City of Endless Night
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Milo Hastings >> City of Endless Night
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9 CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT
By Milo Hastings
1920
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE RED AND BLACK AND GOLD STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY ON THE CHANGING
MAP OF THE WORLD
II. I EXPLORE THE POTASH MINES OF STASSFURT AND FIND A DIARY IN A DEAD
MAN'S POCKET
III. IN A BLACK UTOPIA THE BLOND BROOD BREEDS AND SWARMS
IV. I GO PLEASURING ON THE LEVEL OF FREE WOMEN AND DRINK SYNTHETIC BEER
V. I AM DRAFTED FOR PATERNITY AND MAKE EXTRAORDINARY PETITION TO THE
CHIEF OF THE EUGENIC STAFF
VI. IN WHICH I LEARN THAT COMPETITION IS STILL THE LIFE OF THE OLDEST
TRADE IN THE WORLD
VII. THE SUN SHINES UPON A KING AND A GIRL READS OF THE FALL OF BABYLON
VIII. FINDING THEREIN ONE RIGHTEOUS MAN, I HAVE COMPASSION ON BERLIN
IX. IN WHICH I SALUTE THE STATUE OF GOD, AND A PSYCHIC EXPERT EXPLORES
MY BRAIN AND FINDS NOTHING
X. A GODDESS WHO IS SUFFERING FROM OBESITY, AND A BRAVE MAN WHO IS
AFRAID OF THE LAW OF AVERAGES
XI. IN WHICH THE TALKING DELEGATE IS ANSWERED BY THE ROYAL VOICE AND I
LEARN THAT LABOR KNOWS NOT GOD
XII. THE DIVINE DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM THE GREAT GIVE A BENEFIT FOR THE
CANINE GARDENS AND PAY TRIBUTE TO THE PIGGERIES
XIII. IN WHICH A WOMAN ACCUSES ME OF MURDER AND I PLACE A RUBY NECKLACE
ABOUT HER THROAT
XIV. THE BLACK SPOT IS ERASED FROM THE MAP OF THE WORLD AND THERE IS
DANCING IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE ROOF OF BERLIN
CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT
CHAPTER I
THE RED AND BLACK AND GOLD STRUGGLE FOR
SUPREMACY ON THE CHANGING MAP OF THE WORLD
~1~
When but a child of seven my uncle placed me in a private school in
which one of the so-called redeemed sub-sailors was a teacher of the
German language. As I look back now, in the light of my present
knowledge, I better comprehend the docile humility and carefully
nurtured ignorance of this man. In his class rooms he used as a text a
description of German life, taken from the captured submarine. From this
book he had secured his own conception of a civilization of which he
really knew practically nothing. I recall how we used to ask Herr
Meineke if he had actually seen those strange things of which he taught
us. To this he always made answer, "The book is official, man's
observation errs."
~2~
"He can talk it," said my playmates who attended the public schools
where all teaching of the language of the outcast nation was prohibited.
They invariably elected me to be "the Germans," and locked me up in the
old garage while they rained a stock of sun-dried clay bombs upon the
roof and then came with a rush to "batter down the walls of Berlin" by
breaking in the door, while I, muttering strange guttural oaths, would
be led forth to be "exterminated."
On rainy days I would sometimes take my favoured playmates into my
uncle's library where five great maps hung in ordered sequence on the
panelled wall.
The first map was labelled "The Age of Nations--1914," and showed the
black spot of Germany, like in size to many of the surrounding
countries, the names of which one recited in the history class.
The second map--"Germany's Maximum Expansion of the First World
War--1918"--showed the black area trebled in size, crowding into the
pale gold of France, thrusting a hungry arm across the Hellespont
towards Bagdad, and, from the Balkans to the Baltic, blotting out all
else save the flaming red of Bolshevist Russia, which spread over the
Eastern half of Europe like a pool of fresh spilled blood.
Third came "The Age of the League of Nations, 1919--1983," with the gold
of democracy battling with the spreading red of socialism, for the black
of autocracy had erstwhile vanished.
The fourth map was the most fascinating and terrible. Again the black of
autocracy appeared, obliterating the red of the Brotherhood of Man,
spreading across half of Eurasia and thrusting a broad black shadow to
the Yellow Sea and a lesser one to the Persian Gulf. This map was
labelled "Maximum German Expansion of the Second World War, 1988," and
lines of dotted white retreated in concentric waves till the line
of 2041.
This same year was the first date of the fifth map, which was labelled
"A Century of the World State," and here, as all the sea was blue, so
all the land was gold, save one black blot that might have been made by
a single spattered drop of ink, for it was no bigger than the Irish
Island. The persistence of this remaining black on the map of the world
troubled my boyish mind, as it has troubled three generations of the
United World, and strive as I might, I could not comprehend why the
great blackness of the fourth map had been erased and this small blot
alone remained.
~3~
When I returned from school for my vacation, after I had my first year
of physical science, I sought out my uncle in his laboratory and asked
him to explain the mystery of the little black island standing adamant
in the golden sea of all the world.
"That spot," said my uncle, "would have been erased in two more years if
a Leipzig professor had not discovered The Ray. Yet we do not know his
name nor how he made his discovery."
"But just what is The Ray?" I asked.
"We do not know that either, nor how it is made. We only know that it
destroys the oxygen carrying power of living blood. If it were an
emanation from a substance like radium, they could have fired it in
projectiles and so conquered the earth. If it were ether waves like
electricity, we should have been able to have insulated against it, or
they should have been able to project it farther and destroy our
aircraft, but The Ray is not destructive beyond two thousand metres in
the air and hardly that far in the earth."
"Then why do we not fly over and land an army and great guns and batter
down the walls of Berlin and he done with it?"
"That, as you know if you studied your history, has been tried many
times and always with disaster. The bomb-torn soil of that black land is
speckled white with the bones of World armies who were sent on landing
invasions before you or I was born. But it was only heroic folly, one
gun popping out of a tunnel mouth can slay a thousand men. To pursue the
gunners into their catacombs meant to be gassed; and sometimes our
forces were left to land in peace and set up their batteries to fire
against Berlin, but the Germans would place Ray generators in the ground
beneath them and slay our forces in an hour, as the Angel of Jehovah
withered the hosts of the Assyrians."
"But why," I persisted, "do we not tunnel under the Ray generators and
dig our way to Berlin and blow it up?"
My uncle smiled indulgently. "And that has been tried too, but they can
hear our borings with microphones and cut us off, just as we cut them
off when they try to tunnel out and place new generators. It is too
slow, too difficult, either way; the line has wavered a little with the
years but to no practical avail; the war in our day has become merely a
watching game, we to keep the Germans from coming out, they to keep us
from penetrating within gunshot of Berlin; but to gain a mile of
worthless territory either way means too great a human waste to be worth
the price. Things must go on as they are till the Germans tire of their
sunless imprisonment or till they exhaust some essential element in
their soil. But wars such as you read of in your history, will never
happen again. The Germans cannot fight the world in the air, nor in the
sea, nor on the surface of the earth; and we cannot fight the Germans in
the ground; so the war has become a fixed state of standing guard; the
hope of victory, the fear of defeat have vanished; the romance of war
is dead."
"But why, then," I asked, "does the World Patrol continue to bomb the
roof of Berlin?"
"Politics," replied my uncle, "military politics, just futile display of
pyrotechnics to amuse the populace and give heroically inclined young
men a chance to strut in uniforms--but after the election this fall such
folly will cease."
~4~
My uncle had predicted correctly, for by the time I again came home on
my vacation, the newly elected Pacifist Council had reduced the aerial
activities to mere watchful patroling over the land of the enemy. Then
came the report of an attempt to launch an airplane from the roof of
Berlin. The people, in dire panic lest Ray generators were being carried
out by German aircraft, had clamoured for the recall of the Pacifist
Council, and the bombardment of Berlin was resumed.
During the lull of the bombing activities my uncle, who stood high with
the Pacifist Administration, had obtained permission to fly over Europe,
and I, most fortunate of boys, accompanied him. The plane in which we
travelled bore the emblem of the World Patrol. On a cloudless day we
sailed over the pock-marked desert that had once been Germany and came
within field-glass range of Berlin itself. On the wasted, bomb-torn land
lay the great grey disc--the city of mystery. Three hundred metres high
they said it stood, but so vast was its extent that it seemed as flat
and thin as a pancake on a griddle.
"More people live in that mass of concrete," said my uncle, "than in the
whole of America west of the Rocky Mountains." His statement, I have
since learned, fell short of half the truth, but then it seemed
appalling. I fancied the city a giant anthill, and searched with my
glass as if I expected to see the ants swarming out. But no sign of life
was visible upon the monotonous surface of the sand-blanketed roof, and
high above the range of naked vision hung the hawk-like watchers of the
World Patrol.
The lure of unravelled secrets, the ambition for discovery and
exploration stirred my boyish veins. Yes, I would know more of the
strange race, the unknown life that surged beneath that grey blanket of
mystery. But how? For over a century millions of men had felt that same
longing to know. Aviators, landing by accident or intent within the
lines, had either returned with nothing to report, or they had not
returned. Daring journalists, with baskets of carrier pigeons, had on
foggy nights dropped by parachute to the roof of the city; but neither
they nor the birds had brought back a single word of what lay beneath
the armed and armoured roof.
My own resolution was but a boy's dream and I returned to Chicago to
take up my chemical studies.
CHAPTER II
I EXPLORE THE POTASH MINES OF STASSFURT
AND FIND A DIARY IN A DEAD MAN'S POCKET
~1~
When I was twenty-four years old, my uncle was killed in a laboratory
explosion. He had been a scientist of renown and a chemical inventor who
had devoted his life to the unravelling of the secrets of the synthetic
foods of Germany. For some years I had been his trusted assistant. In
our Chicago laboratory were carefully preserved food samples that had
been taken from the captured submarines in years gone by; and what to me
was even more fascinating, a collection of German books of like origin,
which I had read with avidity. With the exception of those relating to
submarine navigation, I found them stupidly childish and decided that
they had been prepared to hide the truth and not reveal it.
My uncle had bequeathed me both his work and his fortune, but despairing
of my ability worthily to continue his own brilliant researches on
synthetic food, I turned my attention to the potash problem, in which I
had long been interested. My reading of early chemical works had given
me a particular interest in the reclamation of the abandoned potash
mines of Stassfurt. These mines, as any student of chemical history will
know, were one of the richest properties of the old German state in the
days before the endless war began and Germany became isolated from the
rest of the world. The mines were captured by the World in the year
2020, and were profitably operated for a couple of decades. Meanwhile
the German lines were forced many miles to the rear before the
impregnable barrier of the Ray had halted the progress of the
World Armies.
A few years after the coming of the Ray defences, occurred what history
records as "The Tragedy of the Mines." Six thousand workmen went down
into the potash mines of Stassfurt one morning and never came up again.
The miners' families in the neighbouring villages died like weevils in
fumigated grain. The region became a valley of pestilence and death, and
all life withered for miles around. Numerous governmental projects were
launched for the recovery of the potash mines but all failed, and for
one hundred and eleven years no man had penetrated those
accursed shafts.
Knowing these facts, I wasted no time in soliciting government aid for
my project, but was content to secure a permit to attempt the recovery
with private funds, with which my uncle's fortune supplied me in
abundance.
In April, 2151, I set up my laboratory on the edge of the area of death.
I had never accepted the orthodox view as to the composition of the gas
that issued from the Stassfurt mines. In a few months I was gratified to
find my doubts confirmed. A short time after this I made a more
unexpected and astonishing discovery. I found that this complex and
hitherto misunderstood gas could, under the influence of certain
high-frequency electrical discharges, be made to combine with explosive
violence with the nitrogen of the atmosphere, leaving only a harmless
residue. We wired the surrounding region for the electrical discharge
and, with a vast explosion of weird purple flame, cleared the whole area
of the century-old curse. Our laboratory was destroyed by the explosion.
It was rebuilt nearer the mine shafts from which the gas still slowly
issued. Again we set up our electrical machinery and dropped our cables
into the shafts, this time clearing the air of the mines.
A hasty exploration revealed the fact that but a single shaft had
remained intact. A third time we prepared our electrical machinery. We
let down a cable and succeeded in getting but a faint reaction at the
bottom of the shaft. After several repeated clearings we risked descent.
Upon arrival at the bottom we were surprised to find it free from water,
save for a trickling stream. The second thing we discovered was a pile
of huddled skeletons of the workmen who had perished over a century
previous. But our third and most important discovery was a boring from
which the poisonous gas was slowly issuing. It took but a few hours to
provide an apparatus to fire this gas as fast as it issued, and the
potash mines of Stassfurt were regained for the world.
My associates were for beginning mining operations at once, but I had
been granted a twenty years' franchise on the output of these mines, and
I was in no such haste. The boring from which this poisonous vapour
issued was clearly man-made; moreover I alone knew the formula of that
gas and had convinced myself once for all as to its man-made origin. I
sent for microphones and with their aid speedily detected the sound of
machinery in other workings beneath.
It is easy now to see that I erred in risking my own life as I did
without the precaution of confiding the secret of my discovery to
others. But those were days of feverish excitement. Impulsively I
decided to make the first attack on the Germans as a private enterprise
and then call for military aid. I had my own equipment of poisonous
bombs and my sapping and mining experts determined that the German
workings were but eighty metres beneath us. Hastily, among the crumbling
skeletons, we set up our electrical boring machinery and began sinking a
one-metre shaft towards the nearest sound.
After twenty hours of boring, the drill head suddenly came off and
rattled down into a cavern. We saw a light and heard guttural shouting
below and the cracking of a gun as a few bullets spattered against the
roof of our chamber. We heaved down our gas bombs and covered over our
shaft. Within a few hours the light below went out and our microphones
failed to detect any sound from the rocks beneath us. It was then
perhaps that I should have called for military aid, but the uncanny
silence of the lower workings proved too much for my eager curiosity. We
waited two days and still there was no evidence of life below. I knew
there had been ample time for the gas from our bombs to have been
dissipated, as it was decomposed by contact with moisture. A light was
lowered, but this brought forth no response.
I now called for a volunteer to descend the shaft. None was forthcoming
from among my men, and against their protest I insisted on being lowered
into the shaft. When I was a few metres from the bottom the cable parted
and I fell and lay stunned on the floor below.
~2~
When I recovered consciousness the light had gone out. There was no
sound about me. I shouted up the shaft above and could get no answer.
The chamber in which I lay was many times my height and I could make
nothing out in the dark hole above. For some hours I scarcely stirred
and feared to burn my pocket flash both because it might reveal my
presence to lurking enemies and because I wished to conserve my battery
against graver need.
But no rescue came from my men above. Only recently, after the lapse of
years, did I learn the cause of their deserting me. As I lay stunned
from my fall, my men, unable to get answer to their shoutings, had given
me up for dead. Meanwhile the apparatus which caused the destruction of
the German gas had gone wrong. My associates, unable to fix it, had fled
from the mine and abandoned the enterprise.
After some hours of waiting I stirred about and found means to erect a
rough scaffold and reach the mouth of the shaft above me. I attempted to
climb, but, unable to get a hold on the smooth wet rock, I gave up
exhausted and despairing. Entombed in the depths of the earth, I was
either a prisoner of the German potash miners, if any remained alive, or
a prisoner of the earth itself, with dead men for company.
Collecting my courage I set about to explore my surroundings. I found
some mining machinery evidently damaged by the explosion of our gas
bombs. There was no evidence of men about, living or dead. Stealthily I
set out along the little railway track that ran through a passage down a
steep incline. As I progressed I felt the air rapidly becoming colder.
Presently I stumbled upon the first victim of our gas bombs, fallen
headlong as he was fleeing. I hurried on. The air seemed to be blowing
in my face and the cold was becoming intense. This puzzled me for at
this depth the temperature should have been above that on the surface of
the earth.
After a hundred metres or so of going I came into a larger chamber. It
was intensely cold. From out another branching passage-way I could hear
a sizzling sound as of steam escaping. I started to turn into this
passage but was met with such a blast of cold air that I dared not face
it for fear of being frozen. Stamping my feet, which were fast becoming
numb, I made the rounds of the chamber, and examined the dead miners
that were tumbled about. The bodies were frozen.
One side of this chamber was partitioned off with some sort of metal
wall. The door stood blown open. It felt a little warmer in here and I
entered and closed the door. Exploring the room with my dim light I
found one side of it filled with a row of bunks--in each bunk a corpse.
Along the other side of the room was a table with eating utensils and
back of this were shelves with food packages.
I was in danger of freezing to death and, tumbling several bodies out of
the bunks, I took the mattresses and built of them a clumsy enclosure
and installed in their midst a battery heater which I found. In this
fashion I managed to get fairly warm again. After some hours of huddling
I observed that the temperature had moderated.
My fear of freezing abated, I made another survey of my surroundings and
discovered something that had escaped my first attention. In the far end
of the room was a desk, and seated before it with his head fallen
forward on his arms was the form of a man. The miners had all been
dressed in a coarse artificial leather, but this man was dressed in a
woven fabric of cellulose silk.
The body was frozen. As I tumbled it stiffly back it fell from the chair
exposing a ghastly face. I drew away in a creepy horror, for as I looked
at the face of the corpse I suffered a sort of waking nightmare in which
I imagined that I was gazing at my own dead countenance.
I concluded that my normal mind was slipping out of gear and proceeded
to back off and avail myself of a tube of stimulant which I carried in
my pocket.
This revived me somewhat, but again, when I tried to look upon the
frozen face, the conviction returned that I was looking at my own
dead self.
I glanced at my watch and figured out that I had been in the German mine
for thirty hours and had not tasted food or drink for nearly forty
hours. Clearly I had to get myself in shape to escape hallucinations. I
went back to the shelves and proceeded to look for food and drink.
Happily, due to my work in my uncle's laboratory, these synthetic foods
were not wholly strange to me. I drank copiously of a non-alcoholic
chemical liquor and warmed on the heater and partook of some nitrogenous
and some starchy porridges. It was an uncanny dining place, but hunger
soon conquers mere emotion, and I made out a meal. Then once more I
faced the task of confronting this dead likeness of myself.
This time I was clear-headed enough. I even went to the miners' lavatory
and, jerking down the metal mirror, scrutinized my own reflection and
reassured myself of the closeness of the resemblance. My purpose framed
in my mind as I did this. Clearly I was in German quarters and was
likely to remain there. Sooner or later there must be a rescuing party.
Without further ado, I set about changing my clothing for that of the
German. The fit of the dead man's clothes further emphasized the closeness
of the physical likeness. I recalled my excellent command of the German
language and began to wonder what manner of man I was supposed to be in
this assumed personality. But my most urgent task was speedily to make
way with the incriminating corpse. With the aid of the brighter
flashlight which I found in my new pockets, I set out to find a place to
hide the body.
The cold that had so frightened me had now given way to almost normal
temperature. There was no longer the sound of sizzling steam from the
unexplored passage-way. I followed this and presently came upon another
chamber filled with machinery. In one corner a huge engine, covered with
frost, gave off a chill greeting. On the floor was a steaming puddle of
liquid, but the breath of this steam cut like a blizzard. At once I
guessed it. This was a liquid air engine. The dead engineer in the
corner helped reveal the story. With his death from the penetrating gas,
something had gone wrong with the engine. The turbine head had blown
off, and the conveying pipe of liquid air had poured forth the icy blast
that had so nearly frozen me along with the corpses of the Germans. But
now the flow of liquid had ceased, and the last remnants were
evaporating from the floor. Evidently the supply pipe had been shut off
further back on the line, and I had little time to lose for rescuers
were probably on the way.
Along one of the corridors running from the engine room I found an open
water drain half choked with melting ice. Following this I came upon a
grating where the water disappeared. I jerked up the grating and dropped
a piece of ice down the well-like shaft. I hastily returned and dragged
forth the corpse of my double and with it everything I had myself
brought into the mine. Straightening out the stiffened body I plunged it
head foremost into the opening. The sound of a splash echoed within the
dismal depths.
I now hastened back to the chamber into which I had first fallen and
destroyed the scaffolding I had erected there. Returning to the desk
where I had found the man whose clothing I wore, I sat down and
proceeded to search my abundantly filled pockets. From one of them I
pulled out a bulky notebook and a number of loose papers. The freshest
of these was an official order from the Imperial Office of Chemical
Engineers. The order ran as follows:
Capt. Karl Armstadt
Laboratory 186, E. 58.
Report is received at this office of the sound of sapping
operations in potash mine D5. Go at once and verify the same
and report of condition of gas generators and make analyses
of output of the same.
Evidently I was Karl Armstadt and very happily a chemical engineer by
profession. My task of impersonation so far looked feasible--I could
talk chemical engineering.
The next paper I proceeded to examine was an identification folder done
up in oiled fabric. Thanks to German thoroughness it was amusingly
complete. On the first page appeared what I soon discovered to be __
pedigree for four generations back. The printed form on which all this
was minutely filled out made very clear statements from which I
determined that my father and mother were both dead.
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