CHAPTER XII. OSTROG
Graham could now take a clearer view of his position. For a long timeyet he wandered, but after the talk of the old man his discovery of thisOstrog was clear in his mind as the final inevitable decision. Onething was evident, those who were at the headquarters of the revolt hadsucceeded very admirably in suppressing the fact of his disappearance.But every moment he expected to hear the report of his death or of hisrecapture by the Council.
Presently a man stopped before him. "Have you heard?" he said.
"No!" said Graham starting.
"Near a dozand," said the man, "a dozand men!" and hurried on.
A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating andshouting: "Capitulated! Given up!" "A dozand of men." "Two dozand ofmen." "Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!" These cries receded, becameindistinct.
Other shouting men followed. For a time his attention was absorbedin the fragments of speech he heard. He had a doubt whether all werespeaking English. Scraps floated to him, scraps like Pigeon English,like 'nigger' dialect, blurred and mangled distortions. He daredaccost no one with questions. The impression the people gave him jarredaltogether with his preconceptions of the struggle and confirmed theold man's faith in Ostrog. It was only slowly he could bring himselfto believe that all these people were rejoicing at the defeat of theCouncil, that the Council which had pursued him with such power andvigour was after all the weaker of the two sides in conflict. And ifthat was so, how did it affect him? Several times he hesitated on theverge of fundamental questions. Once he turned and walked for a longway after a little man of rotund inviting outline, but he was unable tomaster confidence to address him.
It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the"wind-vane offices," whatever the "wind-vane offices" might be.His first enquiry simply resulted in a direction to go on towardsWestminster. His second led to the discovery of a short cut in whichhe was speedily lost. He was told to leave the ways to which he hadhitherto confined himself knowing no other means of transit--andto plunge down one of the middle staircases into the blackness of acrossway. Thereupon came some trivial adventures; chief of these anambiguous encounter with a gruff-voiced invisible creature speaking ina strange dialect that seemed at first a strange tongue, a thick flow ofspeech with the drifting corpses of English words therein, the dialectof the latter-day vile. Then another voice drew near, a girl's voicesinging, "tralala tralala." She spoke to Graham, her English touchedwith something of the same quality. She professed to have lost hersister, she blundered needlessly into him he thought, caught hold of himand laughed. But a word of vague remonstrance sent her into the unseenagain.
The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speakingexcitedly. "They have surrendered!" "The Council! Surely not theCouncil!" "They are saying so in the Ways." The passage seemed wider.Suddenly the wall fell away. He was in a great space and people werestirring remotely. He inquired his way of an indistinct figure. "Strikestraight across," said a woman's voice. He left his guiding wall, and ina moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils ofglass. Graham's eyes, now attuned to darkness, made out a long vistawith pallid tables on either side. He went down this. At one or two ofthe tables he heard a clang of glass and a sound of eating. There werepeople then cool enough to dine, or daring enough to steal a mealin spite of social convulsion and darkness. Far off and high up hepresently saw a pallid light of a semi-circular shape. As he approachedthis, a black edge came up and hid it. He stumbled at steps and foundhimself in a gallery. He heard a sobbing, and found two scared littlegirls crouched by a railing. These children became silent at the nearsound of feet. He tried to console them, but they were very still untilhe left them. Then as he receded he could hear them sobbing again.
Presently he found himself at the foot of a staircase and near a wideopening. He saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of theblackness into a street of moving Ways again. Along this a disorderlyswarm of people marched shouting. They were singing snatches of the songof the revolt, most of them out of tune. Here and there torches flaredcreating brief hysterical shadows. He asked his way and was twicepuzzled by that same thick dialect. His third attempt won an answerhe could understand. He was two miles from the wind-vane offices inWestminster, but the way was easy to follow.
When at last he did approach the district of the wind-vane offices itseemed to him, from the cheering processions that came marching alongthe Ways, from the tumult of rejoicing, and finally from the restorationof the lighting of the city, that the overthrow of the Council mustalready be accomplished. And still no news of his absence came to hisears.
The re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenlyhe stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world wasincandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of theexcited crowds that choked the Ways near the wind-vane offices, and thesense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourlessintention of joining Ostrog to a keen anxiety.
For a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse andweary with cheering his name, some of them bandaged and bloody in hiscause. The frontage of the wind-vane offices was illuminated by somemoving picture, but what it was he could not see, because in spiteof his strenuous attempts the density of the crowd prevented hisapproaching it. From the fragments of speech he caught, he judged itconveyed news of the fighting about the Council House. Ignorance andindecision made him slow and ineffective in his movements. For a time hecould not conceive how he was to get within the unbroken facade of thisplace. He made his way slowly into the midst of this mass of people,until he realised that the descending staircase of the central Way ledto the interior of the buildings. This gave him a goal, but the crowdingin the central path was so dense that it was long before he could reachit. And even then he encountered intricate obstruction, and had an hourof vivid argument first in this guard room and then in that before hecould get a note taken to the one man of all men who was most eagerto see him. His story was laughed to scorn at one place, and wiser forthat, when at last he reached a second stairway he professed simply tohave news of extraordinary importance for Ostrog. What it was he wouldnot say. They sent his note reluctantly. For a long time he waited ina little room at the foot of the lift shaft, and thither at last cameLincoln, eager, apologetic, astonished. He stopped in the doorwayscrutinising Graham, then rushed forward effusively.
"Yes," he cried. "It is you. And you are not dead!"
Graham made a brief explanation.
"My brother is waiting," explained Lincoln. "He is alone in thewind-vane offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. Hedoubted--and things are very urgent still in spite of what we aretelling them _there_--or he would have come to you."
They ascended a lift, passed along a narrow passage, crossed agreat hall, empty save for two hurrying messengers, and entered acomparatively little room, whose only furniture was a long settee and alarge oval disc of cloudy, shifting grey, hung by cables from the wall.There Lincoln left Graham for a space, and he remained alone withoutunderstanding the shifting smoky shapes that drove slowly across thisdisc.
His attention was arrested by a sound that began abruptly. It wascheering, the frantic cheering of a vast but very remote crowd, aroaring exultation. This ended as sharply as it had begun, like a soundheard between the opening and shutting of a door. In the outer room wasa noise of hurrying steps and a melodious clinking as if a loose chainwas running over the teeth of a wheel.
Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "Itis Ostrog!" he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and theneverything was still again.
Presently came voices, footsteps and movement without. The footstepsof some one person detached itself from the other sounds and drewnear, firm, evenly measured steps. The curtain lifted slowly. A tall,white-haired man, clad in garments of cream coloured silk, appeared,regarding Graham from under his raised arm.
For a m
oment the white form remained holding the curtain, then droppedit and stood before it. Graham's first impression was of a very broadforehead, very pale blue eyes deep sunken under white brows, an aquilinenose, and a heavily-lined resolute mouth. The folds of flesh over theeyes, the drooping of the corners of the mouth contradicted theupright bearing, and said the man was old. Graham rose to his feetinstinctively, and for a moment the two men stood in silence, regardingeach other.
"You are Ostrog?" said Graham.
"I am Ostrog."
"The Boss?"
"So I am called."
Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. "I have to thank youchiefly, I understand, for my safety," he said presently.
"We were afraid you were killed," said Ostrog.
"Or sent to sleep again--for ever. We have been doing everything to keepour secret--the secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? Howdid you get here?"
Graham told him briefly.
Ostrog listened in silence.
He smiled faintly. "Do you know what I was doing when they came to tellme you had come?"
"How can I guess?"
"Preparing your double."
"My double?"
"A man as like you as we could find. We were going to hypnotise him, tosave him the difficulty of acting. It was imperative. The whole of thisrevolt depends on the idea that you are awake, alive, and with us. Evennow a great multitude of people has gathered in the theatre clamouringto see you. They do not trust... You know, of course--something of yourposition?"
"Very little," said Graham.
"It is like this." Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned."You are absolute owner," he said, "of more than half the world. As aresult of that you are practically King. Your powers are limited inmany intricate ways, but you are the figure head, the popular symbol ofgovernment. This White Council, the Council of Trustees as it is called."
"I have heard the vague outline of these things."
"I wondered."
"I came upon a garrulous old man."
"I see... Our masses--the word comes from your days--you know of course,that we still have masses--regard you as our actual ruler. Just as agreat number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler.They are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with the ruleof your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the oldquarrel of the common man with his commonness--the misery of work anddiscipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certainmatters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example,they have been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already weof the popular party were agitating for reforms--when your waking came.Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more opportunity."He smiled. "The public mind, making no allowance for your years ofquiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you and appealingto you, and--Flash!"
He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head toshow that he understood.
"The Council muddled--quarreled. They always do. They could not decidewhat to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?"
"I see. I see. And now--we win?"
"We win. Indeed we win. Tonight, in five swift hours. Suddenly we struckeverywhere. The windvane people, the Labour Company and its millions,burst the bonds. We got the pull of the aeropiles."
He paused. "Yes," said Graham, guessing that aeropile meant flyingmachine.
"That was, of course, essential. Or they could have got away. All thecity rose, every third man almost was in it! All the blue, all thepublic services, save only just a few aeronauts and about half the redpolice. You were rescued, and their own police of the Ways--not half ofthem could be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmedor killed. All London is ours--now. Only the Council House remains.
"Half of those who remain to them of the red police were lost in thatfoolish attempt to recapture you. They lost their heads when they lostyou. They flung all they had at the theatre. We cut them off fromthe Council House there. Truly tonight has been a night of victory.Everywhere your star has blazed. A day ago--the White Council ruled asit has ruled for a gross of years, for a century and a half of years,and then, with only a little whispering, a covert arming here and there,suddenly--So!"
"I am very ignorant," said Graham. "I suppose--. I do not clearlyunderstand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Whereis the Council? Where is the fight?"
Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly,save for an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham waspuzzled.
Then he saw that the cloudy grey disc had taken depth and colour, hadassumed the appearance of an oval window looking out upon a strangeunfamiliar scene.
At the first glance he was unable to guess what this scene might be.It was a daylight scene, the daylight of a wintry day, grey and clear.Across the picture and halfway as it seemed between him and the remoterview, a stout cable of twisted white wire stretched vertically. Then heperceived that the rows of great windwheels he saw, the wide intervals,the occasional gulfs of darkness, were akin to those through which hehad fled from the Council House. He distinguished an orderly file of redfigures marching across an open space between files of men in black,and realised before Ostrog spoke that he was looking down on the uppersurface of latter-day London. The overnight snows had gone. He judgedthat this mirror was some modern replacement of the camera obscura, butthat matter was not explained to him. He saw that though the file of redfigures was trotting from left to right, yet they were passing out ofthe picture to the left. He wondered momentarily, and then saw that thepicture was passing slowly, panorama fashion, across the oval.
"In a moment you will see the fighting," said Ostrog at his elbow."Those fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof spaceof London--all the houses are practically continuous now. The streetsand public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time havedisappeared."
Something out of focus obliterated half the picture. Its form suggesteda man. There was a gleam of metal, a flash, something that swept acrossthe oval, as the eyelid of a bird sweeps across its eye, and the picturewas clear again. And now Graham beheld men running down among thewind-wheels, pointing weapons from which jetted out littlesmoky flashes. They swarmed thicker and thicker to the right,gesticulating--it might be they were shouting, but of that the picturetold nothing. They and the windwheels passed slowly and steadily acrossthe field of the mirror.
"Now," said Ostrog, "comes the Council House," and slowly a black edgecrept into view and gathered Graham's attention. Soon it was no longeran edge but a cavity, a huge blackened space amidst the clusteringedifices, and from it thin spires of smoke rose into the pallid wintersky. Gaunt ruinous masses of the building, mighty truncated piers andgirders, rose dismally out of this cavernous darkness. And over thesevestiges of some splendid place, countless minute men were clambering,leaping, swarming.
"This is the Council House," said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. Andthe fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing upthe buildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash?It shattered half the brittle glass in the city."
And while he spoke, Graham saw that beyond this sea of ruins,overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of whitebuilding. This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction ofits surroundings. Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had tornapart; big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of theirinteriors showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged wallhung festoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallicrods. And amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, thered-clothed defenders of the Council. Every now and then faint flashesilluminated the bleak shadows. At the first sight it seemed to Grahamthat an attack upon this isolated white building was in progress, butthen he perceived that the party of the revolt was not advancing, butsheltered amidst the colossal wreckage that encircled this last raggeds
tronghold of the red-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing.
And not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in alittle chamber within that remote building wondering what was happeningin the world!
Looking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently acrossthe centre of the mirror, Graham saw that the white building wassurrounded on every side by ruins, and Ostrog proceeded to describein concise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction toisolate themselves from a storm. He spoke of the loss of men that hugedownfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. He indicated an improvisedmortuary among the wreckage showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mitesalong a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. Hewas more interested in pointing out the parts of the Council House, thedistribution of the besiegers. In a little while the civil contestthat had convulsed London was no longer a mystery to Graham. It wasno tumultuous revolt had occurred that night, no equal warfare, buta splendidly organised _coup d'etat_. Ostrog's grasp of details wasastonishing; he seemed to know the business of even the smallest knot ofblack and red specks that crawled amidst these places.
He stretched a huge black arm across the luminous picture, and showedthe room whence Graham had escaped, and across the chasm of ruins thecourse of his flight. Graham recognised the gulf across which the gutterran, and the wind-wheels where he had crouched from the flying machine.The rest of his path had succumbed to the explosion. He looked again atthe Council House, and it was already half hidden, and on the right ahillside with a cluster of domes and pinnacles, hazy, dim and distant,was gliding into view.
"And the Council is really overthrown?" he said.
"Overthrown," said Ostrog.
"And I--. Is it indeed true that I?"
"You are Master of the World."
"But that white flag--"
"That is the flag of the Council--the flag of the Rule of the World. Itwill fall. The fight is over. Their attack on the theatre was their lastfrantic struggle. They have only a thousand men or so, and some of thesemen will be disloyal. They have little ammunition. And we are revivingthe ancient arts. We are casting guns."
"But--help. Is this city the world?"
"Practically this is all they have left to them of their empire.Abroad the cities have either revolted with us or wait the issue. Yourawakening has perplexed them, paralysed them."
"But haven't the Council flying machines? Why is there no fighting withthem?"
"They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt withus. They wouldn't take the risk of fighting on our side, but they wouldnot stir against us. We had to get a pull with the aeronauts. Quite halfwere with us, and the others knew it. Directly they knew you had gotaway, those looking for you dropped. We killed the man who shot atyou--an hour ago. And we occupied the flying stages at the outset inevery city we could, and so stopped and captured the airplanes, and asfor the little flying machines that turned out--for some did--we kept uptoo straight and steady a fire for them to get near the Council House.If they dropped they couldn't rise again, because there's no clear spaceabout there for them to get up. Several we have smashed, several othershave dropped and surrendered, the rest have gone off to the Continentto find a friendly city if they can before their fuel runs out. Most ofthese men were only too glad to be taken prisoner and kept out of harm'sway. Upsetting in a flying machine isn't a very attractive prospect.There's no chance for the Council that way. Its days are done."
He laughed and turned to the oval reflection again to show Graham whathe meant by flying stages. Even the four nearer ones were remote andobscured by a thin morning haze. But Graham could perceive they werevery vast structures, judged even by the standard of the things aboutthem.
And then as these dim shapes passed to the left there came again thesight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had beenmarching. And then the black ruins, and then again the beleagueredwhite fastness of the Council. It appeared no longer a ghostly pile, butglowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. About itthe pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red defenderswere no longer firing.
So, in a dusky stillness, the man from the nineteenth century saw theclosing scene of the great revolt, the forcible establishment of hisrule. With a quality of startling discovery it came to him that thiswas his world, and not that other he had left behind; that this was nospectacle to culminate and cease; that in this world lay whateverlife was still before him, lay all his duties and dangers andresponsibilities. He turned with fresh questions. Ostrog began to answerthem, and then broke off abruptly. "But these things I must explain morefully later. At present there are--duties. The people are coming by themoving ways towards this ward from every part of the city--the marketsand theatres are densely crowded. You are just in time for them. Theyare clamouring to see you. And abroad they want to see you. Paris,New York, Chicago, Denver, Capri--thousands of cities are up and in atumult, undecided, and clamouring to see you. They have clamoured thatyou should be awakened for years, and now it is done they will scarcelybelieve--"
"But surely--I can't go..."
Ostrog answered from the other side of the room, and the pictureon the oval disc paled and vanished as the light jerked back again."There are kinetotele-photographs," he said. "As you bow to the peoplehere--all over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and stillin darkened halls, will see you also. In black and white, of course--notlike this. And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting inthe hall.
"And there is an optical contrivance we shall use," said Ostrog, "usedby some of the posturers and women dancers. It may be novel to you. Youstand in a very bright light, and they see not you but a magnifiedimage of you thrown on a screen--so that even the furtherest man in theremotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes."
Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. "Whatis the population of London?"
"Eight and twaindy myriads."
"Eight and what?"
"More than thirty-three millions."
These figures went beyond Graham's imagination "You will be expected tosay something," said Ostrog. "Not what you used to call a Speech, butwhat our people call a Word--just one sentence, six or seven words.Something formal. If I might suggest--'I have awakened and my heart iswith you.' That is the sort of thing they want."
"What was that?" asked Graham.
"'I am awakened and my heart is with you.' And bow--bow royally. Butfirst we must get you black robes--for black is your colour. Do youmind? And then they will disperse to their homes."
Graham hesitated. "I am in your hands," he said.
Ostrog was clearly of that opinion. He thought for a moment, turnedto the curtain and called brief directions to some unseen attendants.Almost immediately a black robe, the very fellow of the black robeGraham had worn in the theatre, was brought. And as he threw it abouthis shoulders there came from the room without the shrilling of ahigh-pitched bell. Ostrog turned in interrogation to the attendant,then suddenly seemed to change his mind, pulled the curtain aside anddisappeared.
For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listeningto Ostrog's retreating steps. There was a sound of quick question andanswer and of men running. The curtain was snatched back and Ostrogreappeared, his massive face glowing with excitement. He crossed theroom in a stride, clicked the room into darkness, gripped Grahams armand pointed to the mirror.
"Even as we turned away," he said.
Graham saw his index finger, black and colossal, above the mirroredCouncil House. For a moment he did not understand. And then he perceivedthat the flagstaff that had carried the white banner was bare.
"Do you mean--?" he began.
"The Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore."
"Look!" and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerksup the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.
The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside
and entered.
"They are clamourous," he said.
Ostrog kept his grip of Graham's arm.
"We have raised the people," he said. "We have given them arms. Fortoday at least their wishes must be law."
Lincoln held the Curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through.
On his way to the markets Graham had a transitory glance of a longnarrow white-walled room in which men in the universal blue canvaswere carrying covered things like biers, and about which men in medicalpurple hurried to and fro. From this room came groans and wailing.He had an impression of an empty blood-stained couch, of men on othercouches, bandaged and blood-stained. It was just a glimpse from a railedfootway and then a buttress hid the place and they were going on towardsthe markets.
The roar of the multitude was near now: it leapt to thunder. And,arresting his attention, a fluttering of black banners, the waving ofblue canvas and brown rags, and the swarming vastness of the theatrenear the public markets came into view down a long passage. The pictureopened out. He perceived they were entering the great theatre of hisfirst appearance, the great theatre he had last seen as a chequer-workof glare and blackness in his flight from the red police. This time heentered it along a gallery at a level high above the stage. The placewas now brilliantly lit again. He sought the gangway up which he hadfled, but he could not tell it from among its dozens of fellows; norcould he see anything of the smashed seats, deflated cushions, and suchlike traces of the fight because of the density of the people. Exceptthe stage the whole place was closely packed. Looking down the effectwas a vast area of stippled pink, each dot a still upturned faceregarding him. At his appearance with Ostrog the cheering died away, thesinging died away, a common interest stilled and unified the disorder.It seemed as though every individual of those myriads was watching him.