The Fall of the House of Heron (Prologue Science Fiction) Page 12

  More than a year was to pass before these two men met again and many months separated Greta from her husband after they parted next day and she drove him to Exeter and saw him off for London. So the three pursued their different tasks against the background of the war: the scientist now in his laboratory — working alone; the policeman with his hands full at his old, salutary business; and Greta busy with far-reaching local organization of the Red Cross embracing a thousand knitting needles. The opening moves of the world’s greatest war were accomplished and the German project revealed. By daily thousands her more fortunate victims died a sudden death, while the less lucky she herded in extermination camps or conveyed to slavery. One by one the lesser kingdoms passed under her dominion; dynasties and rulers fled, or became prisoners of war, while increasing abominations heralded the New Order. Then fell France and over the beaches of Dunkirk descended the curtain on the first act.

  With her brother, Greta Trensham would sometimes discuss events from day to day when they met, which was seldom save at breakfast or dinner. Absolute indifference marked his attitude to successive disasters and after the salvation and return of British armies from France, that stupendous achievement failed to waken a shadow of pride.

  “These loud-sounding and theatrical incidents are as nothing,” he told Greta, “when compared with what is proceeding within the walls of my laboratory.”

  Somewhat earlier than the mightier events about to happen in North Africa, Greta wrote her husband a long and personal letter concerning Cliff and all that was going forward there. She dwelt on the activities of the village, the Home Guard and those who guided it, the spirit of the people, the happy fact that as yet no enemy bomb had fallen within two miles of them.

  “We are familiar enough with their mighty roar,” she wrote, “for we lie beneath their route to Bristol and Wales. They come and go and sometimes let fall the last of their bombs before they leave us on their way home but, round about here, they have slain as yet only a few rabbits on the high moors, and shattered not so much as a roof-tree.”

  Then Ernest learned the latest news concerning his brother-in-law.

  “Faraday is very pale,” she told him. “He grows thin and his great, luminous eyes shine out under his forehead brighter than ever. But he assures me that he is exceedingly well and, from the energetic way he takes his morning exercise and tramps five measured miles every morning before he goes to work, I think he must be all right. He lives a hermit’s life and seldom sees anybody. The elderly man looking after estate business appears to satisfy him and he leaves everything else to me. He seldom talks about anything but atomic energy and is now convinced that Germany has not got it; but from what he reads — papers and letters he gets from America — he thinks their scientists are ahead of us. They are concerned with an aspect of the subject which interests Faraday very much: the amount of heat which may be represented by the new energies. Such heat could create an enormous increase of electrical power in the world and may prove the most valuable product of atomic energy for any after-war, rational use of it. ‘If not destroyed by other means before,’ he said, ‘the world will presently grow much colder and darker than we as yet know it, and, if humanity persists into a future Ice Age, it must find creation of heat and light and food the first things that matter.’

  “Now something novel about my brother, darling,” went on Greta. “He has taken to drinking quite a lot of stimulant! You know how he never touches anything but ‘soft’ drinks and one glass of port after dinner always — to please his father — a habit he never gave up. But now Roger Horn has unearthed from the cellars dozens of old, famous burgundy, and he prevailed upon Faraday, six weeks ago, to take some at luncheon, when he came in very tired and as white as a ghost. He even had not enough fight in him to tell Roger to go to the devil, as I expected, but drank up the wine at a gulp or two and then took another glass. It is priceless, old liquor, so Horn says, and it evidently did Faraday a great deal of good, for he cheered up, became himself — frosty, of course, but not cast down. Since then he has taken it regularly, but more often at dinner than at midday, for, after breakfast he frequently does not appear again till dinner. Happily there is plenty of this very choice burgundy available.

  “Dear father was fond of buying wine, just as he was fond of wine lists, and flower catalogues always amused him, too. He liked producing choice vintages for his friends at his dinner and luncheon parties. Then, when understanding men praised his treasures, they generally found a dozen bottles in their cars for them when they drove home. He always used to say that if you can give game and fruit, why not wine. Horn told Faraday not long ago that the champagne we have got, at present war prices is worth more than a thousand pounds, and I was sorry he did, because now it will probably all be sent to London. But I hope Faraday’s forgotten and I shall warn Roger to keep plenty of it on your account.”

  Greta ended her letter with expressions of joy that at last her husband was in sight of long leave and that they were going to meet in the course of a few weeks; but it was now that her brother found himself called to another London conference and his dislike at this necessary break in his work paled before a far greater display of annoyance when a week later he returned.

  “They have started an infernal Commission,” he told Greta, “and the situation is regarded as so grave that, with my peculiar and extensive knowledge, they take it for granted I shall serve. This business is admittedly important, though the Secret Service declares with authority that Germany is not gaining upon us. But the United States are making substantial advances, at any rate, they claim to be. There are already very eminent anti-Nazi Germans in America and Canada, and now they have openly indicated from Washington and Quebec that, at no distant date, they will demand all the best brains we can send over to them. They know just those they need and I am one of them, of course. Which means that ere long I have a trip to America hanging over me — a most tiresome and inopportune call from my own point of view — yet apparently impossible to evade.”

  “You certainly cannot escape it,” agreed Greta. “If, with your genius, you could shorten the war by a month, Faraday — what a blessing!”

  “Better lengthen the next peace by a century,” he answered, “or create conditions to ensure eternal peace. This filthy episode, in the history of the only conscious being to appear on earth, is concerned with our generation — not the next. I care little who are left after peace returns, so that there remain enough to build again, and act with reason.”

  “That will depend on who are left, and who win the war,” said Greta; “and anything you can help to do to win the war for us will be on the side of the brave new world we already talk about.”

  “I had done better for the brave new world by stopping here and minding my own business,” he said, “than by joining this learned gang in America. Here at least I preserve my self-respect; there I shall only be assisting to create the most prodigious machines for destruction designed as yet by the prostitution of scientific knowledge.”

  Ernest Trensham arrived and his visit was marked by a more important incident, for Faraday learned that he had been awarded a fellowship of the Royal Society.

  “Nothing now,” he said, “though once how I longed for it! These gawds are only precious while you lack them. Once yours, you find them dust and would part with them for a drink of water if you happened to be thirsty.”

  The policeman came and went and, in ignorance, wove the first strands of a web destined to embrace in one wide ambit his wife and her brother. But none dreamed of Ernest’s secret activities at Cliff on this occasion and, least of all, was the man himself aware that they would develop as they were destined to do. Inexorable tragedy was born while he loitered and took his rest; it grew and shaped out of the darkness; and when, in time to come, humanity faced the thing and strove to measure all it meant, upon the dead compassion centred; but for the living only horror, devoid of any pity, awakened.

  CHAPTER IX

 
FOLLOWING closely the German design, Japan announced her approaching domination and opened her scheme of mastery with surprise, bad faith, and contempt for sanctity of the oath. While German hopes faltered under defeat in North Africa and the Allied invasion of Italy, the Japanese enjoyed their vast, preliminary successes, conquered kingdoms and gazed from Burma upon India, from New Guinea to Australia. They had reached their peak of conquest, but as yet knew it not, and on the last day of his long leave, when Trensham, Greta and her brother sat together in the belvedere at Cliff on a moonlit, summer night, the scientist declared his faith.

  “The aspects of this war and the solid facts that emerge from them can be chronicled up to a point,” he said, “and we now know the Allies must win. Science recognizes that, even if the nations engaged fail to do so. But what is at the bottom of our victory? What has changed the picture so completely since Dunkirk? Largely character, and as we were always a maritime nation and the first to conquer the sea, on which every island must depend for security, so we have continued to be. But because we proved greater on the sea, it by no means followed that we should find ourselves greater in the air. To me the first problem of this war has always been what account the British character would give of itself in that comparatively unexplored element. Nobody doubted Teuton bravery, and the tradition of their rare science made me guess that their fighting machines might prove far better than our own and weaken the morale of our aerial armies. I was wrong. Their machines proved no better than our own while our airmen were better than theirs — not braver, hardier, or readier to tackle every difficulty of the new warfare — but by qualities of character, by natural adapability and by native genius. As on the sea better, so in the air. The English-speaking people have taken to the air as the birds take to it, and when we found that atomic energy was not in the German armament, I knew that we must win.”

  “You may say the same holds good for the Japanese,” suggested Ernest. “They, like ourselves, were a maritime people and had made themselves a great navy and built some of the finest battleships in the world, yet even on the sea, after their first bit of knavery, they were soon held.”

  “Character again,” declared Faraday. “They curiously resemble the Germans. Limited barbarians behind their veneer. They have already bitten off more than they can chew. Science will account for them in their turn. But what I want to insist upon is this: that in addition to character, we English-speaking people embrace certain gifts which are not claimed for us and which we do not claim for ourselves. You hear it said we are ‘great’ this, or that — never that we are great men of science. The truth is that in science — recognized as an entity about four hundred years ago — we have led and advanced with the utmost speed that social and religious evolution permitted. War has quickened our wits in many sciences — that must be granted the accursed thing. Discoveries born of war’s requirements have been subsequently used for sane and profitable purposes: you must grant that, too.”

  “Precious little we have to thank this war for,” said Greta.

  “Quite mistaken,” answered her brother. “Already it is amazing how much. Take questions of health as applied to armies; take radar; take jet propulsion, which is in its infancy and comes too late to turn the scale. All these discoveries have sprung out of their need in this war, yet promise to prove their value in peace. Even a greater yet awaits us.”

  “Something precious to peace rather than war?” asked Greta.

  “Something vital to peace — the peace which continues to pass understanding,” he assured her. “Science must be international and until it becomes so war is not impossible. Government and science should understand each other better and scientists decline to obey orders when reason argues against them. We have now reached a point, or soon shall reach it, when science must refuse to further war in every shape or form.”

  “The scientists would have every nation upon their side if they did that,” said Greta.

  “Unfortunately a love for science doesn’t render the human animal immune from other affections and even passions,” he replied. “Otherwise I should not be going presently to help Canadians and Americans perfect atomic bombs. Be sure we all hate the cruel and filthy and devilish arbitrament of war; but if you asked us why a self-respecting crowd of learned men are gathering together to find how best they may destroy the vastest possible number of other men, women and children, our answer would be that thus we shall end the war more quickly, perhaps finish the carnage of war once for all and, in this case, at least hasten victory for the more respectable cause.”

  “Would that hope justify any weapon so frightful as an atomic bomb?” asked his sister.

  “If what we anticipate happens, the result will certainly justify the means,” he answered. “Human lives cease to have any value when pitted against principles of universal value. Germany and Japan are butchering thousands daily for their infernal dreams; we design a final massacre on behalf of freedom and democracy, which appear to be worthier ideals than domination. Science has often fought evil and never stood on the side of the devil to my knowledge. Many men have dedicated and sacrificed their lives deliberately to conquer the physical terrors that beset us — selfless martyrs who gave all they had to give, that the world might be rendered a better place for their kind. We can live in peace with fellow-men between our periodical encounters; but we cannot impose any peace upon Nature and the battle-fields of our eternal struggle with her hold the dust of our greatest.”

  They listened to him a little longer and he went on, as will those accustomed to preach, or lecture, without interruption.

  “So, feeling now that atomic energy may serve to shorten the war and so save thousands of Allied lives, we have put our heads together in sober earnest. America is responsible for the money and, with her eyes on Japan, does not grudge it. Something like five millions of pounds — an astronomic figure in dollars — she has expended. When I, who never counted in the past on using the power as a destructive, pestered my father for half a million, it was with no such purpose in my mind. Perhaps, if he had seen with me, the world war might have been escaped and history told a different tale, for I am doing with success what, given means, I might have done long years ago. I am concerned with neither uranium nor thorium, but other elements possessing radioactivity yet far more abundant, amenable and widely dispersed.”

  “The Russians are working like beavers in the Ural Mountains to do the same thing,” said Ernest.

  “They are, but so far have failed. I have succeeded,” replied the scientist. “Meanwhile a start has been made on the lowest and easiest plane rather than the highest. Now we want to pack the new power into bombs, and the cost of creating those tremendous temperatures this operation demands is enormous. Machinery such as was never seen on earth is rising in the United States and these huge plants are necessary at the present stage of our knowledge; but such cumbrous methods for obtaining the new energy will be archaic ten years hence, or sooner. Meanwhile, the responsibilities of science grow and it is certain that atomic energy will soon run the world of men, as it already appears to run the world of stars.”

  “Or science may only end by destroying everything,” suggested Trensham.

  “A possibility. Professor Kendall has pointed out that if we let our achievements get out of hand when welding hydrogen atoms into helium atoms, then our triumph will be heralded to the universe in the shape of an exceedingly bright and brief explosion; but human reason, though still scanty, may decree otherwise. Idiots tell you that science has nothing to do with the humanities, whereas the contrary is true. Society is based on the humanities. What do you imagine the anthropologists and psychologists and sociologists are doing?”

  Then he hastened off to his laboratory.

  “A thought strikes me,” he said and was gone, while Greta laughed.

  “His subconscious mind often works like that,” she said. “It is busy on one thing while he is chattering about another. He assured me once that he often reaches
quite valuable results with his ‘subconscious’ while his ‘conscious’ is dead asleep and resting.”

  “A weird being and seldom to be found in such a human mood as to-night. I wish I had been more to him than just a cog in the machinery of Cliff, but that is all I ever was, or anybody else for that matter,” declared Ernest.

  “Sometimes I’m sorry for all he misses,” she answered, “and wish he shared his life with other people; but that’s foolish. He misses nothing that matters to him.”

  They walked and watched two destroyers, black against the moonlight, forging down channel; then Trensham lamented his approaching departure.

  “It’s been heaven — a month of you,” he said, “though it’s hard to believe a whole month has passed.”

  She returned to a former remark.

  “I’ve always hated his callous indifference to you,” declared Greta. “If ever there was a man capable of winning other people by your power of entering into their interests it is you; and whatever else he may have missed in his life, he was a fool to miss the chance of making you his friend.”