The Crack of Doom
CHAPTER XII.
"NO DEATH--SAVE IN LIFE."
For some days afterwards our voyage was uneventful, and the usualshipboard amusements were requisitioned to while away the tedious hours.The French fishing fleet was never mentioned. We got through the Baywith very little knocking about, and passed the Rock without calling. Iwas not disappointed, for there was slight inducement for going ashore,oppressed as I was with the ever-present incubus of dread. At intervalsthis feeling became less acute, but only to return, strengthened by itsshort absences. After a time my danger sense became blunted. The nervoussystem became torpid under continuous stress, and refused to pass on thesensations with sufficient intensity to the brain; or the weary brainwas asleep at its post and did not heed the warnings. I could think nomore.
And this reminds me of something which I must tell about young Halley.For several days after the voyage began, the boy avoided me. I knew hisreason for doing this. I myself did not blame him for his want ofphysical courage, but I was glad that he himself was ashamed of it.
Halley came to me one morning and said:
"I wish to speak to you, Marcel. I _must_ speak to you. It is about thatmiserable episode on the evening we left England. I acted like a cad.Therefore I must be a cad. I only want to tell you that I despise myselfas much as you can. And that I envy you. I never thought that I shouldenvy a man simply because he had no nervous system."
"Who is this man without a nervous system of whom you speak?" I askedcoldly. I was not sorry that I had an opportunity of reading him alesson which might be placed opposite the many indignities which hadbeen put upon me, in the form mainly of shoulder shrugs, browelevations, and the like.
"You, of course. I mean no offence--you are magnificent. I am honest insaying that I admire you. I wish I was like you in height, weight,muscle--and absence of nervous system."
"You would keep your own brain, I suppose?" I asked.
"Yes, I would keep that."
"And I will keep my own nervous system," I replied. "And the differencebetween mine and yours is this: that whereas my own danger sense is, orwas, as keen as your own, I have my reserve of nerve force--or hadit--which might be relied on to tide me over a sudden emergency. Thisreserve you have expended on your brain. There are two kinds of cowards;the selfish coward who cares for no interest save his own; the unselfishcoward who cares nothing for himself, but who cannot face a dangerbecause he dare not. And there are two kinds of brave men; the nervelessman you spoke of, who simply faces danger because he does not appreciateit, and the man who faces danger because, although he fears it he daresit. I have no difficulty in placing you in this list."
"You place me--"
"A coward because you cannot help it. You are merely out of harmony withyour environment. You ought to bring a supply of 'environment' aboutwith you, seeing that you cannot manufacture it off-hand like myself. Iwish to be alone. Good-day."
"Before I go, Marcel, I will say this." There were tears in his eyes."These people do not really know you, with all their telepathic power.You are not--not--"
"Not as great a fool as they think. Thank you. I mean to prove that tothem some day."
With that I turned away from him, although I felt that he would havegladly stayed longer with me.
While the _Esmeralda_ was sweeping over the long swells of theMediterranean, I heard Brande lecture for the second time. It was afitting interlude between his first and third addresses. I mightclassify them thus--the first, critical; the second, constructive; thethird, executive. His third speech was the last he made in the world.
We were assembled in the saloon. It would have been pleasanter on theupper deck, owing to the heat, but the speaker could not then have beeneasily heard in the noise of the wind and waves. I could scarcelybelieve that it was Brande who arose to speak, so changed was hisexpression. The frank scepticism, which had only recently degeneratedinto a cynicism, still tempered with a half kindly air of easysuperiority, was gone. In its place there was a look of concentratedand relentless purpose which dominated the man himself and all who sawhim. He began in forcible and direct sentences, with only a faintlyreminiscent eloquence which was part of himself, and from which he couldnot without a conscious effort have freed his style. But the wholebearing of the man had little trace in it of the dilettante academicianwhom we all remembered.
"When I last addressed this Society," he began, "I laboured under adifficulty in arriving at ultimate truth which was of my ownmanufacture. I presupposed, as you will remember, the indestructibilityof the atom, and, in logical consequence I was bound to admit theconservation of suffering, the eternity of misery. But on that eveningmany of my audience were untaught in the rudiments of ultimate thought,and some were still sceptical of the _bona fides_ of our purpose, andour power to achieve its object. To them, in their then ineptitude, whatI shall say now would have been unintelligible. For in the same way thatthe waves of light or sound exceeding a certain maximum can not betransferred to the brain by dull eyes and ears, my thought pulsationswould have escaped those auditors by virtue of their ownirresponsiveness. To-night I am free from the limitation which I thensuffered, because there are none around me now who have not sufficientknowledge to grasp what I shall present.
"You remember that I traced for you the story of evolution in itsjourney from the atom to the star. And I showed you that the hypothesisof the indestructibility of the atom was simply a creed of cruelty writlarge. I now proceed on the lines of true science to show you how thathypothesis is false; that as the atom _is_ destructible--as you haveseen by our experiments (the last of which resulted in a climax notintended by me)--the whole scheme of what is called creation falls topieces. As the atom was the first etheric blunder, so the materialUniverse is the grand etheric mistake.
"In considering the marvellous and miserable succession of errorsresulting from the meretricious atomic remedy adopted by the ether tocure its local sores, it must first be said of the ether itself thatthere is too much of it. Space is not sufficient for it. Thus, theparticles of ether--those imponderable entities which vibrate through ablock of marble or a disc of hammered steel with only a dulled, not anannihilated motion, are by their own tumultuous plenty packed closertogether than they wish. I say wish, for if all material consciousnessand sentiency be founded on atomic consciousness, then in its turnatomic consciousness is founded upon, and dependent on, ethericconsciousness. These particles of ether, therefore, when too closelyimpinged upon by their neighbours, resent the impact, and in doing soinitiate etheric whirlwinds, from whose vast perturbances stupendousdrifts set out. In their gigantic power these avalanches crush theparticles which impede them, force the resisting medium out of itsnormal stage, destroy the homogeneity of its constituents, and mass theminto individualistic communities whose vibrations play with greaterfreedom when they synchronise. The homogeneous etheric tendencies recedeand finally determine.
"Behold a miracle! An atom is born!
"By a similar process--which I may liken to that of putting off an evilday which some time must be endured--the atoms group themselves intomolecules. In their turn the molecules go forth to war, capturing orbeing captured; the vibrations of the slaves always being forced tosynchronise with those of their conquerors. The nucleus of the gas of aprimal metal is now complete, and the foundation of a solarsystem--paltry molecule of the Universe as it is--is laid. Thereafter,the rest is easily followed. It is described in your school books, andmust not occupy me now.
"But one word I will interpolate which may serve to explain a curiousand interesting human belief. You are aware of how, in times past, menof absolutely no scientific insight held firmly to the idea that anelixir of life and a philosopher's stone might be discovered, and thatthese two objects were nearly always pursued contemporaneously. That isto my mind an extraordinary example of the force of atomicconsciousness. The idea itself was absolutely correct; but the men whofollowed it had slight knowledge of its unity, and none whatever of itsproper pursuit. They would hav
e worked on their special lines toeternity before advancing a single step toward their object. And thisbecause they did not know what life was, and death was, and what themetals ultimately signified which they, blind fools, so unsuccessfullytried to transmute. But we know more than they. We have climbed no doubtin the footholds they have carved, and we have gained the summit theyonly saw in the mirage of hope. For we know that there is no life, nodeath, no metals, no matter, no emotions, no thoughts; but that allthat we call by these names is only the ether in various conditions.Life! I could live as long as this earth will submit to human existenceif I had studied that paltry problem. Metals! The ship in which you sailwas bought with gold manufactured in my crucibles.
"The unintelligent--or I should say the grossly ignorant--have long heldover the heads of the pioneers of science these two great charges: Noman has ever yet transmuted a metal; no man has ever yet proved theconnecting link between organic and inorganic life. I say _life_, for Itake it that this company admits that a slab of granite is as much aliveas any man or woman I see before me. But I have manufactured gold, and Icould have manufactured protoplasm if I had devoted my life to thatobject. My studies have been almost wholly on the inorganic plane. Hencethe 'philosopher's stone' came in my way, but not the 'elixir of life.'The molecules of protoplasm are only a little more complex than themolecules of hydrogen or nitrogen or iron or coal. You may fuse iron,vaporise water, intermix the gases; but the molecules of all changelittle in such metamorphosis. And you may slay twenty thousand men atWaterloo or Sedan, or ten thousand generations may be numbered with thedust, and not an ounce of protoplasm lies dead. All molecules are merelyarrangements of atoms made under different degrees of pressure and ofdifferent ages. And all atoms are constructed of identicalconstituents--the ether, as I have said. Therefore the ether, which wasfrom the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, which is the sameyesterday, to-day, and for ever, is the origin of force, of matter, oflife.
"_It is alive!_
"Its starry children are so many that the sands of the sea-shore may notbe used as a similitude for their multitude; and they extend so far thatdistance may not be named in relation to them. They are so high above usand so deep below us that there is neither height nor depth in them.There is neither east nor west in them, nor north and south in them. Noris there beginning or end to them. Time drops his scythe and standsappalled before that dreadful host. Number applies not to its eternalmultitudes. Distance is lost in boundless space. And from all the starsthat stud the caverns of the Universe, there swells this awful chorus:Failure! failure and futility! And the ether is to blame!
"Heterogeneous suffering is more acute than homogeneous, because theagony is intensified by being localised; because the comfort of thecomfortable is purchasable only by the multiplied misery of themiserable; because aristocratic leisure requires that the poor should bealways with it. There is, therefore, no gladness without itsoverbalancing sorrow. There is no good without intenser evil. There isno death save in life.
"Back, then, from this ill-balanced and unfair long-suffering, thisinsufficient existence. Back to Nirvana--the ether! And I will lead theway.
"The agent I will employ has cost me all life to discover. It willrelease the vast stores of etheric energy locked up in the huge atomicwarehouse of this planet. I shall remedy the grand mistake only to adegree which it would be preposterous to call even microscopic; but whenI have done what I can, I am blameless for the rest. In due season thewhole blunder will be cured by the same means that I shall use, and allthe hideous experiment will be over, and everlasting rest or_quasi_-rest will supersede the magnificent failure of materialexistence. This earth, at least, and, I am encouraged to hope, the wholesolar system, will by my instrumentality be restored to the ether fromwhich it never should have emerged. Once before, in the history of oursystem, an effort similar to mine was made, unhappily without success.
"This time we shall not fail!"
A low murmur rose from the audience as the lecturer concluded, and ahushed whisper asked:
"Where was that other effort made?"
Brande faced round momentarily, and said quietly but distinctly:
"On the planet which was where the Asteroids are now."