City of Endless Night

M >> Milo Hastings >> City of Endless Night

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Apparently I had found an explanation of the careful segregation of
German women--there were not enough to go around!

Turning the further pages of my atlas I came upon an elaborately
illustrated directory of the uniforms and insignia of the various
military and civil ranks and classes. As I had already anticipated, I
found that any citizen in Berlin could immediately be placed in his
proper group and rank by his clothing, which was prescribed with
military exactness.

Various fabrics and shades indicated the occupational grouping while
trimmings and insignia distinguished the ranks within the groups. In all
there were many hundreds of distinct uniforms. Two groups alone proved
exceptions to this iron clad rule; Royalty and free women were permitted
to dress as they chose and were restricted only in that they were
forbidden to imitate the particular uniforms of other groups.

I next investigated the contents of Armstadt's desk. My most interesting
find was a checkbook, with receipts and expenditures carefully recorded
on the stubs. From this I learned that, as Armstadt, I was in receipt of
an income of five thousand marks, paid by the Government. I did not know
how much purchasing value that would amount to, but from the account
book I saw that the expenses had not equalled a third of it, which
explained why there was a bank balance of some twenty thousand marks.

Clearly I would need to master the signature of Karl Armstadt so I
searched among the papers until I found a bundle of returned decks. Many
of the larger checks had been made out to "Katrina," others to the
"Master of Games,"--evidently to cover gambling losses. The smaller
checks, I found by reference to the stubs, were for ornaments or
entertainment that might please a woman. The lack of the more ordinary
items of expenditure was presently made clear by the discovery of a
number of punch marked cards. For intermittent though necessary
expenses, such as tonsorial service, clothing and books. For the more
constant necessities of life, such as rent, food, laundry and
transportation, there was no record whatever; and I correctly assumed
that these were supplied without compensation and were therefore not a
matter of personal choice or permissible variation. Of money in its
ancient form of metal coins and paper, I found no evidence.

~3~

In my mail the next morning I found a card signed by Lieut. Forrester of
the hospital staff. It read:

"The bearer, Karl Armstadt, has recently suffered from gas poisoning
while defending the mines beneath enemy territory. This has affected his
memory. If he is therefore found disobeying any ruling or straying
beyond his permitted bounds, return him to his apartment and call the
Hospital for Complex Gas Cases."

It was evidently a very kindly effort to protect a man whose loss of
memory might lead him into infractions of the numerous rulings of German
life. With this help I became ambitious to try the streets of Berlin
alone. The notice from the tailor afforded an excuse.

Consulting my atlas to get my bearings I now ventured forth. The streets
were tunnel-like passage-ways closed over with a beamed ceiling of
whitish grey concrete studded with glowing light globes. In the
residence districts the smooth side walls were broken only by high
ventilating gratings and the narrow passage halls from which led the
doors of the apartments.

The uncanny quiet of the streets of this city with its three hundred
million inhabitants awed and oppressed me. Hurriedly I walked along
occasionally passing men dressed like myself. They were pale men, with
blanched or sallow faces. But nowhere were there faces of ruddy tan as
one sees in a world of sun. The men in the hospital had been pale, but
that had seemed less striking for one is used to pale faces in a
hospital. It came to me with a sense of something lost that my own
countenance blanched in the mine and hospital would so remain colourless
like the faces of the men who now stole by me in their felted footwear
with a cat-like tread.

At a cross street I turned and came upon a small group of shops with
monotonous panelled display windows inserted in the concrete walls. Here
I found my tailor and going in I promptly laid down his notice and my
clothing card. He glanced casually at the papers, punched the card and
then looking up he remarked that my new suit had been waiting some time.
I began explaining the incident in the mine and the stay in the
hospital; but the tailor was either disinterested or did not comprehend.

"Will you try on your new suit now?" he interrupted, holding forth the
garments. The suit proved a trifle tight about the hips, but I hastened
to assure the tailor that the fit was perfect. I removed it and watched
him do it up in a parcel, open a wall closet, call my house number, and
send my suit on its way through one of the numerous carriers that
interlaced the city.

As I walked more leisurely back to my apartment by a less direct way, I
found my analytical brain puzzling over the refreshing quality of the
breezes that blew through those tunnel-like streets. With bits of paper
I traced the air flow from the latticed faces of the elevator shafts to
the ventilating gratings of the enclosed apartments, and concluded that
there must be other shafts to the rear of the apartments for its exit.
It occurred to me that it must take an enormous system of ventilating
fans to keep this air in motion, and then I remembered the liquid air
engine I had seen in the mine, and a realization of the economy and
efficiency of the whole scheme dawned upon me. The Germans had solved
the power problem by using the heat of the deeper strata of the earth to
generate power through the agency of liquid air and the exhaust from
their engines had automatically solved their ventilating problem. I
recalled with a smile that I had seen no evidence of heating apparatus
anywhere except that which the miners had used to warm their food. In
this city cooling rather than heating facilities would evidently be
needed, even in the dead of winter, since the heat generated by the
inhabitants and the industrial processes would exceed the radiation from
the exterior walls and roof of the city. Sunshine and "fresh air" they
had not, but our own scientists had taught us for generations that heat
and humidity and not lack of oxygen or sunshine was the cause of the
depression experienced in indoor quarters. The air of Berlin was cool
and the excess of vapor had been frozen out of it. Yes, the "climate" of
Berlin should be more salubrious to the body, if not to the mind, than
the fickle environment of capricious nature. From my reasoning about
these ponderous problems of existence I was diverted to a trivial
matter. The men I observed on the streets all wore their hair clipped
short, while mine, with six weeks' growth, was getting rather long. I
had seen several barber's signs but I decided to walk on for quite a
distance beyond my apartment. I did not want to confront a barber who
had known Karl Armstadt, for barbers deal critically in the matter of
heads and faces. At last I picked out a shop. I entered and asked for
a haircut.

"But you are not on my list," said the barber, staring at me in a
puzzled way, "why do you not go to your own barber?"

Grasping the situation I replied that I did not like my barber.

"Then why do you not apply at the Tonsorial Administrative Office of the
level for permission to change?"

Returning to my apartment I looked up the office in my directory, went
thither and asked the clerk if I could exchange barbers. He asked for my
card and after a deal of clerical activities wrote thereon the name of a
new barber. With this official sanction I finally got my hair cut and my
card punched, thinking meanwhile that the soundness of my teeth would
obviate any amateur detective work on the part of a dentist.

Nothing, it seemed, was left for the individual to decide for himself.
His every want was supplied by orderly arrangement and for everything he
must have an authoritative permit. Had I not been classed as a research
chemist, and therefore a man of some importance, this simple business of
getting a hair-cut might have proved my undoing. Indeed, as I afterwards
learned, the exclusive privacy of my living quarters was a mark of
distinction. Had I been one of lower ranking I should have shared my
apartment with another man who would have slept in my bed while I was at
work, for in the sunless city was neither night nor day and the whole
population worked and slept in prescribed shifts--the vast machinery of
industry, like a blind giant in some Plutonic treadmill, toiled
ceaselessly.

The next morning I decided to extend my travels to the medical level,
which was located just above my own. There were stairs beside the
elevator shafts but these were evidently for emergency as they were
closed with locked gratings.

The elevator stopped at my ring. Not sure of the proper manner of
calling my floor I was carried past the medical level. As we shot up
through the three-hundred-metre shaft, the names of levels as I had read
them in my atlas flashed by on the blind doors. On the topmost defence
level we took on an officer of the roof guard--strangely swarthy of
skin--and now the car shot down while the rising air rushed by us with a
whistling roar.

On the return trip I called my floor as I had heard others do and was
let off at the medical level. It was even more monotonously quiet than
the chemical level, save for the hurrying passage of occasional
ambulances on their way between the elevators and the various hospitals.
The living quarters of the physicians were identical with those on the
chemists' level. So, too, were the quiet shops from which the physicians
supplied their personal needs.

Standing before one of these I saw in a window a new book entitled
"Diseases of Nutrition." I went in and asked to see a copy. The book
seller staring at my chemical uniform in amazement reached quickly under
the counter and pressed a button. I became alarmed and turned to go out
but found the door had been automatically closed and locked. Trying to
appear unconcerned I stood idly glancing over the book shelves, while
the book seller watched me from the corner of his eye.

In a few minutes the door opened from without and a man in the uniform
of the street guard appeared. The book seller motioned toward me.

"Your identification folder," said the guard.

Mechanically I withdrew it and handed it to him. He opened it and
discovered the card from the hospital. Smiling on me with an air of
condescension, he took me by the arm and led me forth and conducted me
to my own apartment on the chemical level. Arriving there he pushed me
gently into a chair and stepped toward the switch of the telephone.

"Just a minute," I said, "I remember now. I was not on my level--that
was not my book store."

"The card orders me to call up the hospital," said the guard.

"It is unnecessary," I said. "Do not call them."

The guard gazed first at me and then at the card. "It is signed by a
Lieutenant and you are a Captain--" his brows knitted as he wrestled
with the problem--"I do not know what to do. Does a Captain with an
affected memory outrank a Lieutenant?"

"He does," I solemnly assured him.

Still a little puzzled, he returned the card, saluted and was gone. It
had been a narrow escape. I got out my atlas and read again the rules
that set forth my right to be at large in the city. Clearly I had a
right to be found in the medical level--but in trying to buy a book
there I had evidently erred most seriously. So I carefully memorized the
list of shops set down in my identification folder and on my cards.

For the next few days I lived alone in my apartment unmolested except by
an occasional visit from Holknecht, the laboratory assistant, who knew
nothing but chemistry, talked nothing but chemistry, and seemed dead to
all human emotions and human curiosity. Applying myself diligently to
the study of Armstadt's books and notes, I was delighted to find that
the Germans, despite their great chemical progress, were ignorant of
many things I knew. I saw that my knowledge discreetly used, might
enable me to become a great man among them and so learn secrets that
would be of immense value to the outer world, should I later contrive to
escape from Berlin.

By my discoveries of the German workings in the potash mines I had
indeed opened a new road to Berlin. It was up to me by further
discoveries to open a road out again, not only for my own escape, but
perhaps also to find a way by which the World Armies might enter Berlin
as the Greeks entered Troy. Vague ambitious dreams were these that
filled and thrilled me, for I was young in years, and the romantic
spirit of heroic adventure surged in my blood.

These days of study were quite uneventful, except for a single
illuminating incident; a further example of the super-efficiency of the
Germans. I found the meals served me at my apartment rather less in
quantity than my appetite craved. While there was a reasonable variety,
the nutritive value was always the same to a point of scientific
exactness, and I had seen no shops where extra food was available. After
I had been in my apartment about a week, some one rang at the door. I
opened it and a man called out the single word, "Weigher." Just behind
him stood a platform scale on small wheels and with handles like a
go-cart. The weigher stood, notebook in hand, waiting for me to act. I
took the hint and stepped upon the scales. He read the weight and as he
recorded it, remarked:

"Three kilograms over."

Without further explanation he pushed the scales toward the next door.
The following day I noticed that the portions of food served me were a
trifle smaller than they had been previously. The original Karl Armstadt
had evidently been of such build that he carried slightly less weight
than I, which fact now condemned me to this light diet.

However, I reasoned that a light diet is conducive to good brain work,
and as I later learned, the object of this systematic weight control was
not alone to save food but to increase mental efficiency, for a fat man
is phlegmatic and a lean one too excitable for the best mental output.
It would also help my disguise by keeping me the exact weight and build
of the original Karl Armstadt.

After a fortnight of study, I felt that I was now ready to take up my
work in the laboratory, but I feared my lack of general knowledge of the
city and its ways might still betray me. Hence I began further
journeyings about the streets and shops of those levels where a man of
my class was permitted to go.

~4~

After exhausting the rather barren sport of walking about the monotonous
streets of the four professional levels I took a more exciting trip down
into the lower levels of the city where the vast mechanical industries
held sway. I did not know how much freedom might be allowed me, but I
reasoned that I would be out of my supposed normal environment and hence
my ignorance would be more excusable and in less danger of betraying me.

Alighting from the elevator, I hurried along past endless rows of heavy
columns. I peered into the workrooms, which had no enclosing walls, and
discovered with some misgiving that I seemed to have come upon a race of
giants. The men at the machines were great hulking fellows with thick,
heavy muscles such as one would expect to see in a professional wrestler
or weight-lifter. I paused and tried to gauge the size of these men: I
decided that they were not giants for I had seen taller men in the outer
world. Two officials of some sort, distinguishable by finer garb,
walking among them, appeared to be men of average size, and the tops of
their heads came about to the workers' chins. That there should be such
men among the Germans was not unbelievable, but the strange thing was
that there should be so many of them, and that they should be so
uniformly large, for there was not a workman in the whole vast factory
floor that did not over-top the officials by at least half a head.

"Of course," I reasoned, "this is part of German efficiency";--for the
men were feeding large plates through stamping mills--"they have
selected all the large men for this heavy work." Then as I continued to
gaze it occurred to me that this bright metal these Samsons were
handling was aluminum!

I went on and came to a different work hall where men were tending wire
winding machinery, making the coils for some light electrical
instruments. It was work that girls could easily have done, yet these
men were nearly, if not quite, as hulking as their mates in the stamping
mill. To select such men for light-fingered work was not efficiency but
stupidity,--and then it came to me that I had also thought the soldiers
I had seen in the hospital to be men picked for size, and that in a
normal population there could not be such an abundance of men of
abnormal size. The meaning of it all began to clear in my mind--the
pedigree in my own identification folder with the numerous fraternity,
the system of social castes which my atlas had revealed, the
inexplicable and unnatural proportion of the sexes. These gigantic men
were not the mere pick from individual variation in the species, but a
distinct breed within a race wherein the laws of nature, that had kept
men of equal stature for countless centuries, even as wild animals were
equal, had been replaced by the laws of scientific breeding. These heavy
and ponderous labourers were the Percherons and Clydesdales of a
domesticated and scientifically bred human species. The soldiers,
somewhat less bulky and more active, were, no doubt, another distinct
breed. The professional classes which had seemed quite normal in
physical appearance--were they bred for mental rather than physical
qualities? Otherwise why the pedigree, why the rigid castes, the
isolation of women? I shuddered as the whole logical, inevitable
explanation unfolded. It was uncanny, unearthly, yet perfectly
scientific; a thing the world had speculated about for centuries, a
thing that every school boy knew could be done, and yet which I, facing
the fact that it had been done, could only believe by a strained effort
at scientific coolness.

I walked on and on, absorbed, overwhelmed by these assaulting,
unbelievable conclusions, yet on either side as I walked was the ever
present evidence of the reality of these seemingly wild fancies. There
were miles upon miles of these endless workrooms and everywhere the same
gross breed of great blond beasts.

The endless shops of Berlin's industrial level were very like those
elsewhere in the world, except that they were more vast, more
concentrated, and the work more speeded up by super-machines and
excessive specialization. Millions upon millions of huge, drab-clad,
stolid-faced workmen stood at their posts of duty, performing over and
over again their routine movements as the material of their labors
shuttled by in endless streams.

Occasionally among the workmen I saw the uniforms of the petty officers
who acted as foremen, and still more rarely the administrative offices,
where, enclosed in glass panelled rooms, higher officials in more
bespangled uniforms poured over charts and plans.

In all this colossal business there was everywhere the atmosphere of
perfect order, perfect system, perfect discipline. Go as I might among
the electrical works, among the vast factories of chemicals and goods,
the lighter labor of the textile mills, or the heavier, noisier business
of the mineral works and machine shops the same system of colossal
coordinate mechanism of production throbbed ceaselessly. Materials
flowed in endless streams, feeding electric furnaces, mills, machines;
passing out to packing tables and thence to vast store rooms. Industry
here seemed endless and perfect. The bovine humanity fitted to the
machinery as the ox to the treadmill. Everywhere was the ceaseless
throbbing of the machine. Of the human variation and the free action of
man in labour, there was no evidence, and no opportunity for its
existence.

Turning from the mere monotonous endlessness of the workshops I made my
way to the levels above where the workers lived in those hours when they
ceased to be a part of the industrial mechanism of production; and
everywhere were drab-coloured men for these shifts of labour were
arranged so that no space at any time was wholly idle. I now passed by
miles of sleeping dormitories, and other miles of gymnasiums, picture
theatres and gaming tables, and, strikingly incongruous with the
atmosphere of the place, huge assembly rooms which were labelled "Free
Speech Halls." I started to enter one of these, where some kind of a
meeting was in progress, but I was thrust back by a great fellow who
grinned foolishly and said: "Pardon, Herr Captain, it is forbidden you."

Through half-darkened streets, I again passed by the bunk-shelved
sleeping chambers with their cavernous aisles walled with orderly rows
of lockers. Again I came to other barracks where the men were not yet
asleep but were straggling in and sitting about on the lowest bunks of
these sterile makeshift homes.

I then came into a district of mess halls where a meal was being served.
Here again was absolute economy and perfect system. The men dined at
endless tables and their food like the material for their labours, was
served to the workers by the highly efficient device of an endless
moving belt that rolled up out of a slot in the floor at the end of the
table after the manner of the chained steps of an escalator.

From the moving belts the men took their portions, and, as they finished
eating, they cleared away by setting the empty dishes back upon the
moving belt. The sight fascinated me, because of the adaptation of this
mechanical principle to so strange a use, for the principle is old and,
as every engineer knows, was instrumental in founding the house of
Detroit Vehicle Kings that once dominated the industrial world. The
founder of that illustrious line gave the poorest citizen a motor car
and disrupted the wage system of his day by paying his men double the
standard wage, yet he failed to realize the full possibilities of
efficiency for he permitted his men to eat at round tables and be served
by women! Truly we of the free world very narrowly escaped the fetish of
efficiency which finally completely enslaved the Germans.

Each of the long tables of this Berlin dining hall, the ends of which
faced me, was fenced off from its neighbours. At the entrance gates were
signs which read "2600 Calories," "2800 Calories," "3000 Calories"--I
followed down the line to the sign which read "Maximum Diet, 4000
Calories." The next one read, "Minimum Diet 2000 Calories," and thence
the series was repeated. Farther on I saw that men were assembling
before such gates in lines, for the meal there had not begun. Moving to
the other side of the street I walked by the lines which curved out and
swung down the street. Those before the sign of "Minimum Diet" were not
quite so tall as the average, although obviously of the same breed. But
they were all gaunt, many of them drooped and old, relatively the
inferior specimens and their faces bore a cowering look of fear and
shame, of men sullen and dull, beaten in life's battle. Following down
the line and noting the improvement in physique as I passed on, I came
to the farthest group just as they had begun to pass into the hall.
These men, entering the gate labelled "Maximum Diet, 4000 Calories,"
were obviously the pick of the breed, middle-aged, powerful,
Herculean,--and yet not exactly Herculean either, for many of them were
overfull of waistline, men better fed than is absolutely essential to
physical fitness. Evidently a different principle was at work here than
the strict economy of food that required the periodic weighing of the
professional classes.

Turning back I now encountered men coming out of the dining hall in
which I had first witnessed the meal in progress. I wanted to ask
questions and yet was a little afraid. But these big fellows were
seemingly quite respectful; except when I started to enter the Free
Speech Hall, they had humbly made way for me. Emboldened by their
deference I now approached a man whom I had seen come out of a "3800
Calories" gate, and who had crossed the street and stood there picking
his teeth with his finger nail.

He ceased this operation as I approached and was about to step aside.
But I paused and smiled at him, much, I fear, as one smiles at a dog of
unknown disposition, for I could hardly feel that this ungainly creature
was exactly human. He smiled back and stood waiting.

"Perhaps, I stammered," you will tell me about your system of eating; it
seems very interesting."

"I eat thirty-eight," he grinned, "pretty good, yes? I am twenty-five
years old and not so tall either."

I eyed him up--my eyes came just to the top button of his jacket.

"I began thirty," continued the workman, "I came up one almost every
year, one year I came up two at once. Pretty good, yes? One more
to come."

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