilized mind; and still less would there be any probability of agreement upon the details of retreat to the savageries of competition, the horrors of death and pain.

It was Pilwin-C6P, seeing the imminent prospect that the plan for which he felt parent’s affection would go down before the opposition of a single man (and he, as they all knew, being no more than the ego a distant, barbarous age), who proposed the solution which would be sufficient save it.

“Why,” he asked, “should it not be resolved that each man be free to follow the preference of his own heart? Let it be decreed that he who declines the high gesture of human suicide, by which mankind will reject the life which it has not asked, and has found to be no more than the gift of a jesting god, may revert to such barbarisms as a baser nature may prefer.”

There was so near an approach, as he said this, to outdated passion in words and tone, and the proposition itself was so amazing—for it had been the fundamental principle of the proposed event that should extinguish human life with an entire finality—that it would have produced a clamour of bewildered protest in an assembly of a more volatile kind. As it was it was followed by a universal silence, in which the first stupefactions of surprise gave way to understanding and then consent.

For, even though this Colpeck of alien ego should elect (fantastic thought!) to remain in solitary discord when the whole procession of his fellow-men should have passed through the gates of death, it would still appear a fantasy beyond serious consideration that he should find a companion of kindred mood. Solitary as he would be—with no possibility of procreation remaining—he might plumb such depths of barbarism as his soul desired, might prolong his absurdity of existence to its latest hour, and he would be no more than a final mockery in his Creator’s eyes, an apotheosis of the futility of the race He made. The proposition would have been agreed without further words, but that it was desirable that the five millions of inferior listening intellects should understand the decision, and the conclusion from which it came.

The resolution, as first proposed, was adopted with one dissentient, and on the chairman’s ruling that this was sufficient to fulfil the condition of unanimity on which the proposition was based, Wyndham understood, from the knowledge of their procedure his brain supplied, that it was an assumption beyond the necessity of words that all must accept the fate for which their own votes had been freely cast. The authority of the assembly would be forthwith used for the prompt and painless end of themselves and their fellow-men. It was that for which they had not the will and sanction alone, but the ample power, and from which only such as he would have further freedom of choice, from the moment the resolution had been proclaimed.