The Old Man of the Stars (13 page)

“A fanatic,” he cried in my face. “When the world is at peace, you want to make war—”

“Only on the false civilization,” I said.

“It is world-wide now. As long as we are allowed to live out our lives in peace—”

“Will there be any peace in your mind if you allow the Newmen to take over the Communities? Are you going to be resigned to the dying out of the Communities? We know what we must do. And it shall be done.”

World peace. That was true. But to me, and to the men who were my followers, it was a detestable peace. The boasts of the Newmen had been fulfilled; and that was an intolerable state of affairs. The spread of memory and skill inheritance throughout the world had enabled men to grapple much more intelligently with international problems—the development of an international language speedily settled many difficulties of communication, and the leaders of different countries thought and spoke on a higher plane than ever before. The World Federation was formed with a speed, which would have been incredible to politicians and pessimistic diplomats of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

And the President of the World Federation was a boy of ten.

* * * *

We did not have telescreens in the Communities, and we did not receive daily newscasts. The Communities had repudiated the world of dominant children, and scorned their inventions and gadgets. But in preparing the campaign I had been forced to establish some contacts within the cities, which would supply news. Important social and political information reached me by a special messenger service. We used nothing in the way of radio transmission—dealing with a world of technicians, we did not dare to use equipment that could be tapped, traced, and eavesdropped on.

I knew about the election of the President. He was Juhan Larsen, the youngest member of a family that had given a dozen distinguished scientists to the world in the last hundred years. Even before the introduction of the Newmen radiation, the name of the Larsens had been held high in world opinion. Devoted, serious, living secluded lives and working in the interest of abstract truth, they were the paragons of civilization. Little was known about their private lives—all of them kept out of the public eye. But now when a World President was needed and that man had to be of unimpeachable integrity and brilliance, it was essential that a Larsen should be drawn out into the blaze of day.

Juhan Larsen, ten years old, would open the session of the Conference of All Nations in London. Surrounded by the Federation Government who had chosen him—like a college of cardinals, I bitterly thought—he would preside over one of the greatest conclaves of representatives of nations at peace that had ever been assembled.

He would be in London; and he would die in London.

“You're a fanatic,” said Henning to me yet again. “What will the murder of a boy achieve? If the Newmen have been able to bring world peace, let us leave them alone.”

“They will not leave us alone,” I said. “Not much longer.”

“You can't defeat them. They'll outwit you.”

“No.” I was sure I knew their weaknesses and knew how to defeat them. The implacable urge was not to be denied.

“What can you hope to achieve?” Henning went on desperately. “You say you're fighting against the Newmen. You claim to represent the concept of the dignity of the older generation as against the dominance of children. But you yourself have dominated the councils of the Communities. You've become one of the Newmen in thought as well as....”

He fumbled for words. He was lost in complexities with which he could not grapple.

I said: “Whatever I am, and whatever I do, it is your legacy to me.”

Myrna put her face in her hands and wept. She was very emotional, and absurdly naive. And unreasonable—for it was true, was it not, that my feelings towards the Newmen were inspired by her and Henning? Because of them, I was a weapon designed to attack and demolish the Newmen. I had been fashioned only for that. In every fibre of my being I felt it.

Abruptly, from out of nowhere, a memory surged up into my mind. It was a picture of Southerden—a small village in the sunset, with a fishing boat coming into harbour.

The breeze from the sea had a salt tang, and made a faint whistling sound as it blew between the houses. I was conscious of happiness—and tranquillity.

The memory was one of Myrna's. It came from her early days in Southerden. It gave me a picture of Southerden that I rarely saw nowadays. I rarely looked at the village itself—it was merely the place in which I worked and schemed.

I felt strangely moved. This was how it ought to be. In years to come, when we had defeated the mechanistic system of the Newmen, and all people were free to live as Nature meant them to live, it would all come back to this—I would sit in my old age in a cottage, and watch the sun on the water and the children playing as children were meant to play along the shore....

It was a thought of sweet simplicity.

But I was not simple. I could never be like that. This was the ideal for which the Communities had been formed, and it was this ideal which I preached when I organized resistance to the Newmen. But for me it was not enough.

I did not yet know what would be enough.

The vision faded. I had no time for sentimentality. The road ahead was plain. It led inevitably towards the death of Julian Larsen. After that, the pattern of life would shape itself; after that, the roads would have to be built anew.

* * * *

On that bright, cold October day we struck.

The timing was perfect. Southern Group Five entered the power station south of the Thames and demolished the generators. There was no opposition. It was a day of festivity, and there were no guards on the power station.

In point of fact, there were no guards anywhere. The Newmen had grown overconfident, it seemed. World peace had become such a certain thing that precautions of the most obvious kind were no longer taken. The power station rocked and crumbled under the impact of carefully placed explosive. The radiation blanket over London died.

In the provincial towns and cities, similar attacks were being made simultaneously. They were equally successful.

At the same time, my forces pounced on radio stations and took over telescreen transmitters. At the very moment that President Julian Larsen was entering the Council Chamber of the World Federation Hall, erected on the site of the recently demolished Old St. Paul's, telescreens went blank for a moment. Then vision was switched on again.

All the technical details were in the hands of city-bred rebels. I had chosen carefully. I knew whom I could trust, and they did not fail. Older men who had worked for years in the radio offices all over the country now assumed control.

The Newmen had believed too firmly in their imposed peace. They were not ready for assault

“They've grown smug,” I said to Michael Martin, a young man from the north whom I had chosen to act as my lieutenant in the opening campaign. “They are too complacent. They never expected a revolt from the despised country-dwellers!”

In the grand assembly, no word could reach the delegates. They were too deeply engrossed in their solemn ritual of speeches and declarations. Their faces and voices were carried out to telescreens all over the world. Even the technicians on the spot did not know that their headquarters staff had been replaced by rebels.

I watched the President on the monitor screen in Radio House, in the heart of London. It was strange to see that boy mouthing platitudes and to know that very shortly he would be dead.

In the middle of his speech of welcome, he stopped abruptly. A strange expression crossed his face. He put his right hand up to his ear as though feeling a momentary pain.

There was a murmur in the Federation Hall.

His silence lasted for a second only; but it seemed a long second. Then he looked up, and it seemed that his eyes were peering out of the screen into mine.

Something had gone wrong. But how? It was too soon for him to know yet. He had no way of knowing.

He said: “I have just received news of a misguided attack on our government. Guerrilla forces have made concerted assaults on our main cities, and seized the radio stations.”

The fretful murmur in his audience rose like the roar of a descending wave, then splashed into fragments and rustled away.

“There is no cause for alarm,” said Larsen glibly. “We had not prepared for such wanton outbreaks of war; but we were not altogether unprepared, if I may put it that way.” His thin, confident smile was infuriating. He was talking nonsense. “Although it has been against the principles of the Newmen to maintain armed forces since the signature of the World Covenant, we have always borne in mind the possibility that unruly elements might take advantage of the new enlightenment.”

Martin muttered in my ear: “Excuses, that's all.”

“We have always based our policy,” Larsen went on, “on the assurance that the regime of the Newmen could not be overthrown within a matter of weeks. We could have only one enemy—the reactionaries who have been allowed to live in peace away from our civilization. If these barbarians”—again he seemed to be staring into my eyes—“chose to launch an insane attack on us, we have always known that we could afford to lose a few yards.”

“A few yards!” I echoed furiously.

“Things have happened as we foresaw. It is regrettable that force should once more have to be used. It is regrettable that strife should have broken out once again in a world that we believed to have been freed from the menace of war. But order will soon be restored. Already the radiation blanket, cut off momentarily by an act of sabotage, has been restored. A secondary station has come into operation—”

“Cut him off!” I snapped. “Cut transmission, and put our proclamation on.”

Martin snapped an order into the internal speaker. Almost at once Larsen faded, and suddenly one of our own men was on the screen, beginning to read the message we had prepared so laboriously.

I hurried out of the room. Julian Larsen had caused a slight upset in our plans, but if we moved fast it would not be serious.

Yet how had he received that message? He could not have known before he went into the Federation Hall, for the carefully timed attacks had not been unleashed then. Nobody had approached him while we had been watching him on the screen, and he could not have received radio warning—for the radio stations were in our hands.

My commandeered helicar sprang from the roof of Radio House, and spun down like a madly windblown leaf to the landing ground by the spacious Federation Hall.

Two men moved towards me from the main door.

I tensed, then walked briskly to meet them.

One said: “Have you got a pass?”

“I'm from Radio House,” I said. “Urgent news from the Controller there to the President. It's been taken over—”

“Radio House as well? We heard something from inside, but—”

“I've got to have a word with him.”

If I had been an adult they might have suspected. They looked doubtful as it was; but they were in the middle thirties, and I was only a boy. I spoke in a voice of command—the tone they were accustomed to—and before they had time to wonder, or to argue, I was hastening into the Federation Hall.

The corridors were almost deserted. At one corner I saw a uniformed attendant coming out of a door. As it swung open and then shut, the murmur from the conference hall buzzed out like the sound of bees, and then was put off.

He glanced at me; but I went on, out of sight.

I knew the way. It had all been mapped out. Admittedly things were not what they ought to have been—the alarm had been given—but there was still no reason why the pieces of our plan should not lock firmly together.

Even as I opened the door of the President's ante-room, I heard the muffled thunder of the explosion outside. The sound was further away than I had expected it to be—to seal the doors, the explosion ought to have been closer and more jarring; but my men knew what they were doing.

An elderly man by the door on the far side of the ante-room turned.

“What are you doing in here? You .know the President has requested privacy. Everyone knows—”

“This is urgent,” I said. “I've escaped from Radio House.”

I hoped that the others were close behind me. I hoped that they were assembling by the doors of the conference hall, ready to swoop.

The man said; “He's coming off the platform now. We've heard rumours—he made an announcement....”

Julian Larsen appeared in the doorway. He was an inch shorter than I was, and I thought how insignificant and unworthy he was.

“What is it?” he asked, glancing at me.

And then his face set. Awareness blazed in his eyes.

I jumped, took him off balance, and stabbed him. Once...twice.... His head fell loosely back, and the gash across his throat began rhythmically to pour blood.

The man by the door squealed, and made a vague movement of his arm. I caught him, pulled him close, and smashed my fist into his face. He went down.

Then the door to the corridor was flung open. I swung exultantly round to greet my followers.

The faces were the faces of strangers.

Four of them were forcing me back against the wall, while another bent over the President. When he got to his feet there was a disturbing sadness in his face. No hatred, no vengeful fury; merely sadness.

He was a man in his early twenties. He came and stood before me. I thought he would strike me, but he simply shook his head.

“You have murdered a fine man,” he said gently.

“That's only the beginning,” I said.

“You want to spread bloodshed?”

“We want to restore the old order,” I said. “I advise you to release me at once. My men will be here any moment. We have seized power stations and radio stations. The Federation Hall, with delegates, of all nations of the world, is surrounded—”