Childhood's End, Page 5

  No one knew exactly how comprehensive this ban was supposed to be, or what Karellen would do to enforce it. They had not long to wait.

  The Plaza de Toros was full when the matadors and their attendants began their processional entry. Everything seemed normal; the brilliant sunlight blazed harshly on the traditional costumes, the great crowd greeted its favourites as it had a hundred times before. Yet here and there faces were turned anxiously towards the sky, to the aloof silver shape fifty kilometres above Madrid.

  Then the picadors had taken up their places and the bull had come snorting out into the arena. The skinny horses, nostrils wide with terror, had wheeled in the sunlight as their riders forced them to meet their enemy. The first lance flashed — made contact — and at that moment came a sound that had never been heard on Earth before.

  It was the sound of ten thousand people screaming with the pain of the same wound — ten thousand people who, when they had recovered from the shock, found themselves completely unharmed. But that was the end of that bull-fight, and indeed of all bull-fighting, for the news spread rapidly. It is worth recording that the aficionados were so shaken that only one in ten asked for his money back, and also that the London Daily Mirror made matters much worse by suggesting that the Spaniards adopt cricket as a new national sport.

  “You may be correct,” the old Welshman replied. “Possibly the motives of the Overlords are good — according to their standards, which may sometimes be the same as ours. But they are interlopers — we never asked them to come here and turn our world upside-down, destroying ideals — yes, and nations — that generations of men have fought to protect.”

  “I come from a small nation that had to fight for its liberties,” retorted Stormgren. “Yet I am for Karellen. You may annoy him, you may even delay the achievement of his aims, but it will make no difference in the end. Doubtless you are sincere in believing as you do; I can understand your fear that the traditions and cultures of little countries will be overwhelmed when the World State arrives. But you are wrong; it is useless to cling to the past. Even before the Overlords came to Earth, the sovereign state was dying. They have merely hastened its end; no one can save it now — and no one should try.”

  There was no answer; the man opposite neither moved nor spoke. He sat with lips half open, his eyes now lifeless as well as blind. Around him the others were equally motionless, frozen in strained, unnatural attitudes. With a gasp of pure horror, Stormgren rose to his feet and backed away towards the door. As he did so the silence was suddenly broken.

  “That was a nice speech, Rikki: thank you. Now I think we can go.”

  Stormgren spun on his heels and stared into the shadowed corridor. Floating there at eye-level was a small, featureless sphere — the source, no doubt, of whatever mysterious force the Overlords had brought into action. It was hard to be sure, but Stormgren imagined that he could hear a faint humming, as of a hive of bees on a drowsy summer day.

  “Karellen! Thank God! But what have you done?”

  “Don’t worry, they’re all right. You can call it a paralysis, but it’s much subtler than that. They’re simply living a few thousand years more slowly than normal. When we’ve gone they’ll never know what happened.”

  “You’ll leave them here until the police come?”

  “No. I’ve a much better plan. I’m letting them go.”

  Stormgren felt a surprising sense of relief. He gave a last valedictory glance at the little room and its frozen occupants. Joe was standing on one foot, staring very stupidly at nothing. Suddenly Stormgren laughed and fumbled in his pockets.

  “Thanks for the hospitality, Joe,” he said. “I think I’ll leave a souvenir.”

  He ruffled through the scraps of paper until he had found the figures he wanted. Then, on a reasonably clean sheet, he wrote carefully:

  BANK OF MANHATTAN

  Pay Joe the sum of One hundred Thirty-Five Dollars and Fifty Cents ($135.50)

  R. Stormgren.

  As he laid the strip of paper beside the Pole, Karellen’s voice enquired:

  “Exactly what are you doing?”

  “We Stormgrens always pay our debts. The other two cheated, but Joe played fair. At least I never caught him cheating.”

  He felt very gay and light-headed, and quite forty years younger, as he walked to the door. The metal sphere moved aside to let him pass. He assumed that it was some kind of robot, and it explained how Karellen had been able to reach him through the unknown layers of rock overhead.

  “Go straight ahead for a hundred metres,” said the sphere, speaking in Karellen’s voice. “Then turn to the left until I give you further instructions.”

  He strode forward eagerly, though he realised that there was no need for hurry. The sphere remained hanging in the corridor, presumably covering his retreat.

  A minute later he came across a second sphere, waiting for him at a branch in the corridor.

  “You’ve half a kilometre to go,” it said. “Keep to the left until we meet again.”

  Six times he encountered the spheres on his way to the open. At first he wondered if, somehow, the robot was managing to keep ahead of him; then he guessed that there must be a chain of the machines maintaining a complete circuit down into the depths of the mine. At the entrance a group of guards formed a piece of improbable statuary, watched over by yet another of the ubiquitous spheres. On the hillside a few metres away lay the little flying machine in which Stormgren had made all his journeys to Karellen.

  He stood for a moment blinking in the sunlight. Then he saw the ruined mining machinery around him, and beyond that a derelict railway stretching down the mountainside. Several kilometres away a dense forest lapped at the base of the mountain, and very far off Stormgren could see the gleam of water from a great lake. He guessed that he was somewhere in South America, though it was not easy to say exactly what gave him that impression.

  As he climbed into the little flying machine, Stormgren had a last glimpse of the mine entrance and the men frozen around it. Then the door sealed behind him and with a sigh of relief he sank back upon the familiar couch.

  For a while he waited until he had recovered his breath; then he uttered a single, heart-felt syllable:

  “Well?”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t rescue you before. But you see how very important it was to wait until all the leaders had gathered here.”

  “Do you mean to say,” spluttered Stormgren, “that you knew where I was all the time? If I thought —”

  “Don’t be too hasty,” answered Karellen, “at least, let me finish explaining.”

  “Very good,” said Stormgren darkly, “I’m listening.” He was beginning to suspect that he had been no more than bait in an elaborate trap.

  “I’ve had a — perhaps ‘tracer’ is the best word for it — on you for some time,” began Karellen. “Though your late friends were correct in thinking that I couldn’t follow you underground, I was able to keep track until they brought you to the mine. That transfer in the tunnel was ingenious, but when the first car ceased to react it gave the plan away and I soon located you again. Then it was merely a matter of waiting. I knew that once they were certain I’d lost you, the leaders would come here and I’d be able to trap them all.”

  “But you’re letting them go!”

  “Until now,” said Karellen, “I had no way of telling who of the two and a half billion men on this planet were the real heads of the organisation. Now that they’re located, I can trace their movements anywhere on Earth, and can watch their actions in detail if I want to. That’s far better than locking them up. If they make any moves, they’ll betray their remaining comrades. They’re effectively neutralised, and they know it. Your rescue will be completely inexplicable to them, for you must have vanished before their eyes.”

  That rich laugh echoed round the tiny room.

  “In some ways the whole affair was a comedy, but it had a serious purpose. I’m not merely concerned with the few scor
e men in this organisation — I have to think of the moral effect on other groups that exist elsewhere.”

  Stormgren was silent for a while. He was not altogether satisfied, but he could see Karellen’s point of view, and some of his anger had evaporated.

  “It’s a pity to do it in my last few weeks of office,” he said finally, “but from now on I’m going to have a guard on my house. Pieter can be kidnapped next time. How has he managed, by the way?”

  “I’ve watched him carefully this last week, and have deliberately avoided helping him. On the whole he’s done very well — but he’s not the man to take your place.”

  “That’s lucky for him,” said Stormgren, still somewhat aggrieved. “And by the way, have you had any word yet from your superiors — about showing yourself to us? I’m sure now that it’s the strongest argument your enemies have. Again and again they told me: ‘We’ll never trust the Overlords until we can see them.’ ”

  Karellen sighed.

  “No. I’ve heard nothing. But I know what the answer must be.”

  Stormgren did not press the matter. Once he might have done so, but now for the first time the faint shadow of a plan was beginning to take shape in his mind. The words of his interrogator passed again through his memory. Yes, perhaps instruments could be devised…

  What he had refused to do under duress, he might yet attempt of his own free will.

  Chapter 4

  It would never have occurred to Stormgren, even a few days before, that he could seriously have considered the action he was planning now. This ridiculously melodramatic kidnapping, which in retrospect seemed like a third-rate TV drama, probably had a great deal to do with his new outlook. It was the first time in his life that Stormgren had ever been exposed to violent physical action, as opposed to the verbal battles of the conference room. The virus must have entered his bloodstream; or else he was merely approaching second childhood more quickly than he had supposed.

  Sheer curiosity was also a powerful motive, and so was a determination to get his own back for the trick that had been played upon him. It was perfectly obvious now that Karellen had used him as bait, and even if this had been for the best of reasons, Stormgren did not feel inclined to forgive the Supervisor at once.

  Pierre Duval showed no surprise when Stormgren walked unannounced into his office. They were old friends and there was nothing unusual in the Secretary-General paying a personal visit to the Chief of the Science Bureau. Certainly Karellen would not think it odd, if by any chance he — or one of his underlings — turned his instruments of surveillance upon this spot.

  For a while the two men talked business and exchanged political gossip; then, rather hesitantly, Stormgren came to the point. As his visitor talked, the old Frenchman leaned back in his chair and his eyebrows rose steadily, millimetre by millimetre, until they were almost entangled in his forelock. Once or twice he seemed about to speak, but each time thought better of it.

  When Stormgren had finished, the scientist looked nervously around the room.

  “Do you think he’s listening?” he said.

  “I don’t believe he can. He’s got what he calls a tracer on me, for my protection. But it doesn’t work underground, which is one reason why I came down to this dungeon of yours. It’s supposed to be shielded from all forms of radiation, isn’t it? Karellen’s no magician. He knows where I am, but that’s all.”

  “I hope you’re right. Apart from that, won’t there be trouble when he discovers what you’re trying to do? Because he will, you know.”

  “I’ll take that risk. Besides, we understand each other rather well.”

  The physicist toyed with his pencil and stared into space for a while.

  “It’s a very pretty problem. I like it,” he said simply. Then he dived into a drawer and produced an enormous writing-pad, quite the biggest that Stormgren had ever seen.

  “Right,” he began, scribbling furiously in what seemed to be some private shorthand. “Let me make sure I have all the facts. Tell me everything you can about the room in which you have your interviews. Don’t omit any detail, however trivial it seems.”

  “There isn’t much to describe. It’s made of metal, and is about eight metres square and four high. The vision screen is about a metre on a side and there’s a desk immediately beneath it — here, it will be quicker if I draw it for you.”

  Rapidly Stormgren sketched the little room he knew so well, and pushed the drawing over to Duval. As he did so, he recalled, with a slight shiver, the last time he had done this sort of thing. He wondered what had happened to the blind Welshman and his confederates, and how they had reacted to his abrupt departure.

  The Frenchman studied the drawing with a puckered brow.

  “And that’s all you can tell me?”

  “Yes,” Duval snorted in disgust.

  “What about lighting? Do you sit in total darkness? And how about ventilation, heating —”

  Stormgren smiled at the characteristic outburst.

  “The whole ceiling is luminous, and as far as I can tell the air comes through the speaker grille. I don’t know how it leaves; perhaps the stream reverses at intervals, but I haven’t noticed it. There’s no sign of any heater, but the room is always at normal temperature.”

  “Meaning, I suppose, that the water vapour has frozen out, but not the carbon dioxide.”

  Stormgren did his best to smile at the well-worn joke.

  “I think I’ve told you everything,” he concluded. “As for the machine that takes me up to Karellen’s ship, the room in which I travel is as featureless as an elevator cage. Apart from the couch and table, it might very well be one.”

  There was silence for several minutes while the physicist embroidered his writing-pad with meticulous and microscopic doodles. As he watched, Stormgren wondered why it was that a man like Duval — whose mind was incomparably more brilliant than his own — had never made a greater mark in the world of science. He remembered an unkind and probably inaccurate comment of a friend in the U.S. State Department. “The French produce the best second-raters in the world.” Duval was the sort of man who supported that statement.

  The physicist nodded to himself in satisfaction, leaned forward and pointed his pencil at Stormgren.

  “What makes you think, Rikki,” he asked, “that Karellen’s vision-screen, as you call it, really is what it pretends to be?”

  “I’ve always taken it for granted; it looks exactly like one. What else would it be, anyway?”

  “When you say that it looks like a vision-screen, you mean, don’t you, that it looks like one of ours?”

  “Of course.”

  “I find that suspicious in itself. I’m sure the Overlord’s own apparatus won’t use anything so crude as an actual physical screen — they’ll probably materialise images directly in space. But why should Karellen bother to use a TV system, anyway? The simplest solution is always best. Doesn’t it seem far more probable that your ‘vision-screen’ is really nothing more complicated than a sheet of one-way glass?”

  Stormgren was so annoyed with himself that for a moment he sat in silence, retracing the past. From the beginning, he had never challenged Karellen’s story — yet now he came to look back, when had the Supervisor ever told him that he was using a TV system? He had simply taken it for granted; the whole thing had been a piece of psychological trickery, and he had been completely deceived. Always assuming, of course, that Duval’s theory was correct. But he was jumping to conclusions again; no one had proved anything yet.

  “If you’re right,” he said, “all I have to do is to smash the glass —”

  Duval sighed.

  “These unscientific laymen! Do you think it’ll be made of anything you could smash without explosives? And if you succeeded, do you imagine that Karellen is likely to breathe the same air that we do? Won’t it be nice for both of you if he flourishes in an atmosphere of chlorine?”

  Stormgren felt a little foolish. He should have thought of th
at.

  “Well, what do you suggest?” he asked with some exasperation.

  “I want to think it over. First of all we’ve got to find if my theory is correct, and if so learn something about the material of that screen. I’ll put a couple of my men on the job. By the way, I suppose you carry a brief-case when you visit the Supervisor? Is it the one you’ve got there?”

  “Yes.”

  “It should be big enough. We don’t want to attract attention by changing it for another, particularly if Karellen’s grown used to it.”

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Stormgren. “Carry a concealed X-ray set?”

  The physicist grinned.

  “I don’t know yet, but we’ll think of something. I’ll let you know what it is in about two weeks.”

  He gave a little laugh.

  “Do you know what all this reminds me of?”

  “Yes,” said Stormgren promptly, “the time you were building illegal radio sets during the German occupation.”

  Duval looked disappointed.

  “Well, I suppose I have mentioned that once or twice before. But there’s one other thing —”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you are caught, I didn’t know what you wanted the gear for.”

  “What, after all the fuss you once made about the scientist’s social responsibility for his inventions? Really, Pierre, I’m ashamed of you!”

  * * *

  Stormgren laid down the thick folder of typescript with a sigh of relief.

  “Thank heavens that’s settled at last,” he said. “It’s strange to think that these few hundred pages hold the future of mankind. The World State! I never thought I would see it in my lifetime!”

  He dropped the file into his brief-case, the back of which was no more than ten centimetres from the dark rectangle of the screen. From time to time his fingers played across the locks in a half-conscious nervous reaction, but he had no intention of pressing the concealed switch until the meeting was over. There was a chance that something might go wrong; though Duval had sworn that Karellen would detect nothing, one could never be sure.