‘That’s our pitch-pipe,’ said Arnott. ‘We may be a bit ragged; I’ve never conducted two hundred and fifty performers before.’ He pulled out the couplers, and struck a full chord on the Service Communicators.
The beams of light leaped down again, and danced, solemnly and awfully, a stilt-dance, sweeping thirty or forty miles left and right at each stiff-legged kick, while the darkness delivered itself – there is no scale to measure against that utterance – of the tuneto which they kept time. Certain notes – one learnt to expect them with terror – cut through one’s marrow, but, after three minutes, thought and emotion passed in indescribable agony.
We saw, we heard, but I think we were in some sort swooning. The two hundred and fifty beams shifted, reformed, straddled and split, narrowed, widened, rippled in ribbons, broke into a thousand white-hot parallel lines, melted and revolved in interwoven rings like old-fashioned engine-turning, flung up to the zenith, made as if to descend and renew the torment, halted at the last instant, twizzled insanely round the horizon, and vanished, to bring back for the hundredth time darkness more shattering than their instantly renewed light over all Illinois. Then the tune and lights ceased together, and we heard one single, devastating wail that shook all the horizon as a rubbed wet finger shakes the rim of a bowl.
‘Ah, that is my new siren,’ said Pirolo. ‘You can break an iceberg across, if you find the proper pitch. They will whistle by squadrons now. It is the wind through pierced shutters in the bows.’
I had collapsed beside Dragomiroff, broken and snivelling feebly, because I had been delivered before my time to all the terrors of Judgment Day, and the Archangels of the Resurrection were hailing me naked across the Universe to the sound of the music of the spheres.
Then I saw De Forest smacking Arnott’s helmet with his open hand. The wailing died down in a long shriek as a black shadow swooped past us, and returned to her place above the lower clouds.
‘I hate to interrupt a specialist when he’s enjoying himself,’ said De Forest, ‘but, as a matter of fact, all Illinois has been asking us to stop for these last fifteen seconds.’
‘What a pity!’ Arnott slipped off his mask. ‘I wanted you to hear us really hum. Our lower C can lift street-paving.’
‘It is Hell – Hell!’ cried Dragomiroff, and sobbed aloud.
Arnott looked away as he answered:
‘It’s a few thousand volts ahead of the old shoot-’em-and-sink-’em game, but I should scarcely call it that. What shall I tell the Fleet, sir?’
‘Tell them we’re very pleased and impressed. I don’t think they need wait on any longer. There isn’t a spark left down there.’ De Forest pointed. ‘They’ll be deaf and blind.’
‘Oh, I think not, sir. The demonstration lasted less than ten minutes.’
‘Marvellous!’ Takahira sighed. ‘I should have said it was half a night. Now shall we go down and pick up the pieces?’
‘But first a small drink,’ said Pirolo. ‘The Board must not arrive weeping at its own works.’
‘I am an old fool – an old fool!’ Dragomiroff began piteously. ‘I did not know what would happen. It is all new to me. We reason with them in Little Russia.’
Chicago North landing-tower was unlighted, and Arnott worked his ship into the clips by her own lights. As soon as these broke out we heard groanings of horror and appeal from many people below.
‘All right!’ shouted Arnott into the darkness. ‘We aren’t beginning again!’ We descended by the stairs, to find ourselves knee-deep in a grovelling crowd, some crying that they were blind, others beseeching us not to make any more noises, but the greater part writhing face downward, their hands or their caps before their eyes.
It was Pirolo who came to our rescue. He climbed the side of a surfacing-machine, and there, gesticulating as though they could see, made oration to those afflicted people of Illinois.
‘You stchewpids!’ he began. ‘There is nothing to fuss for. Of course, your eyes will smart and be all red to-morrow. You will look as if you and your wives had drunk too much, but in a little while you will see again as well as before. I tell you this, and I – I am Pirolo! Victor Pirolo!’
The crowd with one accord shuddered, for many legends attach to Victor Pirolo of Foggia, deep in the secrets of God.
‘Pirolo?’ An unsteady voice lifted itself. ‘Then tell us, was there anything except light in those lights of yours, just now?’
The question was repeated from every corner of the darkness.
Pirolo laughed.
‘No!’ he thundered. (Why have small men such largevoices?) ‘I give you my word and the Board’s word that there was nothing except light – just light! You stchewpids! Your birth-rate is too low already as it is. Some day I must invent something to send it up, but send it down – never!’
‘Is that true? We thought – we heard – somebody said—’
One could feel the tension relax all round.
‘You too big fools,’ Pirolo cried. ‘You could have sent us a call and we would have told you.’
‘Send you a call!’ a deep voice shouted. ‘I wish you had been at our end of the wire.’
‘I’m glad I wasn’t,’ said De Forest. ‘It looked bad enough from behind the lamps. Never mind! It’s over now. Is there anyone here I can talk business with? I’m De Forest, US – for the Board.’
‘You might begin with me, for one – I’m Mayor,’ the bass voice replied.
A big man rose unsteadily from the street, and staggered towards us, where we sat on the broad turf-edging, in front of the garden fences.
‘I ought to be the first on my feet. Am I?’ said he.
‘Yes,’ said De Forest, and steadied him as he dropped down beside us.
‘Hello, Andy. Is that you?’ a voice called.
‘Excuse me,’ said the Mayor; ‘that sounds like my Chief of Police, Bluthner?’
‘Bluthner it is; and here’s Mulligan and Keefe – on their feet.’
‘Bring ’em up, please, Blut. We’re supposed to be the Four in charge of this hamlet. What we say, goes. And, De Forest, what do you say?’
‘Nothing yet,’ De Forest answered, as we made room for the panting, reeling men. You’ve cut out of the system. Well?’
‘Tell the steward to send down drinks, please,’ Arnott whispered to an orderly at his side.
‘Good!’ said the Mayor, smacking his dry lips. ‘Now I suppose we can take it, De Forest, that henceforward the Board will administer us direct?’
‘Not if the Board can avoid it,’ De Forest laughed. ‘The ABC is responsible only for the planetary traffic.’
‘And all that that implies.’The big Four who ran Chicago chanted their Magna Charta like children at school.
‘Well, get on,’ said De Forest wearily. ‘What is your silly trouble, anyway?’
‘Too much damn democracy,’ said the Mayor, laying his hand on De Forest’s knee.
‘So? I thought Illinois had had her dose of that.’
‘She has. That’s why. Blut, what did you do with our prisoners last night?’
‘Locked ’em in the water-tower to prevent the women killing ’em,’ the Chief of Police replied. ‘I’m too blind to move just yet, but—’
‘Arnott, send some of your people, please, and fetch ’em along,’ said De Forest.
‘They’re triple-circuited,’ the Mayor called. ‘You’ll have to blow out three fuses.’ He turned to De Forest, his large outline just visible in the paling darkness. ‘I hate to throw any more work on the Board. I’m an administrator myself, but we’ve had a little fuss with our Serviles. What? In a big city there’s bound to be a few men and women who can’t live without listening to themselves, and who prefer drinking out of pipes they don’t own both ends of. They inhabit flats and hotels all the year round. They say it saves ’em trouble. Anyway, it gives ’em more time to make trouble for their neighbours. We call ’em Serviles locally. And they are apt to be tuberculous.’
‘Just so!?
?? said the man called Mulligan. ‘Transportation is Civilisation. Democracy is Disease. I’ve proved it by the blood-test, every time.’
‘Mulligan’s our Health Officer, and a one-cycle man,’ said the Mayor, laughing. ‘But it’s true that most Serviles haven’t much control. They will talk; and when people take to talking as a business, anything may arrive – mayn’t it, De Forest?’
‘Anything – except the facts of the case,’ said De Forest, laughing.
‘I’ll give you those in a minute,’ said the Mayor. ‘Our Serviles got to talking – first in their houses, and then on thestreets, telling men and women how to manage their own affairs. (You can’t teach a Servile not to finger his neighbour’s soul.) That’s invasion of privacy, of course, but in Chicago we’ll suffer anything sooner than make crowds. Nobody took much notice, and so I let ’em alone. My fault! I was warned there would be trouble, but there hasn’t been a crowd or murder in Illinois for nineteen years.’
‘Twenty-two,’ said the Chief of Police.
‘Likely. Anyway, we’d forgot such things. So, from talking in the houses and on the streets, our Serviles go to calling a meeting in the Old Market yonder.’ He nodded across the square where the wrecked buildings heaved up grey in the dawn-glimmer behind the square-cased statue of The Negro in Flames. ‘There’s nothing to prevent anyone calling meetings except that it’s against human nature to stand in a crowd, besides being bad for the health. I ought to have known by the way our men and women attended that first meeting that trouble was brewing. There were as many as a thousand in the market-place, touching each other. Touching! Then the Serviles turned in all tongue-switches and talked, and we—’
‘What did they talk about?’ said Takahira.
‘First, how badly things were managed in the city. That pleased us Four – we were on the platform – because we hoped to catch one or two good men for City work. You know how rare executive capacity is. Even if we didn’t, it’s – it’s refreshing to find anyone interested enough in our job to damn our eyes. You don’t know what it means to work, year in, year out, without a spark of difference with a living soul.’
‘Oh, don’t we!’ said De Forest. ‘There are times on the Board when we’d give our positions if anyone would lack us out and take hold of things themselves.’
‘But they don’t,’ said the Mayor ruefully. ‘I assure you, sir, we Four have done things in Chicago, in the hope of rousing people, that would have discredited Nero. But what do they say? “Very good, Andy. Have it your own way. Anything’s better than a crowd. I’ll go back to my land.” You can’t do anything with folk who can go where they please, and don’twant anything on God’s earth except their own way. There isn’t a kick or a kicker left on the Planet.’
‘Then I suppose that little shed yonder fell down by itself?’ said De Forest. We could see the bare and still smoking acre of ruins, and hear the slag-pools crackle as they hardened and set.
‘Oh, that’s only amusement. ’Tell you later. As I was saying, our Seniles held the meeting, and pretty soon we had to ground-circuit the platform to save ’em from being killed. And that didn’t make our people any more pacific.’
‘How d’you mean?’ I ventured to ask.
‘If you’ve ever been ground-circuited,’ said the Mayor, ‘you’ll know it don’t improve any man’s temper to be held up straining against nothing. No, sir! Eight or nine hundred folk kept pawing and buzzing like flies in treacle for two hours, while a pack of perfectly safe Seniles invades their mental and spiritual privacy, may be amusing to watch, but they are not pleasant to handle afterwards.’
Pirolo chuckled.
‘Our folk own themselves. They were of opinion things were going too far and too fiery. I warned the Seniles; but they’re born house-dwellers. Unless a fact hits ’em on the head, they cannot see it. Would you believe me, they went on to talk of what they called “popular government”! They did! They wanted us to go back to the old Voodoo-business of voting with papers and wooden boxes, and word-drunk people and printed formulas, and news-sheets. They said they practised it among themselves about what they’d have to eat in their flats and hotels.
‘Yes, sir! They stood up behind Bluthner’s doubled ground-circuits, and they said that, in this present year of grace, to self-owning men and women, on that very spot! Then they finished’ – he lowered his voice cautiously – ‘by talking about “The People.” And then Bluthner he had to sit up all night in charge of the circuits because he couldn’t trust his men to keep ’em shut.’
‘It was trying ’em too high,’ said the Chief of Police. ‘But we couldn’t hold the crowd ground-circuited for ever. I gatheredin all the Serviles on charge of crowd-making, and put ’em in the water-tower, and then I let things cut loose. I had to! The District lit like a sparked gas-tank!’
‘The news was out over thirty degrees of country,’ said the Mayor; ‘and when once it’s a question of invasion of privacy, goodbye to right and reason in Illinois! They began turning out traffic-lights and locking up landing-towers on Thursday night. Friday, they stopped all through traffic, and asked for the Board to take over. Then they wanted to clean Chicago off the side of the lake and rebuild elsewhere – just for a souvenir of “The People” that the Serviles talked about. I suggested that they should slag the Old Market where the meeting was held, while I turned in a call to you all on the Board. That kept ’em quiet till you came along. And – and now you can take hold of the situation.’
‘Any chance of their quieting down?’ De Forest asked.
‘You can try,’ said the Mayor.
De Forest raised his voice in the face of the reviving crowd that had edged in towards us. Day was come.
‘Don’t you think this business can be arranged?’ he began. But there was a roar of angry voices:
‘We’ve finished with crowds! We aren’t going back to the Old Days! Take us over! Take the Serviles away! Administer direct, or we’ll kill ’em! Down with The People!’
An attempt was made to begin Macdonough’s Song. It got no further than the first line, for the Victor Pirolo sent down a warning drone on one stopped horn. A wrecked side-wall of the Old Market tottered and fell inwards on the slag-pools. None spoke or moved till the last of the dust had settled down again, turning the steel case of Salati’s Statue ashy grey.
‘You see, you’ll just have to take us over,’ the Mayor whispered.
De Forest shrugged his shoulders.
‘You talk as if executive capacity could be snatched out of the air like so much horse-power. Can’t you manage yourselves on any terms?’ he said.
‘We can, if you say so. It will cost those few lives to begin with.’
The Mayor pointed across the square, where Arnott’s men guided a stumbling group of ten or twelve men and women to the lake front, and halted them under the Statue.
‘Now I think,’ said Takahira, under his breath, ‘there will be trouble.’
The mass in front of us growled like beasts.
At that moment the sun rose clear, and revealed the blinking assembly to itself. As soon as it realised that it was a crowd, we saw the shiver of horror and mutual repulsion shoot across it precisely as the steely flaws shot across the lake outside. Nothing was said, and, being half blind, of course it moved but slowly. Yet in less than fifteen minutes most of that vast, multitude – five thousand, at the lowest count – melted away like frost on south eaves. The remnant stretched themselves on the grass, where a crowd feels and looks less like a crowd.
‘These mean business,’ the Mayor whispered to Takahira. ‘There are a goodish few women there who’ve borne children. I don’t like it.’
The morning draught off the lake stirred the trees round us with promise of a hot day; the sun reflected itself dazzlingly off the canister-shaped covering of Salati’s Statue; cocks crew in the gardens, and we could hear gate-latches clicking in the distance as people stumblingly resought their homes.
‘I’m afraid there won’t be any
morning deliveries,’ said De Forest. ‘We rather upset things in the country last night.’
‘That makes no odds,’ the Mayor returned. ‘We’re all provisioned for six months. We take no chances.’
Nor, when you come to think of it, does anyone else. It must be three-quarters of a generation since any house or city faced a food shortage. Yet is there house or city on the Planet to-day that has not half a year’s provisions laid in? We are like the shipwrecked seamen in the old books, who, having once nearly starved to death, ever afterwards hide away bits of food and biscuit. Truly we trust no crowds, nor system based on crowds!
De Forest waited till the last footstep had died away. Meantime the prisoners at the base of the Statue shuffled, posed andfidgeted, with the shamelessness of quite little children. None of them were more than six feet high, and many of them were as grey-haired as the ravaged, harassed heads of old pictures. They huddled together in actual touch, while the crowd, spaced at large intervals, looked at them with congested eyes.
Suddenly a man among them began to talk. The Mayor had not in the least exaggerated. It appeared that our Planet lay sunk in slavery beneath the heel of the Aerial Board of Control. The orator urged us to arise in our might, burst our prison doors and break our fetters (all his metaphors, by the way, were of the most mediaeval). Next he demanded that every matter of daily life, including most of the physical functions, should be submitted for decision at any time of the week, month, or year to, I gathered, anybody who happened to be passing by or residing within a certain radius, and that everybody should forthwith abandon his concerns to settle the matter, first by crowd-making, next by talking to the crowds made, and, lastly, by describing crosses on pieces of paper, which rubbish should later be counted with certain mystic ceremonies and oaths. Out of this amazing play, he assured us, would automatically rise a higher, nobler and kinder world, based – he demonstrated this with the awful lucidity of the insane – based on the sanctity of the Crowd and the villainy of the single person. In conclusion, he called loudly upon God to testify to his personal merits and integrity. When the flow ceased, I turned, bewildered, to Takahira, who was nodding solemnly.