The Earth-Tube (15 page)

The families he took and broke up, substituting units of workers in their stead. Men he measured according to their intelligence and aptitude. Of some he made slaves for the commonest work; others became petty overlords, though still responsive to his will. Many women also became slaves, and some were set aside to reproduce the race. No children were kept but those who were sound of body and able to endure the rigors of the training imposed upon them by the State. They were raised in institutions; they were trained by men skilled in the work of molding minds to obey without question; they were taught to perform over and over a single, accurate task without monotony, without emotion of any kind.

If any rebelled or were headstrong or showed characteristics which the leaders felt were subversive, they were ruthlessly exterminated. If the rebellion were communicated to their relatives, the entire breed was cast out of the nation and destroyed. As the tribe increased its holdings, new nations were reduced to slavery and absorbed. Those who were willing to subjugate themselves and join the machine were saved. The others were not.

The complexity of the organization grew. New and mighty machines were invented, and groups were organized to man and repair them, to haul fuel and water to energize them, to direct them in battle or in their other daily uses. The sons of workers were kept apart and taught to follow the allotted rounds of their fathers. The sons of engineers were encouraged to explore, examine, and invent; the sons of chemists to discover new weapons in the fuming test tube; the sons of mathematicians to learn new secrets from the unseen world.

Religion passed away. In such a world there was no room for the priest, who taught allegiance to greater powers than the State. Early in the reign of the first Tal Majod the priests were tortured to death in the full sight of the people, and when their gods did not come down in brimstone and fire and forked lightnings from the hills, the nation bowed down to the belching gods on wheels, the demons of metal and smoke, instead, and served the machine with their inner lives as well as with their hands and brains.

So grew the Juggernaut, hidden beyond the barren hills, the high peaks, the fierce and ignorant men of the Asian wilderness. While men of the Western World talked of trade and played with radio and tiny wings, a force was growing in the hidden lands to crush their playthings and enslave them. Two Tal Majods lived in the Asian desert lands, and then at length, under the leadership of the third, grandson of him who was born of the lightnings, who brought fire from the polished wood of foreign trees, and who taught the undulal to move, the Asians came down to the lowlands of the East and conquered China and Japan.

And over this complex machine of flesh and bones and keenly trained minds and automatic movements ruled Tal Majod, the great Tal Majod, who had been selected by his father and his grandfather before him to lead the race of the Asians down into the lowlands, and to conquer the peoples of the sea, and the peoples beyond the sea, and above and below the earth, and on all its circumference.

And of all the women of the nation, the finest, the most intelligent, the fairest in form and face. these were reserved for the Tal Majod. And of all the foods produced by the nation, the finest and most nourishing and most pleasant to the taste, these were saved for the Tal Majod. As was his divine right, Tal Majod had everything of the best in this empire, and the flesh machine which lived inside of and for the machines of undulal and gold and silver and steel and all the strange and fine metals which the Asians had found in their country and the countries which they had conquered, and in the ancient earth itself, which they had pierced, responded, moved, and had its being in his will.

There were sculptors and artists and singers of great ability in the Court of Tal Majod, and they had planned his cities and his music and his entertainment as well as that of the myriad members of the nation, slaves and lords alike. The height and inspiration of their art was the glorification of the machine. Their music was the music of many cogs, the whir of tiny wheels, the roar of steam, the shriek of whistles, and the thump of hammers run by power. Their painting was the painting of machines; they were oblique, the product of many gears, of minds that loved the click of cams, the sliding of pistons, the merciless motion of walking beams and rocker arms.

And their literature and sculpture were also the glorification of the machine as were their architecture and their designings. They had tales of the immortality of the machine, the weakness and helplessness of men without the fiery god they served. Their religion taught them that the souls of faithful servants entered the mysterious strength of the machines they served, that death to a slave was nothing, for his inner life was already absorbed by the machine, his master, and lived forever in its metal embrace.

And as they advanced over the land, from their ancestral home eastward to the sea, they absorbed not only the peoples and the lands and the strength of the nations on the way, but they absorbed as well the knowledge of alien peoples. When they had reached and conquered Japan they had already learned about the shape and size of the world, and what was known of the composition thereof, and how the western continents lay, and of ships and foreign armies and explosives and airplanes. They had learned to combat the puny weapons of the Orient, but they learned, when they had reached the water, that they could not make battleships of undulal; it was too heavy and would sink. Therefore a land link must be found to take them to the Western Hemisphere, and the engineers of the Asians sent out spies all over the world, to learn what further there was to be known. And shortly they began to bore a hole directly through the earth, sinking caissons of indestructible undulal as they went, and boring with manless machines of undulal when the earth grew too hot inside for human flesh.

“Our race is as invincible as undulal, which once being made, can never be destroyed, save by one thing,” said Tal Majod. “We will keep our secret safe, and we will conquer the world!”

Not even the rays and the thunders invented by the Asians could destroy undulal; this substance alone remained unchanged when exposed to time and winds and all the elements. But one thing would destroy it, and that was known only to ten men, who were to guard the secret with their lives and use it only when necessary.

“And if any man other than these ten learn our secret, whether he be one of us or an enemy, he shall be put miserably to death; he shall be tortured first and then thrown living down the earth-shaft, to perish in the heat.”

This was the decree of Tal Majod, who ruled the Eastern World.

II

It was already afternoon. Above the metal city hung the sun, well to the west, but its rays, blanketed by the clouds and deflected by the metal cap, failed to penetrate to the thousands of human beings inside. They went about their work without regard to the comings and goings of the warming orb. That it existed at all was no concern of theirs; they knew or cared nothing about its daily journeys, its changes or its moods. They lived by artificial light, they moved by clocks; their days were guided by gongs and sirens, their lives were punctuated by the arrivals and departures of the earth-cars.

Tier upon tier rose the layer of cells, one above the other, until the very roof of the metal cap was reached, and in virtually every cell rested a human being, while in the streets moved the police, who patrolled the city everywhere. In luxurious apartments of the city there were also human beings during the quiet hours between the cars: the guides and overseers, the princes and masters of this metal hive, the lovely women of the Tal Majod, and others whom he had seen fit to honor with a finer home and softer life.

In one of these King and Diane were sitting, conversing earnestly while all the others betook themselves to rest. Into the chamber not even the sound of the beating sea or the faint rushing of the air as it sucked back and forth in the empty earth-tube reached them. Save for the small and fearful servant girl, who knew no language but Asian, they were alone.

“They would be working in the laboratories even now,” Diane was saying. “They work there ceaselessly, in regular shifts, making engines of war and machines of peace, and new inventions to further both. But there are only three men on this side of the earth who know the secret you are after. and they will not tell you. Perhaps I can take you to the laboratories. if you insist, but heaven knows if you will be able to learn what you wish even if we get there.”

So far fortune had attended him. Why believe that it would forsake him in the end? King was insistent. He came up close to her.

“If you can disguise me, somehow, we will go,” he replied. “Who knows what we might see?”

Her voice seemed very tired; she had talked to him a great deal, and she had taken no rest for many hours.

“It would be dangerous, you understand that,” she said. “It will probably end in failure, for while I can take you through the streets in disguise, the fact that you cannot speak the language would surely be detected in the laboratories. Strangers are never welcome there.”

“Well?”

“And. if you are captured, you would be killed. tortured, probably.” She took his hand with a sudden, unexpected gesture.

“Look,” she exclaimed, “I could just as easily escort you to the entrance gate, and let you escape again the way you came. Perhaps we could both escape that way. the two of us!”

She was surprised herself at the hysterical quality of her voice. Quickly she subdued her emotions, explaining to him, apologetically: “I am continually haunted. I cannot always control myself. I have but a few more days. perhaps in a week, or say. perhaps on the next car, even, Tal Majod may send for me, and. I would have to go.”

“We will prevent that,” said King, evenly. “You must help me, Diane. At all costs, we must learn this secret and then escape.”

He seized the bundle of policeman’s clothes he had brought into the apartment with him, and unfastening it, let the garments spread themselves out upon the floor.

“Would these do?” he asked.

Suddenly, as she looked at the clothing, her eyes grew wide with terror.

“Where did you get those?” she demanded. “Did you kill the man?”

King shook his head, smiling. “Only stunned him, I think,” he replied. “His head was pretty hard.”

“It would have been better if you had killed him,” she returned, seriously. “As it is, he will arouse the whole city, and they’ll be looking everywhere for you. As in everything else, the Asians are thorough in their policing. Already they may be tracking you here though it is possible that the returning slaves covered up the evidence of your passage.”

“We had better be doing something, then,” replied King. “If you would suggest a better disguise, I’d go out and try to get it.”

“You needn’t do that. There is a manservant who sometimes accompanies me on trips through the city. I can get you one of his suits, and we will make you some false mustaches to hide your face. All Asians above the caste of slaves wear mustaches here, except the scientific men and a few others.”

“Why?”

“It is a custom and a mark of caste.” She went into another room and soon returned with the necessary clothing. King stepped behind a screen and changed into it, transferring as he did so his small radio apparatus and his automatic pistol and other equipment. When he came out again he had been transformed into an Asian of some dignity and bearing. He walked back and forth to get used to the feel of the garments. They were of fine texture, loose and baggy, and quite oriental in design. In his hand was. the small radio. “I am going to call my people and let them know that so far I am safe,” he announced, pressing a small button on the machine. Diane looked up and in a moment was at his side, snatching at the tiny instrument.

“And do you think,” she blazed, “that the Americans are the only persons who have discovered radio? In five minutes, if you start that thing, the police will have located us. They’d be down here a hundred strong before either of us could reach the door. Neither your life nor mine would be worth a breath if you communicated with your people now!”

King put the radio slowly back into his clothing, where it was well hidden and safe. “They will be sure that I have gone the way of the others, if I do not signal them,” he exclaimed.

“It won’t hurt them to be in suspense,” she answered, “and it means everything to us. Come, your mustaches are ready. I have just finished them for you.”

With a bit of paste she fastened them on, and darkened his skin with a faint stain.

“I will teach you a few words of Asian,” she said. “You will have to know the common salutations, and the formal manner of reply. Otherwise you are to keep silent and refer all questions to me. You must not at any time speak English while we are in the streets; any other language but the Asian is forbidden and would immediately attract attention. You must walk two steps behind me, and one step to my right. That is the respectful manner for a manservant toward a chosen woman of the Tal Majod. I will think up a pretext to get us into the laboratories. What you learn after we arrive there is your own affair. But remember, any misstep will plunge us into ruin, not only you and I, but the Americas as well. I am a fool to enter this adventure with you!”

He took her hands in both of his.

“That you are making a sacrifice need not be further impressed upon me,” he said, tenderness creeping into his voice. “For myself I could never ask it. but this is a matter which affects many people beside ourselves.”

So it happened that in the middle of what would, outside, have been the afternoon, a chosen woman of the Tal Majod, marked by her white robe and crimson cord, went walking down one of the main wheel-avenues toward the center of the city, accompanied at a respectful and proper distance by her manservant. When they had gone a little way King began to feel that on all sides they were being observed. Passers-by turned to look at them; the police gave both Diane and himself a swift, searching scrutiny as they went by; even the slaves who happened to be in the streets, passing back and forth to obscure duties which were always requiring to be done in the city, watched them.