The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (59 page)

“To me? Of supreme unimportance. But I act in the interests of a third party.”

I described the situations of my two sisters. During my speech he attentively inspected his nails, and then threw two needles at me from his eyes, asking:

“Do you drink? And how much?”

“Sometimes at dinner I drink a half pint of beer.”

“A bachelor?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have any intention of commiting that blunder? Of marrying?”

“Oh, no.”

“Any present love affairs?”

“No, sir.”

“How do you support yourself?”

I answered that question briefly and fairly, omitting, for the sake of brevity, five or six of my latest casual professions.

“So,” he said, when I had finished, “do you need money?”

“No. My stomach is full and I am adequately clothed. I always find work. So far as it is possible I follow recent developments in science. I am convinced that sooner or later I will find
my opportunity.”

“Would you like money in advance? A loan?”

“No, that is not my practice. I don’t take money from anyone . . . But we’re not finished.”

“Your principles are commendable. Perhaps we can come to an agreement. Give me your address and I will inform you, and probably very soon, of our decision. Good-bye.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Nideston,” I responded. “I have answered all your questions, even the most delicate, with complete candor. May I ask you one question?”

“Please.”

“What is the purpose of the journey?”

“Oho! Are you concerned about that?”

“We may assume that I am.”

“The purpose of the journey is purely scientific.”

“That is not an adequate answer.”

“Not adequate?” Mr. Nideston abruptly shouted at me, and his coffee eyes poured out sheaves of needles. “Not adequate? Do you have the insolence to assume that the firm of
Nideston and Son now in existence for one hundred and fifty years and respected by all of England’s commercial establishments would suggest anything dishonorable or which might compromise
you? Or that we would undertake any enterprise without possessing reliable guarantees beforehand that it is unconditionally legal?”

“Oh, sir, I have no doubt of that,” I responded in confusion.

“Very well, then,” he interrupted me and immediately became tranquil, like a stormy sea spread with oil. “But you see, first of all I am bound by the proviso that you not be
informed of any substantial details of the journey until you are aboard the steamship out of Southampton . . .”

“Bound where?” I asked suddenly.

“For the time being I cannot tell you. And secondly, the purpose of your journey (if indeed it comes to pass) is not completely clear even to me.”

“Strange,” said I.

“Passing strange,” the solicitor willingly agreed. “But I may also inform you, if you so desire, that it will be fantastic, grandiose, unprecedented, splendid, and audacious to
the point of madness!”

Now it was my turn to say “Hmmm,” and this I did with a certain restraint.

“Wait,” Mr. Nideston exclaimed with sudden fervor. “You are young. I am twenty-five or thirty years older than you. You are not at all astonished by many of the greatest
accomplishments of the human mind, but if, when I was your age, someone had predicted that I would work in the evenings by the light of invisible electricity which flowed through wires or that I
would converse with an acquaintance at a distance of eighty miles, that I would see moving, laughing human figures on a screen, that I would send telegraph messages without the benefit of wires,
and so on, and so on, then I would have waged my honor, my freedom, my career against one pint of bad London beer that I was confronted with a madman.”

“You mean the project involves some new invention or a great discovery?”

“If you wish, yes. But I ask you, do not view me with distrust or suspicion. What would you say, for example, if a great genius were to appeal to your young energy, strength, and
knowledge, a genius who, we will assume, is engaged with a problem – to create a pleasing, nutritious, economical food out of the elements found in the air? If you were provided the
opportunity to labor for the sake of the future organization and adornment of the earth? To dedicate your talents and spiritual energies to the happiness of future generations? What would you say?
Here is an example at hand. Look out the window.”

Involuntarily I arose under the spell of his compelling, swift gesture and looked through the clouded glass. There, over the streets, hung a black-rust-gray fog, like dirty cotton from heaven to
earth. In it only dimly could be perceived the wavering glow from the street lights. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

“Yes, yes, look,” said Mr. Nideston. “Look carefully. Now assume that a gifted, disinterested man is summoning you to a great project to ameliorate and beautify the earth. He
tells you that everything that is on the earth depends on the mind, will, and hands of man. He tells you that if God in his righteous anger has turned his face away from man, then man’s
measureless mind will come to his own aid. This man will tell you that fogs, disease, climatic extremes, winds, volcanic eruptions – they are all subject to the influence and control of the
human will-and that finally the earth could become a paradise and its existence extended by several hundred thousand years. What would you say to that man?”

“But what if he who presents me with this radiant dream is wrong? What if I find myself a dumb plaything in the hands of a monomaniac? A capricious madman?”

Mr. Nideston rose, and, presenting me his hand as a sign of farewell, said firmly:

“No. Aboard the steamship in two or three months from now (if we can come to an agreement) I will inform you of the name of that scientist and the meaning of his great task, and you will
remove your hat as a mark of your great reverence for the man and his ideas. But I. unfortunately, Mr. Dibble, am a layman. I am only a solicitor – the guardian and representative of
others’ interests.”

After this interview I had almost no doubt that fate, finally, had grown tired of my fixed inspection of her unbending spine and had decided to show me her mysterious face.
Therefore, that same evening with the help of my small savings I produced a banquet of extraordinary luxury, which consisted of a roast, a punch, plum pudding and hot chocolate which was enjoyed in
addition to myself by the worthy couple, the elder Johnsons, and, I do not remember exactly – six or seven of the younger Johnsons. My left shoulder was quite blue and out of joint from the
friendly pounding of my good landlord who sat next to me on my left.

And I was not wrong. The next evening I received a telegram: “Call at noon tomorrow. 451 Regent Street, Nideston.”

I arrived punctually at the appointed time. He was not in his office, but a servant who had been forewarned led me to a small room in a restaurant located around the corner at a distance of two
hundred paces. Mr. Nideston was there alone. At first he was not that ebullient, and perhaps even poetic, man who had spoken with me so fervently about the future happiness of mankind two days
earlier. No, once more he was that dry and laconic solicitor who on the occasion of our first meeting that morning had so commandingly instructed me to remove my outer clothing and had questioned
me like a police inspector.

“Good day. Sit down,” he said indicating a chair. “It is my lunch hour, a time I have at my disposal. Although my firm is called Nideston and Son’ I am in fact a bachelor
and a lonely man. And so-would you care to dine? To drink?”

I thanked him and asked for tea and toast. Mr. Nideston ate at leisure, sipped an old port and from time to time transfixed me with the bright needles of his eyes. Finally, he wiped his lips,
threw down his napkin, and asked:

“Then, you are agreed?”

“To buy a pig in a poke?” I asked in turn.

“No,” he said loudly and angrily. “The previous conditions remain in force. Before your departure to the tropics you will receive as much information as I am empowered to give
you. If this is not satisfactory, you may, on your part, refuse to sign the contract and I will pay you a recompense for the time which you have employed in fruitless conversations with
me.”

I observed him carefully. At that moment he was engaged in an effort to crack two nuts, the right hand enveloping the knuckles of the left. The sharp needles of his eyes were concealed behind
the curtain of his brows. And suddenly, as though in a moment of illumination, I perceived all the soul of that man – the strange soul of a formalist and a gambler, the narrow specialist and
an extraordinarily expansive temperament, the slave of his counting house traditions and at the same time a secret searcher for adventures, a pettifogger, ready for two pennies to put his opponent
in prison for a long sentence, and at the same time an eccentric capable of sacrificing the wealth acquired in dozens of years of unbroken labor for the sake of the shadow of a beautiful idea. This
thought passed through me like lightning. And Nideston, suddenly, as though we had been united by some invisible current, opened his eyes, with a great effort crushed the nuts into tiny fragments
and smiled at me with an open, childlike, almost mischievous smile.

“When all is said and done, you are risking little, my dear Mr. Dibble. Before you leave for the tropics I will give you several commissions on the continent. These commissions will not
require from you any particular scientific knowledge, but they will demand great mechanical accuracy, precision, and foresight. You will need no more than about two months, perhaps a week more or
less than that. You are to accept in various European locations certain expensive and very fragile optical glasses as well as several extremely delicate and sensitive physical instruments. I
entrust to your care, agility, and skills their packing, delivery to the railroad, and sea and rail transport. You must agree that it would mean nothing to a drunken sailor or porter to throw a
crate into the hold and smash into fragments a doubly convex lens over which dozens of men have worked for dozens of years . . .”

“An observatory!” I thought joyfully. “Of course, it’s an observatory! What happiness! At last I have my elusive fate by the forelock.”

I could see that he had guessed my thoughts and his eyes became yet merrier.

“We will not discuss the remuneration for this, your first, task. We will come to agreement on details, of course, as I can see from your expression. But,” and then he suddenly
laughed heedlessly, like a child, “I want to turn your attention to a very curious fact. Look, through these fingers have passed ten or twenty thousand curious cases, some of them involving
very large sums. Several times I have made a fool of myself, and that in spite of all our subtle casuistic precision and diligence. But, imagine that every time that I have rejected all the tricks
of my craft and looked a man straight in the eye, as I am now looking at you, I have never gone wrong and never had cause for repentance. And so?”

His eyes were clear, firm, trusting and affectionate. At that second this little swarthy, wrinkled, yellow-faced man indeed took my heart into his hands and conquered it.

“Good,” I said. “I believe you. From this time I am at your disposal.”

“Oh, why so fast?” Mr. Nideston said genially. “You have plenty of time. We still have time to drink a bottle of claret together.” He pulled the cord for the waiter.
“But please put your personal affairs in order, and this evening at eight o’clock you will leave with the tide on board the steamship
The Lion and the Magdalene
to which I will
in time deliver your itinerary, drafts on various banks, and money for your personal expenses. My dear young man, I drink to your health and your successes. If only,” he suddenly exclaimed
with unexpected enthusiasm, “if only you knew how I envy you, my dear Mr. Dibble!”

In order to flatter him and in quite an innocent manner, I responded almost sincerely:

“What’s detaining you, my dear Mr. Nideston? I swear that in spirit you are as young as I.”

The swarthy solicitor lowered his long delicately modeled nose into his claret cup, was silent for a moment and suddenly said with a sigh of feeling:

“Oh, my dear Mr. Dibble! My office, which has existed nearly from the time of the Plantagenets, the honor of my firm, my ancestors, thousands of ties connecting me with my clients,
associates, friends, and enemies . . . I couldn’t name it all . . . This means you have no doubts?”

“No.”

“Well, let us drink a toast and sing ‘Rule, Britannia’!”

And we drank a toast and sang – I almost a boy, yesterday a tramp, and that dry man of business, whose influence extended from the gloom of his dirty office to touch the fates of European
powers and business magnates – we sang together in the most improbable and unsteady voices in all the world:

A servant entered, and turning politely to Mr. Nideston, he said:

“Excuse me, sir. I listened to your singing with genuine pleasure. I have heard nothing more pleasing even in the Royal Opera, but next to you in the adjoining
room is a meeting of lovers of French medieval music. Perhaps I should not refer to them as gentlemen . . . but they all have very discriminating ears.”

“You are no doubt correct,” the solicitor answered gently. “And therefore I ask you to accept as a keepsake this round yellow object with the likeness of our good
king.”

Here is a brief list of the cities and the laboratories which I visited after I crossed the Channel. I copy them out in entirety from my notebook: The Pragemow concern in
Paris; Repsold in Hamburg; Zeiss, Schott Brothers, and Schlattf in Jena; in Munich the Frauenhof concern and the Wittschneider Optical Institute and also the Mertz laboratory there; Schick in
Berlin, and also Bennech and Basserman. And also, not distant in Potsdam, the superb branch of the Pragemow concern which operates in conjunction with the essential and enlightened support of Dr.
E. Hartnack.