"That Hideous Strength" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lewis Clive Staples)

III

Mark sat down to lunch that day in good spirits. Everyone reported that the riot had gone off most satisfactorily, and he had enjoyed reading his own accounts of it in the morning papers. He enjoyed it even more when he heard Steele and Cosser talking about it in a way which showed that they did not even know how it had been engineered, much less who had written it up in the newspapers. And he had enjoyed his morning, too. It had involved a conversation with Frost, the Fairy, and Wither himself, about the future of Edgestow. All were agreed that the government would follow the almost unanimous opinion of the nation (as expressed in the newspapers) and put it temporarily under the control of the Institutional Police. An emergency governor of Edgestow must be appointed. Feverstone was the obvious man. As a member of Parliament he represented the Nation, as a Fellow of Bracton he represented the University, as a member of the Institute he represented the Institute. All the competing claims that might otherwise have come into collision were reconciled in the person of Lord Feverstone; the articles on this subject which Mark was to write that afternoon would almost write themselves! But that had not been all. As the conversation proceeded it had become clear that there was really a double object in getting this invidious post for Feverstone. When the time came, and the local unpopularity of the N.I.C.E. rose to its height, he could be sacrificed. This, of course, was not said in so many words, but Mark realised perfectly clearly that even Feverstone was no longer quite in the Inner Ring. The Fairy said that old Dick was a mere politician at heart and always would be. Wither, deeply sighing, confessed that his talents had been perhaps more useful at an earlier stage of the movement than they were likely to be in the period on which they were now entering. There was in Mark’s mind no plan for undermining Feverstone nor even a fully formed wish that he should be undermined: but the whole atmosphere of the discussion became somehow more agreeable to him as he began to understand the real situation. He was also pleased that he had (as he would have put it) “got to know” Frost. He knew by experience that there is in almost every organisation some quiet, inconspicuous person whom the small fry suppose to be of no importance but who is really one of the mainsprings of the whole machine. Even to recognise such people for what they are shows that one has made considerable progress. There was, to be sure, a cold fish-like quality about Frost which Mark did not like and something even repulsive about the regularity of his features. But every word he spoke (he did not speak many) went to the root of what was being discussed, and Mark found it delightful to speak to him . . . The pleasures of conversation were becoming, for Mark, to have less and less connection with his spontaneous liking or disliking of the people he talked to. He was aware of this change-which had begun when he joined the Progressive Element in college-and welcomed it as a sign of maturity.

Wither had thawed in a most encouraging manner. At the end of the conversation he had taken Mark aside, spoken vaguely but paternally of the great work he was doing, and finally asked after his wife. The D.D. hoped there was no truth in the rumour which had reached him that she was suffering from-er-some nervous disorder.

“Who the devil has been telling him that?” thought Mark. “Because,” said Wither, “it had occurred to me, in view of the great pressure of work which rests on you at present and the difficulty, therefore, of your being at home as much as we should all (for your sake) wish, that in your case the Institute might be induced . . . I am speaking in a quite informal way . . . that we should all be delighted to welcome Mrs. Studdock here.”

Until the D.D. had said this Mark had not realised that there was nothing he would dislike so much as having Jane at Belbury. There were so many things that Jane would not understand: not only the pretty heavy drinking which was becoming his habit but-oh, everything from morning to night. For it is only justice both to Mark and to Jane to record that he would have found it impossible to conduct in her hearing any one of the hundred conversations which his life at Belbury involved. Her mere presence would have made all the laughter of the Inner Ring sound metallic, unreal; and what he now regarded as common prudence would seem to her, and through her, to himself, mere flattery, back-biting, and toad eating. Jane in the middle of Belbury would turn the whole of Belbury into a vast vulgarity, flashy and yet furtive. His mind sickened at the thought of trying to teach Jane that she must help to keep Wither in a good temper and must play up to Fairy Hardcastle. He excused himself vaguely to the D.D . . . with profuse thanks, and got away as quickly as he could.

That afternoon, while he was having tea, Fairy Hardcastle came and leaned over the back of his chair and said in his ear:

“You’ve torn it, Studdock.”

“What’s the matter now, Fairy?” said he.

“I can’t make out what’s the matter with you, young Studdock, and that’s a fact. Have you made up your mind to annoy the Old Man? Because it’s a dangerous game, you know.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Well, here we’ve all been working on your behalf and soothing him down and this morning we thought we’d finally succeeded. He was talking about giving you the appointment originally intended for you and waiving the probationary period. Not a cloud in the sky: and then you have five minutes’ chat with him-barely five minutes in fact-and in that time you’ve managed to undo it all. I begin to think you’re mental.”

“What the devil’s wrong with him this time?”

“Well you ought to know! Didn’t he say something about bringing your wife here?”

“Yes he did. What about it?”

“And what did you say?”

“I said not to bother about it . . . and, of course, thanked him very much and all that.” The Fairy whistled.

“Don’t you see, honey,” she said, gently rapping Mark’s scalp with her knuckles, “that you could hardly have made a worse bloomer? It was a most terrific concession for him to make. He’s never done it to anyone else. You might have known he’d be offended if you coldshouldered him. He’s burbling away now about lack of confidence. Says he’s ‘hurt’: which means that somebody else soon will be! He takes your refusal as a sign that you are not really ‘settled’ here.”

“But that is sheer madness. I mean . . .”

“Why the blazes couldn’t you tell him you’d have your wife here?”

“Isn’t that my own business?”

“Don’t you want to have her? You’re not very polite to little wifie, Studdock. And they tell me she’s a damned pretty girl.”

At that moment the form of Wither, slowly sauntering in their direction, became apparent to both and the conversation ended.

At dinner he sat next to Filostrato. There were no other members of the inner circle within earshot. The Italian was in good spirits and talkative. He had just given orders for the cutting down of some fine beech trees in the grounds.

“Why have you done that, Professor?” said a Mr. Winter who sat opposite. “I shouldn’t have thought they did much harm at that distance from the house. I’m rather fond of trees myself.”

“Oh yes, yes,” replied Filostrato. “The pretty trees , the garden trees. But not the savages. I put the rose in my garden, but not the briar. The forest tree is a weed. But I tell you I have seen the civilised tree in Persia. It was a French attache who had it, because he was in a place where trees do not grow. It was made of metal. A poor, crude thing. But how if it were perfected? Light, made of aluminium. So natural, it would even deceive.”

“It would hardly be the same as a real tree,” said Winter.

“But consider the advantages! You get tired of him in one place: two workmen carry him somewhere else: wherever you please. It never dies. No leaves to fall, no twigs, no birds building nests, no muck and mess.”

“I suppose one or two, as curiosities, might be rather amusing.”

“Why one or two? At present, I allow, we must have forest for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet.”

“Do you mean,” put in a man called Gould, “that we are to have no vegetation at all?”

“Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet.”

“I wonder what the birds will make of it?”

“I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt.”

“It sounds,” said Mark, “like abolishing pretty well all organic life.”

“And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, ‘Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,’ and then drop it?”

“Go on,” said Winter.

“And you, especially you English, are you not hostile to any organic life except your own on your own body? Rather than permit it you have invented the daily bath.”

“That’s true.”

“And what do you call dirty dirt? Is it not precisely the organic? Minerals are clean dirt. But the real filth is what comes from organisms-sweat, spittles, excretions. Is not your whole idea of purity one huge example? The impure and the organic are interchangeable conceptions.”

“What are you driving at, Professor?” said Gould.

“After all we are organisms ourselves.”

“I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life, like what you call the blue mould-all sprouting and budding and breeding and decaying. We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course; slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation.”

“I don’t think that would be much fun,” said Winter.

“My friend, you have already separated the Fun, as you call it, from the fertility. The Fun itself begins to pass away. Bah! I know that is not what you think. But look at your English women. Six out of ten are frigid are they not? You see? Nature herself begins to throw away the anachronism. When she has quite thrown it away, then real civilisation becomes possible. You would understand if you were peasants. Who would try to work with stallions and bulls? No, no; we want geldings and oxen. There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable.”

This brought them to the end of dinner, and as they rose from the table Filostrato whispered in Mark’s ear “I would not advise the Library for you to-night. You understand? You are not in favour. Come and have a little conversation with me in my room.”

Mark rose and followed him, glad and surprised that in this new crisis with the D.D. Filostrato was apparently still his friend. They went up to the Italian’s sitting-room on the first floor. There Mark sat down before the fire, but his host continued to walk up and down the room.

“I am very sorry, my young friend,” said Filostrato, “to hear of this new trouble between you and the Deputy Director. It must be stopped, you understand? If he invite you to bring your wife here why do you not bring her?”

“Well, really,” said Mark, “I never knew he attached so much importance to it. I thought he was merely being polite.” His objection to having Jane at Belbury had been if not removed, at least temporarily deadened by the wine he had drunk at dinner and by the sharp pang he had felt at the threat of expulsion from the library circle.

“It is of no importance in itself,” said Filostrato.

“But I have reason to believe it came not from Wither but from the Head himself.”

“The Head? You mean Jules?” said Mark in some surprise. “I thought he was a mere figure head. And why should he care whether I bring my wife here or not?”

“You were mistaken,” said Filostrato. “Our Head is no figure head.” There was something odd about his manner, Mark thought. For some time neither man spoke.

“It is all true,” said Filostrato at last, “what I said at dinner.”

“But about Jules,” said Mark. “What business is it of his?”

“Jules?” said Filostrato, “why do you speak of him? I say it was all true. The world I look forward to is the world of perfect purity. The clean mind and the clean minerals. What are the things that most offend the dignity of man? Birth and breeding and death. How if we are about to discover that Mind can live without any of the three?”

Mark stared. Filostrato’s conversation appeared as disjointed and his manner so unusual that he began to wonder if he were quite sane or quite sober.

“As for your wife,” resumed Filostrato, “I attach no importance to it. What have I to do with men’s wives? The whole subject disgusts me. But if they make a point of it . . . Look, my friend, the real question is whether you mean to be truly at one with us or no.”

“I don’t quite follow,” said Mark.

“Do you want to be a mere hireling? But you have already come too far in for that. You are at the turningpoint of your career, Mr. Studdock. If you try to go back you will be as unfortunate as the fool Hingest. If you come really in-the world . . . bah, what do I say? . . . the universe is at your feet.”

“But of course I want to come in,” said Mark. A certain excitement was stealing over him.

“The Head thinks that you cannot be really one of us if you will not bring your wife here. He will have all of you, and all that is yours-or else nothing. You must bring the woman in too. She also must be one of us.”

This remark was like a shock of cold water in Mark’s face. And yet . . . and yet . . . in that room and at that moment, fixed with the little, bright eyes of the Professor, he could hardly make the thought of Jane quite real to himself.

“You shall hear it from the lips of the Head himself,” said Filostrato suddenly.

“Is Jules here?” said Mark.

Instead of answering Filostrato turned sharply from him and with a great scraping movement flung back the window curtains. Then he switched off the light. The fog had all gone, the wind had risen. Small clouds were scudding across the stars and the full moon-Mark had never seen her so bright-stared down upon them. As the clouds passed her she looked like a ball that was rolling through them. Her bloodless light filled the room.

“There is a world for you, no?” said Filostrato.

“There is cleanness, purity. Thousands of square miles of polished rock with not one blade of grass, not one fibre of lichen, not one grain of dust. Not even air. Have you thought what it would be like, my friend, if you could walk on that land? No crumbling, no erosion. The peaks of those mountains are real peaks: sharp as needles, they would go through your hand. Cliffs as high as Everest and as straight as the wall of a house. And cast by those cliffs, acres of shadow black as ebony, and in the shadow hundreds of degrees of frost. And then, one step beyond the shadow, light that would pierce your eyeballs like steel and rock that would burn your feet. The temperature is at boiling-point. You would die, yes? But even then you would not become filth. In a few moments you are a little heap of ash; clean, white powder. And mark, no wind to blow that powder about. Every grain in the little heap remain in its place, just where you died, till the end of the world . . . but that is nonsense. The universe will have no end.”

“Yes. A dead world,” said Mark, gazing at the moon.

“No!” said Filostrato. He had come close to Mark and spoke almost in a whisper, the bat-like whisper of a voice that is naturally high-pitched. “No. There is life there.”

“Do we know that?” asked Mark.

“Oh, si. Intelligent life. Under the surface. A great race, further advanced than we. An inspiration. A pure race. They have cleaned their world, broken free (almost) from the organic.”

“But how?”

“They do not need to be born and breed and die only their common people, their canaglia do that. The Masters live on. They retain their intelligence: they can keep it artificially alive after the organic body has been dispensed with-a miracle of applied biochemistry. They do not need organic food. You understand? They are almost free of Nature, attached to her only by the thinnest, finest cord.”

“Do you mean that all that,” Mark pointed to the mottled white globe of the moon, “is their own doing?”

“Why not? If you remove all the vegetation, presently you have no atmosphere, no water.”

“But what was the purpose?”

“Hygiene. Why should they have their world all crawling with organisms? And specially, they would banish one organism. Her surface is not all as you see. There are still surface-dwellers-savages. One great dirty patch on the far side of her where there is still water and air and forests-yes, and germs and death. They are slowly spreading their hygiene over their whole globe. Disinfecting her. The savages fight against them. There are frontiers, and fierce wars, in the caves and galleries down below. But the great race press on. If you could see the other side you would see year by year the clean rock-like this side of the moon-encroaching: the organic stain, all the green and blue and mist, growing smaller. Like cleaning tarnished silver.”

“But how do we know all this?”

“I will tell you all that another time. The Head has many sources of information. For the moment, I speak only to inspire you. I speak that you may know what can be done: what shall be done here. This Institute-Dio mio, it is for something better than housing and vaccinations and faster trains and curing the people of cancer. It is for the conquest of death: or for the conquest of organic life, if you prefer. They are the same thing. It is to bring out of that cocoon of organic life which sheltered the babyhood of mind the New Man, the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.”

“And you think that some day we shall really find a means of keeping the brain alive indefinitely?”

“We have begun already. The Head himself . . .”

“Go on,” said Mark. His heart was beating wildly and he had forgotten both Jane and Wither. This at last was the real thing.

“The Head himself has already survived death, and you shall speak to him this night.”

“Do you mean that Jules has died?”

“Bah! Jules is nothing. He is not the Head.”

“Then who is?”

At this moment there was a knock on the door. Someone, without waiting for an answer, came in.

“Is the young man ready?” asked the voice of Straik.

“Oh yes. You are ready, are you not, Mr. Studdock?”

“You have explained it to him, then?” said Straik. He turned to Mark and the moonlight in the room was so bright that Mark could now partially recognise his face-its harsh furrows emphasised by that cold light and shade.

“Do you mean really to join us, young man?” said Straik. “There is no turning back once you have set your hand to the plough. And there are no reservations. The Head has sent for you. Do you understand-the Head? You will look upon one who was killed and is still alive. The resurrection of Jesus in the Bible was a symbol: to-night you shall see what it symbolised. This is real Man at last, and it claims all our allegiance.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” said Mark. The tension of his nerves distorted his voice into a hoarse blustering cry.

“My friend is quite right,” said Filostrato. “Our Head is the first of the New Men-the first that lives beyond animal life. As far as Nature is concerned he is already dead: if Nature had her way his brain would now be mouldering in the grave. But he will speak to you within this hour, and-a word in your ear, my friend-you will obey his orders.”

“But who is it?” said Mark.

“It is Francois Alcasan,” said Filostrato.

“You mean the man who was guillotined?” gasped Mark. Both the heads nodded. Both faces were close to him: in that disastrous light they looked like masks hanging in the air.

“You are frightened?” said Filostrato. “You will get over that. We are offering to make you one of us. Ah-if you were outside, if you were mere canaglia you would have reason to be frightened. It is the beginning of all power. He live forever. The giant time is conquered. And the giant space-he was already conquered too. One of our company has already travelled in space. True, he was betrayed and murdered and his manuscripts are imperfect: we have not yet been able to reconstruct his space ship. But that will come.”

“It is the beginning of Man Immortal and Man Ubiquitous,” said Straik. “Man on the throne of the universe. It is what all the prophecies really meant.”

“At first, of course,” said Filostrato, “the power will be confined to a number-a small number-of individual men. Those who are selected for eternal life.”

“And you mean,” said Mark, “it will then be extended to all men?”

“No,” said Filostrato. “I mean it will then be reduced to one man. You are not a fool, are you, my young friend? All that talk about the power of Man over Nature-Man in the abstract-is only for the canaglia. You know as well as I do that Man’s power over Nature means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument. There is no such thing as Man-it is a word. There are only men. No! It is not Man who will be omnipotent, it is some one man, some immortal man. Alcasan, our Head, is the first sketch of it. The completed product may be someone else. It may be you. It may be me.”

“A king cometh,” said Straik, “who shall rule the universe with righteousness and the heavens with judgement. You thought all that was mythology, no doubt. You thought because fables had clustered about the phrase ‘Son of Man’ that Man would never really have a son who will wield all power. But he will.”

“I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” said Mark.

“But it is very easy,” said Filostrato. “We have found how to make a dead man live. He was a wise man even in his natural life. He live now forever: he get wiser. Later, we make them live better-for at present, one must concede, this second life is probably not very agreeable to him who has it. You see? Later we make it pleasant for some-perhaps not so pleasant for others. For we can make the dead live whether they wish it or not. He who shall be finally king of the universe can give this life to whom he pleases. They cannot refuse the little present.”

“And so,” said Straik, “the lessons you learned at your mother’s knee return. God will have power to give eternal reward and eternal punishment.”

“God?” said Mark. “How does He come into it? I don’t believe in God.”

“But, my friend,” said Filostrato, “does it follow that because there was no God in the past that there will be no God also in the future?”

“Don’t you see,” said Straik, “that we are offering you the unspeakable glory of being present at the creation of God Almighty? Here, in this house, you shall meet the first draught of the real God. It is a man-or a being made by man-who will finally ascend the throne of the universe. And rule forever.”

“You will come with us?” said Filostrato. “He has sent for you.”

“Of course he will come,” said Straik. “Does he think he could hold back and live?”

“And that little affair of the wife,” added Filostrato.

“You will not mention a triviality like that. You will do as you are told. One does not argue with the Head.”

Mark had nothing now to help him but the rapidly ebbing exhilaration of the alcohol taken at dinner-time and some faint gleams of memory from hours with Jane and with friends made before he went to Bracton, during which the world had had a different taste from this exciting horror which now pressed upon him. These, and a merely instinctive dislike for both the moonlit faces which so held his attention. On the other side was fear. What would they do to him if he refused now? And aiding fear was this young man’s belief that if one gave in for the present things would somehow right themselves “in the morning.” And, aiding the fear and the hope, there was still, even then, a not wholly disagreeable thrill at the thought of sharing so stupendous a secret.

“Yes,” he said, halting in his speech as if he were out of breath, “Yes-of course-I’ll come.”

They led him out. The passages were already still and the sound of talk and laughter from the public rooms on the ground floor had ceased. He stumbled, and they linked arms with him. The journey seemed long: passage after passage, passages he had never seen before, doors to unlock, and then into a place where all the lights were on, and there were strange smells. Then Filostrato spoke through a speaking-tube and a door was opened to them.

Mark found himself in a surgical-looking room with glaring lights, and sinks, and bottles, and glittering instruments. A young man whom he hardly knew, dressed in a white coat, received them.

“Strip to your underclothes,” said Filostrato. While Mark was obeying he noticed that the opposite wall of the room was covered with dials. Numbers of flexible tubes came out of the floor and went into the wall just beneath the dials. The staring dial faces and the bunches of tubes beneath them, which seemed to be faintly pulsating, gave one the impression of looking at some creature with many eyes and many tentacles. The young man kept his eyes fixed on the vibrating needles of the dials. When the three newcomers had removed their outer clothes, they washed their hands and faces, and after that Filostrato plucked white clothes for them out of a glass container with a pair of forceps. When they had put these on he gave them also gloves and masks such as surgeons wear. There followed a moment’s silence while Filostrato studied the dials. “Yes, yes,” he said. “A little more air. Not much: point nought three. Turn on the chamber air . . . slowly . . . to Full. Now the lights. Now air in the lock. A little less of the solution. And now” (here he turned to Straik and Studdock) “are you ready to go in?”

He led them to a door in the same wall as the dials.