Читать книгу Spiders' War - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 12

CHAPTER IX: PRELUDE TO PERIL

Soothed by the greater simplicity of Gleda’s mind, she fell easily into deep and restful sleep; yet within, the mind of Marguerite Cranleigh busied itself computing and comparing, matching and measuring and analyzing her strange adventure.

Perhaps she had never consciously turned her thoughts to an examination of mankind as a social entity, a single, multi-celled creature crawling blindly through history. Mankind had, it seemed, always been complacently certain that its present was necessarily superior to its past, and that its future would surely bring it another step heavenward. It always called itself “civilization.” Could this era be called a civilization, when a man could, with impunity, put a knife into his wife’s belly and her kidneys upon the grill?

And yet—was not the great telepathic communion she had witnessed a step forward, a truer democracy than that which she had known in her time? The twentieth-century politician was more concerned with popularity than with leadership, and great, obvious trends, like a falling birth rate or a cessation of essential migration would be ignored, or even condoned, if that should serve his popularity. She recalled the case of a strong man called to lead her nation in a death struggle, who, when the fight was won, was rejected in favour of men who easily pledged themselves to what they could not possibly do.

Then perhaps Lemno’s was a higher culture after all, for it had both the reverence for the mass mind and the ability to follow a strong leader. And yet—where was the strength in a civilization which possessed, through books, the riches of past great technologies, and yet would undertake an expedition against a stronger, more numerous, better-fed people, and go through a land of monsters in the process, armed with nothing but their wits and perhaps an axe or a bow?

Then she let speculation cease, and her twentieth-century mind sank into that of the sleeping Gleda, and slept restfully with it.

But speculation returned as she sat with Lemno at the morning meal; and when she questioned him as to the adequacy of the resources of his boasted civilization to deal with this animal—no, not animal—with this insect—but they were not insects—say, with this bestial plague, he was frank in reply: “It is certainly true that there was much available in past ages in mechanical equipment and weapons which it might be advantageous for us to have, but which we could not provide, if at all, without too great a delay. But we abandoned these things deliberately to attain a real civilization, and we must accept the disadvantages which result. The price of their production, in every previous attempt at civilized life, has been individual anxieties and almost universal toil. We have tried for something better than that, which need not have been jeopardized now, had we had sufficient prudence to accumulate a reserve of food. But I suppose that we shall do well enough, if we can return before the cold season comes. We must use the nut bags for our minimum of essential needs. We shall have axes and knives and swine-prodders which may be weapons enough. Men must not over burden themselves, being half-starved as they are. The habits of slave civilizations are too entirely abandoned—and were too recently known—to be readily adopted again, even at a great need.”

The nut bags were a kind of knapsack used when men climbed to gather nuts for winter storage. They were of more than sufficient size to contain the few personal necessities which Lemno thought it useful to take. Their main load, besides their primitive weapons, would be the meat of which they would soon be relieved, and concerning which Relf’s wife, Plera, was already at the door to offer the help of Relf’s household for its transport to the meeting place on the bank of the upper river.

Being thanked for this, she showed no haste to be gone. Plera was one who was always willing to talk, and she had a most natural curiosity concerning the events which had brought Lemno a wife from a strange land, and transformed Destra into a neat heap of succulent joints.

Gleda told her freely what had occurred, for she had a friendly smile, which was easy to trust, and added: “I am not the one to complain, knowing that I should be lying there on the slab, had not Lemno made the choice which he did. But it is strange to me that the men of your land should be allowed to kill their wives, and that there should be no law which they have occasion to fear.”

Plera looked puzzled. “How could a law prevent that?”

“It mightn’t exactly prevent it, if a man were resolved to do it at any cost, or if he thought he could conceal it successfully,” Gleda admitted. “But it could punish him if he were caught, and would be an example for others who might be tempted. That hardly needs arguing.”

“I don’t say it does. But I believe there used to be such laws in terms which were far worse than ours.”

“That’s just what I’m doubting.” Gleda recognized that it would be best to avoid assertion of incredible knowledge. But had not Lemno told her so much? And who would check on the exact limitations of that? She went on: “There was a time called the Christian era, which Lemno was telling me about yesterday. He said it was worse than this. But no one could have killed anyone under their law without the probability that he would be caught and hanged.”

“Doesn’t that prove what he said?”

“Does it? You mustn’t think I’m complaining about what happened to Destra. I know I’m not the one to do that. But—”

“I should think not, indeed!”

“Well, that’s what I said. But—”

“There’s no but about it. It needed doing, whether he’d caught you or not.”

“Do you mean she was such a bad woman?”

“I don’t mean that she did the kind of things that laws used to punish. There must often have been excuses for them. What they called temptations. But she did worse things. She used to make Lemno’s life wretched with her tongue, and in other ways. It went on until Relf made some excuse to get her by herself at our house, and when she went home she had less skin on her buttocks than when we put her across a chair. She was a lot better for that, especially after we made her come next week and thank us for what we’d done.”

“Doesn’t that just show what good things punishments are?”

The question reduced Plera to a short silence, after which she said frankly: “But it wasn’t quite the same thing. You see, we knew what we were doing. It wasn’t like strangers butting in, and talking as though a law were something above themselves, without using their own judgment, like serving a god. And when you talk of killing people you’ve got nothing against, because they killed someone who may have driven them mad—well, I should say that the first killing might have been bad or good, but the second would be bad beyond doubt at all.”

“You seem to take no account of it being a warning to other killers.”

“Well, as to that, you’d have to prove that there’d be more than twice as many killings if there were no punishments, before you’d have a leg to stand on. And even then there’d be the question of whether it’s right to do things that you know are wrong because there may be good results in another way. But that wasn’t really the argument that made us decide that no civilization could be any good unless it were without laws. It was the fact that people felt that they’d got to act according to law, even though they might think it bad for the case they tried. They thought law was superhuman; and subhuman was what it was.”

“I think you have overlooked one thing in what you were saying—that murderers were not usually violent killers of provocative pests. They often had much meaner motives, and their crimes were very cunningly done.”

“Then it must have been very hard to be quite sure they’d got hold of the right man. And very tempting to make a guess, after all the fuss and trouble there’d been; and those who guess may guess wrong.

“Don’t you think that if it had been left for general discussion—if anyone wanted that—or for those who knew most about it to deal with it in their own way, or to leave it alone, there might have been better justice, as well as a lot less misery?”

“It does sound reasonable,” Gleda conceded readily. “It seems to me that it would depend most upon the characters of those in whose hands it would be left.” Perhaps, she thought, laws are good for those who would not otherwise conform to civilized ways, but no civilization can be secure until it has arrived at a higher stage. But it also occurred to her, none too soon, that she might easily reduce her own popularity by too warm a defense of an ancient time, which should be nothing to her. And, beyond that, she was less than sure that these people were wholly wrong.